…or very rightly…

Last week’s game ended with a raid by the pirate forces of Chua Te, Captain Trihn, who was looking for a place to land after the destruction of his pirate haven, San Antonio. the Captain of Sanctuary, Hollander, put him off for a bit, but the baddies were scaling the sides of the old passenger liner in search of our travelers and their Vril companions. We ended on a good cliffhanger, outnumbered and with the monstrous henchman, Tongo, just having grabbed a hold of Gus Hassenfeldt….

The night started with Tongo hurling Gus over the rail, not to be seen again for the night. The reason for this is the player is at a Transformers convention. His character failed to transform into a flying machine (that we know of…)

During the fight, it was obvious they were trying to capture Gould. Hunter wound up taking down quite a few pirates with the katana he picked up while in India. (It will eventually become a plot device.) In the fight, he tok on and slew Tongo with one hell of a good strike with the weapon. Between this act and the Vril lighting pirates up with their ray guns, the pirates fled.

However, another faction was in play, as the strange dwarf-like critters that carry around Ivora the Magnificent, the mistress of the airship Sela, stole in during the fight and made off with Zara, Olga, and Shria — the Vril pilot and daughter of Emperor Mot of Atlantis. Hunter noted the abduction and gave chase, with Gould following, leading up to the boat deck, where a basket was waiting to be winched up to the waiting Sela, as the airship was casting off. Hunter went for broke and jumped onto the basket using the katana to try and stabilize himself (and nearly killing one of the women inside.) This lead to a tussle with one of the dwarves, which threw him from the basket into the jungle below. Gould shot up the engine car of the airship and damaged it a bit.

About this time, Trihn’s fleet opened up on the Sanctuary, blasting the old ship repeatedly. Old steel eventually started to give way, and the scaffolding that held the Sanctuary upright began to fail. Gould and Amon, the Vril leader, gathered up their gear and people and were attempting to escape the place when they ran into Hunter, who with a great acrobatics roll survived the fall through the trees. They decided to go after the women as they had little time before the airship was too far to follow. They worked their way forward through the damage and fires to the forward cargo hold cum laboratory for Uncle Zek, and after rescuing his daughter, make good their escape in his flying wing. (Tossing a bunch of machinegun rounds at the fleet for good measure.

In quick order they catch Sela, which is following the crash track for the war saucer, Aruna. She’s going for the salvage? They get close, looking to down the airship, but they are hanging Lady Zara and Shria out of the sides of the ship — hostages. The characters race ahead and make a dangerous landing in the clearing the saucer is downed in. They have about 90 minutes to figure out how to repair the ship, and Uncle Zek — with Hunter’s mechanical aid, and Gould’s science knowledge, manage to rewire the systems to use fewer “heat crystals” that it usually can.

And just in the nick of time, too: Sela has arrived and Ivora is threatening to drop the hostages if they don’t give her the crystals. Hunter opens up with the guns on the airship and Ivora makes good her threat — giving us our first party kill of the campaign. Gould goes to aid the woman dropped out of the airship, only to have the dwarves rappel into his path. In the ensuing fray, Hunter fatally damages Sela with the flying wing’s guns; and Amon and Zek drive off or kill the dwarves. Shria is able to escape the crashing airship with minor injuries.

They use the saucer to track the wreck of Sela, and jump onto the collapsed balloon that is holding the keel and control car up in the trees. This led to a chase, in which they discover Ivora has held onto Olga — she has figured out that the woman is a psychic battery and has use of her…because Ivora is some kind of mentalist of sorceress. She is able to use some kind of telekenesis, able to shroud herself from view by “clouding men’s minds”, and the fight between her amplified powers (thanks to Olga) and the two men was tense but ultimately they rescued Olga while losing Ivora in the trees.

They returned to the clearing, where Aruna was coming to collect them, in the hopes of finding Hassenfeldt back at Sanctuary when they hear a strange snuffling sound, and turn to find themselves face to face with a tyranosaur!

And thus, I’ve managed to keep every session, so far, ending on some kind of cliffhanger, with a character missing, another dead, and the rest facing a mega-predator.