Gremlin Ascendency II: A Cross of Paths

[Thechosenone]

( A narrative battle rep for my Gremlins. Please enjoy and leave a comment)

Showgirls
Colette DuBois
Cassandra
Performer and Mannequin
Sue
Two Coryphee
Two Mechanical Doves
Plant Evidence, Sabotage and Bodyguard
　
Bayou Gremlins
Somer Teeth
Two Mosquitoes
Two Bayou Gremlins
Francis LeCroix
McTavish
Warpig
Three Piglets
Two Slop Haulers
Distract and Bodyguard
　
　
Pre-Game

Colette tilts her head and stares at the outer walls of the Guild Bank. She analyzes every little chip and fissure with intense scrutiny. She then looks across the street to the bare walls of the Ram’s Rule Café. The spider web cracks in the café wall are partially obscured by old posters and Guild propaganda. One wind whipped poster is advertising a Star Theater Production from last season, their rendition of H.M.S. Pinafore with an all female cast. The art, overly epic and extremely bawdy, depicts Cassandra as Josephine being held tightly in Colette as Rackshaw’s arms while the sea rages around their boat. The production ran some time ago. She remembers it being very wet and the impossibly uncomfortable costumes made even more so when water logged.

"Well?" Cassandra interrupts Colette’s indecisive whispered mumbles.

"Cassie, honestly! I don’t know why you come along on Doctor’s Ramos errands? All you do is complain?" She gestures plainly toward the two walls. "I mean, we can’t just pick any old wall to smear with leaflets. You have to think! A lot goes into a good smear campaign that most people don’t even consider. For instance, foot traffic and visibility. Sure, a lot of people go to the bank but they sit around longer at the café."

Colette continues on about the placement leaflets, artistic license taken in the depictions of the Secretary General and even more tangential topics like color theory as it relates to placing up the different sheets next to each other.
"I just don’t…." Cassandra tries to interrupt her several times but none of her attempts at pausing have any traction. She surrenders to the impromptu art lesson.

Cassandra looks to the agent Ramos sent with them for any assistance in moving things along. As Colette prattles on She eyes the man in black. The quiet street breeze, acrid and smelling of a coming storm, hits the man head on. His coat rustles, his hair lashes out in strands of black with a few silver tinsels. A little red flicker comes from under the man’s hat. A cigarette burns cold, little but embers left and they glow dimly. The man, he never meets her pleading eyes. She watches him, his every movement seems deliberate, calculated but not stale. When people say someone moves with purpose she imagines they mean movement like the man in black. He takes a guitar off his back, the color of shadow and ice, and he sits down on the corner of the bridge at Pike Plaza and his hand runs over the strings. The few plucked melodies duel with the wind for a moment before they harmoniously blend into one another. His voice, she decides, sounds like a perfect mixture of molasses and quiet pain.

"I taught the weeping willow how to cry" He shares a few lyrics with no one in particular. "And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky"

Even Colette seems moved to silence for a moment. That moment isn’t long lasting. She’s shaken from her awe by the mannequin at the wall. It’s pasting up the leaflets all wrong. Some of them are even upside down and backward. It’s featureless face turns to Colette looking for approval.

"Oh no no no! Monday put down that glue pail RIGHT NOW!" Colette yells at the dusty old mannequin Monday. It’s head droops, it drops the pail and runs off making squeaking sobbing noises. "Vivian!"

Colette’s performer Vivian Dove just looks to her theater mistress and shrugs. "Sorry Ms. Dubois. Monday’s been needing a good stitch up for a while."

"I’d say so." Colette peels off one of the leaflets and wiggles the wet paper at Vivian "She’s putting Lime and Periwinkle right on top of each other. Garish!"

Cassandra watches the wobbling rattling construct flee down the streets. "Colette, I really don’t think it matters to much where…." Cassandra’s argument falls flat as the rustle of empty bottles and paper trash catches her attention. Under the street lamp is a rather strange sight that takes her mind a few moments to process. It’s a pig. The creature’s awful wet snout rooting around amid the debris, its tusked jaw chewing on tin happily.
"Is that a pig?" Vivian looks at the silly little creature and smiles. One of the Coryphee scissors her hands together. Their language is a series of shears and slices. The two bladed dancers begin over the bridge past the man in black and toward the fat little beast.

