More Money than Sense: PDEE underwater with the Utterley-Barkinge Co.

More of Mark's prehistory month madness!

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Followers of previous underwater adventures reported here will recall, no doubt, the inability of anyone involved so far to bag an Apex Predator In Mesozoic waters. Distinguished aquanautic shikaris such as David Attenborough, Bianca Castafiore, and Lucifer Hardlove, have failed to return from previous expeditions.

The high fatality rate of participants has only added to the allure of the expeditions, to bored celebrities and the idle rich. This years’ venture by the Utterley-Barkinge Time Travel & Landscape Co. was marketed specifically as a chance to break the Apex Predator hoodoo. It was fully booked within hours, despite the astronomical price tag. Some folks just have more money than sense.

The alacrity with which the expedition was subscribed may have had something to do with an announcement by the Time Patrol that Apex Predator marine reptiles will now have Bulk = 4, rather than Bulk = 6 per the previous ruling. This means they will be that much easier to bag, though still more difficult than their land dwelling equivalents who have Bulk = 3.

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In due course the expedition members were set down in some shallow bay of the Tethys Sea, and they posed for the traditional group photo. 

 L to R: the best-selling authors PG Wodehouse & HG Wells; Professor Sir James Dixon (Master of St Janet’s College Oxford); Tipton Plimsoll (the US dog food millionaire); and the international finance supremo JP Morgan III. At extreme R is Juno Utterley-Barkinge, the expedition guide. The expeditioners are armed with the new explosive-head spearguns, except Wodehouse and Plimsoll who prefer the traditional glaives.

The next photo shows the party setting off after Big (very big) Game.  At the start only two bottom-feeding lamniform sharks (pack predators) and a starfish (special rules) are on the table. More beasts - plesiosaurs (pack predators), liopleurodons, dakosaur, ammonite (apex predators) - will be diced for after every round of hunter activations has finished.

The hunters have 8 Turns to bag at least 1 apex predator and return to the pickup point, or they’ll run out of air and/or miss the pickup and be stranded 80 Million Years BCE.

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Two Turns in, and the hunters are off to a good start.  Professor Dixon killed the brown shark with two speargun hits as it swam up aggressively, then he was attacked by the blue shark, which missed and was finished off by PG Woodhouse (glaive thrust) after being wounded earlier by Juno Utterley-Barkinge.

 No-one has yet spotted the Liopleurodon that has entered behind the party. It is swimming at high level, up near the surface but in range of spearguns (with a -1 shooting mod).

After 4 Turns more beasts are onstage: a gigantic ammonite (apex predator) and a plesiosaur (pack predator). The ammonite is at low level, the plesiosaur is at high level. Beasts which do not make a reaction move during a Turn move M at the end but must stay beyond L of any hunter. 

 The Liopleurodon came down to low level and attacked the hunters, wounding Professor Dixon but missing all its other attacks. Several hunters attacked it, and it now has 3 wounds. Note also the yellow markers. These mark where kills happened, for predation purposes. The Starfish it also on the move now. It always moves S towards the nearest dead or wounded hunter. 

Turn 5, and the moment we’ve all been waiting for. JP Morgan III (seen here posing by the left hind flipper) shoots three speargun bolts at the Liopleurodon. Two are hits, the beast amazingly doesn’t attack him, and he becomes the first time-traveller to officially bag a marine apex predator. 

Not surprisingly, considering the hunters are mostly super-rich egomaniacs, Morgan’s success sparked jealousy, and all the others now want to emulate him. Juno Utterley-Barkinge is having a hard time enforcing group cohesion. By the end of Turn 5 the party is moving towards the Ammonite. 

 Another apex predator has appeared, a Dakosaur is now at upper left.

By the end of Turn 6 the hunters have their first casualty, as the Ammonite kills Professor Dixon  although it receives 2 wounds from shooting by other party members and starts to move away.

On Turn 7 the Ammonite is attacked by Tipton Plimsoll, he fails and the beast wounds him. Then another hunter - possibly HG Wells - also fails, and the Ammonite gets a Predate reaction, so it attacks Plimsoll again, and kills him.  It is left to Juno Utterley-Barkinge (seen here behind the beast) to finish it off with her speargun . The other surviving hunters retreat towards the extraction point as their air supplies begin to run low and their timers start to beep.

And here’s the final position at the end of Turn 8.  The remaining beasts retreat as the Utterley-Barking submersible appears, to return the surviving hunters to their own time.

 Blue markers show where Professor Sir James Dixon, and Tipton Plimsoll, were killed by the Ammonite. Yellow markers show where beasts were bagged: 2 yellows for the sharks, 3 yellows for the Liopleurodon and the Ammonite.

The apex predator hoodoo has been broken, as John Pierrepont Morgan III and Juno Utterley-Barkinge have both bagged these beasts.