<span style="font-style: italic">Maribel's uncle spectacularly fails his resistance to Sevana's intimidation despite me spending not one but two GM bennies to grant him rerolls; his original roll AND the first reroll were both 1s, and even with the second reroll he's still taken out.</span><br/><br/>The tall, surly-looking bandit leader, with little chunks of an ear missing and numerous patchy spots where past wounds had healed, was clearly no newcomer to the field of battle. He only flinches a little at first when Sevana's pistols bark in his direction in unison. "Grrr - you look pretty isolated and helpless to me, bug-breath!" He shouts back at Sevana. "I don't know how you convinced Maribel to turn on her kin but I'm... wait... what'd you say about my...?" he suddenly looks up at the two neat holes punched through his hatchets, both dead-center of the blade. His eyes grow as wide as saucers and he gasps out a stuttering huff of disbelief. "Bwaaaaa-huhuh-haha!" His hands go numb and the weapons drop to the ground as he suddenly leaps backwards a good five feet. No sooner does he look up from his smoldering hatchets than he sees Ludwig, an enormous hungry-looking dire wolf, leaping out of the train car to join his mistress, and loses it completely. "It's a set-up! These ain't no travelers, they been waitin' for us! James, Lola, cover me!!!" Without any further explanation, he literally turns tail and starts scampering away on all fours in a very undignified fashion, going about ten paces before diving into a giant hollow stump out of fear.<br/><br/>"No!" Maribel shouts back at him in frustration. "Dammit, uncle, just tell everyone to lay down their arms already!" She groans in worry as she whirls back around to see the mech still advancing, the artillery still taking aim, and the attack animals about to be unleashed. "Don't worry miz Celrie, they'll sure enough break once they figure out what they're up against. Except Old Man MacGasket in that tin-can of his - the way he's been piloting I think he might have gotten into the white lightning whiskey again, and he was never the most reasonable sort to begin with..."<br/><br/>Celrie, a particuarly empathetic elf even among her kind, can appreciate a variety of conflicting emotions when she looks sympathetically upon Alexis once again. At first, when she had seen Arcea mounting a fearless one-kitty stand against the heavily-armed bandits approaching from the forest, the black she-wolf's fear had been mixed with malicious anticipation and schadenfreude, as she fully expected to see Arcea getting flattened by a shell or mechanical claw very soon. But when she started to hear blaster fire and shouting from behind her as well, Alexis's prime reactions had been to fear for her own safety (and Celrie's), yet had to weigh that fear against a clear desire not to seem weak or timid in front of the elf she admired. "You mean - you're staying out here, even though that goofy Maribel girl never brought you any furs? Uh, and also despite us being attacked?" She blinks and lets out a little canine whimper. "Well I hate leaving you unprotected, Celrie - I'd gladly gnaw them all to death for you! But if you don't want to be, uh, distracted while you work..." she trailed off and smiled sheepishly before making a mad dash back to the doors of the train.<br/><br/>Up by the treeline, the buckskin-clad rangeresses have visibly lost much of their initial enthusiasm, skidding to a halt in response to the fearsome declarations belted out by Arcea, Quill and Sevana... they duck their heads and pin their ears flat instinctively. Unfortunately, a nervous humanoid with a ranged weapon at hand is just as likely to respond by shooting as fleeing.<br/><br/>Likewise, the three furs manning the cannon didn't seem very worried yet. A slender male skunk wearing cracked eyeglasses patched together with tape and twine, a zaftig raccoon girl with a mismatching outfit combining the half-shredded remains of a luxury mink coat and a welder's mask, and a muscular, broad-shouldered male coon (the one who'd been shouting) wearing a bulky cotton pair of ear protectors. The last of these seemed to be aiming and firing, with the other two acting as his loader and spotter. Thanks to the square metal gun shield their cannon came equipped with, they didn't feel nearly as exposed as their friends back by the depot. But the particular sort of counter-attack Celrie chose to mount against them effortlessly penetrated defenses like that and unfailingly struck the target it was aimed at... below the belt. Their reaction was not exactly subtle.