Sunday February 24, 2002
Book 2: The Teraport Wars — Quest for Second Sight
NOTE: Let’s play a game of Superfortress Space Siege, shall we?

You Will Need: ONE (1) Tausennigan Ob’enn Thunderhead Superfortress, and an ARMADA (lots'n'lots) of smaller ships. All ships should have equally modern weapons and shielding, but the superfortress gets more of both.

To Play: The Superfortress starts out surrounded by the armada of smaller vessels. The cards are dealt by the Three Fates, Lady Luck, or your choice of destiny-deity. Play proceeds counter-clockwise to the dealer’s left (which of course means that the players are upside-down in relation to the dealer. This is okay).

Strategy for the armada: Force the fortress to raise gravitic shielding by pressing it from all sides with heavy beam weapons. Clear away any hypernet drones it may have left outside its shield, thus leaving it blind to frequencies blocked by the shield (and if you’ve got a broad-spectrum of beam weapons on it, the shield will be quite opaque.) Then move in with a coordinated assault of small torpedoes with gravitic breachers.

Strategy for the Superfortress: Push your shield out as far as you can, while still retaining enough power to swat incoming torpedoes. Hope you get them all before they get too close. Push shielded drones through your shields so you can see. Push shielded, guided torpedoes through your shields in hopes of keeping the armada on its proverbial toes. Fly around half-blind, forcing individual armada ships into range of your gravitic weapons (your gravy-gun range is longer than theirs is).

The game ends when the armada runs out of torpedoes, or when the superfortress drops its shields. The winner is the player who can walk away from the game under his own power and find something safer to do.

Transcript

Narrator: Three men, one woman, and more amorphs than you can shake a stick at are trapped in the belly of a long-abandoned. . . Um. . . well, we'll just call it a 'Pumping Station' and move on. Things are bad, but not so bad that they can't get worse (Which, rather predictably, they are about to do.)
Hob: Kevyn, I'm ready ta blast us outta here. Just say the word, an' I'll tell mister primer down in the hole ta do his little dance.
Kevyn: Not yet, Hob. I need to make sure it's clear outside. I'm going to break silence and call in our air support.
Kevyn: Petey, we've got a problem down here. We need extraction, and I don't think you can teraport the mini-tanks all the way in.
Petey: Mini-tanks won't help, Kevyn. Scans show that they've pulled in some heavy armor outside.
Kevyn: Then they must have laid a trap for us, and we walked right into it. Petey, we need full air support. You'd better plow down here yourself and get us out.
Petey: It's not that simple. They've laid a trap for me, too.
Petey: A veritable armada of light craft has surrounded me, and is pressing me with that orbital lance.
Petey: I can extract you, but I have to swat these flies first.
Kevyn: You're a big, mean warship. That shouldn't take long, right?
Petey: Under ordinary circumstances, no, it should not take that long.
Narrator: This is the part where things get worse. . .
Petey: They are demanding that I allow myself to be boarded.
Petey: If I resist, they claim that they will kill all of you. . . Starting with the amorphs.
Narrator: Whatever you do, don't go thinking that things can only get better from here.