KIds on Volturnus | Star Frontiers

So I got a chance to play SF with my
kids yesterday. Here's a short synopsis. (The group consists of two
dralasites, a yazirian, and a vrusk).

They left the Kurabanda village and
started their journey to the pirate outpost. After three uneventful
days, they reached the "Black Lake" as described by their
Kurabanda guide. Wondering why it was called Black Lake, they ran an
analysis on it and discovered the petroleum content. They decided it
was either contamination from the pirates or a natural upwelling.
They figured if it wasn't from the pirate outpost, they would be able
to come back and locate the source and collect it. Tired of walking
they spent the rest of the day constructing a raft and a rough sail
of woven vines from the jungle.

In the morning they set out to follow
the coastline down toward the pirate outpost. Towards evening on the
first day they were attacked by a flock of 30 winged rippers. One of
the boys decided he wanted to try to capture one to try to tame as a
pet. So he was using his sonic stunner that he had acquired onboard
the Serena Dawn to try to stun one and knock it out of the sky.
Unfortunately for him, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and
missed every round the rippers attacked. His little sister, on the
other hand, couldn't seem to miss. Despite her low skill with a
laser pistol, hit on 7 out of 8 shots. After about 6 rounds of small
bites and scratches from the rippers (enough to wear out the last of
a couple skein suits) they managed to kill enough of the rippers to
drive them off. As the creatures were flying away, the character
with the stunner took one last shot and rolled an 02, finally hitting
and knocking out one of the rippers. They quickly rowed over and
retrieved it from the water. Now he has a very angry carnivorous
bird he's trying to tame. He's been bribing it with the chocolate
covered anchovies he found in the cargo hold.

The night and next day passed
uneventfully as they made camp and then continued to paddle toward
the pirate outpost. They came upon the dry canal but decided not to
investigate. As soon as the pirate outpost was in sight, they made
for shore and set up camp for the night being careful to stay out of
sight of the outpost. "No fire tonight boys," one of them,
playing the Yazirian techie (with an environmentalist skill) said.

In the morning they approached the
pirate base and witnessed the robot come out and make it's patrol.
As soon as the robot came out, the groups roboticist (the yazirian)
decided he wanted to capture and reprogram it. When it went back
inside, the yazirian ran up to the fence to ascertain if it was
electrified (which he did) and see if he could turn it off (which he
couldn't). He then retreated back just before the robot came out
again. One of the boys had an idea, "Wood doesn't conduct
electricity, we can use the raft to get over the fence." So
after watching the robot make its patrol again they retreated back to
their camp where the disassembled the raft and reassembled it into a
longer ramp and carried it back to the outpost. Watching for the the
robot, once it completed it's circuit and went back inside, they
rushed up to the fence, laid the ramp up against it and clambered
over it and into the compound. They then stood up against the wall
of the building waiting for the robot to come out so that the
Yazirian could deactivate it. And they managed to do this all
without asking about, seeing, or being seen by any of the security
cameras on the outside of the outpost.

When the robot came out, the yazirian
made a DEX roll to try to reach in and open the access panel to
deactivate the robot but he missed. This brought them to the
attention of the robot who shouted "Intruders" and brought
his laser rifle to bear but in the close quarters missed. Seeing
what the robotocist was after, the vrusk managed to get the access
panel open as the robot turned to fire at the yazirian. They won
initiative on the next round and the yaz was able to deactivate the
robot. While that was going on, the two dralasites entered the
building to find themselves in the garage. They quickly dragged the
robot inside.

At this point, the yaziran set to work
on the robot while the others checked out the garage finding the
jetcopter disassembled and in need of some repairs. Listing out the
robots mission and functions he found that it was programmed to two
circuits around the outside and then two inside and attack anyone
without a Star Devil tattoo or insignia. He decided to change the
"without" to "with" in the latter bit so that it
would attack the pirates and not them. As he got to work, the
dralasites proceeded into the next room, which turned out to be the
store room. Along the way they unknowingly (no one looked and it was
a silent alarm) tripped an IR beam alerting the pirates to their
presence. Upon the discovering the storeroom the drals started
opening boxes, while the vrusk went to cover the far exit.

