Junker Hulk

Encontros Pendrake — NQ17

Some of my most frightening experiences occur when I am not expecting to encounter the beasts that I study. Such times do not occur often, as I make it my duty to discover and document Immoren’s strange creatures. Every so often however, when I am doing something I consider routine or safe, I find myself fearing for my life. I can only thank Morrow that I have the training and experience to survive such situations. Many others do not.

The junker hulk is particularly guilty of such surprises. Few things stop the heart like innocuous scrap rising with murderous intent. When picking over a junkyard at night, assuming that, as you received permission, you have nothing to worry about, and then you witness random bits of junk shooting through the air, skittering across the ground, and rising up to form an immense humanoid shape bristling with edges and chains. Though I cannot prove it, I believe junker hulks arises when a discarded cortex retains enough power to magically gather nearby material to create a body, enough cunning to harbor a viciously territorial personality, and enough sentience to hate anyone who would try to control it.

— Viktor Pendrake

Junker hulks are spontaneously arising constructs of scrap and other junk arrayed in a hulking humanoid form around a damaged and vengeful steamjack cortex.

Junker hulks form when a discarded cortex retains enough power to exert magical influence over surrounding objects and enough awareness to desire a familiar form. The cortex gathers nearby materials — often items with which it has physical contact — and shapes them into a rough humanoid form. Usually, such an event occurs in junkyards, but it can also occur in scrap piles near or within ‘jack workshops. Every so often, a junker hulk arises on an old battlefield; cortexes from downed warjacks occasionally have enough sentience and materials to create a body (albeit one weaker than their former chassis — usually).

Violently territorial, junker hulks also harbor a fierce independence, perhaps a remnant from when warcasters and ‘jack marshals controlled them. Thus, when any creature attempts to exert arcane control over a junker hulk, rage clouds what limited, sputtering intelligence it possesses.

This encounter, designed for four PCs of 6th to 7th level, can take place on a waterway depending on how you want to run it and the PCs’ location. The action occurs on a junk barge, and reasons exist for such a craft to be virtually anywhere. The default setting is a vacant stretch of the Banwick River between Point Borne and Fort Whiterock in Cygnar.

This encounter requires the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide and the Monsternomicon, Vol. 2 (the junker hulk appears on pages 100–101).

Encounter Background

This encounter takes place on a barge, huge and slow and weighed down with junk. A gobber bodger named Goggz pilots the barge. Goggz plies the waters between Point Borne, Corvis, and Orven, hiring local laborer to pile scrap onto his barge. He then steers his barge to Ironhead Station where he unloads with his steam-driven crane whatever he can sell and dumps the rest overboard. (Over the years, a vast collection of submerged and rusted debris has built up in the area.) Before he rids himself of the junk, of course, he stops by his hidey-hole and unloads the most valuable pieces for sale to discriminating or discrete customers.

Goggz doesn’t know it, but his latest shipment includes a defective cortex. The cortex has slowly assembled a body of the junk on the barge. The creature currently sees Goggz as a sort of protector or ally, but it is unlikely to feel the same about PCs.

What brings the PCs aboard the barge (and thus into conflict with the junker hulk) is up to you and your players. Some ideas include:

• The PCs stow away on the barge, hoping to travel to somewhere along Goggz’s route with a minimum of hassle.
• The PCs see the barge floating down the river and hail the captain. Goggz is willing to take them aboard as passengers (though their sleeping arrangements will be less than ideal) for a price.
• The PCs are looking for a particular piece of junk, perhaps even the junker hulk’s damaged cortex itself. The PCs learn that the object of their search is likely aboard Goggz’s barge.

At your option, the junker hulk may not immediately see the PCs as threats. Thus, the PCs might assume they are safe when they board the barge, but sometime later — perhaps at night — the junker hulk attacks.

The Battlefield (EL 7)

The battle takes place aboard Goggz’s barge, which he operates alone. The barge is a huge, wallowing craft of iron and wood. A furnace at the rear provides steam power; one large stack belches both smoke and steam into the air. The furnace also powers a large steam crane, which Goggz uses to move the junk around.

When the PCs see the barge, read or paraphrase the following.

Before you is a hulking, flat craft of iron and wood. Junk of all sorts — broken furniture, scrap metal, iron plates, broken gears, jutting girders, and other useless items — cover its surface to a depth of several feet, causing the barge to ride dangerously low in the water. The barge is huge; over 50 feet wide and probably 100 feet long.

