0x01: The Cold Bounty, Part 2

• After several hours of rest, the PCs descend down the ramp into a long abandoned Dwarf complex. The destruction they find is widespread.
• Inside a great chamber, they discover the fractured remains of an Anvil of Doom and Coppertong gathers up many of the larger fragments, intent on using them to forge her own personal anvil.
• Beyond a great door, they find the shattered remains of an orc camp, with many such greenskins smashed or burned or even melted. Among the bodies, they also discover Beastmen who appear to have been fighting the orcs.
• Two surviving orcs try to flee past them, but one is incinerated by a great Dwarfish automaton that has a cannon for an arm, though it spews molten magma instead of balls. Coppertong realizes that the runes animating the automaton are corrupted, and one of the orcs is struck by the cannon. It dies almost instantly.
• After a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, the PCs manage to evade the automaton and escape from the complex where they spend the rest of the day (and into the early evening) slowly descending to the mountain pass where they settle in to create a rudimentary camp for the long, cold night…

GM Notes:

• This was one of those encounters that looked better on (digital) paper than it actually played out. I got too focused on the round-by-round minutiae which reminds me once again: GURPS needs an intermediary time. A “Quick time” or something that isn’t quite combat rounds, but is Action time.
• I did manage to remember to show that the automaton was probably too dangerous to fight head-on with it blasting one of the orcs in the beginning so the PCs got to see how much damage the arm cannon thing did.
• My expectation was to complete “The Cold Bounty” with this session but the above-mentioned “too focused on…” prevented that from happening. Ideally, we’ll finish it next week.