ION Heart #3 - Sandstorm Perils
ION Heart is a splendid lo-fi exploration solo TTPRG. It’s rules-light and enables meaningful mech storytelling. This session was a miracle of dice rolls to keep my characters in the game.
A week after barely surviving the power plant explosion, Fitz and Batty left space port and arrived on Chaar, a desert planet that is more Major Flora and Fauna than people and landmarks. Nestled between the towering skeleton trees and arid badlands are a few densely packed cities. Batty led the way to Koth, a bustling town of 250 people and a heralded Mech Workshop. Her goal was to get Fitz checked out after the power plant overload nearly disabled him for good.
When Batty explained Fitz’ damage and let a tech take a look at him, she was immediately turned away. They weren’t even sullen. In their eyes, Fitz’ damage was so intense, it would be too much of a risk to attempt to repair him. In fact, it would be too much of a strain on Fitz to even attempt to bring his shields back up. They weren’t sorry; they were determined not to help.
Batty couldn’t hide her disappointment from Fitz. The only good thing about the power plant explosion was how close they’d gotten in quiet moments. Fitz and Batty were more attuned to each other than ever before, a real sync bond, but it was marred by the darkness of what they’ve experienced together.
Outside of the Mech Workshop, the one that wouldn’t even take a bribe to try to help Fitz, he and Batty both felt a buzz on their radars for a brewing storm. The scans went from winds, to minor dust storm, to sandstorm catastrophe in seconds. Batty jumped in to pilot her mech just as the tunnels of sand started to swallow up their collective vision.
Was it sand or was it sheets of sawtooth gnawing at every surface in Koth? The crunch and scuff of the sandstorm against the city buildings similarly chewed up Batty’s senses as she piloted Fitz in a random direction with no visibility and only hope. His shields were in the paltry single digits—at 5% of their total power—and she could hear the gusts of sand chipping away at his chassis.
Fitz felt Batty lean towards resignment. The storm would be their end, is what he assumed she thought. Right on the line of giving up, they both chose to press on and plod forward to the promise of shelter. Batty could not believe how Fitz could get any closer to being disabled, but his every pace forward made her grit her teeth in time with the sand making contact with metal.
Miraculously, on the fringes of Koth, there was a pocket where the storm winds were far weaker. Batty and Fitz scoped out a thick and hollowed out tree. Its entire presence felt ancient, as if the tree had weathered creation, wars, conflicts, industry, and now sandstorms without a care for measly pilot problems. If Fitz huddled up, he too could partly hide within the tree trunk.
Alone and with some time to think, Batty unloaded all the intrusive thoughts and horrors plaguing her as they weathered the storm. Sure, she had known a life before Fitz, but when presented with a life sans Fitz twice in 10 days, her appetite for keeping it together was nulled out. Fitz could feel Batty’s stress and it distressed him right back. They were wholly unable to comfort each other, instead letting the looming anxiety become a too-hot security blanket until Batty wasted to sleep.
In all, they made a small camp and hid in the tree trunk’s vicinity for four days. In those four days, Batty returned to herself and regained some semblance of confidence, enough to raise Fitz’ shields back to the double digits. That was a relief in itself and gave them the courage to return to Koth and assess any damage done to the town that they could potentially help rebuild before moving on to somewhere new.