Alchemical Exalted Quest #2

>>1197298
>Who are we?
Unwavering Application of Justice, a Soulsteel Caste Alchemical. You proudly serve the nation of Kamak, the wealthiest in all of the Realm of Brass and Shadow, as an enforcer of its laws. You are currently headed to intercept a deal between the nations Yugash and Claslat to steal a valuable core of Adamant, for use in your nation's own attempt to travel to the other dimension known as "Creation."

>What the heck do any of those words mean?
This game is based off the setting of Exalted. A good summary is here: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Exalted. If you have any questions, feel free to ask someone else in the thread, hopefully they will help you out.

>Do you have a twitter?
@AugWillich

Previous Thread?
>>1186567

>>1197298
>Talk to Liquidator. You hope she's more focused than she was during the Trasnik incident, especially if she's going to be doing overwatch with her assault crossbow.

>>1197298
Talk to Liquidator, she seems to be the Alchemical with the highest loose cannon factor.

>>1197444
You head over to the other newcomer to the Assembly's corner of the armory. She's currently loading a magazine of bolts, shoving each of the 100 bolts in individually, somehow doing it without her elbow-length black hair getting in the way. After a few seconds, she finally looks up at you with her dark-orange eyes and smiles. "Hey, little brother. How're you feeling?"

You feel a little awkward as she calls you brother. Sure, you both were made from the same vein of soulsteel in the same batch, but it's a little weird that she's so insistent on calling you that. After all, the average Autochthonian does not bother with placing much importance on their biological family over any other good citizen of the world, and in your case "biological" doesn't even apply.

Do you...
>Ask her, politely, to not call you her brother.
>Roll with it. Might as well make use of it, if she feels kinship with you. At least she'll be more inclined to keep watch over you.

>>1197537
>Roll with it. Might as well make use of it, if she feels kinship with you. At least she'll be more inclined to keep watch over you.

>>1197582
You shrug, and leave the matter be. If it means she's more likely to shoot whoever is messing with you in the eye from 1000 yards away, so be it. Although the "little" part still bugs you; you're half a foot taller than her and only was activated 2 minutes after her.

"So, Liquidator, I was just wondering, you going to keep yourself on target this mission?" You say this while grabbing a black combat suit and a breastplate of soulsteel to throw over it.

She looks at you with a quizzical look on her face. "Focus? What do you mean?"

"Well, there was that time in Trasnik, when all those machine spirits went berserk, where you spent the entire time shooting everything instead of just evacuating the settlers and getting out. I mean, don't get me wrong, you're a great shot, but you nearly got me killed when I had to yank you out of your sniping spot before you got swatted like a fly by one of the bigger spirits."

She brushes her hair out of her face with a gauntlet-clad hand and groans. "But it's so much fun! I just can't help it, there's something so enjoyable about fighting. It's like having a conversation with someone, but instead of trading jokes or gossip, you're trading shots with each other. It's amazing."

You're *almost* glad Kamak doesn't do propaganda, as Liquidator would be a PR nightmare. You shrug and say, "Your duty's come before personal enjoyment, remember that. I don't want you going off on a killing spree and leaving me high and dry while you enjoy yourself."

She sighs. "Fine. I'll make sure you're safe, brother. I promise."

You thank her, and then decide to ask her a question.

>Pick 2

>What's the plan here?
>How are you feeling?
>Any recommendations for the mission?
>What's with the hair?
>How's your job been going?
>You really need that much armor for a sniping position?

>>1197647
>Any recommendations for the mission?
>What's the plan here?

>>1197688
She goes back to slotting in more bolts for her crossbow while you ask her your two questions. "We're boarding this tram they're using while it's still moving. You and the big guy over there are going to keep the troops transporting this thing busy while Redistributor locates and snatches the core. Mirror's handling the get-away. It's very confined spaces there, easy to get a longer weapon caught on something and not enough room to fire a ranged weapon without getting caught in the middle of reloading or blowing a hole in something you shouldn't have. My advice? Take a grimcleaver, a fist weapon of some sort, or a beamklaive. I prefer the former, of course. It's really funny to split people in half vertically, but if you do it with a beamklaive it just cauterizes everything and that's not as good. Less messy that way."

You say, "Uh, thanks, Liquidator," and move on to your side of the armory. What do you pick out?