Rising from the center of the assembled junk, like a tower amid bones, is the large metal framework of a battered crane whose hoist ends in a large magnet. Three great waterwheels, one at the rear and two on the craft’s sides, turn slowly under the furnace’s power, allowing the barge to chug forward. At the rear of the vessel, the pilot house rises twenty feet in the air on rusty stilts. The barge’s immense furnace sits beneath this structure, casting an orange-red, shimmering light.

Beneath the pilot house and near the furnace, a hammock is slung between what look to be two ruined steamjacks. A grizzled gobber reclines in the hammock. He appears to be napping, though every so often he cracks an eyelid, looks around, reaches out from the hammock, and adjusts the craft’s furnace. Then he leans back and closes his eyes.

Conditions

The time of day (or night) in which the PCs arrive (or in which you’d like the encounter to occur) determines the lighting conditions.

The barge is extremely noisy. These conditions provide a –2 penalty on all Listen checks aboard the barge. PCs with appropriate Craft or Knowledge skills can identify some of the junk aboard the barge, which can be anything you like. The junker hulk has taken a 10 on its Hide check, giving it Hide +21.

Battlefield Features

The junk barge has several features that might hinder or help the PCs.

The Barge: The barge chugs along at a speed of 15 feet per round. Downstream, the river’s current adds to this speed; upstream, the river’s speed works against the barge, so it can travel upstream only on slow-moving rivers. However, Goggz has a lever near the steering wheel that causes the barge to go into overdrive (Spot check DC 10). In this mode, it travels twice as fast (30 feet per round) but consumes four times as much fuel, so Goggz uses it only when necessary. If this lever is activated, there is a 10% chance each round that the ship has run out of the necessary fuel to keep going and comes to a stop two turns later (the furnace is still hot enough to inflict damage — see below).

Tricky Footing: Junk and scrap cover most of the barge. Characters attempting to run or charge must make Balance checks (DC 15). Failure by less than five results in normal movement rather than a run or charge. Failure by more than five means the character falls halfway through his movement, taking 1d3 points of damage in the process.

Mounds of Junk: Especially high mounds of junk rise from the positions indicated on the map. Each of these is about 15 feet tall. Due to the rickety nature of the piles, scaling them requires a Climb check (DC 20). Failure by ten or more means the PC both falls and the pile collapses about him. In addition to falling damage, the unfortunate PC takes 3d6 points of bludgeoning damage (Reflex save DC 17 for half); everyone adjacent to the mound takes half as much (Reflex save DC 12 to halve it again). Anyone who fails this Reflex save also falls prone.

The Crane: Climbing into the crane’s seat requires a move action. Once there (or adjacent to it), as a move action, a character can make a Craft (steam engine) (DC 10) or Knowledge (mechanika) check (DC 15) to determine how the mechanisms function. The character can then perform any of the following actions as move actions:

• Move the crane into position (i.e.: above an object of interest).
• Lower the magnetic hook. Doing so allows the crane to snag the object beneath it. If the object is the junker hulk, the creature is entangled (–2 on attack rolls, –4 to Dexterity) and cannot move more than five feet from its current location. As a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity, it can make a Strength check (DC 20) (its Strength bonus is
• Raise the magnetic hook. Doing so hoists the hooked object 20 feet into the air. If the object is especially heavy (like the junker hulk), the crane bends and creaks alarmingly, but holds. Once hoisted aloft, the junker hulk remains entangled but (obviously) cannot move at all. It takes a –5 penalty on Strength checks to free itself from the hook; if it succeeds, it crashes to the deck, taking appropriate falling damage (2d6).
• Release the magnetic hook. Doing so drops whatever it was holding 20 feet to the deck below (or into the water, if the crane’s controller moved the crane away from the barge). A creature beneath the crane takes the appropriate damage (1d6 for an object 100–200 pounds; 2d6 for an object 200–300 pounds; heavier objects are unlikely to be found on the barge). If the creature knows the object is coming, the crane’s controller must make an attack roll (using base attack bonus + Intelligence modifier) against the creature’s touch AC.

Dumping the junker hulk in the water effectively stops it, unless you prefer otherwise. However the creature can survive even if submerged. It might stomp along the river bottom after the barge, angry at the creatures that dislodged it.

The Furnace: The furnace sits beneath the pilot house. Automated machinery monitors it and adds fuel (using jointed metal arms) as necessary. The furnace is hot. A creature standing within five feet of it takes 1d3 points of fire damage per round. A creature entering the furnace (the furnace door is five feet high) takes 8d6 points of fire damage per round.

