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Zephyr powers up his armor. Harlan gracefully rises to a nearby rooftop.
A single shape rises from behind the buildings in the military base. It's shaped something like an inverted mushroom, easily as tall as Harlan's rooftop. Four screaming ducted fans in its base hold the vertical cylinder of its bulk aloft while it vectors toward you.
It clears the military buildings and drops until it's about 10' off the ground. It rushes toward you, the downwash of its fans blowing a cloud of dust, grit, and even small pebbles in a radiating wave.
Zephyr maneuvers as needed for a clean shot and brings his heavy artillery laser to bear on the bot, aiming for the fans keeping it aloft!
Harlan spends a little too long appreciating the robot to immediately set about destroying it.
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Jaeric takes Harlan up on his offer for a ride to a loftier height to survey the coming battle. "There's not a lot I can do against robots," he explains to the technomancer, "So, I hope you've got something to bring it down. Otherwise, Never and Zephyr are in for a rough time, and I'll just need to keep them on their feet with some Desnan healing."
Once the robot appears and ventures into range, he tries to identify any vulnerabilities he can discern from his study of alien engineering.
Not feeling very sure of anything regarding the ancient izalguun construct, he decides the best solution is to just bring it down with whatever magic might be able to pierce its armor. So, he summons a bit magic, reaching within himself for a bit of essence drawn from his own soul. "Desna protect us!" He flings it with an outstretched hand at the alien machine.
"New type. This related to your Izal-goons?"
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"You know, Jaeric,... Maybe there's something to that Desna you keep asking for help."
...
Jaeric's mystical missile flies well wide of the robot. Even with his broad knowledge of alien technology, he can't identify anything that might provide an advantage in this fight. Harlan does no better in this respect. Perhaps the lack of features in its smooth skin makes identification difficult.
Never makes ready and passes A-1 on her way to position herself to attack the robot.
While the robot bores straight in two circular bands around its cylindrical body rotate. The turbine fans whine higher, its body lifts. Dust and grit fly and strike Never, A-1, even Zephyr. In the upper band a gunport opens. And a wash of bullets from an automatic machine gun fly at Jaeric and Harlan!
A multi-jointed arm extends from an opening in the lower band, then flicks like a switchblade knife to reveal a heavy 8' long blade.
With the battle bot closing quickly, Zephyr holds his ground and fires twice more with his Artillery Laser now that it is within his first range increment.
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Jaeric surveys the battlefield from the lofty vantage point of the building, noting the robot's tactics as well as how Never and Zephyr are approaching the combat. When he feels confident he's got a good read on things, he taps his comm-unit to address the team.
"Guys, I think we can knock this thing out if we coordinate a bit more. I'm going to distract it with some Desnan starlight right in its eyes. Never? If you can keep its attention focused on you from the air, Zephyr can hammer away from the ground. He's having great effect with that artillery laser. If you see an opening when it turns its eye on him or someone else, swoop in and do what you do best!"
"Huh, ain't going to argue with any of that." Harlan dusts off his armor where the rain of bullets struck him, then spends a moment examining his pocket watch. When he flicks it shut, a volley of magic missiles manifests and lances out to pummel the incoming bot.
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Zephyr's first shot misses, but the second scorches, then cuts through the bot's outer shell. Sparks erupt from inside. Then that band of the cylinder rotates to protect the rupture from further damage.
Jaeric casts his distracting spell and provides tactical advice.
Harlan chooses a more directly damaging form of magic. His missiles dent and puncture the bot's armor.
No great tactician, the bot drives straight ahead past Never. It targets Harlan with another burst of machine gun fire. Miracuously the bullets fly past him without harm. The giant sword swings at Zephyr and the android is not as lucky. He dodges just enough to avoid the razor sharp edge, but still takes an impact from the flat of the blade.
Melee megablade +22 (2d10+15 S; critical wound)
As the big robot engages, Zephyr realizes he must either back off to continue shooting or move in to reach the bot’s vitals. He decides to move carefully closer (guarded step) and use his powered armor to strike up at the robot’s fans that hold it aloft.
Maintaining his magic despite having to duck down low to avoid the hail of bullets, Harlan sends another unerring volley of force bolts down at the rampaging bot. "We got a classic here. Spinning blades, blazing guns. I'd like to get a hand on one of these pieces of work." Harlan guffaws.
"Keep hammering it!" Jaeric calls over the comm to encourage everyone, "It's already taken some hard hits...and there's clear damage."
"Desna...help me bring this thing down..." he whispers in prayer, calling upon the mystic powers of the Song of Spheres.
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Never flails with her whip at the bot, but can't find a weak spot. Harlan continues his assault of magic missiles. Jaeric encourages his comrades and sacrifices a bit of his own essence to buffet the bot. More dents and chips appear in the plating.
And here I thought being up on the building would make Harlan less of target, not more of one.
With the bot making the tactical error of attacking Zephyr from the extreme edge of its reach, Zephyr takes a guarded step back instead of forward, then blasts with his heavy artilllery laser again!
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Zephyr adroitly steps back and blasts another skin panel.