>A grimcleaver. Always fun to swing around an axe.
>A pair of smashfists. What's closer to your body than a pair of huge gauntlets?
>A beamklaive. It's a fucking laser sword, what more do you need?

>>1197743
>A beamklaive. It's a fucking laser sword, what more do you need?

You draw out a cylinder of black soulsteel and heft it in your hands. Thumbing your hand over a switch, you activate the weapon. Out from the center of the cylinder through a concave disc of crystal emerges a dark-red beam of light about three feet long that illuminates the room in its ruddy glow. It hums in an intimidating infrasound note and trails black streamers of ash as you move it around. Eventually, Mirror shouts at you, "Hey, turn that off! You'll poke your eye out."

You begrudgingly comply, switching the beamklave off. Everyone seems to have geared up completely now; Mirror in her standard gold-and-black jacket with a side-cape, Engine and Liquidator in their hulking plate armors, and the Moonsilver thief in nothing more than a simple pure white bodysuit that covers everything but his beautiful face.

You all make your way to the steam car that will take you to the tunnels that intersect Yugash, Kamak, and Claslat. In relative silence, you drive as you draw closer to your inevitable conflict. Redistributor leaves ahead of you all, cloaking himself as a normal Populat traveler, his moonsilver skin now clad in a simulacrum of human flesh. Liquidator is the next, stopping near a winding maze of maintenance tunnels that she rockets into with the thrusters built into her back and feet. Eventually it arrives to your drop-off point, near a catwalk high above where the tram will pass. You're going to leap onto it, make it to the caboose, and then cut your way in with Engine. You both activate your Optical Shrouds, the tiny crystals embedded in your skin flickering as they begin refracting light around you. Mirror departs without you in the car.

How do you pass the time?

>Small talk with Engine. He's still a little upset about losing his former Assembly-mates to Estasia, so you should probably go with something simple.
>Wait in silence. Best not to bug him while he is still in mourning, even if he is taking a ridiculously long time to mourn.

>>1197947
>>Small talk with Engine. He's still a little upset about losing his former Assembly-mates to Estasia, so you should probably go with something simple.

You crouch down on the catwalk like a gargoyle (what is a cat, anyways, you wonder?), your Assembly partner near you. You can't see him with the shroud up, but you can practically sense the bulk of the vast warrior near you, and can place your mental vision of the stony faced man where that is. You wonder what to say before you have to fling yourself off this thin strip of metal and land on a tram going one hundred miles per hour.

>How are you feeling?
>Think there will be any Alchemicals on that tram asides from us?
>How is Mirror going to get us out of this, exactly?
>There's gotta be a better way to get on that tram than this.

>>1198066
>>How is Mirror going to get us out of this, exactly?

>>1198066
>How is Mirror going to get us out of this, exactly?

You can hear, barely, Engine's beard brush against his armor as he turns to speak to you in monotone. "Mirror found a Protocol in one of the old records about Creation and recreated it. Some sort of teleportation effect. I did a test run with her, nearly made me throw up when we did it, but it works. She'll board the tram once we're all finished and warp us out. Liquidator will fly herself out."

You nod, although he can't exactly see you do it, and the elder Jade caste speaks again. "Keep out of trouble. You see any Alchemicals down there, you let me handle them. You're not ready to go up against more experienced Champions."

Do you...
>Agree. You've only been around a month now, better to deal with the mortals than someone with potentially decades of experience.
>Disagree. You can handle yourself, thank you very much, and this will garner you some attention if you defeat an enemy Exalt.
>Meet him halfway. You'll stay out of it, but the second he gets into trouble, you're coming in. No lone wolf nonsense (whatever the hell a "wolf" may be).

>>1198138

>Meet him halfway. You'll stay out of it, but the second he gets into trouble, you're coming in. No lone wolf nonsense (whatever the hell a "wolf" may be).
Justice will be hard to deliver if there are less enforcers.

>>1198138
>Meet him halfway. You'll stay out of it, but the second he gets into trouble, you're coming in. No lone wolf nonsense (whatever the hell a "wolf" may be).

Where are all these useless idioms coming from?

>>1198138
>meet him halfway

The point of an assembly is mutual support.
But his experience is acknowledged and appreciated.

>>1198138
>Meet him halfway. You'll stay out of it, but the second he gets into trouble, you're coming in. No lone wolf nonsense (whatever the hell a "wolf" may be).