The furnace also serves as a source of open flame and red-hot coals. The PCs might scoop up coals with the nearby shovels and fling them at the junker hulk; such an attack is a ranged attack that suffers the –4 non-proficiency penalty and deals 2d6 points of fire damage.

The Steering Wheel: PCs who take control of the steering wheel can alter the barge’s direction (though the change is slow) or manipulate one of the two levers here. A Craft (steam engine) (DC 10) or Knowledge (mechanika) (DC 15) check reveals their purpose: one engages or disengages the drive
to the furnace while the other pushes the barge into overdrive (as explained under “The Barge,” above). Pulling one or both levers requires a move action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

The Water: Depending on where the encounter takes place, the water can be anything from a still lake to a rushing river. By default, it is a wide (50 feet), slow moving (five feet per round) river. The barge travels downstream a total of 15 feet per round, staying about 20 feet from a given bank.

Creatures

The junker hulk is disguised as normal junk. Considering that the junker hulk is made of the same junk that lies scattered on the barge, the disguise is pretty good. Goggz is also present, though whether or not he takes part in the encounter depends on a couple factors (see below).

Tactics

The junker hulk’s left hand is an immense claw — once part of a heavy-loader steamjack — that gives it the improved grab and crush abilities. (This claw is another option for a junker hulk ability, and it counts as a slam for the purposes of the junker hulk’s feats.) The junker hulk is wily. It saves its electrical charge attack until it thinks it can disable one of its enemies with it. When using its claw, it usually takes the –20 grapple penalty (making its grapple check –2) to attempt to conduct the grapple while moving about; it plans to thrust enemies into the furnace or dump them overboard.

Whether or not Goggz joins the fight is up to you and to how the PCs treat him. Odds are he simply cowers near the steering wheel, but if the PCs are in trouble or if they were especially nice to him, he can shout encouragement and ideas (“use the crane!”). He might even take action himself, like operating the crane or steering the barge toward shore so he (and the PCs) can abandon ship.

Treasure: The junk on the barge is junk, but Goggz might pay the PCs up to 200 gp (total) for protecting him. (If you like, he and the PCs can negotiate a price during the heat of battle). The PCs might be able to get a 500-gp reward from Engines East or some similar organization if they return the junker hulk’s cortex for study or repair, however Goggz (rightfully) claims the cortex as his.

Further Adventures

The events in this encounter can lead to other encounters or more detailed adventures. Some possibilities are:

• Despite their inherently dangerous nature, Goggz thinks junker hulks make the perfect guard creatures and goes out of his way to find more discarded cortexes.
• Goggz becomes worried about his safety and hires the PCs as semi-permanent bodyguards, leading to any number of adventures using
  his junker barge as a base of operations.

While scouring a junkyard in Corvis, I was surprised when some of the scrap rose clank-ing from a surrounding pile and fought back. I staggered backward in surprise, reached for my sword, and found it suddenly gone. The creature resembled a steamjack composed of accumulated junk held together by mysterious means, including the sword that had leapt from my scabbard to join the hulking pile.

I cast about desperately for something I could use as a weapon as the creature approached, chains dangling from its great fists. Finally my eyes lit upon a sturdy but rusty steel bar. I snatched it up and smashed it into the creature’s head. It paused for only an instant then renewed its attack un-phased.
I only dispatched the mechanical nightmare after a running battle through the labyrinth of scrap piles by commandeer-ing the junkyard’s steam-driven wrecking crane. When I sifted through the remains I discovered a cracked old cortex. I hauled it off for study, and though mechanika is not my specialty,
I have a theory regarding the natural appearance of these mechanical creatures.

I believe these junker hulks, as I have named them, occa-sionally arise when a discarded cortex somehow achieves sen-tience though a mysterious magical interference not unlike that which gives birth to animatons. This may also explain the irra-tional hatred junker hulks supposedly display for warcasters. I believe the junker hulk’s cortex takes a fierce pride in its inde-pendence, and these individuals — as well as any that attempt to command it — invoke its rage.

Junker hulks are also terribly territorial, as I discovered. I’ll certainly never again search a junkyard alone.

Combat

Junker hulks spend much of their time quiescent and practically indistinguishable from big piles of junk. When a creature enters their territory, though, they become aggressive. They usually watch intruders for a time, waiting for the opportune moment to burst forth in a sneak attack. They hurl chunks of detritus only if they can’t get to grips with the enemy.

Fonte: Monsternomicon Vol.2