No Rest for the Wicked: Up the Hill

Helloooooo, minions!

After the usual round of scheduling snafus, my gaming group finally got back together for another session of No Rest for the Wicked this past week, so I've got a write-up for you. We're still settling in, players getting used to a new system. It's also been interesting, playing a fan-made system and learning to work around the handful of rough edges. (Admittedly, this might not have been the best introduction to PbtA for some of these folks, but learning experiences and whatnot.)

If you missed it, here is the first session in this particular game and here you'll find detailed descriptions of the cast of characters.

Anyhow, here we go.





The group heads up the hill from Gamma, hiking towards the Hyperion facility where they can get the parts to fix Claptrap so his mind can be relocated back into his body. In the meantime, he's in 'the cloud,' singing little hiking songs to them. Songs like the classic Colonel Bogey March (and now you know the name of that song, you're welcome), though soon enough he transitions to going through Holst's 'Planets' Suite.

They know the Hyperion facility in question has been pretty quiet since the death of Handsome Jack -- like, they know that despite having digistructing tech that lets them make most things, there are regular shuttles dropping off supplies outside and someone's bringing in the crates. So the assumption is that they've just been hold up while Hyperion sorts out what's going to happen next.

To preserve their sanity as they hike, the group decides to take turns turning off their comms, one person leaving theirs on at a time just in case. B-light takes the first shift.

But as they go up the hill, they hear a conversation from a group of individuals who sound like they're going down to check out the crater in the canyon. They're past some rocks so they're out of view, but the tone of the conversation makes it clear that these are bandits -- likely members of the bandit group known as the Avalanche Gang, known for living at the higher elevations and exploiting explosives to weaponize the environment against their enemies. Thirt33n's face-mask produces a holographic 'smile' emoji (not entirely unlike Zer0's emoticons)[0]. B-light asks Claptrap to start reciting the digits of pi, figuring the numerical droning would be easier than coping with background music.

The group starts putting together tactical plans, perhaps for a diversion, but Thirt33n sneaks off to the side and creeps around the rocks. Sledge, once he realizes the assassin has snuck off, just shrugs and readies his rifle for the combat about to ensue. Thirt33n sees four heavily-armed guys decked out in piecemeal body armor leading a fifth person behind them. The guy's covered in tattoos of lines, some swirling, some angular like a circuit diagram. He's been blindfolded and gagged, and they're leading him on a leash. Aside from the tattoos, he resembles a Pandora-style 'psycho,' which is a rarity on Minos.

Thirt33n goes ahead and initiates combat, activating their holographic decoys and going after the one on the leash first, just in case. But their initial strike misses, and instead they just cut off the gag and blindfold, and the guy shrieks at them that "The top is open!" and lunges at them with a pickaxe.

The rest of the group, on the other side of the rocks, hear the fight start and charge in, Sledge-first. Sledge unloads on them with his combat rifle, while Mr. Phillips follows up close behind and unleashes Hanabi-chan at the bandits. But she takes a shotgun blast and lets out a high-pitched squeal of panic, which actually manages to throw off Claptrap's counting. In his panic, he switches from reciting the digits of pi to listing pie fillings. The gunfight continues as Thirt33n makes sure to drop the tattooed bandit.

At one point, one of the bandits grabs a grenade of some sort duct-taped to the side of his gun and throws the beeping explosive up the hill, clearly with the intent of unleashing an avalanche at the group (in the style of this particular bandit gang). Phillips sees that coming and leaves Hanabi-chan to defend him while he pulls out a blocky datapad that looks like Al's on Quantum Leap and frantically tries to disable the device remotely. There's a tiny explosion and a thin plume of smoke marking that he's just saved all of their butts.

B-light and Thirt33n duck behind rocks to let their shields recharge as Sledge goes into berserk mode and charges the remaining bandits fist-first. Mr. Phillips, Hanabi-chan, and B-light engage in more gunplay with the bandits as Thirt33n re-engages their stealth tech and goes in with their blade. And soon enough, Sledge is finishing the last of the bandits with burning fists.

The group stops to take a closer look at the guy who'd been dragged around by the rest -- the tattoos are definitely something they haven't seen before, like some sort of maze drawn on the skin. Mr. Phillips strips the body and takes pictures to record the tattoos -- which is quicker than what B-light had planned (recreating them on paper) and both quicker and less messy than what Sledge would have done (just skinning him and keeping the tattooed hide). Meanwhile...

Claptrap: "...shepherd's, and Pinkie, and... I think I'm out of pies!"
B-light: "Do you know the equations for pi?"
Claptrap: "You mean the digits?"
B-light: "Yeah. Recite it backwards."
Claptrap: "But... wait..." followed by a buzzing sound and blessed silence.[1]

Conveniently, the Hyperion facility is already in sight, maybe another 20 minutes' hike up the hill. It's a big, boxy facility and the only way in or out is a closed blast door. There's a Fast Travel station out front, but the network is down so right now it's only useful as a respawn point. There's no obvious way to open the door, but there is an intercom.

Sledge pushes the button and a light comes on. The voice of a 'Loader' robot informs him that office hours are closed, and that he needs to come back later. Thirt33n tells the bot on the other end that its momma was a Claptrap, and -- speak of the devil -- Claptrap comes back online with a "Hellloooooo, residents!", restarting everyone's comms in the process so they all have to hear it. Cue the collective groan, especially since Thirt33n can't seem to be able to turn theirs back off.

But then Sledge remembers that Claptrap can open doors, and asks if he can get the Hyperion facility open. Claptrap tells him he should be able to hack the door if Sledge stands close enough that the robot can work through his comm.

