The Story So Far

P1. Stone’s Return!! The Beginning of Broccoli’s Strange Journey!

 

Brock J. Lee, or “Broccoli,” was the guardian of a small village in the outskirts of civilization neighboring a “Bad Zone.” During the war, Broccoli had been a soldier in an elite Azyani strike force; but as payment for a debt to the man known as Stone, he had agreed to guard a nameless backwater village until Stone returned from a mysterious journey. He did this task together with his two compatriots, Jack, a wanderer, and Doc, a doctor, and honored his post for ten years before Stone returned, badly wounded, from the Bad Zone. In the same manner as Stone saved Broccoli the younger man then saved the older and brought him to Doc who nursed him back to health. Stone told Broccoli that he had been in the Bad Zone for ten years and had learned the deep secrets of the machines. The scattered machine empire were ruled by nine “Machine Leaders” who were politically divided into groups of four and five. He also revealed the coordinates he was currently heading toward- coordinates on the far-off southern isle Ely. A knock came at the door and when Broccoli investigated he found that his enemy in the town, the gang boss Pedro, and his gang had been silently murdered outside his door during the conversation. Suddenly, a tall machine in a grey cloak threw the murder weapon - Brock’s military issue EMP axe - towards Brock and vanished. Brock then heard a terrifying sound- the sound of thousands of stampeding machines. Brock, surprised to find his axe again after missing it ten years, grabbed it and hammered the base’s alarm. Brock retrieved his multirifle from the cabinet and stocked up on ammo, then met Doc and Jack who were ready in the Buggy. The three set out to the southeast through the ruined canyons that made up their home followed by an enormous machine army.

 

P2. The Man who Fought the Doctor!! Let’s get out of here, Robbie!

 

The trio, after about four hour’s driving, passed a sign for a strip joint. Since their front right tire needed repair, they decided to pull into the lot. It was a small joint, but the girls were of the highest quality. The club’s proprietor, one Robbie McGruff, genius designer and known mafioso, came out of the building and introduced himself to his new guests, who then warned Robbie of the incoming robotic army. Robbie appreciated the warning but didn’t want to leave his club. As they finished talking, a huge chrome dropship loudly appeared high above the group and Robbie, recognizing it immediately, went inside for his gasoline collection. While he was inside, Dr. F, the mogul who controlled the robot stripper industry on all of Orilon, descended in his golden suit along with two of his finest killer strippers and demanded McGruff’s whereabouts. Robbie soon emerged from the building toting two large canisters of pure gasoline, with which he slathered the strip club.

No sooner had Dr. F offered to buy McGruff’s assets at a very reasonable price than Robbie cast one of the four lit cigarettes he was smoking (he was feeling a little stressed) onto the gasoline, which set his girls into Kill-or-be-Killed Berserk Stripper mode. Dr. F retreated to his dropship shouting obscenities as the forerunners of the stampede arrived and attacked. Robbie was able to convert the body of his most beloved girl, Elektra, into a makeshift tire that allowed them to drive off in the buggy. As he looked back over the scene of destruction, Robbie saw his girls’ heads shooting off into the sky as their bodies went on a self-destructive fighting rampage. They were ten hours from the nearest settlement, Cul-de-Sac, and they found that one of Elekrta’s titties, which protruded from the tire’s surface, was slowing them down enough for the stampede to really gain on them. Plus the buggy was running low on fuel, and with the weight of four people in it they were undoubtedly doomed if nothing was done. Robbie was ready to perform maintenance on the wheel but Brock, driven mad by the constant bumping of the tire and the screaming of the machines behind them, found himself overtaken by rage and jumped axe-first into the stampede. This allowed the other three to repair the tire and make it safely to Cul-de-Sac.

 

P3. Brock’s Decision! Life or death??

Brock, however, found himself constantly skirting death as he rode out the waves of machines. The army travelled with the smaller machines out ahead of and amongst the larger ones, but the deeper he went he found more and more large machines including two suspicious units - one which was the size of a football field and almost completely flat, and another shaped like a bullet (or, perhaps, shaped like a pickle?) that was the size of a megatrain. Brock found shelter under a closed wing of the large bullet-like (pickle-like?) unit with his cameocloak, but was attacked by one of the nine machine lords- Abaerenkulla the Silent. Abaerenkulla had six arms that extend an extra forearm beyond a human’s but ended in curiously humanlike clawed hands. On each length of arm was an almost silent superfocused laser which only Brock’s honed military reflexes has allowed him to dodge. Brock rolled off the bullet(it’s a pickle) and made his way to the large flat machine’s back, where he ran from the monster pursuing him. He was able to escape Abaerenculla and found himself an embarrassing mount which let him blend in with the machines. He eventually was discovered and took cover in a cave on the side of a canyon where he found Stone again. Stone had discovered the purpose of the stampede- to position a weapon capable of shooting the human space habitat out of the sky. Stone gave Brock the coordinates of the weapon launch and Brock took a much needed break.

