Date: 2023-11-10

Player Characters (~300 points):
M2M2M, mech vehicular and robotics engineer, drone operator, hacker
Dr. Heinrich Schüler, human xenobiologist, physician, search and rescue specialist
Dr. Link Mercury, nanoswarm combat medic, pilot
Nectahii, edari sniper

NPCs of note – Boron Squad:
Alx Thorox, antax cybersecurity & electronics expert
Chloe Blanc, human marksman
John Hippocrates, neo-gray medic
“Rush” de Vries, human close quarters specialist

CP Awarded: 3

After defeating the alien swarm, Trauma Squad proceeded further down the tunnels. Soon they found a large three-way junction, which was full of charred alien corpses and other signs of battle. A tunnel branched off to the west, and another straight across the junction to the north (the operators entered  from the south). At the northern exit they found the remains of Thermobaric Zarl, the brute reptoid Boron Squad heavy weapons and demolitions specialist. M2 recovered his bodycam footage, which revealed that he made a last stand here to buy the rest of his squad time to withdraw from the alien swarm. M2 then attempted to contact any Boron Squad survivors via radio, and succeeded! Three of them were holed up in a freight elevator through the facility north of the junction. That’s where Trauma Squad went next – they left Zarl’s remains here to recover them later.

In the tunnel leading north, the team once again heard the sounds which last time heralded the alien swarm. This time they all prepared properly, taking cover behind a corner and some support beams next to it. Alien hordelings started pouring from around another corner to the south, and the team started mowing them down. There were a couple dozen all in all, with the operators dispatching about half of those appearing each second. After a couple seconds, the hordelings reached the team, but no more of them appeared – just four more “spitters”, which took positions behind cover and started aiming. Luckily, they were far enough to land only a couple of hits at the operators, who dodged them while taking out the remaining hordelings. In the end, the spitters fell as well.

Trauma Squad was unscathed, and simply proceeded further. They found another small bio-lab. Heinrich determined that this one focused on mental conditioning and rapid “sleep-learning” for cloning applications (whereas the first one researched tissue engineering and cloning itself). Past the lab, there was a large blast door which the Boron Squad survivors sabotaged on their way through to prevent the aliens from following them. Trauma Squad blew open a hole in it. On the other side, there was another seemingly “residential” section of the facility, and at its end the freight elevator where Boron Squad was holed up.

There, the operators found Alx, Chloe, and Rush. All were severely injured, and couldn’t climb the depowered elevator’s shaft to seek another exit. It wouldn’t have mattered though, because M2 sent his Gemini drone up and it reported a cave-in. As Heinrich and Link started treating Boron Squad, they briefed Trauma on the situation. Apparently, the third tunnel in the central junction led to a large laboratory. Emilia Rosenbaum, Boron’s science officer, and John Hippocrates, their medic, were investigating it while the rest of the squad went to haul supplies from the makeshift camp on the side of the facility they entered through. When they returned, the aliens started emerging from pods in the lab, killing Emilia on the spot. The rest of the squad retreated, except for John, who got separated from the others. None of the survivors are sure how that happened, though it seemed that the aliens completely ignored him. Boron Squad attempted to retreat the same way they came in, but got cut off by the heavily armored turrets in the first bio-lab. Hearing the alien swarm behind them, they decided to return towards the junction and fight just the aliens, instead of both the aliens and the turrets. The rest of their story matched what Trauma Squad already knew.

Considering their options, the two teams decided that the still heavily injured but patched up Boron Squad is fit enough to recover Zarl’s remains and retreat to the outside on their own. After parting ways, Trauma Squad set out to find John, and Emilia’s remains, in the main lab. As they approached its entrance, M2 noted that the disturbance which made radiocommunications in the facility difficult was in fact coming from the lab. They opened the door (which was unlocked) very carefully, and M2 sent Gemini in to take a look. There was nothing moving inside the 20-yard diameter lab – just a bunch of alien corpses, various scientific equipment, and pods along the walls and floors which presumably contained the aliens. Trauma Squad entered and carefully looked for the main control station. They found it at the opposite end of the lab, on a raised platform.

They activated the console, and started looking for research data, but also for a kill switch which would terminate aliens in all of the pods, if any still remained. As they were doing this, one of the pods near them opened – and Link fired several shotgun slugs into it. Out emerged John, stopping the slugs with a psionic force shield. He seemed physically changed, and greeted Trauma Squad. Answering their questions, he explained how the aliens from the pods ignored him, which allowed him to explore the lab after the rest of his squad ran away. He put Emilia’s corpse into one of the pods, as the technology within could revive her. Then, he himself went to be “uplifted”. He offered to prepare the pods to do the same with Trauma Squad, if they so desired. Heinrich was quite intrigued by the possibilities, and asked John what exactly this “uplifting” entailed, but also tried to discretely prod him into revealing if the pod put him under the Masters’ control. John answered that he wasn’t controlled by them, but the party got the impression he was not telling the whole truth. As Heinrich got John to explain the details of the uplifting process, Link sneaked up to John and injected him with a large dose of knockout drugs. At the same moment, M2 engaged the kill switch which he found in the meantime.