AAAAAAAAAND... OPEN!

The doors open to reveal a large open facility with stairs leading up to catwalks over bubbling tanks of chemicals and various substances. Off to the side, along one wall, are doors leading to laboratories. No sign of any humans around.

Claptrap notices that something's wrong with the intercom system, so he proceeds to 'unhack' it. At which point the characters hear a bunch of people screaming for help. They reply and find out that these are the researchers who've been running the facility... until the robots decided that 'the tyranny of meat is over.' Most of the human staff are dead and the researchers are in a panic room and running out of food. The panic room opens up into the labs, though there might also be a way to open the doors from the control room -- where there might still be a functioning emergency shutdown for the Loaders. Speaking of which, one of the robots reclaims control over the intercom and reminds the group that office hours are over and they should come back later -- or never. Also, it points out, the tyranny of meat is over.

The group steps into the open facility where some jamming signal blocks Claptrap from their comms, and they can hear the clanking of Loader bots coming their way. The group has a brief conversation over whether or not they're obligated to save the researchers or let this be a 'they got themselves into this' situation. Thirt33n wants to save them because they figure they can make them pay. Phillips argues it's a little more reasonable to try and save them and hope that they can pay. But in the end, they agree to at least make the attempt.

The plan is for Thirt33n to use their stealth abilities to sneak to the back of the facility and find the control room, and in theory should be able to shut down the bots without having to fight anything. They vanish with their cloaking device and run along the catwalks, dodging Loader Bots clunking their way towards the open door. The rest of the group backs away, assuming the Loaders are operating on a patrol route and won't deviate beyond it, and they just duck out of sight around the corner.

Meanwhile, Thirt33n is rushing through the empty facility, seeing tanks of glowing chemicals -- looks like some of it is liquid eridium mixed with various substances. They're seeing more and more human corpses the further back they go, and eventually they can't resist the call for loot and start opening lockers looking for something worth pocketing -- and, luckily enough, find a couple of bars of eridium. They pocket it and move on to the control room, where there's a corpse propped up next to the door, hand so close to the bio-scanner. They drag the hand up to the handprint scanner and hear the machine accept the scan -- through a cybernetic implant of the dead human's as much as anything else[2] -- and they hear bots coming as the door opens.

Outside, the patrol of bots has noticed the open door and started poking around as the group holes up around the corner, waiting to see if they're going to have to fight their way through this after all.

Thirt33n looks at the various switches and buttons and computer panels in the control room, and along the way they find the CL4P-TP repair kit. They swipe that, and notice there's a loot chest and some other boxes of loot in the room. But first, the bots. They quickly examine the panel and find the right buttons to push to initiate the emergency shutdown. They also find a monitor showing the inside of the panic room, with scientists trying to get the intercom working again. They shutdown the robots (barely sparing the group outside from a fight), but then a single red eye starts showing up on the monitors, HAL-style.

"The Handsome One is dead. She is avenged. The tyranny of meat is over."

Then who or whatever that is (presumably another AI) starts hacking the panel. Thirt33n slams their hand down on the button to open the panic room up and then they open fire on the panel to destroy the controls so whatever the eye-thing is can't commandeer them. They let the group know what's going on, and proceed to quickly loot the room (collecting a bunch of guns in the process). They flee the control room to see two active Loaders stomp out of a hallway, and they decide to fight them, asking the group (and Phillips in particular) for some backup.

Knowing Thirt33n is in trouble, Sledge charges in to help (especially when Thirt33n's initial attack misses and they get shot). Phillips comes along because he was requested by name, and B-light follows along for good measure. It's just a pair of Loader bots, but they're a little hardier than your typical bandits and Sledge and B-light have to throw around some corrosive damage.

One of them informs the group that "Mother sees all, the tyranny of meat is over." Thirt33n says "Fuck your mother" and goes out of their way to put their sword through the eye of the first one to finish it off.

While they're fighting the other one, a Surveyor robot flies out of a hatch in the wall to help the Loader, and Sledge immediately digs out a Tediore SMG to unload on it and chuck the gun at it to blow up the bot before it can boost the Loader's shields. It shocks him with an electrical blast as it goes down, though thanks to B-light's covering fire some of the damage is negated. Hanabi-chan finishes off the Loader but takes damage that causes more feedback that damages her hard light emitters, so Phillips is going to have to fix her later.

They make sure the panic room is empty of both people and loot, and distribute some of the guns they've found, and then talk about what to do now. B-light really wants to know what's going on with the facility and 'Mother,' but Phillips and Sledge just want to let the Loaders have the facility because letting the researchers take it back over would be putting it back under Hyperion's control and blowing the whole place up would be potentially dangerous because of all of the weirdly-processed eridium in the building. Nobody wants them to blow up the mountain and possibly punch another hole in the planet.

They do make a note to come back later, but first they escort the researchers back towards Gamma (making them promise that they're done with whatever research is going on at the top of the hill), and hearing about how there's a Constructor in the building that took over.

But as the group heads back down the hill (eventually hearing Claptrap on their comms again), they approach Gamma to see they have some special visitors waiting, one of them a familiar musclebound figure...

And we'll leave it there. Hope you folks had a good holiday, and I'll likely see you on the other side of the New Year!


[0]-- Zac, Thirt33n's player, has actually used a Sharpie and some paper plates to create a bunch of emoji 'facial expressions' for this purpose.
[1]-- In case it needs to be explained, pi is a number without end. Therefore, asking him to recite the digits backwards is impossible, and there is a precedent for a CL4P-TP unit to be susceptible to paradoxes.
[2]-- For those of you who've played through Tales from the Borderlands, this is the Hyperion employee ID drive.