"Fire Fight", © 2001-2005 by
Paul Lucas.
This adventure originally appeared here, although it was accepted by GDW's
Challenge, which folded before it saw publication.
Text-entry & HTML by:
Steve
C.
The party is strolling through a middle-class section of Libreville early one evening when they witness a nearby apartment building explode violently into flames. The deafening explosion shakes the entire street, and glass flies everywhere. Screams burst forth from the doomed edifice, screeching desperately for help.
The adventurers will reach the scene before anyone else and will be the only ones who will be able to take decisive action before the building is totally consumed by flames. The cries for help are coming from the portion of the building that is still intact, but this is quickly becoming engulfed by flames. One or more of the PC's will have to enter the building in order to get at the people trapped inside. The only quick access into the building is the front door; the windows are covered with bolted-on anti-theft bars. The upper story and the left half of the building are infernos, making access through them impossible.
Within the building, the PCs will see a corridor running the building's length, with three apartments on each side of the corridor. The screams are emanating from the middle right apartment, which is only a few meters from the leading edge of flames. Luckily, the door is unlocked. In the main bedroom, a woman is trapped under a heavy wooden dresser that fell on her during the initial explosion. Lifting the wardrobe off her is a Difficult Strength-related task.
When the PC'S reach her, however, she pleads with them to get her children out first. Two children are in the secondary bedroom across the hall and the third is in the adjacent converted nursery. They are all under five years of age and are quite panicky from the explosion and fire. They will be screaming and kicking and crying for their mother, generally giving the PC's a hard time. They will have to be physically carried out, as will their mother, who has suffered a broken leg. All this will have to be done as quickly as possible, before the fire cuts them off from the door and the steadily-weakening roof collapses. As soon as the PCs enter the building, they have six rounds (3 minutes) to get the family out before the fire overtakes the apartment entrance. They will have eight rounds (4 minutes) after that to find a way out before the fire completely consumes the apartment.
PC's who do become trapped may decide to go through an outer wall, which will take 12 Damage Points before being breached, and twice that to make a man-sized hole. The window bars require special tools to remove, taking a minimum of five minutes. Alternately, they can be blown off by inflicting 8 damage points or ripped off by a Formidable Strength-related task.
For every round the PC's spend inside the building, they will receive a DPV of 0.2 (stun damage) from smoke inhalation. Crawling along the floor or placing a cloth over the mouth will reduce this damage by one-half. Respirators or filter masks will eliminate this risk altogether. Characters who spend a full round within a meter of the flames take a DPV of 0.1 from the awful heat. Adventurers who touch the flames will receive a DPV of 0.5 for every round they are in contact. PC's who actually catch fire (7+ on 1D1O for every round in contact with the flames) will receive DPV of 0.5 per round for 1D6 rounds or until the flames are extinguished.
Emergency vehicles and personnel will arrive ten minutes after the initial explosion, and the media will arrive soon after. If the party managed to rescue the people trapped inside, they will be personally interviewed and praised as heroes.
Shortly thereafter, a very frantic man will shove his way past the police lines. Upon seeing the inferno, he will sink to his knees, bury his head in his hands, and sob loudly. He will be non-responsive to anyone who seeks to comfort or communicate with him. Any PC who asks a neighbor will learn that his name is Jose Rolon, and that his family was inside the building and did not make it out.
Follow-up reports in the media will reveal that the blaze was definitely an arson job. Firefighters suspect that it was caused with a sophisticated flame-projection weapon, called a plasma thrower, that has become popular with many urban gangs.
Shortly after hearing this report, the characters will be visited by a very haggard-looking Jose Rolon. He remembers them from the night before, overheard one of them tell a reporter that they were trouble-shooters, and sought them out. Jose gets right to the point: he knows that the arson job was no random act of violence, but rather a deliberate attack on him and his family. Jose was a low-level programmer for the firm of Ramirez-Abruggo. In order to make ends meet, he took to raiding the company's classified files and selling the data to the firm's competitors. Just before the fire burst out, he received a call on his car phone saying that Ramirez-Abruggo was aware of his indiscretions and that he and his family would be made examples of. He rushed home as fast as he could, but it was already far too late for his wife and two sons.
Rolon will pay the party Lv 7,000 -- his entire life's savings -- if they will track down those responsible for his family's murder. He does not care about the specifics or legality of the job, as long as the adventurers do whatever it takes to see that justice is done.