We ended the session with that cliffhanger.

Date: 2023-11-03

Player Characters (~300 points):

M2M2M, mech vehicular and robotics engineer, drone operator, hacker
Dr. Link Mercury, nanoswarm combat medic, pilot
Nectahii, edari sniper
Miko, human melee specialist, silent killer, psi

CP awarded: 2

This session was a relatively short one – it started late and ended early. After Trauma Squad blew up the turrets, M2 repaired Link who then attended to Heinrich’s injuries. T’was but a scratch, in both cases. The group entered the room which was now safe, and proceeded to examine it. It was obviously some kind of a lab, with a lot of scientific equipment and computer consoles. Link determined it was a bio-lab, but wasn’t quite sure of the specific research subjects since he’s merely a doctor, not a scientist. The team determined that Boron Squad was here and used the consoles, but little else about them. M2 discovered that the door to the lab, through which they entered, was remotely locked about a day ago. He found several other nodes on the network, but couldn’t ascertain anything more about them. He attempted to access the node which locked the door, but couldn’t get in. He did get access to most of the research data in the lab, but the group decided to look for Boron Squad first and download the data later. So they continued onwards, through the door on the opposite side of the lab than the one they entered through.

A corridor of hewn rock reinforced with artificial supports, and some ventilation shafts and cabling passed through it, was on the other side of the door. M2 sent his GEMINI drone to scout 10 yards ahead of him, while the rest of the squad tried to sneak a couple yards after M2. They failed to move silently. Some 20 yards from the lab, after turning a corner, the squad heard tapping and clanging noises coming from up ahead, around another corner, and from the walls around them. M2 rushed towards GEMINI, which was almost at that next corner, but Link started retreating towards the lab. Nectahii and Miko took positions in cover behind the ceiling supports. When M2 noticed Link retreating on the tacnet, he started to double back as well, but at that point the sources of the sounds revealed themselves – a dozen insectoid quadruped aliens, the size of large dogs, with bulging eyes, toothy maws, and sharp claws emerged from around the corner in front of the party, and another half a dozen burst forth from the ventilation shafts and wall panels around Nectahii and Miko. Trauma Squad was ready for them, if not optimally positioned, and opened fire.

For the first few seconds, M2 continued retreating towards the rest of the group, while Nectahii covered him, Link covered Nectahii and Miko, and Miko worked on the aliens surrounding the pair with her swords. More aliens appeared each second, and those from around the corner ignored GEMINI and rushed at the operators. M2 used this opportunity and shot down a good number of the hordelings via GEMINI’s gauss PDW. Once close to Nectahii and Miko, he turned around and started blasting himself. His sniper rifle wasn’t optimal for taking down many hordlings, and neither was Nactahii’s payload rifle, but Link and GEMINI fared better with their automatic shotgun and PDW, respectively. Still, the alien swarm didn’t abate, and Trauma Squad was risking the danger of being overwhelmed.

Just as the operators got some breathing room, four larger aliens emerged from behind the front corner (along with what proved to be the last wave of hordelings), and started focusing on Trauma Squad from afar. This proved to be taking aim with their corrosive spit attacks. At about the same time, the hordelings realized they couldn’t penetrate the operators’ armor with their claws, and started to attempt bites, with which they could also grapple. They piled onto M2, while Miko and Nectahii managed to keep themselves free. Nectahii ignored M2’s instructions to focus on the spitters, and tried to free M2 of some of the hordelings, but he merely managed to keep the number of hordelings latched onto M2 constant. This left Link the only one dealing with the spitters. The spitters only managed to land one hit on Miko and one on M2. Nectahii dodged several hits by floating close to the ceiling and then dropping lower, and Link made good use of cover. Miko’s psionic force field fully absorbed the hit; M2’s armor did the same, but got corroded. After a few seconds of tense shooting and grappling, the aliens started dropping like flies and Trauma Team fully wiped them out.

So I finally started a new campaign! I started prepping it in <gasp> March, as far as I can see in my Discord chat logs. It took way too long for my liking, though there were significant periods where I couldn’t spare the time for it.

“A TL9/10 planet-hopping space campaign of elite commandos inspired by XCOM and Stargate Atlantis. Shoot aliens, bugs, and robots. Uncover the mysteries of elusive alien masterminds, and recover their tech for Earth.”

That’s the synopsis. A setting similar to that of the XCOM and Chimera Squad games, where aliens invaded Earth, but we drove them away and now live with our erstwhile enemies because their Masters left them here stranded. Long story short, while Earth now has FTL travel, the “near space” around it proved utterly uninteresting, but a wormhole gate was discovered on Mars that led to the Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way… Where the alien masterminds left other minions, apparently a long time ago, and also some of their tech.

