Armour Astir 3
[This is the second of three parts of a short Armour Astir campaign I played in. You can find the first and second parts here:
https://daydreamingmoose.bearblog.dev/armour-astir-1/
https://daydreamingmoose.bearblog.dev/armour-astir-2/]
Back at the College of Daedalus, the squad and crew get a precious week of downtime before their relaxation is abruptly interrupted. The crew informs the the Captain, Alwain, that a Samirian raiding party is approaching the college.
Meanwhile, Alya is training with her sword, thereby conversing with the Arbitrator, in a private training room. Suddenly, something sends a shiver down her spine. Something is very wrong. Pure malice lingers in the air. Out of the shadows, an ivory spear emerges, followed by a skeletal figure covered in flayed skin. A skill with empty eye sockets. Another crimson seeker! It speaks to her again: I have a question for you. The last one I told was not cooperative.
It is obviously talking about Rajiv.
It asks Where is the Ophelia? and Alya answers At the College.
The Seeker is happy about the straight answer and wants Alya to lead them to it, but she is reserved and inquires about the goals of the Crimson Seeker. The Seeker simply retorts, that that is none of her concern. Looking at the Crimson Seeker, Alya remembers how wrong it felt to pilot the Ophelia, because the Seeker feels exactly like that malice, taken humanoid form.
At the same time, the device Rajiv had built goes haywire and crew members down in the cargo hold seem to disappear from the surveillance monitors in the captain’s observatories. Alwain orders all crew away from the cargo deck and moves in to investigate.
Back in the training room, Alya attacks her adversary with a brutal upwards strike, but the attack gets blocked and reciprocated, and she bleeds from a large gash on her chest. With her next attack, she manages to decapitate the seeker, while getting stabbed again as well. Blood is dripping along the spear stabbed in her shoulder, but the ivory weapon seems to slowly absorb it. Alya pulls the spear from her body, and notices that the seekers’ body is still moving on the floor and the head looking at her. The seeker is picking up its head and seems to want to reattach it, Alya concentrates on her blade and shoots a ray of light at the seeker, blinding it. Finally, six of the marines arrive, taking over and sending Alya to the infirmary.
Down in the cargo hold, Alwain runs into another crimson seeker – the same one that attacked Rajiv, as is evident by the large hole left in its head. Immediately another fight breaks out, but Alwain misses his initial shot due to the Seeker throwing its spear at him. At the same time, Rajiv sneaks into the cargo hold, trying to surprise the seeker, but his shot, aimed at the head, misses as well and he gets knocked to the ground. Alwain reacts immediately, but his attack gets blocked again and in retaliation the Crimson Seeker breaks his offhand wrist with a brutal attack. While lying on the floor, Rajiv aims, looses three shots in an upwards trajectory and hits the lower torso, upper torso and finally the head. The seeker starts to bleed ichor again, but is still going. Alwain manages to cut off the seekers weapon arm at the elbow and the seeker starts focusing on him, ignoring Rajiv entirely. When the marines finally arrive, they move in with the captain, killing the seeker in melee, and Rajiv moves in and empties his magazine into the lifeless corpse.
'STAY FUCKING DEAD.'
The seeker dissolves into ichor and seeps into the floor, leaving only a dark stain on the floor. Unfortunately, the other Seeker escapes the marines, and while Alwain joins Alya in the infirmary, the Carrier sets course to assist the college.
Luckily, the College isn’t completely defenceless. While it is being attacked by a slew of Crimson Guard Astir, it is covered by a luminous, blue dome. One of the defenders utilizes a guiding spell to show the ship a way behind the college to enter the defensive dome. After being greeted by the security forces of the college, the squad is asked for help and moves into defensive positions. Bombarding the attacking Astir at range with their own guns and the massive ship weapons of the carrier, they manage to drive of the enemy machines at the same time as the ground troops subjugate the last Crimson Guard ground troops inside the College. After the battle, the captain gets pinged by the college to inform them that they only need another hour to prepare for the crossing, so the ship lands in the underground hanger and gets prepared for the crossing as well. Alya watches the procedures, which consists of four people carrying a large crate to the engine bay, which contains a magical, dark haze that clings onto the engine and then gets configured by a fifth. It’s a similar vibe as the malice of the seekers, but slightly different, more controlled. Less malicious, more destructive. It’s made from the same essence as the entity Sumire has a pact with, the entity that gives them the Astirs in exchange for sacrifices. This will punch a hole through the wall surrounding the sector, and it should be able to do that again for a return trip if the group wants to return.
