Episode 1 - Megafauna
Let’s get right down to talking about the first episode of The Taxila Coil!
All streaming problems aside, we had a great time playing the game and getting the players immersed into a new roleplay involving Imperial forces sent on a “show the flag” mission. (or is that Show the Aquila?)
We’ll do a deep dive (pun intended) into the backgrounds of the characters and aircraft at a later date, so let’s talk about the scenario, and then the (gasp) Megafauna
The quick overview of the mission was that an emergency evacuation call came from an offshore harvesting platform that was undergoing “Severe Seismic Activity”. It was up to the player flying the Marauder Princeps to coordinate the arrival turns of each of the player aircraft, and to support them with some of the Marauder’s onboard systems. (we’ll talk about that cool airplane as the game goes along).
With 7 Transport points of evacuees to remove, it seemed like a simple task for the players - with the Adeptus Mechanicus Archaeocopter going in for the first wave of evacuations. In short order the AdMech and the Guard Valkyries all found themselves under attack by the Sea Dragon as they tried to approach the platform for landing.
At one point, the Megafauna had plucked an unlucky Valkyrie from the skies in its jaws and threatened to take the craft and its crew to a watery doom! The Valkyrie broke free at the last second and crash landed on the platform - with the AdMech Engineseer rushing over to hastily repair it, as it had lost 2 of its 3 structure points!
Fortunately for the Imperial players, at this point a flight of Imperial Navy Thunderbolts and a 2-ship of local Aerial Militia Pterodons arrived to put some firepower onto the creature.
Eventually the players brought enough firepower dice to bear on the creature (successfully) that it was killed. Yet much to the dismay of the players, the platform had sustained enough damage that it continued to crumble, leading to a panicked last-ditch evacuation with several overloaded aircraft lifting from the platform, skimming the wavetops and finally climbing to safety.
All told the players eventually dished out a total of 10 structure points of strafing damage to the creature to overkill it a bit (on the last turn) and it felt like the stats were just about right. The creature’s breath weapon didn’t seem all that effective, but the “bite” attack on adjacent aircraft at Altitude 1 was impressive. We used Handling checks to see if the aircraft could avoid being grabbed after the damage from the bite was assessed. Once grappled, an additional handling check was required to break free, of course with the aircraft starting at speed zero! PCs were able to take a Talent Check if they failed the basic AI handling check in order to see if their superior piloting skill could save the day.
The players enjoyed the change from a traditional dogfight mission and as the GM, it was tons of fun to have an opponent that the players didn’t already know the stats and abilities of. We’ll work on the streaming for this week - which may be offsite due to store closure and weather - but we’ll hop right back into the story and pick up in the post-flight debrief.