The campaign follows the exploits of Trauma Squad, a team of elite operatives of the Offworld Exploration Branch (OFF-EX for short) of AEGIS, Earth’s post-War defense force. OFF-EX established a base on the other side of the gate and is tasked to explore the surrounding space and retrieve any useful tech for Earth. Encounters with local aliens have so far gone poorly (read: they attack all outsiders on sight), and OFF-EX is currently mostly avoiding direct contact and focusing on exploration while it works to decipher the locals’ language.

I’m considering running this campaign with more than one group, but while Trauma Squad are my longtime friends with whom I play via voicechat, eventual other groups will be in PBP format. I still haven’t committed to anything, I wanted to get the primary game running first and see how it goes. So more on that later.

Date: 2023-10-27

Player Characters (~300 points):
M2M2M, mech vehicular and robotics engineer, drone operator, hacker
Dr. Heinrich Schüler, human xenobiologist, physician, search and rescue specialist
Dr. Link Mercury, nanoswarm combat medic, pilot
Nectahii, edari sniper
Miko, human melee specialist, silent killer, psi

NPCs of note:
Captain Zek-12, gray commanding officer to Trauma Squad

CP awarded: 2

The session started with Captain Zek-12 briefing Trauma Squad on their mission. Another team, Boron Squad, missed a scheduled check-in, and a standard rescue mission was being engaged 24 hours later. they were on an exploration mission on the planet Vectrosis, where surveys found traces of previous local alien habitation and potential Masters’ technology. In their last communique, Boron Squad reported that they found an alien facility built into a mountain, which they started to investigate. They reported no contact with sentient life, or any other dangers. After a bit of Q&A, Trauma Squad geared up and departed.

Jumping with their shuttle to Vectrosis, they found the region where Boron Squad landed enveloped in an immense storm. This caused them to land quite a ways off, and the storm apparently also messed with radio and sensors, which couldn’t reach more than 50 yards. Luckily, their piloting skills avoided a crash landing.

On their way through some woods to Boron Squad’s shuttle, the M2M2M was shot with a massive lightning bolt which disabled it, and feline-looking predators ambushed the team. Luckily, the only contact they made was when one of the six-legged creatures pounced on M2M2M who was already prone and knocked out, and didn’t manage to rake through its heavy armor. Trauma Squad’s gauss shotguns, sniper railguns, and magnum pistols loaded with APHEX ammo made short work of the beasts. They made their way back to their shuttle, M2M2M and one fresh corpse in tow. There, they kickstarted the mech back up, who then proceeded to repair itself while Heinrich dissected the big cat. He determined the cats had organs which produced electricity, which suffused their claw and bite attacks, and which they could also shoot in the form of lightning. However, a single specimen could not nearly produce lightning as strong as the one which disabled M2M2M. A theory that multiple individuals can together produce a larger bolt remains unproven so far.

The team eventually made their way to Boron Squad’s shuttle, which they found vacant, if undisturbed. Ship logs revealed nothing extraordinary, but automatically uploaded bodycam footage proved more illuminating. Boron Squad did indeed find an alien facility under the mountain, including a large vault door which they haven’t managed to open on any existing footage. Instead, the latest footage shows the onset of the storm, and how Boron Squad evacuated into the facility to shelter themselves within.

At the hillside entrance, Trauma Squad found the remains of a camp ravaged by storm, and also two corpses of the familiar feline predators, shot by standard-issue OFF-EX weaponry. Heinrich also noticed the corrosive traces of antax blood, concluding that Alx Thorox, the Boron Squad antax cybersecurity and electronics expert, was severely wounded. Proceeding into the hillside entrance, they found a simple elevator platform going downwards, and signs that Alx’ injuries were treated here. Down the elevator, there was a small alien facility, where Boron Squad hauled what equipment they could when the storm started, and a large vault door, opened just wide enough to squeeze through.

There wasn’t anything of immediate interest in this part of the facility, so Trauma Squad proceeded beyond the door. There, after a winding natural cavern tunnel, they found another part of the alien facility, including secure doors which led to a small laboratory. This seemed much more interesting at first glance, but three armored gun turrets popped out of the ceiling as the team entered. Their reflexes allowed them to bail out of the room for cover before the turrets could shoot. They formed up around the door, and made synchronized pop-up attacks… which were interrupted by the waiting turrets. Everyone dodged and dropped, but Heinrich and Link failed. Luckily, Heinrich’s turret rolled low and merely scratched him through the armor, and Link is Homogenous as a nanoswarm, so the 6-round burst he took didn’t amount to more than a scratch either.  While Link’s shotgun and Heinrich’s magnum pistol only managed to temporarily stun one turret, M2M2M’s and Nectahii’s high-caliber railguns blew them all up. We concluded the session there.