Preach's heart sank when the man did something to sabotage the valves. He had to stop him doing any further damage so quick as a flash he drew his pistols and fired! The hammers slammed into the cartridges and detonated the main charges with thunderous booms.
Alsah fires her crossbow at the woman
Gripping her scythe, Juliet follows Bryn towards the rear engine room. Flushed with adrenaline and exercise, Juliet grins, unaware and manic as she runs. All things considered, this was exhilarating.
Wincing as the burns overwhelmed him more, Messer tried to finish off the last sprite.
Seeing Preach fire towards the rear of the engine room, Bryn follows his line of sight to the target. Turning the corner, he uses the extra momentum to make a wide swing.
Preach discharges his weapons with a deafening boom, causing the man to spin round, as one slug slams into him. Bryn joins the fray, but his strike goes wide and Juliet joins the pair in the noisy cramped confines.
Nearby, a badly burned Messer can't quite connect with with his strike, but Alsah's aim is true, and her bolt strikes with a solid thunk.
"Time to finish these things..." The Investigator says more to herself than any other person. She steps forward rapier and attempts to find a opening and thrusts the weapon forward to strike the small elemental.
,
She looks to Messer, "Go for those two others."
The saboteur withdraws, fleeing around the back of the engine.
Alexandra dispatches the remaining sprite with a sure thrust of her sword, while the two other suspects flee up the ladders to the berth deck.
Round/6/7
The woman moves to see the hadmaiden and halfling scurry away up the ladder. Alex than yells so that others can hopefully hear her above the engine noise, "Stop! Before we go chasing the culprits, we need to figure out if they sabotaged anything here, or if we stopped them."
My understanding of firearm reloading rules is as follows:
Normally reloading a pistol is standard action. Preach has Rapid Reload (Pistol) which turns that into a move action and for reload's hes using paper cartridges (unless it gets too expensive*) which further reduces this to a free action at the cost of increasing misfire by 1 (i.e. missfire on a roll of 1-2). There's a limit to how many free actions you can take so he can reload at least one weapon per round or maybe both this way at the GM's discretion.
*) Cost of ammunition
Per the rules it's possible to load a shot without a cartridge. This costs 1 dose of black powder (10gp base) and a lead ball (2gp). Gunsmithig reduces the price of this to 1/10th so a round costs 1.2gp to fire. Commonplace guns reduces that to 0.3 gp per round.
The baseline cost of black powder in pathfinder is 1000gp per 5lbs and each shot requires a 0.05lb dose. In pathfinder an alchemical paper cartridge costs 12gp each to buy, or 6 gp to craft if you have at least one point in craft alchemy.
This is Zeitgeist where we use firedust instead. PG 16 of the Zeitgeist
player's guide lists the rules for firearms. We're using commonplace guns so prices are 1/4 of the standard. So an alchemical paper cartridge costs 3 gp each to buy, or 1.5 gp to craft.
I forgot about craft: alchemy when building Preach :( Would it be possible to retcon his skill point in Kn: Arcarna to Craft alchemy? He's not used that skill yet.
Side note: firedust which is way cheaper than black powder!
Page 16 of the Zeitgeist lists the price of a 20lb keg of firedust as costing 20gp. That's 1gp per lb. With commonplace guns black powder costs 50gp per lb.
Unfortunately this does not affect the price of ammunition because the zeitgeist player's guide says:
Acquiring and paying for firearms uses the “commonplace” rules presented in the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game ultimate combat rulebook. PCs must spend the appropriate gold listed for ammunition, though it is assumed this ammunition consists of firedust and a specially construct- ed cartridge rather than the black powder/alchemical cartridge listed.
Not sure the designers really thought this through since there's a quote on pg 8 about a bullet costing less than a mug of beer which is several orders of magnitude wrong (a bullet is still 2gp or 2s if crafted). A mug of ale costs 4cp. Anyway nevermind, gunslinging is expensive by default.
Anticipating having to shoot again, Preach held several cartridges in his lips. With speed that would shock most people, he dropped one of the guns, spat a cartridge into the muzzle of the other and rammed it home with a little rod before rushing after the fleeing saboteur and firing!
Smoking lightly, Messer said, "See if they damaged those valves like they wanted, I'll look at the boiler." Moving over, Messer tried to open the door to the boiler and see if the gem they'd used was somehow causing problems.
"Preach, check the boiler. I'll handle this guy," Bryn says as he runs by him.
Alsah looks at the engine door.
Hey this ship is new. Why is this rusted? And should it be making this sound? she says nervously
Alsah understanding of steam engines is limited.
Sprinting after Bryn, Juliet lets her adreniline carry her around the corner of the engine room. The saboteur is just visible ahead, and Juliet quickly closes the gap, ducking under and hopping over piping with ease. As she runs the Mystic yells, likely fruitlessly into the din raised by the ship's clanking gears and hissing boilers. "Oi! Stop! You're under arrest!"
"The preasure is too high? Maybe that was the purpose of there gem..." It didn't take an engineer to know an over pressurized boiler wasn't a good thing. Messer wasn't strong, but since his hand was fireproof (at least to standard flame) he tried to yank it open.
"It was not like that when I was down here earlier. Need some help?" Alex says and moves to the door and attempts to help Messer to open the rusted boiler door.