The little creature manages to pull something of value out of the debris pile. The girls all watch the ugly beast drag a sewer rat into view. The pig flails its head and battered the vermin against the street till it dies a messy snapping death. The Coryphee stop. Monstrous squeals echo out of the alley next to the café. Two more pigs rush out and attack the tenderized rat flesh snapping at their comrade. Another pig, this one a hog the size of a pony steps out and rips half the rat corpse from the lips of a smaller cousin. It slups up the hind quarters and chubby tail while tiny eyes set deep in its ugly skull watch all the girls. It starts dragging its cloven hooves over the cobblestone and bellowing a hateful challenge into the quiet night.

"Um, that’s odd?" Colette wonders. She starts nervously looking around for Monday.

A scream cuts through the darkness that freezes all the women in their tracks. One of the shutters on the café opens quickly and slaps against the building wall. A creature leaps onto the ledge, its flesh the color of mud and moss hopelessly intertwined. Teeth, yellowed and sharp, are seen beneath curled lips. It wears tiny patchwork clothes and a wrinkled hat. An ungainly arm holds a crude long rifle that it thrusts into the air.

"Gremlin?" Cassandra says confused. She’s seen these creatures before used in the acts of disreputable circuses and street shows. They’re dressed up and forced to perform simple tricks. Far too low brow to ever be used at the Star.

The man in black slings his guitar back over his shoulder. From beneath the brim of his hat a haze of smoke blows off his dying cigarette. “Gremlins don’t have a hate in their eyes like that one. Something’s wrong with him.”

The shutters on the second floor of the café burst open as other Gremlins crawl and climb into view snarling and hissing. Another Gremlin slowly ambles into view, this one larger than the rest and obese by Gremlin standard. It sips on a spit covered bottle taken from the café. The wine rolls out his misshapen lips and over his stained white coat. Beside him a human, dressed equally as shabby as his Gremlin companions. The man pulls hard on a muck covered chain and drags his snapping blood covered albino alligator into view. The creature’s awkward reptilian gait takes it and its master toward the girls.

The big Gremlin hisses and drools as it draws a gun from the dark of its coat. It makes a few gestures directing its crew and then draws its grimy weapon over its throat in a bloodletting gesture.

“What am looking at here?” Colette says while dragging Monday with her to the man in black’s position.

Pistols are drawn from a hidden holsters. “A fight miss.”

The blade dancing Coryphee cross over the bridge, their whirling twisting duet spin faster and faster till they reach a murderous rapidity that carries them past the man in black. Their knife fingers only a cricket’s length from slicing into his flesh as they move toward the shrieking masses clambering out of the café.
　
The Gremlins leap and bound from the building, some swing on street lights and others messily toss themselves to the ground but all advance toward the center of Pike Plaza heralded by the squeal of pigs.
　
Mctavish and the man in black both lock eyes. There is no recognition between the two beyond the familiarity of a killer’s stare shared between two blood soaked souls. The man in black checks his pistols’ ammo and satisfied, he snaps the chamber closed and advances over the bridge. Mctavish spits his tar colored saliva on the street and smiles.
　
"Come on then! Come at me!" The Bayou tracker whispers harshly. He watches the gunman approach, the man has an ignorance to danger that would shiver a rattler but Mctavish is more dangerous than any snake. He thrashes the chain leash over and over. The noise agitators his gator into a snapping frenzy. It bites at the chain, its huge teeth raking deep scars into the metal links. Mctavish’s bicep tenses as he hauls his beast into Pike Plaza.
　
Colette, still waiting in the safety behind the bridge, shoves her mannequin back a few feet. It’s creeping over her shoulder trying to get a glimpse of the action with its ethersight. "My personal space Monday, please." She then points to Vivian and demands the performer gets to the bank and start work on Ramos’ project. Cassandra darts past her position with saber in hand. She’s a colorful and magnificent blur in the night. Colette makes note of her position hiding outside the bank in case they need to switch places.
　
The big Gremlin yells and threatens his nearby kin with gun and fist, bullying the little creatures into dragging more of their number from the café and into Pike Plaza. Hideous little Gremlins hand out spoonfuls of stagnant slop from their greasy buckets to nearby kin, the offal seems to invigorate the creatures and urge them on.
　
Turn Two and Three

