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Monthly Archives: November 2017

Let’s Play Tropic 4: XVII

October ’58

The High School is finally done, but not nearly soon enough as so is the Rum Distillery, however the latter needs someone with at least a HS education to operate. Short term I think we’ll have to hire some foreign workers until we can complete our first education cycle.

August ’59

Here’s my latest money making scheme, a couple of Tobacco Farms (still under construction) and a Cigar Factory. It’s like money grows on shrubs as they say! Yet again though we need employees with at least a High School Education! This is why it’s so important to start them young. Literacy for everyone; I’m sure that will be one of my campaign pillars once the people get smart enough to demand an election. Education is a double edged sword after all.

November ’60

The newspaper is finally done. Apparently our High School is not enough and we’ll need to hire someone with a college degree, in the meantime we’ll print coupons for local businesses; this should help invigorate the local economy and make the people happy (who doesn’t like discounts?) The electrical infrastructure has also been expanding. Two apartment complexes have Air Conditioning, and it won’t be long before we can get electricity out to the mines and can really ramp up production there. Still costs keep cropping up faster than we can earn money. I don’t know when I’m going to have time to start padding my Swiss Bank Account.

June ’61

With this electrical substation in place our Gold and iron mines should really be able to ramp up production. We’ve also built a salt mine near the harbor district in order to secretly provide the Russians with salt for a perfectly legitimate purpose.

Meet the Cult 18: Zygor Honlock

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Sekrax Melgoy had the voice of an an angel, everyone agreed. Hearing him talk or sing was ecstasy. However this not his story.  Zygor Honlock made filters for, and assembled the cults’ supply of gas masks. And the one time he screwed up, his one mistake, was in Sekrax’s mask during a raid in a Nurgle infested agri-world. Sekrax survived, but his voice was ruined by the noxious gases encountered there, thenceforth sounding like Tom Waits gargling sandpaper. As punishment it was ordained that Zygor never speak again; to that end he’s been bound with a similar punishment as Varbhor.

Like most of the cult Zygor’s biggest desire is to curry the favor of Slaanesh. Before his sentence of silence he lead a small group of cultists who’d found some ancient texts on philosophy. As such they’d devoted themselves to the pursuit of excellence, for surly the more perfect they became the greater the chance Slaanesh’s gaze would fall upon them. While he can no longer participate in the debates, he still attends and listens. In addition he is one of the best shots with a pistol in the cult, able to hit a target half again as far away as most marksmen.

Finally Zygor is also a collector; several years ago he came across an ancient miniatures game called CrimeHive. According to the rules the miniature robots and monsters would move on their own, fighting battles as directed by the players. However the ravages have time have not been kind to the sparse selection of models Zygor has found, and while most are in decent condition the electronics inside have long since corroded to the point of being unsalvageable. The are several other cultists who are willing to play his modified rules where they use measuring sticks and dice to determine the outcome of battles, but little would please Zygor more than finding some perfectly preserved pieces with functioning electronics so that they could play the game properly.

Some day soon you’ll ride a duck

Dael’s Adventure Part 9

Start from the beginning

Fortunately for us  Teawrecks wasn’t very observant and we were all able to sneak past it. We quickly decided we’d try and lure it into the elevator shaft and so I trailed it to give warning if it  came back whilst the other three devised a cunning plan involving steel cable and industrial strength mayonnaise. Fortunately the mechanical beast made it’s way back just after they’d completed the trap. Solei hanging from a rope in the elevator shaft got it’s attention and pulled herself up just in time, the dinosaur slipped on the mayo-slick Honch had prepared and then tripped over the steel cable tripwire Vyrez     had strung in front of the the elevator shaft. Or it would have worked, except Vyrez had tied one end of the wire to a barrel, and the other to the support that Solei was hanging from. The monster did end up going down the shaft but was able to launch itself across and land 3 floors down. Unfortunately it also drug the support that Vyrez and Solei were hanging from after it, and if Honch and I hadn’t been very quick to rescue them they’d have gone down the shaft after the terror.

Apparently Mayo is flammable! Who knew? Well, Honch is a cook, so I guess he did, which would explain why he lit a couple of torches and tossed them down onto the now Mayonated monstrosity, setting it aflame. Then the three of them started hurling the spikes they’d prepared as a fallback defense down at the Teawrecks. With the terror looking a little worse for wear the three of them decided to descend in the elevator with the remaining spikes to try and finish it off. Turns out it was doing better than expected and had stopped, dropped and rolled, putting the condimental fire out. They got past it, but it then leapt on top of the elevator car. I tossed the remaining Mayo and just to be sure the remains of my liberated jar of whisky on top, hoping to reignite the flames of it’s demise. Solei and Vyrez enacted some complicated plan which involved rubble and flying, the exact details of which I’m still a little unclear on, while Honch rode the elevator back up. Honch used a spike to rub sparks off the elevator cable and reset the undying thing back on fire and finally we were reunited a few floors above the beast. Solei was suggesting going back down, but I could see the elevator cables didn’t look to sturdy so I lowered the elevator back down empty and sure enough it was stupid enough to climb in, as the elevator struggled to come back up to us Honch hammered the cable while Solei cast some sort of mystical power at it and moments before Teawrecks returned to our floor to wreck us the cable snapped sending it plummeting dozens of stories to it’s destruction.

We made our way to the bottom, and were pleased to find a distinct lack of the remains of Mortia and Hubert in the rubble. However we found a magic gem, which nearly killed Vyrez, and a note that said: “They haven’t been eaten, it’s worse than that. -Love Dredd”.

Upon exiting the tower and heading to the next spire we eventually found Dredd and he offered us a terrible choice, one of us would have to trade our lives for that of our captured companions. Solei quickly accepted the martyrdom, but both of our missing companions were returned within a hairs breadth of death.