20240611 - Run 52

We continue to fight. We’re coming up behind a squad of 4 elven raiders. The commander has one of those purple lozenges on his belt.

“What air support doing?” - Chad

The commander of Squad AftPort runs up from the … aft … to talk to Commander BowPort, and then they turn to look at the ship and us. D.va drops a shatter on the now five strong elf party. Somehow this doesn’t let them spot us, so, ok. D.va scampers back, out of the range of their bullshit stun capes. But then she runs up the starbord aft ramp. The ship is lit in low red and purple lamplight, and she does see the elf the crossbow militia shot as the forward starboard ramp was closing.This deck is open, and all four ramps can be accessed from here. D.va also sees a way up to another deck and a way to the engines.

Caleb leaps forward with a telekinetic leap and swings at one of the commander types. He swings wtice, slashing one of the commanders twice and hitting him with a psionic strike as well, knocking him prone. Caleb then surges into action and keeps axing him questions, cutting him twice more. Chad moves in to back him up, gets near, and hurls his javelin into the downed enemy, taking the commander through the throat and killing him. 

“Invisible Hand lawn darts.”  - Chad

I run over and stun the other commander with two spear strikes and a punch. Nyla drops a louder shatter on the group of enemies and summons another tentacle to keep hitting the stunned commander. The three soldiers move forward; one grabs the purple lozenge from the commander, activates it, spikes it, and then says “Make haste my swordbrethren, we must to the battlements.” One of the others follows him - they blink invisible and reappear most of the way to the ship. The last attacks me with his sword, but misses twice. I see another elf rushing towards me from the other squad; the other two from the other squad run full tilt towards the ship.

The elf running towards us from the fourth squad attacks Caleb, swings twice, manages to cut him once. Nyla’s tentacle and a psychic shield from Caleb try to stop the blow, but the blow lands and the psychic runes on the sword flare. And we hear behind us a scream: “TWO FUCKERS IN THE OPEN! FIRE!” A hail of arrows catches the two from our battle to the ship, taking one down and wounding the other heavily.  However, then we receive the air support fire the purple lozenge was intended to summon, and a blast hits me, Caleb, and Chad - as well as the elves we’re fighting. The commander and one of the other fighters go down. So we’ve got one fucker in close combat with us and 2 elves trying to get back on the ship. The lozenge is intact on the ground, and has gone dark.

D.va casts invisibility on herself and starts closing ramps; it might work, might not. We see the ramps start to close, and I know there’s no elves and one D.va in there, so looks like our ride might be leaving soon. Caleb swings at the one elf we’re still engaged with, hitting her twice. He catches his breath, gets his second wind. Chad gets confused, thinks that an elf is trying to steal the ship instead of D.va, and I yell at him to take out the elf instead of going after ‘that fucking invisible elf on the ship’. He’s about to pass the one elf running to the ship, but Chad stops on the ramp and finishes off the elf running for the ship. I finish off Caleb’s enemy and run to the ship, get in through the lifting forward port ramp. Nyla runs under the ship and hides from the two remaining elven raiders, and the elven raiders jump into the ship with D.va, Chad and I. One flees up the stairs; the other pulls his sword and guards the stairs up. 

D.va drops two lightning bolts into him, dropping her invisibility. Caleb runs over, towards the ship, and telekinetically pops Nyla, who is making ‘upsies’ gestures, into the ship.  Chad charges the guy D.va lightning bolted, but can’t quite make it to him and also attack. I move up and start hitting, nearly taking him down; Nyla fires a pair of eldritch blasts at him, hitting him once, dropping him. 

There is a throb in the ship, as someone on the bridge appears to be powering up the engines. Chad and I can see that there is a door, closed, up at the head of the stairs. The ship is starting to lift off. 

D.va moves up to the door and investigates it; it’s a pretty standard shipboard lock. She pulls out thieves tools and an arc welder and trips a maintenance catch, opening the door. The door does not open into the cockpit, so Chad moves in. Caleb is having trouble getting on the ship, so I stop, tie a rope to some shit in the assault deck, and throw it down to Caleb. Nyla moves up to accompany Chad; I stay back to bring up Caleb. The three of them continue to advance through the ship. D.va heals herself with a spell and backs up Chad; she’s pretty sure there’s going to be a stairway up behind the door Chad’s next to, which will lead up to a main deck. The helm should be accessible from the main deck. Caleb comes up my rope and heads up to the rest of the party. I close the ramp and continue up. D.va heals me, Nyla, and Caleb before we head ithrough the next door. We breach the door and move through the main deck, Nyla on Caleb’s shoulders so we can actually move quickly, heading to where D.va thinks the stairs to the helm should be. We hear a door in the engineering spaces open, but we’re already past; we enter the helm. There’s a misshapen figure stuck, lashed, in the helm, and an empty throne up and to the left from the helm, and there is a figure - one of the soldiers - holding a sword to the throat of the figure piloting the ship, apparently compelling the pilot to go.

D.va blasts the hostage taker with lightning blasts; Caleb runs in to “start axing”, hitting the elf twice as well. Chad moves up to assist, skewering him twice and removing the threat from the pilot. I move up and ask the pilot to please land the ship, in Old Kraskyan, and then in Common just in case. The pilot looks like they’ve been tortured by bad doctors, somehow. 

We have to deal with the one last elf in engineering, and we need to do something for this pilot, but we seem to have stolen this ship. (Also, we level, finally.)