Cowboys and Dinos: Session 9 and Finale

We left session 8 or so at the cliffhanger of meeting up with a giant millipede. Or centipede - I did not count the number of legs per segment. The Gatling gun had been overturned and Sargeant Thomas was trying to shoot from his dying horse, who had been mortally wounded from the beast before our group got there.

The fight lasted a few rounds with most of the damage getting ignored: the creature had a high defensive value from almost 6" of chitin armor. Few shots made it, even though most of the characters had a rate of fire of at least 3. Even the soldiers had a high miss rate, and rarely did damage. 

Molly was flying overhead to keep an eye on things. Her attempt to drop a blanket over the creature's head, while a good idea, did not work out despite using a grit point to re-roll. Of course, Lee was attacking at point blank range, and then at one point leaps on the monster, jamming his short sword in-between some armor plates. He actually managed to do more damage than the guns. Hambone gets Puddin' to club the beast with her tail and even that did not do a lot of damage due to a bad damage roll. Fortunately, as a dino-rider, when the monster turned to attack, they managed to avoid the hit as there are some good advantages to fighting on your dino if you are a dino-rider class. Molly managed to drop a rope and help get the Army Sargeant back to his group as they were trying to right the gatling gun. Archibald, after few shots and not doing a lot of damage, and hearing that the soldiers had the gun righted and wanted to shoot but Hambone and Lee were in the way. Hambone wanted to shove a lit stick of dynamite into the beast's orifice, but despite 2 rolls kept having horrible rolls. Memories of the T-Rex going splat were not revisited with the monster. Finally the creature, realizing it is heavily damaged, takes off back into the Badlands, Lee still riding it like a bucking bronco. Archibald lifts Lee off before he gets too far, but Lee cannot maintain his grip on the sword as the monster runs off. Molly had made a graceful landing into the back of the runaway wagon and in a couple turns managed to get them under control and heading back to the group. Meanwhile, Mannix, who only has a pistol and you don't bring a pistol to a monster fight, caught back up with Molly and took over the wagon.

The group stays at For Talon overnight, then heads out. Just as in the fight, I keep forgetting my NPC and Mannix was not with them. They had a map to the location of the machine that dug the hole as the Army, while not inspecting it, did find it and part of their job is to track things in the Badlands. 

Drilling Machine, which is what Archibald was looking for

Fort Talon (actually a real fort in MN)

They only find a large hole sloping into the ground where the machine was. Large enough to allow their dinos to go with them, they have to decide what to do. Seeing the purple ichor from the millipede, Hambone tosses a couple sticks of dynamite down the tunnel. Nothing comes out or makes noise, and noticing that after the dust settles, there is warm, moist air blowing out of the hole.

They trek down, and 4 or more hours later they see a light at the end of the tunnel. Getting to the opening, they see a vast jungle in front of them. Off in the distance, amidst a thinning fog. an island seems to be floating down from above and landing in the middle of the jungle. Below them, the large cylindrical tunnel machine was sitting at the edge of the jungle, down the slope. 

And thus we finished this arc of the story. Which is in the same place and time now as where we finished off the vigilante game that I was playing in before this. We are in the Hollow Earth, and there are a lot of potential things that can happen. I may even bring back Jungle Girl - there was an entrance in our first Apex game but no one went there even though it was on the map. They were busy being chased by Nazis so really did not have the time to look. And the 2nd game of Apex, the first round of Cowboys & Dinos, I made the door too small for the dinos. Thinking it would be hard to play with them but not realizing that they were why we were playing that game to begin with!

This is also part of my "all my game worlds are connected" thing. Even though I was not running the vigilante game, I had a character in there. What is in the Hollow Earth? Anything and everything. As I had just finished reading Journey to the Center of the Earth for a pulpy feel for a game, I decided to stick it in there. There are empires there, maybe even SF ones and I can use some of my 0-Hr deck plans. Anyway, it is wide open for the other game masters in my group as well if they want to play there.