Had an satisfying 45 Adventures pulp outing today - Dr. James "Ohio" Smith, rogue archeologist, had another chance to face off with his long-time nemesis "Red" Lily, international woman of mystery, probable agent of the Red air pirates!
The previous episode is
chronicled on this LAF thread - in which Ohio & Lily brawled on a jungle riverbank, a dog ripped a man's throat out, a whip got cut by gunfire, and an airplane crash ended with Lily in Ohio's custody, and all of them heading inland to seek out a mysterious valley and lost city!
This episode takes place sometime after our first. Lily has escaped Ohio's captivity, but had to leave her loyal henchman Ivan Evilski behind with injuries. Aquiring new henchmen, she heads inland with Ohio in close pursuit, both determined to follow the clues to the Mysterious Valley!
Ohio had his long-suffering female companion Marion and/or Debbie (he has terrible trouble remembering women's names), their assistant "Hapless" Smith, and a European hunter with the unlikely nickname of "Cheerful".
Red Lily had hired an exiled American minor gangster Jim "Turkey" LaCross, who had brought along two other thugs, known only as Tommy and "Leadfoot".
One of Red Lily's thugs opened the festivities by narrowly avoiding a pool of jungle quicksand - and then Ohio's party learned one of the reasons the natives avoided this whole area, when a pair of velociraptors lunged from the undergrowth!
One died instantly to Cheerful's shotgun blast to the head, but the other attacked Marion and/or Debbie, and the whole episode delayed Ohio's party for quite a while - long enough for Red Lily to sneak closer and infiltrate the very middle of Ohio's group! (She has 45A's Disguise ability, and used it to take Hapless' place in the middle of the group!)
Lily's thugs forged deeper into the jungle without her, discovering a mysterious statue that seemed to be pointing deeper into the jungle (a Clue!) and then the second great shock - a group of apparently intelligent dino-men, jabbing spears as they lunged out from behind a pile of boulders!
Alas, flint spears and no brains VS a Thompson SMG is a very poor matchup - firing as fast as he could, one of Lily's thugs cut down three of the dino-men and forced the others to flee for their very lives! They later re-emerged from the undergrowth only to face more gunfire, and the sole survivor escaped back into it's city to warn of the terrible strangers approaching! (in 45A a mook with an SMG firing on Snap Shot at close range can do four shots, each with the potential for two hit points of damage per impact. You can also move targets in between shots - 'walking' an automatic weapon along a closely-spaced line of spear-carrying dinomen, for example. It was ugly.)
Ohio Smith and the hunter known as "Cheerful" had finally dispatched the second raptor, and Marion and/or Debbie and 'Hapless' Jones were involved in a confused brawl with Red Lily, who appeared to have forgotten about getting deeper into the jungle in her desire to kill off Marion and Ohio's party!
Cheerful was gunned down by the same SMG-wielding maniac who had slaughtered the dino-men, but Ohio forged on alone into the jungle, leaving Marion and Hapless to brawl with Lily.
Alas, before Ohio could get closer to the towering cliff that appeared to conceal the approaches to the Lost City and Valley proper, he heard a shout of triumph - Turkey and one of his thugs had found the hidden door and slipped through, leaving Ohio - and their nominal employer! - behind!
Marion and/or Debbie had injured Red Lily badly enough to put her on the ground, bleeding, but when she approached to capture (again!) the infamous Red air pirate, she sprang to her feet and gunned Marion down instead! With Lily's tommygun-wielding thug approaching to give aid, Marion was captured and spirited off back toward the river by Lily and her goon!
What next? Will Ohio find another way into the Lost City of the Dino-men? What are Red Lily's nefarious plans for Marion and/or Debbie? Will the two thugs who made it through the mysterious entrance be killed by outraged dino-men?
Tune in next time, for the further adventures of 'Ohio' Smith and 'Red' Lily!
This was the first outing for my Saurian dino-men, and also for my velociraptor figures. Neither fared very gloriously, though, especially the saurians vs the SMG! The next installment is being thrased out for play later in June, pending building of a bit more Lost City scenery. (This was also the first outing for my jungle scenery, actually.)
Today's scenario was written on the bus ride to gaming, and (as always!) grew and mutated on the fly once the dice started rolling. We discovered we'd been doing several things wrong in 45A, fixed them, and explored a few new Abilities we hadn't had a need for before. We also discovered - while I was placing the raptors on the table - that the Thunder Lizard rulebook (the one with the dino and saurian rule!) had been left at home, so quasi-raptor stats were invented on the spot by upgrading the main 45A books stats for a Komodo Dragon. The Saurians used the Half-grade Bandit stats from Dragon Bones, which is the main reason they died like flies when the SMG opened up...