Heavy Gear and the Half-Blood Prince

[Poh Tun Kai]

Just what the title said. We played Heavy Gear yesterday and saved
Emir Anurima Khajar and the clones "Ron" Logan and "Hermione" Miranda
from a bunch of irradiated and mad Mekong bandits pretending to be
Basalite terrorists. There was much gear smashing and a boss fight
with a Mammoth, and the team got to surf on top of a restored HT-68
Predator hovertank to raid an abandoned Concordat-era nuclear reactor.

Much entertainment ensued.

[Ivan Tam]

So uh, do we get a double-decker bus afterwards for our trip?

"Were all going on a summer holiday.
No more working for a week or two.
Fun and laughter on a summer holiday.
No more worries for me and you.
For a week or two."
~Sir Cliff Richard

[ptik...@gmail.com]

I was thinking of the bus from The Italian Job.

"We are the self-preservation society"

[Ivan Tam]

I already know who the bus driver will be as half the vehicle hangs
over the cliff, with the gears slowly sliding out the back door...

[ptik...@gmail.com]

Explosions rocked the pavilions at the Smyrna science expo, out on the
banks of the River Enri. Terrorists claiming to be fighting for "Free
Basal" were attacking in Swamp Snake gears! Somehow, security had been
compromised, and Emir Anurima Khajar herself had been spirited away on
a hijacked Sand Cobra ground effect plane, along with a visiting
foreign couple from the Mekong known only as "Ron" and "Hermione."

"Ron" was, in fact, Clone Arron Logan, Escouade-A's current employer
and ward, and "Hermione" was his girfriend, the Miranda-class GREL
codenamed Parfait Soldat Un, in heavy disguise. The Escouade's recent
investigations in Smyrna proper had led to trouble with the local
authorities and bloodshed and fire, and they would have skipped town
on their Barnaby with their stolen gears and their tech team, if not
for the fact that they had agreed to protect "Ron" Logan and his GREL
girlfriend, and help them get to Jan Mayen. Besides, "Ron" had the
crucial blackmail files implicating Anurima Khajar in collaborating
with the CEF. And you can't exactly blackmail Anurima Khajar if she's
dead, so...

The Escouade sprang into action, charging to the rescue and battling
the pretend Basal rebels on the expo grounds, amidst burning expo
buildings, screaming civilians running to and fro, and a large and
imposing Strider Exhibit Hangar that sat in the middle of the grounds
like a gun on a mantelpiece, waiting to go off...

Since "Hermione" was absent, Artemis decided to take the GREL's
personal ride, the stolen Savage Panda prototype, out for a spin.
While he rolled off the back ramp of the Barnaby, the Majorie Sisters
were inside the front cab of the gear transporter truck, listening in
to Smyrna Guard reports of four terrorist gears and an equal number of
terrorists on foot. E sat the wheel of the Springer Jeep, with Jerrod
and Preston sitting behind him in the truck bed, unslinging their
antigear rifles.

As the Emirs' maids ran from a burning expo building right in front of
them, Marilyn dismounted to ask them what they had seen - the Sand
Cobra on the other side of the Strider Hangar, speeding off. They
confirmed that Emir Anurima and her two guests had been kidnapped, and
Marilyn sent them to the rear, while unslinging her Sirocco
Bullspringer rifle. Artemis spotted two enemy Swamp Snakes behind a
burning tent and dropped a mortar round on them, stunning one and
destroying the other. Two terrorists popped up from the back of the
burning building, firing a rocket at Artemis' Panda and missing.
Marilyn sniped back at them, blowing away the one with the rocket
launcher.

As the combat continued, more terrorist gears converted on the
firefight even as the Sand Cobra disappeared across Lake Enri. E tried
to take the Springer around the main fight, but lost control of the
jeep during a crucial turn just at the edge of the river bank (fumbled
roll) and the jeep pitched headlong into the river! Jerrod and Preston
tumbled nimbly out in time, but E began to sink with his jeep, having
no skill at swimming whatsoever. Petulla, behind the wheel of the
lumbering Barnaby, took one look at the screaming civilians crying out
for help, ignored them, and rammed the gear transport right into the
stunned Swamp Snake, overkilling it. Meanwhile, Artemis dodged fire
from the two remaining Swamp Snakes, firing the Savage Panda's
enormous snipered Heavy Bazooka and destroying one more enemy gear.
Marilyn hunted down the remaining member of the terrorist rocket team,
dodging pistol fire and chasing the man down into one of the ruined
expo buildings.