If the party takes Mr. Rolon's job offer, they will have several avenues for investigation available to them:
Scene of the Crime: Now a gutted, blackened ruin, the apartment building will yield few clues. If the PC's ask around, one neighbor will claim to have seen something shiny moving on the roof just before the explosion, and another will swear she saw a shadowy, indistinct figure crawl up the outside of the adjacent building before she lost sight of it in the smoke. If that building is investigated, the PC'S will notice a trail of small holes poked into the exterior plasticrete leading up five stories and then abruptly ending.
The Fire Department: Unless the PC's have a contact in the fire department, gaining access to the arson investigation reports will require hacking into the department's mainframe (a Difficult computer-related task) or bribing officials in the department (a Difficult Bureaucracy task). Bold PC's may attempt to break into the offices where the hardcopy reports are kept.
The report reveals that the explosion and subsequent fire at the apartment building was the result of a plasma thrower being fired at a heating fuel tank on the roof. Exactly who is responsible is unclear, but the report goes on to mention that plasma throwers have become increasingly popular with certain street gangs in the area. The Sons of the Phoenix is the only gang mentioned by name.
The Sons of the Phoenix: The Sons are a fairly large gang located in the Kango district. Over 60 members strong, most of them exhibit a quasi-religious reverence toward fire, which they consider the ultimate natural force. Their weapons of choice are plasma throwers, many of which have been customized by the gang to maximize their lethality.
Their leader, Icefire, a tall, wiry individual who still bears the marks of horrible burns he suffered as a child, takes his role as chieftain very seriously. He will at first be uncooperative, even hostile, toward the PC's, but if they mention they are tracking down an arsonist, his attitude will change considerably. The Sons consider arsonists blasphemers, dogs who misuse the gift of fire for selfish ends. He directs the PC's to the gang's contact on the black-market who procures the plasma throwers and other "special" equipment for them. His name is Morris Kirkland, and he is based in a condemned warehouse in the Nduya district.
Ramirez-Abruggo: Unless the party has a high-level contact in the company, obtaining any information about the arson from R.A. will be next to impossible. A PC decker can break into the main office's files (a Formidable task) and attempt to gain data on the attack, but the company keeps its records of questionable dealing in mainframes unconnected to the Net. However, diligent characters will find a transfer of Lv 50,000 to a Morris Kirkland less than an hour after the fire broke out for "services rendered."
From the exterior, the warehouse is an old, crumbling two-story affair with boarded windows and rusty doors. The interior, however, has been extensively modified to serve Kirkland's needs as a black-marketeer. The inside is completely open except for a small 5m x 5m office that Kirkland uses as a bedroom, and a 2m x 3m bathroom adjacent to it. In the exact center is a partially-disassembled hovercraft on a large dropcloth. Huge, chaotic piles of boxes and crates dominate all the walls. Most are filled with various outdated vehicle parts left by the warehouse's previous owners, and are pretty much worthless. A few, however (about 5%) are filled with both tech and weapon contraband Kirkland has been dealing with lately. The exact nature and worth of this material is up to the Director. There are three man-sized doors (front, side, and back) and two garage-sized doors (front and back). All have state-of-the-art locks (Formidable to bypass). The exterior is monitored by infra-red and motion sensors, making it impossible to sneak up to the building undetected unless the PC's employ extensive ECM.
The interior is similarly monitored, and patrolled by Kirkland's four cyber-scorpions. These will attack any person entering who has not spoken the proper clearance codes, known only to Kirkland. See the section describing cyber-scorpions for information on how to handle these units in combat.
There are several ways for the party to gain access to the warehouse. They can pose as potential customers, and be admitted by Kirkland if they can pull off the con. This will be a Formidable Eloquence task, accompanied by extensive role-playing on the part of the PC's, given Kirkland's paranoid nature. They may also attempt to bypass the security system and enter the building by stealth, but such a course of action will require a detailed plan and plenty of Electronics task rolls. Alternately, the PC'S can opt for a lightning-quick frontal assault on the building, hoping to overwhelm whatever security exists with surprise and devastating firepower.
If Kirkland is drawn into a fight, he will at first fight mercilessly, using his cyber-scorpions (controlled by a voice-activated remote) and a FAM-90 rifle that is never far from his side. If he has any forewarning, he will also don an Inertial Armor Vest; otherwise he is unarmored. If he is injured or more than two of his robots destroyed, he will flee, attempting to make it into the warehouse sewer access (concealed by floor tiles in the office) and lose the party in the maze of tunnels there. If he does elude the party, he will instruct the plasma-thrower cyber-scorpion (if it is still intact) to torch the warehouse, destroying any potential evidence against him or his employers.
