Golden Anvil

Well, we played tonight, and things went pretty well. In particular, I think I firmly proved that I'm not playing favorites with my wife...

As you might recall, the last session was three weeks ago, and Mrs. Kheldar hadn't been able to make it. We stopped the session just as a fight was starting, and someone showed up in the room behind the group. Natasha had taken some gun fire, and burned off a character point to get a chance to roll a dodge.

Well, this time, the fight kicked into full gear. Brooky got tied up wrestling around with one of the men who ambushed them. Unfortunately, his rolls were (typically) not so hot, and he wasn't do so well. This kept him out of the fight for a bit. Natasha was tied up in a close range gun fight with the man who'd shown up behind her. Professor Hayes dove for cover in the corner of the room (holing up next to Achmed, the lamp dealer behind an overturned table). This left Eva by herself against two sub-machine gun wielding thugs that she'd tangled up in a curtain (and unfortunately they were getting loose).

Hearing gunfire from the room where Natasha was pinned down, she decided not to retreat that direction (for fear of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire) and instead started backing for cover. As the gunmen got free, she used her TK powers to lift the edge of the large rug on the floor up to block line of sight. This provided some nice cover, and gave Brooky enough time to throw off the man who he'd been grappling with. As one gunman came around the edge of the rug (gun at the ready), Eva dropped the rug and desperate fired with her pistol, but unfortunately the shots went wide. The man with the gun let out two bursts of fire as his comrade (who'd been wrestling with Brooky) dove for his dropped pistol.

Even after spending a character point to get a reroll on her dodge, two of the shots from the second burst caught Eva in the torso, and she stumbled backwards before dropping to the ground, unconscious. It was all pretty dramatic, as I rolled the damage dice out on the table in front of everyone. In GURPS-speak, she had 9 hit points, a 10 health, and she was taking 4 dice damage. For those not familiar with GURPS, on an average damage roll she'd likely get knocked unconscious. With any amount of bad luck, she'd have a 50% chance of dying.

The dice came to a stop, and the total was just two points short of her needing to make a health roll to avoid death. Whew!

Meanwhile, after Natasha dove behind some cover, the man attacking her seemed to vanish from the room. She cautiously tried to lure him out with an illusional decoy, but nothing happened. So, she headed for the room where everyone else was to see what was going on. One spectacular burst from her submachine-gun took down one of the remaining thugs just after Brooky managed to down the other. Then, with inspired timing, she decided to make one last check over the room behind her, and spotted her attacker once more behind her preparing to fire. She let loose a burst from her gun at him, and he dodge back through the closed door. Obviously he too possess unnatural powers.

Having no time to chase him down, she went back to the others, where the fight was just wrapping up (Brooky having shot the remaining armed man in the leg, convincing him to surrender).

Achmed (the old lamp dealer) seemed fairly willing to blab details about what was going on, but apparently feared for his life, and wanted protection. It seems that the men were working for some German, and were planning on planting bombs on the British base with the help of some traitors working on base. Other bombs were planned for another spot in the business district of the city. Despite threats, Achmed refused to reveal more information until he was someplace safe.

Fortunately, Eva appeared to be stable, but she looks to be unconscious for an hour as the heroes plan how to get back to the hotel (with Achmed) without drawing too much attention.

Oh yes, one other note, Brooky seems to have picked up a hilarious new quirk... always loses his shirt in combat. This time, after taking five bullets (with no apparent damage), he tore the shirt to strips to bind Eva's wounds and to secure the one other man they'd captured.

All in all, it was a fun session, and a pretty exciting combat. They should be getting close to being able to wrap things up on this adventure.

In other news, my copy of Flight Simulator X was waiting in the mailbox when I got home. I shocked. I didn't expect it for another couple of days. Now I've got to figure out whether or not to stay up even later and install it... Hmm...