This comic is written by Shawn Gaston, who I discovered while reading one of his other projects, Chainmail Bikini, a D&D Parody/Satire comic.

This is the link to the Clockworks comic, but if you want to start from the beginning, (a very good place to start) click here.

1550 Things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG

I had just drawn my weapons, and leaped through the glass door, guns blazing. I opened fire with a full burst on the nearest security guard, and hit him square in the chest. With my adept enhanced reflexes, it was as if everything was in slow motion. I then rolled and flipped over the security checkpoint (think of those stations in government buildings) and opened fire on the next guard, but my shots went wild and I blew the chandelier apart. (glitch) My next burst was not so bad, and knee-capped the next guard. Smitty dashed in and curb-stomped the injured guard, who was trying to crawl away (With his augmented strength, it was not a pretty sight) The last guard was sprinting for the phone, so I knelt, took careful aim, and squeezed off a burst… larger than I had anticipated. Guard number three was splattered all over the walls and floor. I spotted that one of the guards had a Colt Manhunter with a silencer (a gun I had been wanting, but unusual for the average rent-a-cop) and while searching his body, we realize something is amiss. These guards were waiting to ambush us with guns drawn, but there was no way they had the skill or the tech to hack our comlinks…

Flashback to upstairs…

CJ turns to the opening coffin, and sees a disfigured Elf wearing armor, hissing at him. (presumably the Blood Mage who summoned the elemental) CJ fired a full burst from both of his Skorpions, and shredded the mage’s skull. Greg lept forward with his forearm blade to take a swing at the bloody monstrosity (everyone knows bullets are useless against spirits, right?) The Blood Elemental surged forward, and engulfed Greg, trying to crush him with its dark energy, or drown him. (drowning in a malevolent puddle of blood, not the way I would want to go) Allen, seeing this, quickly tries to counter the dark powered spell, and banishes the elemental. Blood explodes everywhere. (seeing a pattern here?)

Allen calls up one of his last fire elementals. “Burn this whole building to the ground, after we leave,” he commands it. The team grabbed the box and headed for the stairwell. (elevators weren’t working because of the fire on the upper level. The instant they step into the stairwell, they hear “CLEAR! GO! GO! GO!” and the heavy tread of combat boots. The sound is unmistakable, it’s a SWAT team. They begin to run down the stairs, but CJ slips on the landing and falls down a whole flight and cracks his head at the bottom. He’s out cold. Greg has to pick him up and carry him over the shoulder. (if only I could really see this instead of having it described to me. A dwarf carrying a hulking, muscular full grown man on his shoulder, running down the stairs) They run down many flights of stairs, until Allen is able to wake CJ up. The put him down and continue. On floor six, a door pops open, and a light machine gun pops out and sprays the stairwell. Greg, in the lead, narrowly misses being in the direct line of fire. They stagger back up a level to seven and run for the stairwell on the other side of the building. “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” The door at the end of the corridor explodes with the concussive blast of a breaching charge. They duck into a studio door, narrowly missing the shrapnel and automatic weapons fire. Allen calls up his last fire elemental. “I need you to burn down all of the stairwells in the building” Fortunately, this one doesn’t take him literally, assuming the intention of the command. Whoosh! The stairwells fill with fire for about a minute. No screams can be heard over the raging inferno in the stairwell. They start back down the stairs, but have to pause half way down from the sheer heat and smoke.  The run the rest of the way down the stairs and out into the lobby. In the smoke and haze, Smitty raised his weapon to fire, not knowing who was coming out of the stairwell, having just seen it explode in fire. Archon swatted the gun away. CJ, Greg and Allen walked out into the ghastly carnage in the lobby. Allen, Greg, Archon and Smitty headed for the limo but CJ stopped to take the 2,000 credstick from the guard (which Smitty had popped his head like a melon).

We got in the limo and headed out. Looking behind us, we see the whole building erupt into flames as the elemental did its work. We looked in the data packet for the run, but there was no drop-off point for the package. Greg realized that there was a code, and the solution were GPS coordinates. Upon arrival at the location, there was nothing there. Just a lonely mailbox out in the middle of nowhere. CJ, (being his paranoid self) checks the mailbox for traps. (D&D reference anyone?) He sees a data cable running into the ground from the mailbox. Unsure what to do next, CJ puts the package into the mailbox. Nothing happens. Something clicks in his mind, and CJ reaches over and puts up the flag. The mailbox and ground surrounding it suddenly drop quickly out of sight into a hole in the ground. Archon peers over the edge to look with his low-light vision, and sees many heavily armed elves with assault rifles looking back up. That instant, CJ’s commlink pings with the info that his bank account had been updated. Mission Accomplished!

In addition to the cash for completion (and karma, of course) CJ, Archon, and Smitty all gained notoriety for their actions. (for general carnage and looting dead bodies)

This is where I came in. Supposedly, Smitty and myself were waiting in the Nightsky limo in the parking lot. I recieved a text message on my comm saying, “Come in now, we need you”. At first, I grabbed my guns and a gun for Allen and Greg and went to the door. Thinking this a bit suspicious though, I called in to check everything out, just as Greg discovered that his comm had been hacked, and sent us the message. We knew our cover was blown, and we had to ramp up our plans.

Allen called up a fire elemental and sent up a few floors up to cause “chaos”. He then used his earth elemental and had it rip the vault door off of its hinges. They rushed down the hall, in the door, and into a very disturbing scene. In the room were shackles, torture equipment, coffins, mage equipment, and a WALL of BOXES. They quickly found the correct box, pulled it out and turned around to see a dark shape in the doorway. CJ drew his guns to fire, but something told him it wouldn’t be a good idea. Allen flipped on the lightswitch… only to see a Blood Elemental, a Water elemental tainted by human sacrifice. Allen popped out another fire elemental, and then heard one of the coffins open. Allen let out a few choice words, Greg stood dumbfounded, and CJ began screaming like a lunatic. Over the commlink. (if this was Cthulhu, I guess that would be “sanity loss”)

I drew my dual Ingram Smartguns, and Smitty leaped from the Limo…

Session one was over. Cliffhanger… awesome.

WereGeek

I give the link to the first page in the comic, so you can start from the beginning.