X-PATH: Stick Your Citadel Where the Sun Don't Shine (Complete 5 Aug 2004)

[Capellan]

2: New Blood

Beverly Hills-Hilton, heiress to a fortune and WCX summer intern, breezed into Gate Room 4 in a swirl of miniskirt and a snapping of gum.

"I got a delivery." She displayed the Zippo lighter she was carrying in her best wannabe-supermodel style.

The Technician glanced up from his work. It took a very long time for his gaze to rise as far as her ultra-short miniskirt, and it never did quite reach her eyes.

"What's the mission number?" he managed, at last.

"Uh ..." Beverly frowned, then brightened as she remembered the slip of paper in her other hand, "Yeah, it's like WCX-1982-SC01."

"Put the object in the gate area." By rights, the Technician should have done this himself, but every time the girl moved, her skirt bounced up just that little bit higher ... and well, he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Okay." Beverly did as he asked, then flounced out in a haze of flowery perfume. Just as the door closed behind her, however, she snapped her fingers and dashed back inside, "Shih Tzu puppies! You have to sign this form before you can send -"

FZAT.

Suddenly, Beverly Hills-Hilton, heiress and intern, found herself standing in a smelly old stone room, with three dirty, blood-spattered men pointing guns at her pretty little head.

* * *

"Jacobsen, who is that girl and what is she doing in this mission?"

"She's ..." Jacobsen paused and swallowed nervously, "She's one of our interns, sir. Gate Room 4 report she came in to make a delivery to the team, left, then suddenly ran back in just as they were sending the item. It's Miss Hills-Hilton, sir."

"The heiress?"

"Yes, General. Gate Room 4 is making immediate calculations to bring her back, sir."

"Hell, boy. Don't do that." Patton's corpse-cold fingers drummed on the metal surface of his desk, "She'll go running straight to her father's lawyers."

"Surely we can't just leave her there, sir? What if she's hurt?"

"Stall for a few hours." Patton's eyes narrowed, "Tell them we have no record of her on the mission logs, and therefore she's not our responsibility to return. Then, contact Documents and tell them to find Ms Hills-Hilton's WCX Performer's Contract."

"But she doesn't have -"

"Tell them to find it, Jacobsen." The General's voice grew sharp. "No matter what they have to do."

"Ah ..." light dawned, "I'll get right on it, sir."

* * *

Internal Memorandum

From: Head Office
To: WCX Payroll

Subject: WCX-1982-SC01: Personnel


Additional personnel assigned to this operation are listed below.


Beverly Hills-Hilton
Payroll Scale: SOR1
Payroll Status: active
Mission Status: active

* * *

"I do not care for this young woman. Her attire and language are most indecent."

"I ain't exactly her greatest fan, either." Floyd consoled Smith, "But we're stuck with her, and Fabio don't seem too displeased. We'll leave him to baby-sit her."

"I have big muscles." Fabio announced. Floyd rolled his eyes,

"With luck, they'll get themselves both killed."

* * *

After a brief discussion, the small group took an exit from the room that doubled-back in the same direction as the one through which they had entered.

"This way there won't be no-one sneakin' up behind to make us squeal like piggies." Floyd reasoned.

Beverly went first, Smith insisting that she stay where he could watch for signs of her no-doubt imminent sinfulness. They passed along a corridor and through an empty room, to a second chamber with a large, dried-up fountain.

"There's some writing here." Smith scraped the scum away from the base of the bowl, "Some kind of infernal tongue. I can't read it."

"Camera." Floyd indicated the plaque, "Photograph that and print us a copy, thankyaverramuch." As they waited for the little machine to chatter out a dot matrix representation of the text, he explained, "Maybe we all will find someone in this place as can read it for us."

* * *

They pushed on, coming to a junction. Seeing at least half a dozen-doors straight ahead, they turned left, into another chamber, with only two further doors to choose from.

"This one's got more of that funky writin' on it." Floyd observed. Smith inspected it suspiciously,

"Probably the best way to go then. Try opening it."

As soon as Floyd touched the door, a gleaming scythe swung out, narrowly missing his kiss-curl of hair.

"Seems they're a might unfriendly." He pulled a crowbar out of his blue suede backpack, "This ought to get her open."

The scythe scythed again, as scythes are wont to do. The crowbar spun across the room, and Floyd nursed stinging fingers.

"Let's try the other way." He said, at last.

* * *

Grishtag and Frokzok lounged against the barricade, swapping dirty stories and laughing about the puny kobolds.