Then the stomping began. Something large was coming out of the Strider
Hangar. The Emir's technology expo featured none other than a Northern
Mammoth strider, a curiousity for Southerners, but the terrorists had
managed to arm it and steal it, and now it emerged in all its terrible
glory. Preston sprinted for the side of the Strider Hangar, trying to
flank it, while Jerrod threw a rope to E and fished him out of the
river. Artemis blasted the last enemy gear with his bazooka, then
turned to begin his attack run on the Mammoth.

Petulla took one look at the strider and decided: "I can take him."

The rest of the crew of the Barnaby were less enthusiastic about their
odds. When the Mammoth achieved a target designator lock on the
charging Barnaby, Petulla's twin sister and all the rest of the crew
bade her farewell and bailed out! Moments later, an Antitank Missile
slammed into the Barnaby amidships, blowing it in half. Petulla was
thrown clear thanks to a successful bailout attempt, and crawled to
safety in a nearby exhibition tent. At the same time, Marilyn
confronted the remaining terrorist indoors, and took him down by
shooting through the door he was hiding behind. There's very little
cover that can resist a Bullspringer rifle round.

Artemis went fully evasive in the Savage Panda, dodging snub cannon
and autocannon fire from the strider as he tried to flank the
monstrous machine. But it was Preston and Jerrod, on foot and armed
with antigear rifles, who drew first blood. Preston dropped to one
knee and blew out the Mammoth's sensor cluster, while Jerrod put an
AGR shot clean through the Mammoth's crew compartment, killing the
pilot! As the Mammoth's gunner tried to regain control of the damaged
strider, the Savage Panda closed into melee combat range and ripped
into the Mammoth's rear armor with its vibro-axe. It wasn't enough to
penetrate, but the weakened armor was vulnerable to Preston's follow-
up shot, which penetrated the engine compartment and overkilled the
strider at last. Artemis and the others backed away as the Mammoth
exploded in flames...

"Oh, Petulla, you stupid girl, I'll miss you," cried Petunia as the
rest of the team consoled her. Petulla let this go on for only a short
while before popping up to show that reports of her death were
somewhat exaggerated.

"Hey, where's my Iguana?" asked Artemis.

"It was in the Barnaby. With all our other equipment."

Artemis looked at the smoking wreck of what had been the team's mobile
home. "Oh."

The Escouade looked around to make sure that there was no further
opposition. Emirate Guards were finally arriving, no doubt with some
hard questions for the team to answer. And the terrorists had gotten
away with important hostages, including Emir Anurima and "Ron and
"Hermione." Their evening was far from over...

[ptik...@gmail.com]

A tall female technician in a full-body containment suit led the
Smyrna Guard investigation team as they pored over the scene of the
attack, examining the terrorists that Escouade-A had defeated.

Preston noticed that the terrorists all seemed rather miserable
specimens with bleeding gums and hair falling out under their caps.
The technician in the suit ran a Geiger counter over a terrorist to
confirm that there was a high rad count present. Preston and the
others immediately asked to borrow some rad suits! Meanwhile, Marilyn
noticed something familiar about the tall technician, and spoke with
her further. Underneath that full-body suit was a gorgeous Kassandra-
class GREL who was the spitting image of Marilyn's ex-girlfriend Troy
from Port Arthur. The GREL introduced herself as Noel, and explained
that she had a chance to meet Marilyn's friends, "Ron" and "Hermione"
earlier in the Emir's palace. Somehow the clone couple had discovered
Emir Anurima's secret staff of GREL technicians, and befriended and
bonded with them. "Your friend Ron is truly a special young man.
Hermione knew right away that I and my fellow GRELs were kindred
spirits. They won us over right away. We'll help you rescue them and
our Emir, any way we can."

Then their conversation was disrupted by the sound of gunfire from the
strider hangar, where Bunta and E had run into each other while both
attempting to loot the place. E had a smoking gun, Bunta had a
vibroblade. Marilyn and Noel managed to get them to stop fighting but
the two continued to glare at each other.

Once Preston and Marilyn managed to round up their entire team, they
followed the Emirate GREL to a hidden hangar which contained Emir
Anurima Khajar's secret research facilities. Here, Noel explained, the
Emir kept a staff of former Earth technicians who salvaged old CEF
equipment for the Emir's use.