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Surprisingly enough, the leader of the gun crew actually manages to defend against Celrie's taunt, acing a d6 followed by a 5, giving him a total of 11 too. This brings up a bit of a quandry - I'll admit that it does seem odd that charisma bonuses from attractiveness don't apply to a trick attempt in the form of a distracting flirt. On the other hand, if I allowed such bonuses to apply in full to all trick/taunt/intimidate attempts, it would render all other forms of attack and defense pointless by comparison. As a compromise, I think I'll handle extreme attractiveness which a character is actively flaunting as a sort of passive defense - even if they don't get shaken or taken out by your attempt, enemy extras will make you their lowest priority target and avoid sending any attacks your way if they can help it (unless said enemy is a melee grappler/predator in which case it might be the opposite).  And narratively, I'll emphasize that the "failure" is not due to Celrie's figure not being seductive enough <img alt=";)" src="./images/smilies/wink.gif" title="Wink"/> ) </span><br/><br/>"Oh my..." the spectacled raccoon murmured, bringing a spyglass up to his face to get the best view possible at Celrie's bust straining against the flimsy garments holding it back, his jaw dropping. The beefy gunner cuffed him on the back of the head. "GIMME THOSE, ZEKE!" Before the spotter could react, the gunner had snatched away his spyglass and focused on Celrie's awe-inspiring assets. Several thick droplets of drool rolled off his tongue almost immediately. He gave a grunt of animalistic lust and pounded his fist against the surface of the gun shield appreciatively. "HOT DAMN! ANY OF YOU ALL HEAR A CHOIR START SINGIN'? I WOULDN'T MIND BUTTERING<span style="font-weight: bold">THOSE</span>BISCUI-OWWWCH!"<br/><br/>Before he can finish his string of crude compliments, the female coonie behind him, apparently the jealous type, winds back her foot and gives him a resounding kick between the legs. "You damn stupid horndog!" she shrieks. "Don't you know there's a bounty on the lead cat? You want a session of feeling up elf tits instead of dancin' with the girl that brung ya, you're at least gonna have to earn it! Just get outta the way, I'll do it myself!" Still wincing in pain, the original gunner isn't able to do much as the masked female shoves him aside and takes hold of the gun, aiming it towards Arcea heedless of Maribel and Celrie's proximity and grasping the trigger-lanyard in her free hand. Despite the fact that tears were still streaming down his cheeks, the gunner refused to hand the spotter's spyglass back and instead brought it up to his eyes gain, grinning weakly as he continued to eagerly devour the feast for the eyes which Celrie presented. The other male raccoon squinted to get the best possible sight of Celrie's curvaceous breasts and ass, and started fondling the rounded tip of a spare artillery shell unconsciously. Even among the rangers off to the left of the gun, the female skunk and slender racoon girl let their rifles and crossbows drop for a moment, letting out small sighs and feeling a shiver of lust run through them as they stared at the glorious elven rump angled in their direction. The skunkette even snickered shamelessly as she gave one of her own breasts a quick grope and blew Celrie a kiss. "Oi, make sure we get that elf intact! We could really use a sweet thing like her around!" the raccoon ranger said, letting her rifle droop down to the ground and pressing the wooden stuck up against her crotch, roughly massaging herself for a moment in a way she thought was subtle. The male raccoon ranger, also toting a crossbow, laughed. "Forget her, just make sure we capture those fine bat bitches! Their tongues can do a lot more for us than some wisp of an elf, you'll see, hah!"<br/><br/>The chubby raccoon holding the leashes of the purple alligators pouts. "Wait, what's going on up there? Are we retreating already? But my babies haven't had a good meal in days! Is that my chicken-livered husband I see turning tail already? Bah! C'mon, Gasket!" she shouts at the stumbling mechanical power armor. "Let's show 'em how it's done!"<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Cassandra acts next, then we're back to the top of the round with Arcea, at which point the enemies will act again. Out of 11 (sentient) enemies 2 have been taken out and 1 is shaken, so you're about 1/3 of the way to forcing the whole group to surrender.</span>