The heat coming off of the boiler is intense and sweat begins to bead on your forehead as you struggle to open the firebox door. It gives groan of protest and lets loose in a rush. There is a slight whoosh, as air rushes into the fire and flames furl outwards.
With its door open, you can see that the firebox has been packed tight with firegems and jammed in last is a glowing gem that pulses with energy. Without the metal barrier to protect you, the heat pouring out of the door is enough to sear the flesh.
Wait, I have an idea
Alsah runs back to grab the fireward amulets. She will grab two and run back
Alsah double moves towards the bow, heading back towards the ammunition stores where the firewards hang.
In the rear of the engine room, the saboteur withdraws moving towards another release valve.
Round 7/8
Recoiling from the heat, Messer stared into the mess of a boiler. They needed to deal with that as quickly as possible.
Moving forward a bit, Juliet steps off to the side to allow Bryn to pass her. Annoyance creeps into her voice as she calls out again. "Stop! Halt! Surrender!" This time, she puts some magic behind the force of her words, an attempt to compel the villain to lose focus and stop.
Bryn races past Juliet, maintaining pursuit.
"You heard the lady, surrender or wake up with a nasty headache."
She looks over to see Aslah head for the ladder they came down, "I do not think we have that kind of time."
She looks back to see a strange gem within the boiler and all the packed in firegems... and to Messer looking around for something.
Juliet's spell seizes the man's mind and Bryn lands a solid blow that rocks the man on his feet, but he does not fall.
Messer you know that there has to be something that can be used to fish out the gem, but your quick glance doesn't see anything. You do recall that shovels were used to feed the firebox and all the firegems packed in there had to had been put in there somehow.
1)Ending your turn in front of the furnace cause 1d6 fire damage from the heat, no save.
2) No portholes on this deck. It is below the water line.
3) Reaching into the firebox unaided will cause 3d6 points of fire damage, but you will succeed in pulling out the gem even if you fall unconscious.
Alsah grabs the firewards and returns
Preach hurried after the saboteur, reloading as he went. He took careful aim and prepared to put the man down if needed. To the constables he suggested, "Lets arrest this fool before he does any more damage!"
Alexandra looks to Messer and back to the furnace once again and back to him and yells, "Toss the glowing gem into the ocean, if you are able!"
With no thoughts of herself the woman than turns and reaches into the furnace to grabs the strange gemstone within. She cries out in pain at the heat and flames that are coming from within, but Alexandra manages to grasp the gem. The investigator starts to pull back from the furnace but is succumbs to the extreme heat and fire, collapsing to the floor from her efforts. The gemstone is in hand and out of the boiler and falls to the floor in front of her as unconsciousness overtakes her.
Wincing at his collegues pain, Messer picked the gem up and starting moving it away from the boiler. Even as he moved he cast Frostbite, hoping to remove the gem as a factor sooner than the edge of the ship.
In a desperate move, Alexandra grabs the elemental gem out of the furnace, burning herself badly and causing her lose consciousness. Free of the confines of the firebox, a fire elemental starts to coalesce in the room, but quickly begins to fade away, the magic of the gem having mostly been leeched away to fuel the heat of the furnace.
With the removal of the gem, the rise of the indicator on on the pressure gauge begins to slow, but does not stop. You've bought yourselves some time, but will it be enough to avert disaster.
Round 8/9
'The valves, why is he going for the valves?' thought Preach.
With that he rushed forward to try and turn the valve to release the pressure.
Alsah will make the five round run. She will make as fast as she can
Rather than the gem, Messer does indeed make sure his ally is not well done in by the heat.
With nowhere to move in the confines of the engine room in a way that puts her in range to tackle the saboteur, Juliet concentrates, again flinging her magic at the man, a mental assault intended to lock him into inaction.
The saboteur shakes his head and his eyes begin to focus.
Having no skill with healing nor healing items Messer chose to cast Frostbite on the gem.
The boiler's vibrations set Preach's teeth on edge, he was pretty sure it wasn't meant to sound like that, pressure was clearly rising. Normally the pressure release system would prevent things from getting out of hand but the sabeteur was actively trying to break it. The man had to be stopped or it was going to blow, so Preach took careful aim and pulled the trigger. His pistol barked and the ball slammed into the man's chest!
Preach takes aim past his collegues and manages to tag the culprit. The man spins around, dropping to the ground, senseless.
In another part of the engine deck, Messer uses his magic to cool the gem just extracted from the fires of the furnace.
Alex's breathing steadies, as she stabilizes.
Round 9/10
The nearest threat dealt with, Juliet sprints towards the nearest exit. "Nice shot, Preach!"
There was still the question of what was happening in the coal room, no time to waste.
Preach nodded, "Thanks! We need to try and release the pressure, they wanted this thing to blow!"
He moved to the valve and tried to turn it, "Here give me a hand with this!"
Preach opens the valve, releasing some of the pressure and providing some relief to the stressed system.
"What do you need me to do?" Bryn asks Preach as he turns his attention to the ship.
Preach studied the mass of pipework and the placement of the valves and the boiler and tried to understand what they could do to safely relieve excess pressure.
"Well I'm not an expert, but I think we can do this..." started Preach as he tried to explain to Bryn what to do.
Realising there was little more they could do here, Preach says "I'll check out the main engine room and see if there's anything we can do ."