BattleLords of the 23rd Century
An Old-Fashioned Bug Hunt

Scene Seven: Putting The Hatter To Sleep

by John Wick

THE RUN-DOWN

Making it back to the bridge while dodging spiders and death traps.

Flashing lights and gas make it very difficult to see and hear anything.

Spiders notice all the noise and commotion and become very defensive.

THE SET-UP

Here's where the mercs get to run the gauntlet. They have to make their way back to the bridge with all the nasty death traps the ship has been set up with to deal with infiltrators. Hatter will gladly use these on mercs and spiders: he doesn't care.

THE ACTION

While running the gauntlet, you will notice that the death traps have been marked on the map. Here's where you get to match the numbers up with the traps.

Trap #1: Lasers

Very simple. Lasers fire out at the mercs. They have equivalent damage to light laser rifles. They have a Rifle Skill of 70% and can fire once per turn.

Trap #2: Gas

The gas bombs the ship drops are identical to the gas bombs in SCENE FIVE, including the fact that the webs on the interior of the ship are Mucking them up. Once the gas has been released, the mercs have to make a CON check at -20 every turn. If they fail the first CON check, they are immobilized. Their eyes will bum and their stomachs will regurgitate.

A second failed CON check will knock them out. A third CON check failure will cause them a d10 in hits. Any failed CON check after the third will cause hits. If they succeed the first check, all rolls are still at -10. This effect is non- cumulative (in other words, their CON checks are always at -20). Any Successful CON check will allow the marine to move about, but still operate at 10.

Trap #3: Sound There is a sound generator that will cause d2 automatic hits every turn along with a need for a CON check. Once again, the webbing has caused the generator to operate as if it were Muffled. Under normal conditions, the mercs would be knocked to the ground with their ears bleeding. If a marine fails the CON check, he falls to the floor screaming, covering his ears and shouting "Mommy, make it stop!" The sound generator can be taken out by a laser blast or grenade.

Putting Hatter To Sleep

Once the mercs have made it to the bridge, turning off the Hatter will not be easy. It requires 4 Computer Skill rolls to shut him down, and he will he screaming about it all the way. He'll threaten them with knowledge that they need, letting them know that he knows about their memory loss because he's the one that, did it.

He'll promise anything to keep from getting switched off, but once the mercs get to the bridge, there's nothing that he can do about it. There are no defense systems on the bridge and the mercs have him cornered. Alice tells them that once he's shut down, the mercs will have full access to his memory banks, letting them know everything they need. She continually urges them to shut Hatter down.

HINT. MAKE THIS DAMNED SUSPICIOUS!

Who's telling the truth? Who is really trying to kill them? Is it Alice or is it Hatter? After all, their troubles started when Hatter was shut down. Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that all the attacks started when Hatter came back on line?

The way to get to the truth is very simple. Alice cannot lie. It isn't in her programming. She'll tell the mercs this, but Hatter will tell them that she's lying. There are several ways of getting at the truth here, and truly clever players can figure it out, but if they make the mistake of shutting down Alice instead of Hatter, they're hosed.

FOLLOW-UP

Once the mercs have shut Hatter down, they'll have access to his memory banks. Read them the following passage:

    operation:spider-climb
    operation priority one: all researchers liquidated
    operation priority two: research information,collated

    Post operation prlorlty one: eliminate team members-memories for re-education.
    post-operation priority two: eliminate team-members
    all other priorities rescinded.
    arm lift ship will pickup drop ship seventy-two hours after signal has received.

If the mercs check, the signal beacon was set 24 hours ago. This means that the mercs have just over fifty hours on the planet before their employers pick them up.

And if it wasn't explicit enough, ARM is coming to pick them up--the terrorists who drop nasty alien things in the middle of cities just for fun. They have no problem dropping nukes on the mercs to make sure the ship is "clean."

So, now the realization is claer--the mercs were here to kill the researchers andgether the research, then get their memories sucked up and become "reeducated." They are on their way back and they aren't too happy about what's going on.

With a little repair work (about five a few skill rolls), the mercs can hook Alice up to the main data base and she can start pulling all the files they need from Hatter's memory. If the mercs try looking for the information they took from the base, they'll find that the files are empty. Apparently, Hatter erased them before they got to him. The only answers to the mystery of why they are here on the planet lie in the science bunker. They are going to have to make it all the way across the one mile stretch to the bunker If they take a look outside, they'll see a whole mess of spiders out there, creeping around.

Alice will suggest that they try the rovers. If they haven't hooked up the data base yet, she won't be able to open the doors for them. They could blow them up, but that would be rather bad. You see, the spiders got into the ship through the transport bay in the first place, and the door there is jammed open. If Alice is hooked up to the data base, she can tell them that the door is jammed open and that the place is probably crawling with spiders. If they don't spend the time to hook her up, well ... that's life in deep space.

BattleLords of the 23rd Century An Old-Fashioned Bug Hunt by John Wick, et. al.

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