"Hmm, fast." The big Gremlin grumbles to his crawling insects. He worries that the women, especially their boss woman in the shiny hat, will get inside the food building and see what he’s taking. She’ll call more humans forcing them to flee with little to show for the raid.
　
"Get’em" He spits a command to one of the large mosquitoes crawling on the wall. The bug takes flight and dives into Pike Plaza, its proboscis glittering with a dull gray magick.
　
The insect’s ugly mouthpart salivates as the thing hovers over the plaza; its needle jaw penetrates into the ether and begins drinking it dry of mana. The big gremlin lights up a messily rolled cigar and cocks his gun. "Right than… business time now boys." He says in a mocking slurr of real human speech. It’s something the surgeons used to say when they dragged one of his kin from the enclosures inside their buildings. He never saw anyone who was taken inside ever again. It’s a trite phrase parroted by the gremlin because it terrified him to hear it. He hopes it has the same effect on them… though its obvious to all that look into his glossy glowing eyes that the meaning of the words is lost on him.

Colette watches the dying sparks of magick pop and fizzle over her fingertip. The ether offers up nothing to fuel her magick. She relies entirely on her own force of will and her cache of soul stones. "Eh… this is just annoying." She looks over to the rest of her crew who are dodging bullets and hunkered down behind cover. "My magick’s broke! Anybody getting any etheric connection?"
　
The Coryphee scissors back that they are equally crippled. Cassandra confirms as well that magick is stymied here.
　
"The bugs!" Cassandra points to the mosquitoes dipping their mouths into nothingness and drinking the raw potential from the scene.
　
"One thing at a time Cassie." Colette says. Monday bumps into her, the construct struggling to do anything useful with all the missing mana. "For the love of god!" She shoves the thing back again.
　
She watches the Coryphee slice at the large hog’s face and waits for the pair to exhaust themselves on the gnarled pig hide. Only then does she act, vanishing in a puff of stage smoke and switching places with the duet. She appears before the bloodied and confused hog, her hand holding a deck of cards charged with throbbing pulses of red and pink light. She flourishes the deck into the face of the beast, each card snapping and exploding in turn till nothing is left of its head but brittle bits of bone and cooked flesh.
　
Colette shuffles her deadly cards back together and waves at the Gremlin boss. His rolling round eyes mark her out with an especial hatred.
　
The snap of rifles and screech of beasts replace the quiet of Pike Plaza by night.
　
Turn Four and Five
Little green bodies dot the stone square outside the bank and the café. The gremlins startling numbers are thinning far faster than the boss is comfortable with.
　
The man in black downs one of the Mosquitoes after it drinks its fill of the mana in Pike Plaza. He ducks back behind cover as his position is harassed by rifle fire from the remaining gremlins.
　
Vivian calls to one of the creatures from her position by the bank with a sweet voice and the deepest innocence she can muster all the while clutching her derringer behind her back. The little beast curiously followers her voice but Vivian is cut short in her seductive luring as rifle shells pepper her position. She ducks back in and gives up on her plan to assassinate the beast in favor of saving her own skin.
　
Mctavish takes aim and fires his hunting rifle at the lead woman while her attention is elsewhere. He has no issue blasting a victim in the back, though face to face has always been a little more satisfying. The bullet only catches the stonework of the bridge, his target vanishes in a cloud of smoke and cards only to reappear directly in front of his, her handful of cards packed full of energy flush out and explode before him. The wrangler and his gator are both blown back into the Café.
　
The gremlin boss laments this turn of events. His force is tragically light now and his hopes of keeping the leader manling from discovering his food raid are slimming. "More fire! Cut her down!" His command is punctuated by drool and foamy froth dripping from his mangled lips. The gremlins all concentrate fire on Colette and force her from the scene. She vanishes back to the safety of the bank far from the café.
　
"Lot of those things out there. We should probably start considering a retreat and…" Colette’s planning is interrupted by Monday stumbling into her. "God damn it!" The mannequin creaks out mechanical a whimper.
　
Cassandra enters the building too, the sound of rifle fire echoing behind her. "Colette, we could stay here all night and probably kill these things off but all this noise is going to draw Guild attention. The barracks are real close by. Not a lot of time to run."
　
Before Cassandra can close the door a squealing pig rushes in and starts nipping at her heels. He’s followed in by a limping slathering gremlin carrying buckets of gruel. The ladies defend themselves against the frantic swine and filth hauling gremlin for a moment or so before the boss steps in, his cigar fuming like the dying coals of furnace being stoked to full fury.
　
He snarls, strands of syrupy spit rolling off his broken teeth. With those drippings he casts his sinking negative charms into the air, the drool glowing like a trail of fireflies and it rolls through the air leaving luminescent gray streaks. The ether is again depleted of potential. He opens of the flap of his coat and angrily starts loading sticks of explosives, shrapnel pieces and sticky tar into the dented barrel of his weapon. Everyone starts panicking as he starts taking aim. Colette prepares to avoid the blast; grabbing up her last soul stone to aid her.
　
Then she freezes in her tracks. Monday bumping into her and whining apologizes for her frequent mess-ups tonight. She wraps her stuffed arms around Colette begging for forgiveness.
　
"No no no you stupid piece of…" The boss pulls the trigger targeting the oblivious doll instead. A massive blast bursts out of the gun hurling him through the bank wall and outside as a bloodied mess. Monday is ripped to bits by the shot and Colette leaves nothing behind but a few loose cards, dice and trail of smoke. Cassandra is left staring at the mess.
　
There are no words…
　
Turn Six
　
The man in black downs another of the Gremlins outside. Another critter is left to moan in the street clutching its wound and bleeding. Satisfied he lights a fresh cigarette.
　
But then there is sudden activity where none should be. He can see a flash of motion in the reflective surface of his lighter but its too fast. The man in black is struck in the side of the head by a grimy bucket and sent toppling into the murky waters beneath the bridge.
　
The lucky slop brewer and his last remaining compatriot pull back and let loose a few wild shots at Cassandra and Vivian as the girls flee the scene. After their jubilation ends they both shrug at each other and return to the café to load up on food with the others and return home leaving behind a plaza wailing with gremlin agony.
　
　
Show Girls
Sabotage 0
Bodyguard 0
Plant Evidence0
　
Bayou Gremlins
Bodyguard 0
Distract 4


