<span style="font-style: italic">Rangers sprint roll: 5 (move 11")<br/><br/>handler and gators sprint roll: 1 (move 7")<br/><br/>Armored raccoon sprint roll: 2 (move 8")<br/><br/>Marten 2 throws smoke grenade: 1 - Mishap.<br/>Card drawn = 5 of clubs. Catastrophic malfunction. The device explodes (!) in a large blast template for 2d6 damage.<br/>Damage rolls = 4 and 7<br/>Because the martens did not see the attack coming they don't get a chance to leap aside. The damage shakes marten 2, the thrower, appropriately enough.<br/>Marten 1 uses her action to go prone.<br/><br/>Raccoon leader attempts to intimidate Sevana:1d8 = 5, opposed by spirit roll.<br/><br/>Maribel makes a persuasion contest of wills against armored raccoon 2. She gets a 3 on her d8, but he gets a 4 on his d6.<br/><br/>The movement of the rangers triggers the readied spells of Cassandra and Sairif once they get within 60 inches. Cassandra's confusion spell: [1d8=2] [1d6=1]. The spell does not succeed unless a bennie is spent to reroll these.<br/><br/>Sairif sleep spell roll: [1d6=3]. Spell not successful.</span><br/><br/>Bare furry feet flying nimbly over the snow and rocks, the buckskin-clad, crossbow-toting raccoon girls and skunkette rush forward, too confused and unnerved by their badger friend's sudden cowardice to take up firing positions yet. They sidestep and weave back and forth as they go, and they constantly toss curious glances back and forth at one another. The skunk girl, short and stocky with flowers braided into her hair, pauses to reach down and take a swig from her hip-flask in mid-stride, and the other two gossip back and forth. With them not making eye contact and moving in an unpredictable path, Cassandra and Sairif's timing is thrown off, and their spell magic produces some brief unnatural shadows and strange purple light but does not affect its targets.<br/><br/>Lurching unsteadily from side to side, the dragon-like mech suddenly gives a 'roar' that sounds more like an amplified, distorted humanoid yell, and puts on a burst of speed, dashing forward quickly only to stumble across some tree stumps, uprooting them and almost falling over in the process. It is hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that the pilot or operator is at least a little drunk. Two (normal-sized) rabbits and a family of muskrats are driven from their burrows and go fleeing in a blind panic as the clanking machine blunders past their homes.<br/><br/>Without letting go of his axe, the male raccoon in armor gestures with two fingers extended towards the two fellow coons in his retinue, and the two take off jogging forward, one (the other male) veering to his left and one (the female with the scythe) to his right. The slender coonie girl gives an excited whoop as she rushes up and takes cover around the corner of the stopped rail car, while the fellow  off to her right just straightens his fox-fur hat as he rushes in.<br/><br/>The grizzled-looking leader behind them doesn't dash or skip like the others - he strides slowly and powerfully forward after giving his nonverbal commands, raising one of his hatchets and pointing it straight at Sevana. "You seem to think we're just playing around and putting on a show here, stranger! We're just here for your jewelry and pocket change - don't make me come up there and clip your wings! Talk some sense into your friends, willya?"<br/><br/>When they think there are no eyes on them, the two nimble little pine martens charge forward from their concealment in the grass. Unlike the raccoons, they don't chatter or whoop loudly as they move, but rather communicate by exchanging glances. The one on the right goes into a diving slide, getting low so as not to present a target, while her sister next to her pulls out a heavy, hand-made grenade of some sort made from an old coffee can mounted on a short wooden handle for throwing. She pulls a string and it starts trickling out a stream of grey smoke. She begins to toss it forward to cover their advance - but before the smoke bomb leaves her hands... well, suffice to say, she either grabbed the wrong kind of grenade or the fuel mixture inside was much too rich. It explodes with a loud thump, and the little furry female lets out a squeak of panic as she takes the brunt of a blast of low-grade incendiary material. Though her friend is mostly unaffected, the would-be smoke grenadier has her fur singed almost completely black by the blast. She opens her mouth to say something, but just coughs out a small puff of smoke. What's worse, the material burned so quickly that the two pine martens are left without any cover.<br/><br/>Maribel puts her hands on her hips, takes a few steps forward and cups her hands to shout. "STOP IT! You all are making damn fools out of yourselves! Cuz, uncle... Jim!" she fixates on the male raccoon furthest to the west. "Come on, you have to listen to me! This isn't worth getting anyone hurt over, least've all a classy lady like this!" she jerks a thumb backwards at Celrie. "Put the axes n' such down and let's have a civilized chat with these visitors! I think you'll like them, and they have a notorious thief like us with them! They're our kinda people, now let's just cut the foolishness and introduce ourselves over a drink and a smoke instead of fuckin' shellfire!"<br/><br/>While all of this is going on, Arcea and the others - if they should care to look back and to their east, near the rearmost car of the train, they can see that several other Cal'Drua catfolk (though not Chief Marlust - he seems not to have emerged yet) are scrambling for their weapons. Inspired by Arcea's epic display (despite not being able to see or hear it at all clearly), they begin to advance towards the trading post rather than retreating back inside their train car. A couple of them even fire inaccurate warning shots with their bows at the group of marauders advancing from the forest up ahead. Mostly, though, they focus on making a little threat display - yowling and roaring their defiance and challenging all others to come closer if they dare.<br/><br/>Throughout all of this chaos, Alexis Du'Bucovina has seemed extremely torn in deciding what to do. Her initial righteous indignation evaporates when the gun first thunders, and she involuntarily ducks, pulling her tail between her legs and whining as she ducks into the snow. It would seem that she is most unused to the sounds of battle - and aside from giving all present a good view of her bottom covered by tight-fitting trousers as she gets as low as possible, she contributes neither magic nor intimidating force of personality. "Celrieeee! It's an ambush!" she yelps, the fur on her tail bristling. "We can't get caught in the open against that kind of firepower! Quick, get back on the train! The shields are still up, we'll be safe there! Let the bats take care of this, their type loves bloodshed!"<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">On further consideration, after seeing that this battle is relatively slow to get going, I think I'll try and contrive to set future encounters in more enclosed areas or at least have the combatants start closer to one another. I hope to be posting at least every other day now that the holiday slump is over, preferably daily! I'll also be sure to post a short, possibly description-less post after each character action so others can be certain that another player's actions haven't made theirs irrelevant... that being said, don't worry too much about posting 'out of order'. Since all players and all enemies are being made to go in an alternating fashion now, there probably won't be any problems with making a post before it's technically your initiative coming up.<br/><br/>Next  character to act, by initiative draw, is Quill. </span>