Kirkland is an Experienced Core NPC. In his mid-thirties, he has made quite a reputation for himself as an assassin who uses custom-designed robots to facilitate kills. Wanted by the police on Tirane and Beta Canum, he has set up the relatively low-profile profession as a black-marketeer, making hits only when his funds run low. Motivation: King Club and Queen Spades: Morris loves violence, and perpetrates it often just to see something wrecked. He becomes obsessive if thwarted, and will pursue botched hits to the exclusion of all else, providing he is in no personal danger.
Kirkland is a coward at heart, and will give up readily if backed into an inescapable corner. If taken alive, he will confess to torching the apartment building using his special cyber-scorpion. He will also gladly spill all his admittedly limited knowledge of Ramirez-Abruggo's shady operations. The party may then turn him over to the authorities or see that "justice is done" as their employer suggested. Jose will give the party the agreed upon Lv 7,000 whether Kirkland is taken alive or dead, and they will earn his lasting gratitude.
A cyber-scorpion is a medium-sized robotic unit controlled by a partially-organic central processor. Each six-legged unit has a main body about a meter in length with a small "head" housing the main sensors. Slung over its main body is a modified rifle, with ammo and power feeds connected to the back of the unit, giving it its scorpion-like appearance. Three of Kirkland's robots are armed with M-2 Assault Rifles with two fifty-round ammo boxes each. The fourth is armed with a DunArmCo PT-91F Flamer with an extended 16-cartridge barrel. The robots possess an armor value of 0.5 on all faces and a total +2 adjustment to their attack rolls with their respective weapons.
Each unit has powerful leg actuators that allow it to leap up to five meters. The legs of the robots are also equipped with numerous barbs, allowing it to scale walls with ease. Using these, the scorpions can hop from wall-to-wall or from building-to-building for locomotion.
The cyber-scorpions have sophisticated thermal and visual sensors that work up to a range of 30 meters. The robots are programmed to avoid firing at Kirkland's individual thermal silhouette. The robots can also follow the heat trail left by footprints for up to five minutes after the person's passage.
Each scorpion has a Life Level of 10. It possesses no significant signature (except when its weapon is firing, it possesses the signature of that weapon). It has an initiative of 7. Each cyber-scorpion costs about Lv 950 to make, plus the cost of the weapon and ammo.
The cyber-scorpions are very canny in combat, employing hit-and-run tactics. Its relatively small size and near-constant movement in combat makes it Difficult to hit at short ranges and Formidable to hit at long ranges. Once it has acquired a target, it will attack it relentlessly until destroyed or ordered off, insuring a kill.
Plasma throwers work on the same principle as plasma guns, but instead of propagating their discharge into a tight beam, they expel it in a wide-angled jet. They are designed primarily as short-range support weapons for urban or enclosed environments. The discharge of the thrower is hot in the extreme (2,500+ degrees C), igniting most materials upon contact, including wood, clothing, and common plastics. Any character hit by thrower discharge must make a roll on 1D1O; on a roll of 5+, their clothing/armor/carried equipment ignites, resulting in additional DPV of 0.5 to the character every round for the next 1-6 round or until the flames are extinguished.
Flame-resistant versions of most armors are available, usually at 150% normal cost. These will reduce damage from flame attacks by half, and will not ignite. Hostile Environment Suits and Combat Walkers are immune from plasma thrower attacks.
DunArmCo PT-9IF (Integral Fuel) Flamer: This weapon consists of a carbine-length projector with a pistol grip, thermally insulated undergrip, and shoulder stock. Known more commonly as the Iffy Flamer, both for its Integral Fuel (IF) acronym as well as for its dubious reputation. It contains an integral rotating drum magazine of 8 fuel cartridges, designed to be more compact and less vulnerable than the thrower-external tank configuration of old flame projectors. However, faulty valves on the fuel feeds have more than once resulted in an explosive backflow of plasma and injury to the operator. DunArmCo is currently working on improved versions.
Type: plasma thrower - Country: Australia - Weight: 2.7 kg - Length: 75 mm (Bulk=2) - Action: single shot or bursts - Ammunition: l2x90mm fuel cylinders Ammunition weight: 0.8 kg - Magazine: 8 cylinder rotating drum magazine - ROF: 1 (area fire 5) - Aimed Fire Range: 80m - Area Fire Range: 50m - EP Value: 1.0 Price: Lv 305 (Lv 1 per fuel cylinder).