The Trade Depot Fasco - - Warriors of the Red Planet/ Hyperborea rpg Session Report Five

 Let's pick it right up from last session on the blog.  Our party took the riskier route to the trade depot and made it without much incident except for an encounter with two dust devils. This was lon the low end of our encounters after the cannibals. 

The trade depot came into view and there were already a huge caravan meet of Green & Red martian lower bottom dead sea merchants and traders. We got into our reserved space and went on too tell our tale of cannibal red men warriors. And unloaded our cargo and setttled in. 
The first thing we did was get ammo, supplies, etc for our group of adventurers and eyed some of the other merchants goods. We also restocked on water, food, etc. You know the stuff that ERB's skipped over but Brackett went into a bit of detail about. We picked up a job from a red man merchant prince who was looking for some foo erm brave souls willing to venture into the dead sea bottom ruins of one of the ancient cities. 
So for that I'm going wayback to the Best of Dragon Magazine volume #1 James Ward's "Deserted Cities of Mars," as a sort of homage to the roots of Mars old school rpging. But this comes much later on. 

So while everyone is concentrating on the resupplying the party wasn't paying too much attention to the flyer that landed at the deserted tower that made up this dead sea bottom trading post. The flyer belonged to one of the lesser royal houses of Helium's kingdom. What the player's don't know is that it contains Jal Hardos Martian assassin and duelist. The party got all of thier supplies and the pittence for the caravan job because of the Thark mercenaries air strike that they paid for. However they did get a percentage of the overall trade sales as a bonus as per thier terms so they made five hundred gold. 
And this is where our rogue got into a full blown duel with the assassin! And she was able to hold her own for quite a while. The duel drew lots from the Green Martians who were there for trade. But they stayed for the entertainment.  
Jal Hardos made a boast that he could take on the entire party one at a time. He's not kidding either because he's got some really underhanded tactics up his sleeve. Alright so what's Hardos deal? He's a 7th level rogue with a Scientist patron backing him as his 'Q' and is really Chaotic. He's been hired because he get's results. He's got a Paralysis ray up his sleeve literally. He won't use it unless he has no choice.  His aim is to stop the party whose in the past had dealing with black wizards and thier cults.