Back in the garage, the yazirian was
not having any luck with the robot. Try as he might he just couldn't
get the new function programming to take hold. Determined to
succeed, he continued to work at it. One of the drals opened a
small crate and found a power beltpack which he quickly strapped on.
The other dral, played by my 6 year old, opened a big crate and found
a bunch of food. She was quite happy and started stuffing her
pockets. The next round the first dral opened another small crate
and let out a contented sigh. He had discovered 5 T-19 charges. As
the teams demolitionist, he was been quite upset that he didn't have
any explosives but that was now remedied. The other dral found a
crate of powered milk and juices.

As the drals were opening the next set
of crates the door to the room opened and another combat robot rolled
in, having been sent there by the pirates. Prepared for just such an
event, the Vrusk immediately unloaded a pair of laser blasts into
it's body, putting a serious dent in its stamina, as the robot took
stock of the situation. Completing opening the crates, the drals
found 3 solvaways and 4 bottles of vitasalt pills. At this point
they turned to face the new threat.

On the next round, the vrusk dropped
his laser pistol and pulled out his machete, realizing he had a much
better chance to hit the unsurprised robot with the melee weapon than
with his pistol and took a swing, connecting solidly. Just then two
of the pirates rushed into the room and began to attack as well.
Our demolitionist drew his sonic stunner and fired at one of the
pirates but missed, the other dral fired her laser pistol and, her
string of good luck continuing, connected two shots to the robot.
The pirates and robot returned fire but fate was on the side of the
adventurers and none of the shots connected.

Meanwhile out in the garage, after
several more failures, our roboticst finally managed to alter the
robot's function to attack star devil marked characters. At which
point he started dragging the robot toward where he could hear the
fighting. One of his brothers asked him why he didn't just turn it
back on and he said "It's just on the start of it's patrol
outside, if I turn it on now, it will just continue with that and go
outside and won't help us. If I take it in the other room first and
then turn it on, it will see the pirates and attack them before
trying to go outside."

Back in the storage room the PC's again
won initiative, the dral blasted the robot with her laser pistol
once again and the vrusk solidly connected, slicing the head of the
robot and rendering it defunct. Our other dral missed once again
with his stunner. His bad luck streak continued as one of the
pirates connected with his laser pistol, dropping the dral's STA
nearly in half. Our yaz decided that dragging the robot in was too
much work and so decided to try to alter the other function from
patrolling the inside and outside of the building to just following
him.

On the next round the characters all
got good hits in and the demolitionist dral managed to drop his
target with the stunner. The other two got good hits in on the other
pirate but not enough to take him out. Just as the round was ending,
a third pirate entered the room and joined the fray. Once again all
the pirates managed to miss (I was rolling really crappy). Lucky
this time, the yazirian was able to quickly make the function
modification without problems.

On the next round, he entered the
storeroom with the robot behind him to be met with a laser blast from
the new pirate, severely wounding him. With the addition of the
combat robot and fourth character, the PC's quickly overcame the two
pirates before they could retreat. They slit the throat of the
stunned pirate and quickly looted them and finished ransacking the
store room. Ready to enter the rest of the complex, we ended there
for the evening.

On a side note, the yazirian is really
excited about his new "pet robot". My print proof of
Frontier Explorer issue 3 (the robotics issue) showed up yesterday
and he had glanced through it. This morning I found him pouring over
the "Programming Robots for Dummies and Dralasites"
article. He had made a character sheet for the robot with it's
characteristics, weapons, power, etc. and was looking at ways he
could reprogram the robot to do what he wanted. Since the yaz had
the robot, and the one dral had the winged ripper, my son playing the
vrusk has claimed the jetcopter (even though he technically can't fly
it). My 6 year old daughter doesn't really care. She was mainly
just playing to be with her brothers.More to follow shortly. They are itching to play some more and finish up the outpost so we'll probably play some tomorrow (President's Day) if there is time.

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