My poor friend had this game till he made a really bad mistake and moved his marionette in front of his leader. I killed Colette with a dumb luck blast by easily targeting the construct. Poor dude.

[skyhawk]

Man the only time i've played somer against collette her whole crew snuck around cover to grab objectives. Except the corphey duet it came at me like a big dancing whirlwind of death. I swine dashed and pigcharged the $$$$$$$$ out of it but no realy damaging of the modle. I try to crack it and collette but still no dice. she realy did'nt kill any gremlins or significant modles but i just couldnt do $$$$$$$$ to stop her

[Thechosenone]

I'm not gunna say they're easy to be beat but they are a very frequent opponent and so I know what to do to get the job done. Just do the following

1) Sap her control hand
2) throw reliable attacks at Colette to force soul stone usage but be prepared to take the slow trigger
3) Move to Cassandra and the Coryphee. Force more soul stone usage
4) When possible hit the duet with the Slop Hauler bucket to lower defense
5) use hard hitters to finish off the Duet. Next target should be cassandra. Colette is really pointless once you limit the other showgirls on the table.
6) Once the Soul Stone Pool is at 0-2 now you can reliably kill Colette.

[Cambrius]

Is it bad I like the prose better than the scrap itself?

[Thechosenone]

just glad to have reads sir. You can like any part you please

[Omenbringer]

Absolutely loved the Story, narrative battle reports are always so fun.

Glad you posted the steps you took to kill Colette afterword as I did have a few questions about that.

[Thechosenone]

thanks for the appreciation Omenbringer