"They's nothin' without that Dragon." Grishtag prophesied, "We'll kills 'em all, now. Da Boss will see to it."

"Yeah." Frokzok said, agreeably.

Suddenly, the door at the opposite end of the caltrop-strewn corridor burst open, revealing a tall, armour-clad form.

"Yah!" Grishtag ducked behind the barricade, snatched up a javelin, and hurled it in a wobbly arc toward the figure. "Stinky human! Come get us if you dare! We kill you and put you in pot!"

"Yeah."

The human threw something - an egg? - at the goblins. Grishtag ducked, but he need not have bothered. The throw was poor, and the egg bounced back off the barricade and detonated in a spray of white fire. The barricade held, though patches began to burn.

"Dey got wizards! You get de others, quick!"

"Yeah."

As Frokzok ran to warn the rest of the guards, Grishtag ducked again as the humans started using their strange wands to attack him. They made lots of noise, and several splinters burst off the barricade.

"Human magic is puny!"

"Yeah."

Frokzok was back with the others, and the goblins now took turns hurling their stock of javelins at the intruders. The female human, too tall and pasty for goblin beauty, gave a shriek as one of the javelins gouged her arm. The first human disappeared, running away from the fight.

"We gots 'em now, boys!"

"Yeah."

* * *

Snatching up the crowbar, Smith leapt to the door by which they'd entered, wrenching it from its hinges. Then he quickly manhandled it over to the caltrop-strewn doorway.

Holding one end in the air, he dropped the other to the ground, and charged forward, pushing the door as he went. Caltrops bounced off the hard wood, or dug in their spikes, but either way, the impromptu ram swept them aside, clearing a path to the barricade.

The door shuddered twice as javelins struck it, but Smith ignored them, pounding on until he was just a few feet from the barricade. Then, he heaved upwards, pushing the door through an arc that slammed the end he had been holding onto the top of the wall.

Floyd ran straight up this impromptu ramp, firing his heavy pistol as he came, but without effect.

"Get down!" Smith yelled, and gently lobbed one of his phosphorous grenades over the barricade.

 

[Dungannon]

Question, Cap. Are you making this up or is this from an actual game session?

 

[Sniktch]

He plays with Khynal and Arwink and Yip, among others - do you really think he needs to make it all up?

 

[Capellan]

It's an actual game session (actually, it's half a session). The scenes with Patton are the only things that don't happen 'at the table'. You also get the advantage of the NPC viewpoint: something the PCs rarely seem terribly interested in learning

 

[Dungannon]

Okay, then my guess is Arwink is playing Floyd or Beverly.

 

[Capellan]

3: Backlash: it's not just a Pay-Per-View

"Now that's what I call entertainment! Did you see the way those little bastards ran around screamin' and trying to put themselves out?"

"Yes sir. It was ratings gold, sir."

"Maybe if these boys don't get 'emselves killed, I'll give 'em another go in the league."

* * *

"There's another barricade in the next room." Beverly reported. She'd been sent ahead to scout while the men looted every last coin from the dead goblins. "And lots of doors."

"Maybe this will open one of them." Floyd brandished the iron key he'd found on the last of the bodies.

Entering the next chamber, they found a primitive archery - or rather, javelin - range, the barricade Beverly had mentioned, and three doors leading further into the complex.

"Let's start with this one." Smith indicated the only one of the doors to be on the same side of the barricade as the group. "What's over the wall?"

"A camp fire, not much else." Fabio peered over the four foot high barricade.

"Looks like they expected trouble from our direction." Floyd mused, "Maybe they don't like the other little critters we killed, either." He shrugged, "That's a matter for another time. Let's see about that door."

After two abject failures to force the iron-bound door, Smith remembered the key they'd found. Floyd tried it in the lock, and the door opened, revealing a squalid prison, containing three chained-up reptile creatures and a short, human-like creature with a large nose.

* * *

Erky jumped to his feet as the four humans entered the prison. They were strangely dressed, but surely they would help a gnome escape from goblins.

"Please let me out!" he called, in the common tongue.

One of the four, his attention on the kobolds, spoke angrily in a foreign language, gesturing at Erky with the strange implement in his hands. The bare-chested pretty-boy beside him translated.

"Joe says to shut up."

Erky began to protest, but the first human grew more irate.

"It would be wise to keep silent." The one who could speak a civilised tongue continued, "My minions are somewhat unpredictable."

The gnome subsided, watching as the other two male humans jammed a picture of some kind in the first kobold's face, and started shouting at it in their strange tongue.