You respond. "Fine, I respect that. But if you get in trouble, I'm going in. The whole point of an Assembly is having a support group, I'm not going to let you fight alone."

He grunts. Was he always this sullen, or did losing Filament of Prayer and Silent Conclusion of Conflict really impact him this badly? You wonder if he'll try and cultivate Clarity on purpose to deal with it soon; he already seems to be under its effects slightly. In any case, you take that for approval and go back to waiting.

In three minutes, you see your target. A long boxy tram, 10,000 feet long and crawling through the tunnels like a steel snake. You breathe in to focus yourself, and dive. You activate your Personal Gravity Manipulation Apparatus in mid-drop, reducing your weight to 1/5th of what it truly is, and land on the top of the speeding tram without so much as a whisper.

You dash to the caboose, beamklave in hand but not on. Your Shroud deactivates, not able to handle the movement without rippling. Engine follows you, a bulky mace in hand as he sprints to follow you. You jam your beamklave downwards, into the last car on the tram, and cut a hole through it with the blade, then hop through.

You enter into what seems like storage of textiles, like synthetic leather and denim. The car is wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder. No one is here, but you think you hear movement in the other car ahead. What do you do?

>Re-activate the Shroud. Let them come to you.
>Breach and enter the next car. Get this shit started.
>Let Engine decide.

>>1198280
>>Let Engine decide.

>>1198280
>Let Engine decide.

Engine stands still for a moment and places his hand on the right-side wall of the car. After another second he mutters, "It's some workers come to check out this tram. Let's follow them to the soldiers. Put your cloak back on."

He smashes a nearby window and crawls out, his joints conforming to fit the thin space between him and the tunnel nearby. You deactivate your blade and get near the sliding door to this car, then reactivate your invisibility cloak. Two engineers, clad in smocks of denim coated in oil, walk in and behold the smooth circle of metal you cut out. Quietly, you walk around them and go through the door before it closes and enter the next tram. After a moment of inspection, they rush back, hollering for the guards. About three rows of leather-clad guards rush in, wielding hand-axes and shouting orders to search the area.

You step forward, your blazing light-sword in hand, and they immediately rush you, trying to close in on you and restrict your movement.

>Maneuver away. This is taxing on your Essence, but you think you can get out of this without too much damage.
>Hack and slash. Your armor will hold against mass-produced steel axes, and your sword will certainly go through leather like electricity through copper wire.
>Scare the shit out of them. You're a robot made of metal created from tortured and screaming souls, after all.

>>1198361
>Scare the shit out of them. You're a robot made of metal created from tortured and screaming souls, after all.

>>1198361
>Scare the shit out of them. You're a robot made of metal created from tortured and screaming souls, after all.

>>1198361
>Scare the shit out of them. You're a robot made of metal created from tortured and screaming souls, after all.

Flare anima banner?

You allow the component souls of your body to rise forth, appearing on your skin as elongated, pale faces with pitch-black eyes howling in abject terror. Their shrieks fill the tram and you march forward, blade held at your side. They lose their nerve, backing away from you for an instant.

An instant is all you need.

You swing your beamklave through the first row, separating two torsos and a head from the rest of their bodies. Behind this row of soldiers, Engine bursts in through another window and begins rendering those Claslati soldiers in the back row into a thin gruel that reminds you of nutrient paste. The middle row is killed all at once by an extraordinarily long steel bolt that pierces through all of their bodies through a nearby window to the left. You nod towards where the bolt came from, showing your appreciation towards your "sister", wherever she is right now, then crawl under the blade and follow Engine to the next room.

This car, containing food products and cooking wares, has two humps, meant to allow access to the higher shelves of the car, near both doors, and the troops there have taken advantage of that, the back line drawing hand crossbows and standing on these elevated platforms while the forward advances forth with overlapping sets of spears.

What do you do?
>Let Engine deal with the frontline, deal with the crossbowmen.
>Stay on the defensive, see if Liquidator can deal with the gunners.
>Deal with the lancers, Engine can eliminate the ranged weapon wielders.

>>1198407
>>Stay on the defensive, see if Liquidator can deal with the gunners.

>>1198407
>Deal with the lancers, Engine can eliminate the ranged weapon wielders.

>>1198407
>Deal with the lancers, Engine can eliminate the ranged weapon wielders.

