3-5: Trail of the Dust King

After finding a surprisingly good spot for a future home on the edge of the Deadlands, the gang travels the span of Skinner's Roam, looking for more potential locations. Finding a couple that are almost but not quite as good as the Deadlands-adjacent spot, they count themselves satisfied for the time being and resolve to get back on the trail of the Dust King.

From the Dust King's bounty, the one clue the gang has about him is that he's somewhere in the Border Zone. The Border Zone's northeastern reach gives way to Skinner's Roam about where that Holy Mine stands, so that's about where the gang begins their search. It's not too bad of a trek back—while they've got a bit of distance to cover, Skinner's Roam is mostly uninhabited and unpatrolled. The desert's inhospitality discourages paladins from wandering here despite it technically being Holy Nation territory.

Not wanting to get further distracted, the gang slips past the Holy Mine back into the craggy Border Zone region. They soon spot a tower high upon a steep hill, half-hidden from the valley trail. This could be the sort of place from which a Dust King might reign.

On closer inspection, the gang can make out several ninja on the roof manning crossbow turrets. They don't look much like dust bandits; this is probably not the place. The gang finds curiosity overtaking them, though. Any desire to not get further distracted goes out the window. They decide to approach.

Specifically, Ells decides to approach, and under cover of night. The gang has no idea whether these ninja will be friend or foe and they're not particularly eager to get spit-roasted by a crossbow bolt from on high the moment they knock on the door. If these ninja turn out to be hostile, the gang's staunchest ally will be darkness foiling the turret guards' aim.

Once the sun sets, Ells walks up and greets the door guards. They don't seem to pay him much mind so he pushes his luck, climbing the steps to the front door.

Right. Foes it is, then.

Ells beats feet back to the rest of the gang, Dimak and a couple of her Black Dragon Ninjas in hot pursuit. Crossbow bolts rain down from the roof but fly comically wide, even a big guy like Ells being nigh-impossible to get a bead on while running at full tilt in the black of night.

With the gang all standing together, Dimak's two cronies go down easily. The woman herself is not far behind. Though an incredibly skilled swordfighter, she's simply too surrounded, with neither the armour to weather their glancing blows nor the kind of weapon that can cleave through a circle of foes. All she's got is a little ninja blade.

When Outlaw Hana reaches down to relieve Dimak of her sword, she does a double take. This weapon is no mere “little ninja blade”. It's Meitou-grade, the highest quality of weapon, only known to ever have been forged by a singular legendary smith.

I hold ninja blades in pretty low esteem. Like most katanas, they don't deal with armour well and barely even scratch robots. Their base damage isn't very high. Their defense penalty exceeds their attack bonus. That said, a Meitou weapon is a Meitou weapon. By that virtue alone it's one of the best weapons the gang has on them—against organic enemies at least.

As the blurb implies, there is a heavily limited number of Meitou weapons in the game. None are randomly placed. In every game of Kenshi, Dimak will always have this Meitou ninja blade, the only Meitou ninja blade in the game. Each weapon variety has at least one Meitou—most exactly one, the wakizashi most numerous at three. Most belong to faction leaders much tougher than this.

Heartened by the gang's success against Dimak and a little annoyed that the ninja attacked him, Ells runs up to the tower once again to draw more out. This time, he gets seven (still no Buzan) chasing him back to the gang's chosen battleground. This, it turns out, is trouble.

Small, fast weapons like ninja blades are a poor choice for taking on multiple foes, but when forces are more evenly matched, they do a lot better. This is because by default, hitting an enemy with a weapon causes them to stagger, interrupting whatever attack they may have been trying to make. The Toughness stat mitigates this, allowing a character to stand their ground through increasingly hard hits as the stat increases, but the gang's not quite tough enough yet not to flinch from the ninja's strikes. With how fast the ninja are, this means they can stunlock the gang sometimes, landing multiple hits in a row with no chance of retaliation. You see the problem.

“Okay, but why is Ells flying through the air?” I hear you ask. Well, it's because physics can have a bit of a sense of humour. Sometimes when someone gets knocked out or gets put down on the ground by someone carrying them, the ground forcefully rejects them and sends them rocketing skyward. It's fine. There's no fall damage. It's just a good chuckle every once in a while in the middle of a tense fight.

While this scuffle proves a teachable moment about the virtues of ninja blades, it also illustrates their shortcomings. When the rest of the gang falls, Burn stands alone, their metal frame nigh-impervious to the ninja's efforts.

Ninja blades' 39% damage penalty against robots tanks their damage per hit down to single digits against Burn. While still enough to stagger sometimes, this means it's taking them absolutely forever to put Burn away even with five relatively healthy ninja wailing on them. While Burn isn't getting to strike back very often, their plank (a flat-tip sword in the heavy weapons category) cleaves through 2-3 ninja with each swing, dealing 35-40 damage each time. This goes on for so long that each other member of the gang recovers enough to get back up, get knocked down again, and in some cases get back up a second time while Burn refuses to relent.

The ninja do eventually win but it's a far tighter victory than it seemed like it'd be at first. There's only a couple left standing by the time Burn falls. Seemingly exhausted by the fighting, they limp back to their tower, leaving the gang alone to patch each other up as they gradually regain consciousness.

Once the gang is all bandaged up, Horse glances over at Dimak, still curled half-naked on the ground. She's lost a lot of blood. The Black Dragon Ninjas don't carry first aid kits so if he just leaves her there, she'll die. With a sigh, he decides to help.

As Horse finishes patching up Dimak, a window pops up informing us that “Black Dragon Ninjas are no longer hostile towards you.” Healing a faction's members is in fact a way to gain reputation with them. The rank of the member healed, though, has a pretty drastic effect. Healing the rank and file barely moves the needle. Healing a faction leader leads to situations like this: Reputation boosts large enough to cancel the loss incurred from attacking them in the first place.

The gang could kidnap Dimak and turn her in for her bounty, but if the ninja are willing to let bygones be bygones then perhaps it's best to leave it at that. They had a good fight and they took her stuff. They got their first Meitou-grade weapon. This may not have been the Dust King hideout they were looking for but it's not bad for a night's work.