* * *

"Tell. Me. What. This. Says." Smith repeated the demand for the fifth time, speaking even louder and clearer than he had on the four previous occasions. The last reptile quailed before him, it's spindly arms spattered with the blood of its two companions, but it answered only in its own nonsense tongue.

"This is your last chance. Tell. Me. What. This. Says."

More jabbering.

BLAM.

Floyd reloaded his pistol, shaking his head,

"Waste of ammunition, really." He muttered, "Can you believe not a one of 'em spoke English?"

* * *

"He says he can read it for us." Fabio gestured at the tiny humanoid, cringing in the cage at the back of the prison, "But he'll need at least the night to do the translation."

Smith snorted,

"Can we trust him? He's got a nose like Pinocchio."

"Let's give him until morning." Floyd shrugged, "We could do with a rest after that fight, and ah want to know what it says."

* * *

They set up camp in the javelin range. Initially, they left the miniature human in the prison, but then they realised he had no light in there, which would make reading difficult.

"We'll have to bring him out." Smith decided. Floyd nodded agreement,

"But one of us should keep an eye on him at all times, make sure he don't run off."

At first, the time passed uneventfully, but after several hours, while Floyd sat strumming his golden guitar, there came the sound of one of the other doors swinging shut.

"Damn." Floyd began to wake the others, "One of those sneaky little fellers musta snuck in and seen us. We got trouble comin'. Stick the little guy back in the prison and get ready fer a fight."

* * *

By now, Patton had turned off the monitors on his desk, and transferred the images from the mission onto the giant screen in his wall.

"Brave, but dumb as posts." He nodded approvingly, "These boys would make good soldiers. 'course, it's gonna get 'em killed, here."

"Sir?"

"Tactics, Jacobsen." A long, bone-like finger pointed at the screen, "They've got a wall to defend, and they've moved those caltrops in front of it That's good enough, as far as it goes. But they don't know if their backs are secure, and they don't know for sure what's coming. They should've attacked when their position was discovered." He paused, "Of course, restin' in the enemy's guard room wasn't real bright, in the first place."

On screen, all hell broke loose.

Both doors on the far side of the barricade flew open, revealing over a dozen goblins, as well as several larger humanoids, and a strange, twig-like creature about as tall as a man's waist.

* * *

"Here they come!" Floyd yelled, hurling his one and only fragmentation grenade into the midst of the enemy. Four of the smaller creatures were blasted apart by the shrapnel, but the wooden creature raced forward over the caltrops, easily reaching the wall. Behind it, more of small humanoids entered, pushing aside the caltrops as they came.

The room became filled with the shouts of combat, and the flash of guns and grenades. The enemy surged forward to the wall. The caltrops slowed them a little, but the distance from the door to the barricade was simply too short to defend.

Two of the larger humanoids came up to support the wood creature, and the battle became a melee. For a moment, it seemed as if the four humans would hold, but then blood sprayed from fresh wounds, and Fabio and Floyd both fell. The twig creature scrambled into the hole in their line, tearing at Smith as it came.

"Grab Fabio and fall back!" the Mormon shouted at Beverly, scooping up Floyd as he spoke. The creature clawed at him again, but he shrugged off the injury, hauling the unconscious man through the doorway into the next room. "Get in here and close the door!"

Beverly tried, hauling Fabio's body despite the damage to her nails, but she simply wasn't quick enough, and the twig creature leapt through the doorway before she could close it.

Fortunately, it leapt straight into Smith's pick-axe.

"Close the door! Jam it with javelins! I'm going to try and patch these two up!" Smith barked orders as he began tearing his shirt for bandages.

* * *

The door held; or at least it held long enough for them to escape, dragging their unconscious companions all the way back to the room where they fought the water beast.

Slamming the stone door behind him, Smith slumped against it with a tired sigh.

"Let's see 'em get through that." He muttered, grimly.

Hours slipped by, but eventually Smith's medical care restored the other two men to consciousness. Over a celebratory meal of deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, they planned their next move.

"Grenades." Floyd stabbed the air with his finger, to drive home the point, "Lots and lots of grenades. As many as we can get them to send. We'll show those little bastards a thing or two, then."

 

[Graywolf-ELM]

OORah Go Marines. or special ops, or whatever these guys are.

GW

 

[arwink]

Superstars, son. Ah think the word yah may be lookin' for is X-Path Superstar's. None o' that army sissy stuff heyah, ah assure you.

 

[robberbaron]

Thang you very much. I really mean that, I really do.

OK, more Hughie Green than Elvis, but my appreciation of the story is profound.

More, please.

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Wow. Just... wow.