As soon as all ships are fitted with the strange magic, the small fleet starts its journey. They are advised to sleep during the journey and set the ship to autopilot, because the magical energies might drive them crazy. Rajiv decides to not sleep, because one of the college’s professors says it will probably not affect him as much, but might grant him more channelling powers, similarly, both Alya as well as Alwain stay awake as well.
The journey after breaching the wall is marked by indescribable entities and creatures flying alongside the ship, rainbows made up out of colours unimaginable showing in space around the ship. The ship itself seems to be enlarged. The other ships are nowhere to be seen. Then the carrier flies through a sea of light, coasts for a second and suddenly Alwain receives strange messages, urging him to move to the windows. His reflection looks at him, but something is wrong. Then the reflection lifts its arm, touches the window and bleeds through it. It’s a shadow of a person, but speedily gets more defined. Eyes appear on the arm, move to where the face would be, and several arms and legs appear before the captain. It simply asks the captain what their goal is and when the captain replies with curiosity it warns them that the things behind the wall do not enjoy their defences being breached and that they committed an ancient sin. Then they disappear again, apologizing that the captain might not have a reflection for the next few days.
Similarly, Alya also gets visited by a strange creature at her window – but this one indescribable, extremely alien and hostile. An entity that is there to take things for a contract. As payment. The Arbitrator tells her that this entity is the one that is in a contract with Sumire. For a second, Alya thinks about fighting it, but is discouraged by the alien laughter coming from it. But at the same time, she gets the revelation that the being inside the blade isn’t the Arbitrator, merely something sent by the Arbitrator. It conveys the message that its master will be happy to aid her in her quest to destroy the malicious entity outside the ship.
Rajiv gets contacted by the strange entity as well, after seeing it outside the window. It knocks at the back of his head, and he lets it into his mind. It says that their name is unpronounceable and Rajiv wants to hear the offer first, instead of giving his own name first. The entity wants to know what has been stolen from them to cloak the ship and what else is hiding on the ship. It is the device shielding Rajiv from the seekers, and the entity breaks it with its powers. Rajiv isn’t amenable to the continuing demands from the Entity to receive the power he is searching for, and the Entity leaves him to find someone more malleable.
The group communicates for a short while, deciding to attack what they now call Malice. Alya launches first to attack the entity, using her flying form to fight. Rajiv was planning to grapple on the hull to attack from range, but when he leaves the ship, the entity grapples his mind again and somehow enables him to stand and walk in space as if it were normal ground. It is only fair, it says in his mind, with a mocking undertone. Alya gets contacted by her deity, and it tells her that it needs 90 seconds to arrive, so the crew engages the alien entity, firing from every angle and opening they can find. In response, some rooms just go red – life support and therefore all life inside them just gone. Alya changes to her foot-form and draws her beam saber to engage the entity in melee. But Malice defends itself mentally and in return gets shot by Rajiv again. Alwain tries to ram the entity with the carrier, but simply gets swallowed into the darkness of the entity. In truth he managed to escape the entity: They were already inside Malice already, being devoured, which is why crew members were dying room by room. Both Alya and Rajiv try to escape, and while Alya succeeds in her flying form, Rajiv is held back by Malice’s mental hold on him, staying back inside the Entity.
Then, accompanied by a blinding light, Alyas’s deity arrives, and it is terrifying. Even larger and more alien than the strange entity. It is a deity that doesn’t take contracts. It just convinces people to go on and destroy, kill and devour in its name. It immediately devours the dark entity, spits out Rajiv and thanks Alya for the meal and simply vanishes again. Leaving the squad all alone, out in the vastness in space. Luckily, all the other ships of the college arrive as well, having also fought Malice.
After what feels like a millennium of travel in which life itself felt like it stopped, and the necessities of living felt like optional activities, the ship finally arrives somewhere, but without a trace of any of the other ships. On a desert planet, crashing diagonally into the sand, getting stuck there.
[With this uncertain future for the survivors of the great journey, we ended the few shot of Armor Astir. I had quite a bit of fun, and since it's a Powered by the Apocalypse game, it was easy for me to get into the rules. Due to the shortness of the campaign, we only glossed over the downtime and completely left out the faction play, because that would have doubled the game time.
I wasn't too enamored by the Science-Fantasy setting Armor Astir uses, but was definitely less critical of it by the end. But I still prefer science-fiction settings when it comes to Mecha (maybe with the exception of Aether Nexus).
I hope you had fun reading this three parter and I hope you'll be back for more of my writing! Thank you for reading!]