We Jump another 14 months into Early November.

The roadies completed a paved road north to Bridgetown through Grayling.  They also paved down the 127 corridor to the ruins of Lansing and down the I-96 corridor then south to New Lazlo, to provide rapid paths for the scavenger and scrapper crews, for the ruins of the various industrial sites along both routes.

Ent-Array’s have been placed along both corridors, to provide a communication relay to New Lazlo, without exactly explaining where. And surrounding Kayakee to create a 30 mile radius sensor array around the village.

Sentries have been paired with Vinterhounds, to scan persons entering Kayakee.  Checking for potential dangerous individuals or AIs in disguise.  The village has grown to about 500 persons due to relatively steady stream of refugee of about 20 persons a month.  The Village expanded a second Ring was built, and more housing built.  Not the standard log cabin style but Modern (old pre-rifts) homes, and 3 story buildings, using combinations of Japanese, and Nordic Carpentry taught to the builders.  The entire village, a a quaint stealthy MDC haven along a road from New Lazlo north to Northern Gun and Manistique Empire.  

The manufacturing, power generation, and waste management was moved to Kayakee Underdark,  With some minor facilities left on surface, for appearances.  The buildings all have solar arrays on roofs, with wind generators.  

The Underdark is starting a second cave system for  Greenhouse, aquaculture and Deepshelters.

Scale models have been designed for testing for orbital clean-up projects.

Phil moved on.

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A convoy from New Lazlo  came, they asked for the team to assist with escorting the convoy to Tolkeen, along with any supplies and other aid we could supply for the rebuilding of Tolkeen

The convoy consists of Ironhound and Bulkhead in lead and rear guard positions, 21 Deuce and half with command “Willy’s” Jeep convey along with a set of roadies for path clearing with a set of construction helper bots, riding on carryall roadies.  The convoy stopped at St Ignis, Bridgtown to pick up a small amount of supplies.  Stopping overnight at Manistique for more supplies.

While in Manistique, Tim wandered around trying to find interesting magical items.  I tried to find a black market vendor and did not find one.  Ryan headed to a restaurant where he hung out listening to the various conversations.  He heard some rumors about Kayakee, heard some about the Tolkeen reconstruction, and some about some contacts with Xiticix scouts.  As I wandered around some more I got reverse pickpocketed with a note “Stop looking, we see you.”

The next morning we headed to Marquette and Ishpeming, It took about 4 hours with traveling through the various check points along the highway,  As the convoy was loaded up we headed to a restaurant for lunch,  Me heard more about sightings of Xiticix scouting parties, being seen in Northern Gun Territories.  After we headed south to Escanaba via the highway, to find the road south to Menomee (Pirate Bay) overgrown and littered with debris.  Using the Roadies and other bots, we were able to break a workable path through the forest at about 1 mile an hour, the scrub at roughly 15 miles an hour.

During this time Tim tried creating a new spell, to speed the clearing of dense forest he tried several times refining a little each time,  ending on a 30 foot beam.

The next morning the roadies and bots had cleared a path through the dense forest for the convoy to  pass through.  Ironhound and Bulkhead detected movement a bit to the south in the forest, the transformers determined the movements appeared to be insectile in nature.  We broke off from the convoy to intercept the moving group. We found where the group was and then followed the tracks to where they were going.  In a small clearing we found a small scouting party of 6 Xiticix.  We stopped back from the clearing still shaded in the surrounding forest as we were going to leave them be and head back to the convoy since the Xixitix party was heading away from where we were going, the Xixitix turned as one and all charged Tim.   It took a few moments to take out the scouting party as they bounced around like rabid locusts, the last leapt directly on to Tim bear hugging him.  As Tim engaged a [Fireshield] destroying the Xiticix in an instant, got a psychic impression from the tick, “The nest shall know this meal forever, the nest will feed.”  I told Tim he’d been psychicly marked.  The short battle had devastated a swath of the forest from Ryan’s use of a grenade launcher. We picked up 1 – Spear and 4 – Knives, and headed back to the convoy about noon and continued towards Tolkeen.

After about a week of travel we were about half way to Tolkeen, Ironhound noticed, via the drone,  a large collection of forms moving through the scrub moving in our direction.  This turned out to be a Troop of 120 Xiticix warriors.  They were far enough away it would take about an hour to reach us.  Tim conjured defensive walls around the convoy.

From the defensive barricades, we began thinning the force when they got into range,  Which was also close enough that they could detect Tim’s magical energies.  ⅓ of the Troop shot forward like a pack of dogs after a rabbit at the race track.  Several of the convoy members were slain by the charging Xiticix leapers Resin Spike Gun.

We ended the game at the point where the Xiticix reached melee range. And Tim casting 6000ton ice cube.

Xiticix Knife -  1D4 MD  weight : 3.5 lbs

Xiticix Spear - 1D6+3 MD (stabbing/slashing), 1D4MD (blunt) weight: 11 lbs
Range: A hand-held melee weapon that can be thrown effectively (by Xiticix) up to 300 feet (91 m) away. 120 feet (36 m) by most strong characters (bionic or robot P.S. of 21 or higher) and only about 60 feet (18.3 m) for most humans and D-Bees. Bonuses: +1 to disarm and +2 to parry. +3 to strike when thrown