 

P4. A Real Monster Appears!! Dave Finds a Knife!

 

Dave, who referred to himself as “Dave the Electrocutioner,” had a fish head. His life was the result of a cruel joke by his creator. He and his siblings all had powers- Dave and his older brother Terry had lightning powers, but Dave’s creator had always told him that Dave had to have a fish head in order to have his abilities. Dave escaped from the institute, killing lots of scientists and many of his siblings on his way out, and roved around Ayesrm for the duration of the machine war. He now lived in a junkyard with Rick Styles, a doctor with a machine arm, near the town of Cul-de-Sac. Rick had left on one of his gambling trips and Dave didn’t think he’d see him for a few weeks. Eventually Dave detected a huge wave of machines approaching his base. Rigging the self-destruct traps for the machines to discover, Dave gathered his bag of meagre junk, drugs, and rations and set out for the safety of Cul-de’-Sac’s shield ceiling. His mode of transportation was a sheet of metal magnetized by his electrical current. Floating along, he soon came across a strange knife stuck into the ground. Being the fish-headed man he is, he decided to zap it with all the power he could muster while maintaining his mode of transportation. The knife didn’t react, which was curious. Dave picked it up and found that it drained his electric power to even hold it but, zapping it again, he was able to telepathically contact a woman who revealed herself as a Hiaren Telepathic Sniper positioned 1.8 kilometers away surveying a Machine Leader that was currently in the same canyon as Dave- one known as “The Thinker” who possessed a null field about three meters around its body. The knife allowed her to track the Thinker, which she said was to blame for the destruction of her homeland’s resources two years ago. Dave made his way up and out of that particular canyon.

 

Soon, as Dave made his way along the surface, the Thinker rose up out of the canyon. It had a large spherical body and six wicked legs that ended in sharp points, as well as one human hand and three lime green eyes. It watched Dave pass and then returned to whatever business it had in that canyon. Dave’s new telepathic friend told him she was looking for a way to damage the Thinker, as all the weapons on the planet had no effect in its null field. Soon after, Dave passed a cave containing a freshly-awoken Broccoli who hitched a ride with him toward Cul-de-Sac.

 

P5. The Gang Reunites!! Cul-de-Sac, the Gambling Town Destroyed!

 

Robbie McGruff and his companions arrived at Cul-de-Sac hours before the Fish’s meeting with Broccoli, and hours before the machine stampede. He spent this time bargaining for cigarettes with a traveling merchant, but eventually made his way to the town’s casio, where, after winning big, he ran into Rick Styles. The two gambled together and became fast friends; Styles has been to Robbie’s club, though neither of them remembered. Dave and Broc crested the top of a canyon and beheld the colossal shield-ceiling of the city. As they were about wondering what the best way in the ground began shaking violently. Inside, McGruff and Styles felt the earthquake as well. The shield-celing was slowly being pulled upward by an invisible force. Dave and Broc were able to enter the city and locate Styles doing donuts in his 2002 Subaru. Robbie emerged from the casino carrying a large sack of winnings and the gang were united! However, Rick Styles was pulled back to 2014 in his Subaru and was likely never to be seen again in this timeline.

 

As the gang began making their way out of  the city and back to the buggy, fighting robots all the way, they met a man who wielded an enormous jet-hammer. He used it to propel himself at and crush his machine attackers. In a brief moment of calm he teamed up with the party, then they realized the calm was actually because all the machine had turned with reverence toward four machines which rode a large platform which emitted smoke. One of the four was Abaerenkulla, holding a figure in one of his grotesque hands. The second was a tall figure in a grey cloak who emitted a soft blue light. The third was barely visible, standing in the smoke on the platform. Another, a round-bodied machine with three humanoid arms, emitted a music which drove all humans who heard it into a state of uncontrollable destructive dancing. The hammer-man and Broc were able to resist its song, and Broc realized that the figure Abaerenkulla  was holding was none other than his old friend Doc. The hammer-man shouted to the party about an escape hatch about a block away and the gang were able to overpower the music and escape. Soon after they decended a long ladder to a deep tunnel the roof of the city crashed down from the lower atmosphere and left Cul-de-sac a ruin.

 

P6 - The Mountain of Corpses

 

The hammer-man, who revealed himself as a smuggler who trafficked wine between cul-de-sac and another larger settlement called William’s Crossing, led the gang through the tunnels. Eventually they came to a large vase-shaped chamber which had in its center a gigantic heap of bodies which had been thrown through a huge hole in the ceiling by some unknown entity. When they entered the chamber, the gang found to their horror that the corpses where animated by a mysterious force- they fought their way through to a small verdant cave which housed a hermit gardener-bot. The bot tasked the party with returning his adoptive daughter from the nearby city- which was located above the surface in a large cylinder. For some unknowable reason, the party agreed to help the robot. They fought their way through an army of zombies and arrived badly wounded at William’s Crossing.