Ignoring the ineefectual whip-wielder, the robot glides forward. Downwash buffets the retreating android. The grit and sand it carries billows outward, making it hard to see, and the giant blade slices at him again from the maelstorm.
The machine gun band pivots and begins firing at Harlan again, but this time sweeps through an arc to include Jaeric. The half-orc eats lead again, but somewhow the half-elf is unscathed.
Harlan guarded steps back, then moves away to build some more distance before dropping prone to hopefully avoid further hails of bullets. You hear him grunt as he hits the surface of the roof. "Ya know, if the Society gave a bigger budget, I woulda picked up a couple a spell gems for just this situation, but they're penny pinchers, all of em."
Trapped underneath the bot within its reach but outside his own, Zephyr braces himself for the incoming attacks as he keeps firing at the fans holding this massive machine aloft.
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Zephyr finds a weakspot in the bot's underbelly. His laser punches through and something inside erupts in an explosion blasts some of the armor panels all over the bot into the air. Debris and shrapnel whiz past all of you.
The explosion actually lifts the towering tons of construct another 10 ' higher. Its ducted fans cease spinning and it hangs there long enough for all to ponder the wisdom of depriving such a large mass of its support so suddenly and without other controls.
It crashes to the ground. A fan housing is wrenched clear and rolls directly toward Zephyr. It twists on it's axis and two aerials whip straight at Never. Then it's ponderous bulk teeters and begins to fall toward Harlan and Jaeric's building.
Perhaps because he's already on the ground, Harlan simply starts tumbling away from danger, swearing a mile a minute over comms. He readies to toss a fly spell upon himself and Jaeric to arrest their fall should the building give way.
"Way to go, Z!" Jaeric calls out as he sees the damage from the artillery laser finally punching into something vital inside the robot. Then the ensuing explosion and impending drop of the now powerless machine right on top of them makes his eyes widen as he dives to get out of the way, hurrying back towards Harlan.
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The bot tips and crashes into Harlan and Jaeric's building and the impact shakes the entire structure. Another explosion triggers inside the bot sending gouts of flame into the sky, and smoke billowing everywhere.
Retreating from the dust cloud, Harlan discovers a door into a machinery space. There's access to a dust obscured stairwell leading down.
You land gently on your head then roll less gently onto your shoulder and back on an uneven pile of chest-sized rubble.
Even A-1 in front of the gate to the base is engulfed in the dust cloud.
Into their group channel, Zephyr responds, ”I am okay—knocked around a bit, but okay. Let’s head over to where the robot fell and see if the others are okay.”
Zephyr heads over to the wrecked bot and building, looking for signs of life through the swirling dust cloud.
Harlan calls out over comms "Bloody hells! 'S all collapsing."
"H-Harlan?" he has to cough and clear his throat, "Harlan? Where are you? Can you hear me?" Jaeric clambers to his feet and casts a bit of magic to clean off the dust from his face so he can see and breathe more freely.
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After the dust settles, the party regroups in the street. Jaeric has the hardest time of it. While Harlan can just walk to the edge of the remaining roof and jump, the half-elf has to negotiate the debris riddled ground floor. The second floor and roof form an unstable obstacle course between him and a door, or even a giant impromptu opening in the wall.
A-1 still stands at the gate to the base.
Harlan waves dust out of his face and we clambers out of the settling mess. "Well, we didn't earn any favors with the locals, that's for bloody sure. I'd be happy taking a breather while you lot knock some proper sense into that outdated watcher."
Zephyr will take a few minutes to catch his breath as well, looking darkly at the hologram through the smoke of the downed battle bot.
(Spending 1 RP to recover Stamina)
"** cough **, ** cough **"
Jaeric finally emerges from the dust and debris, his token spell having made it appear as if he were just as clean and polished as when they began the fight. "Everyone okay?" he asks over the comm as he starts to gather with everyone else. Taking stock of his own injuries, he realizes they all stem from his spellcasting, so he sits down next to Harlan to rest and recover a bit, while keeping an eye on A-1's image across the way. "We gotta figure out a way to deal with that thing..." he mutters, "Probably just a hologram, but something must be controlling and speaking thru it. If we can trace it back to the source, then we can deal with whatever malevolent entity interacted with the Starfinders who came before us."
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Luwazi Elsebo's voice comes over your comms in a system wide braodcast. "Starfinders have recovered a signal beacon from a steamy swamp on Agillae-2. Our analysis of the data indicates there is a large group of survivors on another planet in the same system, and we will soon be ready to commence the evacuation mission."
They must have decoded the data from the beacon you found.
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A-1 does not disappear when Never lands. " You have defeated our strongest defense. I will answer your questions if you promise you will leave us in peace to maintain this place."
Answers:
1. Starfinders did arrive. They infiltrated the computer system.
2. We defended the planet. They died in the fight.
3. We accessed their data units. Here are the files we recovered.
4. The files indicate another Starfinder presence on Callion-1.
5. We have detected faint, but active data signals from Callion-1 as late as a few hours ago.
A-1 transfers the files to any comm unit or computer you have handy.