Noel introduced the Escouade to two other GRELs: An Isaac-class named
Billie, who was working on restoring a Predator-class HT-68 hovertank,
and a female GREL pilot named Jezebel. While the Escouade's own
support scientists, Tesla and Itano, were amazed at the sight of all
this CEF technology, the rest of the team was more concerned about how
they might all fit on the hovertank. Finally it was decided that the
Escouade and the Savage Panda would all ride on the back of the tank,
like Soviet tank riders in WW2. "There's an old Concordat-era nuclear
reactor on the other side of Lake Enri," said Billie. "That might be
where the terrorists are hiding."

This was confirmed shortly after when the leader of the kidnappers
sent out a video broadcast to gloat about his capture of the Emir. He
called himself Ali Khan, Bandit Lord of the Mekong, and claimed to be
allied with Basalite rebels. He demanded "One Million Dinars!" in 18
hours, or he would detonate a "dirty nuke" attached to the Emir's
body, as well as various other uncohesive threats and promises. The
Escouade was clearly dealing with a dangerous lunatic. "I know that
guy," yelled their bandit ally Bunta. "We used to roam the backroads
of the Mekong together! I taught that boy everything he knows!" Bunta
was itching for a chance to teach Ali to mess with the Escouade, and
so was the rest of the team. Itano and Tesla would stay behind at
base. They asked the Escouade to bring the equipment back safely:
Tesla meant the precious Savage Panda; Itano meant Ron and Hermione!

Moments later, the hovertank roared off across the lake, with Preston
and Jerrod squeezed into the turret, Jez at the controls grinning
maniacally, and the Majorie Sisters, E, Marilyn and Bunta hanging on
for dear life on the back of the tank, in the shadow of the Savage
Panda piloted by Artemis, also hanging onto the back of the turret.
Ignoring calls from confused Smyrna Guard helicopters, the hovertank
rescue team roared into the night, towards the old power plant, and
towards their destinies...

[Ivan Tam]

Yay new reportz. But it feels that the writeup is longer than the
actual game o.o

On May 24, 4:59 pm, ptika...@gmail.com wrote:

[ptik...@gmail.com]

The blocky reactor facility lay on the eastern side of the lake, and
between it and the shore was a quartet of abandoned employee quarters.
Sensors detected heat sources in both the reactor building and the
housing outside, as well as three gears: A Long Fang Black Adder and a
pair of Swamp Snakes. As the hovertank screamed towards the shore at
top speed, rooftop missile launchers fired at it, but the tank was
just too fast and managed to evade the incoming fire, carving a
blazing trail of water behind it that turned into an arc of dust
curving around the reactor.

"Drop us off behind the reactor," ordered Preston, and he dismounted
along with everyone else except for Artemis. Then the hovertank
continued its sweep around to the other side of the building, dropping
Artemis' gear off just out of sight, and charging back out onto the
water, drawing more fire from Ali's troops.

As the Escouade searched the side of the reactor building for an
entrance, the ground seemed to give way beneath Preston's feet. He
tumbled roughly down through a gap in the ground and found himself
inside a storage room of some sort. The crackle of a walkie-talkie
from the hallway outside warned him that he was about to be found by
guards.

[ptik...@gmail.com]

Marilyn and Preston took up positions in the empty store room and
evaded notice as the guards walked in with their flashlights. A couple
of swift strikes from the darkness and it was all over. Jerrod came
down into the underground, and so did Bunta. The bandit claimed that
since he had a grudge against Ali, he should take point.

Outside, on the far side of the reactor building, an aerial drone flew
over the position where the Majorie Sisters and E were hiding. As
terrorist gears approached to investigate, E triggered a smoke
grenade, threw it, then dove into the hole into the underground,
leaving Petunia and Petulla to be captured and marched off to the
housing quarters at gunpoint. With a laugh, E went to look for his
other teammates. He found them sneaking around the central structure
of the reactor building, which had been converted to house a massive
CEF lander ship, with sensors and power cables and cooling tubes
leading into it from all around. E and Marilyn crept past the guards
to the lander by using the huge bundles of cabling and coolant pipes
for cover, and examined the computer systems on the lander to confirm
that the lander was loaded with a huge store of antimatter, which had
to be contained with all of this equipment, lest it go up in a very
big flash of heat and light and noise that the Escouade would not
survive. Preston, Jerrod and Bunta watched from further back, guns at
the ready.

