Dune 2d20 Whalefall - Playtest

Giger

Bene Gesserit Sister Wilhelmina was falling. Her shuttle down to Giedi Prime exploded in flight and her  sealed capsule fell out of the sky, stuttering descent barely slowed by the sporadic activations of the emergency suspensors. The suspensors failed entirely and the capsule fell the rest of the way. She was ready for the impact but an unsecured object left by the flight crew struck her in the throat, crushing her hyoid bone at the most inappropriate time. She was at no risk of suffocating thanks to her excellent physical control, but the injury prevented her from using the Voice.

The first thing she noticed was the stink, like a thousand animals being melted in a giant vat. She calculated that the shuttle must have been flying over the megafarms outside Harko. She levered the door open and was confronted with the reeking whalefields of House Texoco, confirming her suspicions. Cetaceans dangled from enormous derricks, penetrated with tubes that siphoned precious bodily fluids through pipelines to an enormous tryworks in the distance. The rendering plant sent up enormous clouds of foul smelling smoke, mingling with the sooty sky that reflected sunlight from all angles like a greasy mirror.

The falling star had not gone unnoticed. Pyon laborers peered out from behind machinery, wiping tallow off their goggles to see her better. A grain hauler hovering lazily over the tableau turned suddenly and swooped toward her, its speed incongruous with its shitbox exterior. Wilhelmina quickly grabbed the contents of the pod's emergency box and made herself presentable.

The hauler landed and a man with a rifle sprang out of the bed, holding the ancient projectile weapon on Wilhelmina. The driver hopped out after him: sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing a mantle pinned with the glyph of a house Wilhelmina didn't recognize. The guy fingered the broach and his body flickered, personal shield online. Then he introduced himself: Chaak Tlaxxon, son of the Jaeger Katl Tlaxxon, hereditary warden of the woods on the edge of House Texoco's demesne. The guy with the rifle was his bodyguard, Brine. 

 

The law on Giedi Prime required anyone who encountered a lost Bene Gesserit to immediately turn them over to House Harkonnen for safe return to the Sisterhood, in exchange for a handsome reward. Wilhelmina suspected that the Fat Baron would not actually return her to the Sisterhood safely, and didn't want to be hunted for a reward. She pretended to be an unimportant secretary, dropped out of her exploded shuttle and in need of a ride to her hotel. 

 

Chaak wasn't convinced, but had bigger problems: four people coming down the road from the direction of House Texoco's demesne: a sniper, a spotter, and a large man carrying a guy on his back. They wore pith helmets and mantles, red for the soldiers and black for the carried noble. Chaak hustled Wilhelmina into the hauler, because she did not want to get caught by these guys. She was barely buckled in when he slammed the lifter, pressing her into her seat with several more Gs than the hot-rodded hauler should have been capable of. He swung around and took her down into a stand of ancient trees - the last patch of forest in the endless fields of suffering sea creatures and boiling fat.

 

 

Chaak landed in a small clearing and explained that the elder trees were off-limits to anyone besides the Jaeger and his chosen men - including himself, his bodyguard and even Wilhelmina if he invited her. House Texoco would come up with some scheme to chase him out or get inside, but she could wait there while he went to deal with Ketzal Texoco - the guy being carried by the slave and accompanied by the snipers. Ketzal was a real piece of work, a sadist who forced his victims to eat poisoned earth or parts of their own body. Chaak knew how to deal with him.

 

Wilhelmina watched from a concealed position as Chaak went out to argue with Ketzal. The black-mantled noble dismounted from his human bicycle and she noted his sniper team had already climbed one of the whale derricks. Behind her, Brine took up a similar position in a tree with his own antique rifle.

  

Ketzal demanded Chaak turn over whoever came out of the pod. Chaak told him to go away, there wasn't anyone in the woods and he wasn't allowed in there anyway. They argued and decided to settle the affair with a duel. It seemed like a good idea to Chaak because he was an overconfident teenager, but Wilhelmina could see why it was stupid. Chaak had an antique projectile firearm that couldn't hit a shielded foe. Ketzal had a single shot suspensor pistol, which fired a projectile that could stick to the membrane of a holtzman shield and slowly bore through it, exploding or poisoning the target once inside. The only chance Chaak had was to fire in the brief interval where Ketzal had to drop his own shield to fire his gun, which didn't seem likely.

Wilhelmina rushed out of cover, hoping to tackle Ketzal before anyone could draw a bead on her. The House Texoco sniper-spotter team made a sound like a barking hummingbird, immediately alerting Ketzal. He ordered his snipers not to fire, to give himself the luxuriant pleasure of taking this strange woman apart himself. Wilhelmina cannoned into him, but couldn't get her arms through his shield. Chaak and the Bene Gesserit wrestled him and tore off his mantle, removing his shield in the process. Ketzal stomped the earth, kicking up a cloud of heavy-metal dust and allowing him to retreat. Wilhelmina and Chaak fled back into the woods.

 

Brine wasn't happy with Chaak, who he had drilled to never engage an enemy in a fair fight. Chaak was feeling great. Of course he might have just triggered a war with his dad's boss, but that was almost inevitable. He'd help Wilhelmina escape the planet if she took him along for the ride. She was obviously a Bene Gesserit and adventuring with her was better than taking over the whalefield when his dad died. Wilhelmina agreed and Chaak explained his plan: they'd swing by House Tlaxxon's keep and pick up his sister, who would really appreciate Bene Gesserit training. Then they'd run like hell for the transit hub at the opposite end of the whalefields. From there they'd get on the planetary superhighway and from there to the spaceport. Wilhelmina agreed, it would be easier to get two teens aboard a Heighliner than find her way offplanet on her own.

