Salt Flats/Crimson Fastness
ROLAND: I knew this time was coming. I didn't expect it to be like this though.
LILITH: I don't think any of us saw this coming.
MORDECAI: Talk about a shocking swerve, yeah.
ROLAND: Okay, to explain what happened, I should go back to the start of the day. We left the Middle of Nowhere so we could go after Baron Flynt here in the Salt Flats. The Baron was more talkative than most of the other lords, calling us over the echo to taunt us.
LILITH: Not very scary taunts, to be honest. I think he was trying too hard to be falsely polite.
ROLAND: We blew up his protective patrols and broke into his fortress, stopping along the way to fix up a claptrap and gather the parts for an assault rifle. You know, the usual stuff. Pretty good rifle, actually, still using it right now. Anyway, we killed our way through the Baron's gang, which included a bunch of psychos, gun guns, and a pair of massive brutes named Hanz and Franz.
BRICK: [grumbles angrily] Didn't expect to see those two jokers here. I thought I taught them better manners than that.
ROLAND: Wait, you knew them?
BRICK: I did. Hopefully this time they learn their lesson.
MORDECAI: Hold up, they have New-U passes? I thought bandits were automatically kicked out of the system.
BRICK: Most are, yeah, but those guys are clever, more than they look. I'll probably see them again. They don't learn lessons too good.
ROLAND: If only that were the only surprise for the day. Anyway, the Baron himself wasn't that dangerous. He had a very powerful shotgun but it was hampered by the slow speed of the rockets it fires.
LILITH: I've been meaning to talk about that actually. Have we seen any of those rocket shotguns that were actually good?
[brief silence]
MORDECAI: Well hell, now that you mention it, I don't think any of them have been useable.
ROLAND: They're a bit too slow with the rocket speed to be viable at any distance but right in the enemy's face, and at that point a regular shotgun would be better.
BRICK: So much potential, wasted. Wasted I say!
ROLAND: Either way, the Baron's gun will sell for a lot. Once he was dead we checked his personal chest but there was nothing there, no key piece. Then Steele calls to gloat about how Tannis betrayed us, there was no fourth key piece, she had won, she was gonna get the Vault and on and on. I forgot how much she refuses to shut the hell up.
MORDECAI: Plus, like, she hasn't even won yet, you know? She didn't even try all that hard to kill us. We took on the whole of Old Haven at once, did she think a few squads of her troops would do us in now? Kinda insulting, honestly.
ROLAND: To give her a tiny, tiny bit of fairness, she was probably using that time to shut down the echo network and block off communications for the planet, as well as secure Sanctuary so that they couldn't interfere with her plan.
LILITH: Still messed up by not dealing with us when she had the chance.
ROLAND: Very true. Once we fought our way past her token kill squad, we took our runners straight at the base of operations for the Crimson Lance for this sector of Pandora, which is right here on the far end of the Salt Flats. Incidentally, this kinda proves my point about Atlas not caring about the bandits, since they had one of the most powerful bandit lords around living right in their front yard and didn't do a thing about him. Anyway, I knew trying to assault the place from the front would never work, but luckily I know that standard procedure with any Lance fortress is to have a secret back entrance that can be used to escape or counter-infiltrate the facility if it has been captured by enemy forces. Finding it was as simple as checking the area for caves that went deep enough into the cliff face.
LILITH: Doesn't it seem a bit weird that there were no guards in the cave itself?
MORDECAI: I mean, that's probably what the spiderants were for. Those things would keep out any regular bandits who go poking around, and they probably didn't expect any actual badasses to want to mess with them in the first place.
ROLAND: When we reached the back door itself, turns out Steele was waiting for us, had her second in command and a couple of Lance Royal Guard take us out personally. [chuckles] They didn't stand a chance.
LILITH: Okay, so, I took a look at that weird Eridian cannon the guy was using, and I gotta say guys… it's pretty crap.
BRICK: Don't call that pathetic skagheap a cannon. It defiles the name.
ROLAND: Once they were dealt with we were able to tear through the Fastness before the Lance could regroup and react. Soon enough we reached Tannis, who had been locked up in their prison cell.
LILITH: Real talk here for a sec… is anyone really mad at Tannis for 'betraying' us?
MORDECAI: Nah, not really.
BRICK: I barely noticed.
ROLAND: In all likelihood Steele forced her into a no-win scenario where the only way Tannis stayed safe was by playing along.
LILITH: Oh… well great. Glad I'm not the only one.
ROLAND: Tannis told us that Steele had taken the key from her and was heading to the Eridian Promontory, which is where the Vault is supposedly located. But before we could go after her we needed to restart the echo network, which required us going out to three network nodes out in the edges of the Fastness. When we went to do that we saw that we weren't the only ones who were attacking the Lance.
LILITH: Those freaky alien Guardian things were tearing them up! It was really cool but also kinda scary. Or at least it was until Mordecai shot them straight through their shields.
MORDECAI: Ha! I told you it was gonna hurt them good. I'm telling yah, they don't stand a chance against my Trespass tech.
ROLAND: Unfortunately the rest of us can't share his program, but a mix of strong shock damage and solid bullet hits is enough to take them down as well. We fought through a mix of guardians and Lance to each of the individual nodes and turned them on before heading back inside to finish the re-start process. Now we're all set to go after Steele and stop her from opening the Vault before we can get it.
[crackling static, followed by a voice coming through]
Angel: Can you hear me? Are you there?
LILITH: Angel? What happened to you?
Angel: When the echo network went down I lost contact with you, but you brought it back up. Listen, there is no time left, you MUST reach the Vault immediately and stop Steele from opening it! The consequences if you don't are disastrous!
ROLAND: What kind of consequences?
Angel: The kind that include all of the human race being at risk!
MORDECAI: Woah woah woah, hold up! We're badasses and all, but we ain't no saviors of humanity! What the heck is going on here!
Angel: There's no time for questions! Please, you must hurry and reach the Vault before it's too late!
LILITH: What are we waiting for then? Let's go!
ROLAND: Alright, let's move Hunters. Roland, signing out!