You create an opening for the Jade caste bruiser to get through via grabbing as many of the spears as you can under your shoulder. He dashes through, a green blur with bolts pinging off of his superheavy armor, and smashes one of the gunner's heads into the nearby window, ramming his face against the nearby tunnel. The other drops his weapon and flees into the next car at the sight of the other marksman's head being eroded away.

You take a lance through your hip, and you cry out in pain. You throw yourself around them, slashing a circle into the floor below you as you do. With a primal yell, you kick the dish you made down and out, sending the lancers falling to their deaths on either the electrocuted track or to the cold metal floor who knows how many yards down.

You pant, your anima leaking copious amounts of smoke and electricity out of your pores. You put pressure on your wound, now leaking black ichor, and head forward to meet Engine when a beam of yellow light pierces through the door ahead and clips you in the shoulder. Engine hollers "Get down!" and takes to the floor himself as a volley of Essence cannon fire rips through the front end of this car.

What do you do?

>Stay down. You're hurt, take a breather. See if Liquidator can handle whoever is doing this.
>Crawl into the hole you just made, see if you can climb underneath the tram and get under whoever is firing at you.

>>1198479
>Stay down. You're hurt, take a breather. See if Liquidator can handle whoever is doing this.

>>1198479
>Stay down. You're hurt, take a breather. See if Liquidator can handle whoever is doing this.

>>1198479
>Stay down. You're hurt, take a breather. See if Liquidator can handle whoever is doing this.

You lay down, body as flat as possible, as more beams tears through the coffin you're now in. Dozens of energy blasts impact and punch holes into the walls of your car, and you briefly think that it might collapse in on itself. Eventually, the rate of fire tapers off, although whether that's because they're reloading or dead, you cannot tell.

Engine waves you up, urging you to go forward. You follow him through the next door and are immediately shoved back into the nearly ruined tram by a gray metal arm that materializes from nowhere. Your Assembly mate whirls to block a gyroscopic chakram, a flying buzzsaw of starmetal, that flies out of seemingly nowhere, but fails. The disc strikes the couplings between both cars, and before you can get up, the tram is already 50 feet ahead of you.

Shakily, you get back up onto your feet and leap out of the detached cars, using the dregs of your Essence on your Personal Gravity Manipulation Apparatus embedded within your legs to orient yourself so that the fleeing tram and your comrade are down. You fall, rapidly, and aim yourself for

>The roof.
>Straight through the door.

>>1198552
>Straight through the door.
WERE GONNA GO THROUGH IT AND USE IT LIKE A SURF BOARD!

>>1198552
>The roof.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>1198560
>>1198564
[Coin flip time. 1 for door, 2 for roof.]

You hurtle towards the roof and hit it, rolling on your good shoulder. Your anima roars itself into existence, the blood-red beast screaming almost as loud as you when you slash your way into the car. There, you behold Engine locked in combat with an inhumanly tall woman made of Moonsilver, her daiklave smashing against his hammer while he tries to dodge the homing chakram being thrown by a Starmetal man in the back. Thankfully, judging from the presence of all the bolts embedded into what used to be a storage of fine garments for high-ranked Tripartite officials, at least Liquidator has been providing cover fire to distract the Thousand Wounds Gear stylist from doing more work on your partner.

You briefly think about Mirror and Redistributor, and hope that whatever they are doing, they're almost done.

You decide to engage
>The martial artist. Let's see how well he uses that buzzsaw up close.
>The eight-foot tall swordswoman. If you focus your attacks, you can bring her down and finish off the other man with ease.

[Ending it here for tonight as I'm about to pass out. Thanks for playing! Will probably finish this train heist (who doesn't love train heists?) next time tomorrow at around the same time.]

>>1198605
>The martial artist. Let's see how well he uses that buzzsaw up close.
>>1198625
Thank you for running

>>1198605
>the martial artist

>>1198625
I love me a hood train heist!
i was asleep for most of this thread, but I'm glad I caught up! thanks for running

>>1198605
>The martial artist. Let's see how well he uses that buzzsaw up close.

So miffed that you're running while I'm sleeping.

we should be careful to guard against an Arc Blinding Assault. we can look at very bright lights so perhaps we have a form of natural resistance to blinding, but his best choice of response against our attack is probably this technique.

stomping a foot firmly on one of his would trap it, give us a rough estimate of his position if blinded, and potentially force him to use a clinch followed by rearing crane release.

this would be a mistake since our directional gravity allows us to quickly recover.

[Sorry about that, no game today, have to do something]