At the Warren, Rooster announces another Priority One Mission and calls the rooster roster: Thumper, Nanny, Bizzle, Strings, Batty, and of course Beard. Beard, indisposed after getting into the Salvage Bars, will be covered by his identical cousin, Theodore “Stache” Nigel. Transport for the mission to recover an item answering to “Fred”, stolen by Orcs from an anonymous client, will be the Kowalish Apparatus Thingy (KAT), a barrel-shaped, crablike conveyance. With no time for training or orientation, the team pile into the KAT and begin randomly operating the ten control levers to learn their functions with only some damage to the surrounding Warren structure:
1 Extend / retract legs and tail
2 Front shutters toggle
3 Side shutters toggle
4 Extend / retract claws
5 Attack / grapple
6 Forward / reverse
7 Steering left / right
8 Lights
9 ???
10 Rear hatch toggle
Thumper, consulting his faithful companion Monty, takes ahold of levers 6 and 7 and the team steams off to the olde graveyard where the orc thieves reportedly hold Fred.
Nanny peers out the KAT’s open shutters and surveys the graveyard. She reports graves, and central statue of a reaper wraith with glowing blue eyes, and Orcs standing around battleboar-drawn carts encircling a distressed unicorn caught in a magic suppression field. “Help!” it pleas telepathically. Bizzle flashes the lights and yells for the Orcs to cease and desist, but they merely scoff at the approaching KAT and its lever flipping occupants.
Zombies rise from the graves surrounding the rescuers so Batty swings the KAT around in a bootleg turn while Strings deploys the claws to grapple zombie Fourteen. Stache fireballs Twentytwo, Ten, and Nine re-deadening them with fire. Fourteen breaks in half attempting to escape the claws as Nanny swings the KAT around for another grapple while Bizzle backs it toward the imperiled unicorn. Four impacts outside halt the KAT in place.
Thumper looks out the side shutters for the hitch and declares that four transparent ghost worm suckerless octopus squid tentacles have wrapped the KAT. Batty, inspired by some topical poetry from Strings, gets busy stabbing them through the shutters while the zombies ineffectively lurch into the armored exterior.
Once the orc procession withdraws with the unicorn Fred, the tentacles release and the zombies submerge back into the ground. Nanny spins the KAT to pursue Fred. Thumper intuits some significance about the conspicuous statue and turns the KAT back around toward it. But, in a microcosm of society, the myopic lever-pulling monkey-see-monkey-follow reaction of his thick crewmates overwhelms his thoughtfully strategic 19/20 planning and they make for the olde ruins, found on a map in the fantasy glove box, instead. Backward.
At the ruins, the KAT scuttles up silently, courtesy of Batty, on the ten Orcs loitering around outside the ruins. Batty opens with a crossbow bolt into Purple One and he winces in Orcish, but remembers his leadership training and parlays the wince into a proper warcry. Strings hypnotizes Green Two and Green Three which inspires Nanny to higher achievement. Stache advances toward the charging battleboars who begin battering the KAT as steam lines rupture and the armor dents and cracks. Purple One slams his great axe into the rear hatch.
Nanny and Bizzle use the claw to subdivide Green Six while Thumper hits the automated flood lights and makes an assault landing astride Monty out the rear hatch. He lands near a treeline where three concealed Orc-mounted battleboars surround and assail him mercilessly, but he does uncover a previously unobserved tent where he can make out the silhouette of Fred. Batty follows him out and, keen for her own ride, jumps upon the back of Green Four’s battleboar. Perceiving Batty’s immanent predicament, Strings mocks Green Four, so discombobulating him that he fumbles trying to knock Ninja Batty off the battleboar as she shoulder rolls him sailing off, leaving Batty the proud new owner of one low mileage battleboar. Nanny’s boots, made for walking, take her to Purple One; Nanny’s short swords, made for mincing, reduce him to pâté. Stache and Bizzle KAT claw Green Five in twain.