Chaak took the hauler straight up. He reached across the dashboard and flicked a heavy switch, an obvious aftermarket modification that activated the shields just in time to deflect a volley of sniper fire from the ground. He flew in an erratic pattern to avoid giving the Texoco zamburakchi and their suspensor rifles a clear shot. Wilhelmina pulled on the shield-mantle she stole from Ketzal, and used the first aid kit from the pod to fix her busted windpipe - re-enabling her use of the Voice. House Tlaxxon's keep was up ahead: a chunk of rock held up by suspensors and maintained in place by a big anchor chain. On top of the rock were concrete domes, protected by pentashields that admitted the grain hauler through an iris in the roof.

 

The manor interior was beautiful sculpted wood, made from the ancient forests that once covered the land. One room was carved with beautiful hunting scenes, another was twisted like the interior of a massive tree, preserved forever by varnish. A burly middle aged man came storming out of a concealed door and slammed Chaak against the wall, shouting at him. The familial resemblance made it obvious that this was Chaak's father, the Jaeger Katl Tlaxxon. A parasite bulged on the back of the man's neck, injecting drugs to regulate his mood and stop him from killing his family in a fit of mindless rage. Chaak explained that he found a Bene Gesserit in the field outside, and fought off the heir from House Texoco to rescue her. Katl told his son he loved him, then screamed at him to leave, run, get out, get as far away as possible. He stormed off to find his wife. Chaak went to find his sister.

 

Opotchtli "Lefty" Tlaxxon sat motionless in front of a gray orb, with lines shifting in the interior. Her lips were stained red and Wilhelmina surmised she was undergoing mentat training, absorbing information from the patterns in the orb's matrix that only she could see. Chaak entered and she threw an empty cup at him, not happy at having sixteen hours of concentration interrupted. He explained that he had a Bene Gesserit with him, who would help her with her people skills so she could become a master assassin like she always wanted. Lefty immediately agreed and began formulating an escape plan.

• Radio House Texoco and tell them they were claiming House Harkonnen's bounty on Wilhelmina, and they'd kill her if anyone shot at their hauler on the way to the highway.
• "Leak" information to House Grindhvalur, House Texoco's neighbors and rivals, indicating they were weak and this was the perfect time to attack.
  

House Grindhvalur's raid would draw most of Texoco's forces away from the transport hub, letting the gang steal a truck and blast off down the highway to the spaceport. House Texoco wouldn't pursue because it would be an admission of failure - they couldn't catch one woman who fell right on top of them.

 

Brine returned with a militia squad, refinery workers and servants armed with whale-cutting knives and hunting rifles. Everyone got in the hauler and they blasted off for the transport hub.

The transport hub was past the tryworks, a place where refined whale products were loaded onto jet powered trucks for transport across the planet. Fighting had already broken out, House Grindhvalur's Hackpoles moved slowly through the rows of parked vehicles like big silver bears. Sister Wilhelmina knew from looking at them that their armor was forged from living fogwood bound together with plastics, a protective suit that molded to their thoughts and pierced enemies with slivers of wood that bored through the nerve channels to the vital organs. 

 

Chaak picked a promising semi, putting the hauler down in the empty flatbed. Brine's troopers dismounted and set up a perimeter in time to get attacked by a cadre of wood-armored goons. A trio of goons squared off against Wilhelmina and the Tlaxxon siblings. Wilhelmina bit down on her poison tooth and spat a mouthful of mustard gas into the exposed eyes of the attacking Hackpole, blinding him while neutralizing the poison that spilled back into her own body. Lefty pretended to be helpless then followed Wilhelmina's example, squirting a calcifying foam from a concealed projector in the palm of her hand at the armored man reaching for her with spiked hands.

 

Gus Mendonca

 

Chaak got in the truck and hotwired it. Lefty and Wilhelmina followed, pursued by the last hackpole. The guy peeled the door off the truck with his enormous hands and Wilhelmina ordered him to flee using the Voice. Chaak slammed the accelerator and blew out of the yard at top speed, jets propelling the truck onto the superhighway. They merged into the middle travel lane and everyone relaxed. They'd be at the spaceport in no time.

 

Something banged on the roof of the truck. Ketzal Texoco threatened to shoot the truck's fuel line with an exploding shell from his suspensor pistol, unless someone wanted to duel him. Wilhelmina sighed and climbed out. Her stolen shield mantle got caught in the door of the truck, stopping her just short of strangling the sadistic noble. Ketzal shot her in the face with his suspensor pistol, the projectile bored through the shield and she caught it between her teeth, preventing the squash-head from contacting her tonsils and detonating. Ketzal levered the breech of the pistol open to load another round. He wasn't interested in capturing her anymore, not for rewards or sacrifice or torture. He just wanted to get rid of her.

Chaak disconnected the truck cab from the flatbed. Ketzal raised the gun for a confirmation kill and stumbled as the cab pulled away from the platform where he was standing. He raised his shield and jumped, falling onto the highway and skidding like a stone skipped down a waterslide. No longer towed by the cab, the abandoned flatbed and attached grain hauler jackknifed at near-supersonic speed and immediately caused and accident that quickly receded behind the speeding truck.

 

Wilhelmina got back in the cab. Chaak told her she owed him a new grain hauler. She tried to reply and realized she was now missing most of her teeth.