"Put them with the other prisoners," said the bandit king Ali, as the
rag-tag terrorist band brought the twins into one of the smaller
buildings outside. Petulla saw "Ron" and "Hermione" behind bars in a
cell together with Emir Khajar. "I should never have supplied you with
those weapons," said the Emir to Ali. Ali began to rant about how he
had gotten visions of glory and triumph from meditating before the
antimatter containment chamber. "That's not a vision, that's a brain
tumor!" shouted the Emir. Petunia and Petulla tried to resist their
captors, so Ali tried to teach them a lesson, firing a gun at Petunia
and narrowly missing her.

Then Artemis began his attack.

[ptik...@gmail.com]

Artemis expended half of the Savage Panda's rocket load in the first
volley on the mostly-abandoned residences, catching the missile
turrets and two gears in the barrage and also rocking Ali's
headquarters building, knocking out the lights. That was the moment
for Petulla and Petunia to make a break for it, and since the blast
had damaged the jail cells as well, Emir Khajar and Ron and Hermione
joined in the escape. A furious gunfight broke out, and Petulla fell
with a bullet in her side. Petunia stood over her, firing back at the
bandits like an avenging angel. A very short avenging angel.

Around the antimatter storage area, Marilyn pounced on one guard while
E struggled with another, sending stray bullets into tall coolant
tanks that lined the walls. Preston and Jerrod also opened fire,
downing the other guards.

The Long Fang Black Adder arced rocket counterfire back at the Savage
Panda, but Artemis was able to keep moving and avoided getting hit.
Since the terrorist gears seemed to have survived the first barrage,
Artemis fired off his remaining 24 rockets to further saturate the
target area. The Long Fang Black Adder proved to be a tough target,
though, and managed to avoid most of the barrage. But then Jez arrived
in her charging hovertank - she'd taken the rocket barrage as her
signal to come in at top speed. The hovertank might not have any
operational weapons, but it could still ram, and so it did, cleaving
the Black Adder clean in half.

Almost all the terrorist guards around the antimatter storage facility
were now disposed of, but one more guard was approaching from the
doorway, and Marilyn tried to lay in ambush to get him as he entered.
Just then, Bunta turned his assault rifle and grenade launcher towards
the lander. "This must be Ali's precious treasure. Whatever it is,
I'll wreck it!" And then he opened fire on the antimatter! E and
Preston started pummeling the living shit out of Bunta to stop his
insane rampage, while Marilyn took on the last terrorist guard, and
Jerrod provided supporting fire with his machine pistol. It was a
desperate, terrifying struggle, but sanity (and a few sharp punches)
won out. Once they had pummeled Bunta into unconsciousness, they
checked on the antimatter and made sure its containment was relatively
undamaged by all the stray bullets that had flown around the chamber.

Artemis advanced in the Savage Panda, easily shrugging off some
autocannon fire from the terrorist Swamp Snakes, first killing one
enemy gear with the bazooka, then the other. Once he had dealt with
both Swamp Snakes, he advanced towards Ali's HQ, which btw now had
been evacuated by Petunia and her band of escapees. Since the HQ was
now only occupied by terrorists, Artemis blasted it with twin waist-
mounted frag cannons, slaughtering Ali's surviving men until they
finally raised the white flag and came out to surrender. Then he
pulled the trigger and finished them off, the poor fools.

The hovertank skidded to a very bad landing outside, as the Escouade
emerged from the reactor building and got as far away from all that
antimatter radiation as they could, just in case. They had each taken
a small dose of rads, with the exception of Bunta, whose suit had been
damaged in the fight. "The idiot, I'm leaving him," declared Petunia
to her sister. The group was unsure if they wanted to keep E with
them, for that matter.

But Emir Anurima Khajar was most grateful for her life, and her secret
of having supported the bandits was also known to her rescuers, so she
offered Ron, Hermione and the Escouade her assistance. "I can help you
get out of town, and I'll provide you with some assistance..." she
promised. This was most welcome, since a group of Mekong Peacekeepers
led by a Constable Ueki had just arrived in town, looking for
Marilyn's team, who were wanted for their terrorist activities in
Loyang.

Little did the Escouade know what trouble the Emir's help would lead
to, even as they piled into some borrowed jeeps and followed the
Emir's GREL servants out of Smyrna. But their further adventures would
have to wait for another day...

NOTE: In this adventure I decided to have Ron Logan become a sort of
messianic figure to the poor abused GREL servants of the Emir of
Smyrna, and so, because he was a human clone, but also with some GREL
DNA, they came to call him...the "Half-Blood Prince." :)

[Razdan Jamil]

What you need is Kurt Juergens!! Nuff said....