Thumper has the three ambushers right where they want him so he casts a jump spell and sails off toward the ruin, landing safely in the company of a fresh wave of newly revealed Orcs. Batty commands her battleboar, christened Piggy, and charges Purple Two. Strings hypnotizes the ambushers and their battleboars while Stache, observing Batty’s fun, hops his own battleboar and uses it to kill Green Four.
Orcish commands emanate from the tent and the battleboar orcs all back away from the KAT. A short fellow with a long nose emerges from the tent with Fred.
“Well, well, well. I was hoping they’d send more R&S agents.” Strings recognizes Craig the Insidious, a very powerful half-Halfling-half-Gnome mage exiled from R&S for making knockoff greycoats. Insidious Craig goes on to explain his entire plan of using Fred to lure R&S agents to his burgeoning Orc army for their greycoats. He doesn’t even WANT a unicorn.
Thumper retorts with his own rousing soliloquy explaining in no uncertain terms that these Greycoats would never surrender and Craig would never get their equipment. Never.
Bizzle offers to surrender his coat immediately if Craig will allow him to drive it over the 60 feet or so in the KAT, claw first. Strings interprets this as some kind of ruse and offers a persuasive, yet deceptive, supporting argument for this course of action while he also boards the KAT. Nanny knows good momentum when she sees it and joins them.
Craig, eager for the three greycoats and confident in his very powerful spellcasting, waits while the KAT slowly approaches and Nanny closes the grappling claw on him. He seems unconcerned even when Stache charges him with a battleboar, merely chuckling to himself about all the sorrow and death these adventurers will soon experience at his hand. But then Batty casts silence on him and his smugness withers.
Nanny and Strings hop out of the KAT and Thumper hops at Craig, lance first. He calls for Fred to stay and maybe help, but Fred sends back telepathically, “Later, suckers!” as he vanishes into the woods. Even Orcs know a silence spell when they see a monk cast it so they all hurl javelins at Batty to break her concentration. She dodges some but not all yet manages to hold concentration on the spell as waves of battleboars crash into her and she is surrounded by Orcs.
Thumper charges at Craig and invents jousting, a new sport of knocking Orcs off their battleboars. Stache gives that a try but the attempt goes wrong and he flips off his battleboar and into the cage cart. The unseated Orcs remount and charge Batty over and over but remain unsuccessful at breaking her concentration while Nanny and Bizzle heap double damage on Craig hoping to stop him before he can find the opportunity to make good on his threats. With that in mind, he slips free from the grappling claw and runs into the midst of his hypnotized ambushers as Nanny and Bizzle swing at his retreat.
Stache, from the inert safety of his cage, takes advantage of the pile of Orcs and battleboars around Batty and puts a fireball right on them dropping 6 green Orcs and damaging the battleboars. Batty, her fan club in greasy Orc flames, catches up to Craig and rains a flurry of blows on him, slaying him just as he escapes the zone of silence.
While Thumper continues separating Orc from battleboar, Strings turns his considerable charm on Fred who rebuffs his persuasive advances until Strings begins to cry. So moved is Fred that he gallops into the fray and horn-spikes an Orc right off the battlefield into the woods beyond. Thumper’s lance mops up the last of the resistance and Stache gives the hypnotized ambushers a farewell fireball. Only Purple Two remains and he is ornery to the end. Batty puts a bolt in him after accidentally shooting the steaming KAT. Bizzle misses him with Rocky II. Nanny pulls a dagger from her belt and throws it right into Purple Two’s throat, which as it turns out he needed intact to continue living.
The KAT, crippled by the massive battleboar damage, can travel only half speed. Thumper lashes up the battleboars into a draft team, led by Monty and Fred, to pull the KAT back to the Warren where they get an earful for allowing the damage. But the mission was otherwise a complete success with the bonus achievement of one less Craig the Insidious, and besides the damage is easily compensated by the vast quantities of battlebacon.