[Quest Emergency Stage: Defend the Incursion!] appeared. [Defend the Rork village from the ancient war machine the miners have dug up].

The party ran along the levees between fields, Rick in the lead. He ran flat-out, watching his step to avoid falling into the water-filled paddies.

Behind them came the squeaks and groans of the Martian tripod lifting itself out of the excavation hole. A metallic rumble filled the air, rising in intensity, and then a bolt of energy cracked over their heads, making the hair on his arms stand up. It hit the middle of a water corn paddie up ahead, blasting a fountain of steam and mud into the air. The debris rained down on the party as they ran.

"We need to lay some traps or something!" Daniel cried.

"I don't think they'll touch that thing," Rick gasped. "We have to warn the villagers."

They passed another field. Only one more to go. There was another grumbling whine, and another bolt of lightning seared the sky. It hit a field behind them, spattering their backs with scalding mud.

In the village ahead, a bell started peeling with an urgent, furious ring, like an old fire station alarm. When they ran into the courtyard between farmhouses a moment later, there was no need to warn anyone. All the villagers were scurrying about. Several men and women were tearing apart a derrick just outside the courtyard, near the edge of the fields.

Rick hadn't paid attention before, but there were several of the wooden towers around. They were rough-hewn tripod contraptions, lashed together with ropes and bolts. At the top, a pivoting arm attached to a basket that could be raised and lowered to haul things in and out of the water. On the other side of the village ran a wide canal and half-a-dozen of these crane-like devices stood along it.

Now, despite their clear panic, the villagers, in all their urgency, were focused on dismantling the derricks.

"It's coming! You have to run!" Rick called, but nobody seemed to pay attention.

Gambit glanced back and forth between the work teams. "They're up to something!"

Daniel had stopped by the first team they passed and was watching them work.

"Maybe we should go slow down the tripod," Daniel suggested.

Gambit shook his head. "Have you seen that thing? That’s a no, buddy."

Rick caught a glimpse of the death machine between the village houses, striding slowly across the farm fields they had just come from. Each step carried it a dozen yards. There was another grumble as the tripod prepared to fire.

The tripod's death ray cracked, and a bolt of energy hit a grain silo just outside the village. It exploded in a geyser of debris. White bits began falling down all over the village, drifting slowly.

Rick reached out and caught one as it fell. It was popcorn.

"Hey, come see this!" Daniel shouted.

The crew he was standing next to had transformed one of the crane contraptions into a trebuchet. They were turning it around to aim at the tripod. "Check this out! They turned it into a siege engine!" Daniel said enthusiastically.

The Rorks were pulling head-sized stones off a pile and carrying them bucket-brigade style to the trebuchet. One of the mechanically-minded Rorks hefted a stone and brought it over to the basket, while two others worked a windlass, cranking the arm back. A Rork woman inspected the mechanism.

Rick took two steps back. "Maybe we should give them some room," he suggested as the first stone was loaded into the sling.

The Rork woman adjusted a lever, turned a small crank, and then pulled a large handle to fire the weapon. The counterbalance—several bags of grain hanging from the pole—swung down, and the long end of the arm whipped up. The sling snapped taut, flinging the stone away. It sailed over two fields and plunked down into the mud twenty yards from the tripod. The crew was already resetting the arm.

"Wow, that's pretty sweet," Rick said. He looked around and saw that two other teams by the canal had almost finished converting their cranes into trebuchets.

The tripod roared its metallic warning, and the beam cracked again. This time, it shot straight into a farmhouse, which exploded in a shower of bricks. Debris rained over Rorks and humans. A stone struck Gambit in the head, dropping his health bar by 9HP. A roof beam bounced off the cobblestones and caught Rick across the knees, sending blinding pain up his leg and knocking him to his knees. He was pretty sure it was broken, but one Soothing Mist later, most of the damage was gone. He was able to clamber up and put weight on the leg.

All around the courtyard, health bars appeared over the Rorks' heads as villagers were injured by the debris. Rick set to work healing, starting with Gambit. It was nice to have something to do as the trebuchets clanked and launched their payloads.

A third shot from one of the trebuchets near the canal clanged into the tripod. The Rorks sent up a cheer. The war machine now had a health bar, but it had only taken 5 of its 100HP in damage. That didn’t stop the Rorks' enthusiastic stone-flinging, and two more shots were in the air before the cheering had died away.

One of them struck, and the tripod shuddered. Rick tried to keep an eye on the fight as he cast Soothing Mist every time it was off cooldown.

"Maybe I should get a bow," Gambit was saying. "A good compound bow, not that silly thing Daniel has." Rick didn’t pay much attention to him. The tripod’s health was down to 90/100HP. It paused its march and lifted itself slightly, now looming tall enough to be seen over the village houses.

The next bolt of energy crashed down into the courtyard. It tore a great chunk of rocks out of the paving stones and blasted them across the crew of one of the trebuchets. The crew was scattered like bowling pins, their health bars dropping into the yellow and red. Paving stones whizzed by Rick’s head, but he ducked, and none hit him.

The whole team ran over to help. Rick was throwing Soothing Mist as fast as he could, starting with the most damaged—a Rork with only a sliver of red remaining. When the ability hit, his bar jumped up but was still red. The heal-over-time effect would do more, so Rick targeted a different Rork, and then another, each time picking the lowest health bar he saw.

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When he got back to the first man, the heal-over-time effect had ticked his bar into the yellow. Letting the HoT aspect of his heal have time to work increased the amount of overall healing he could do in a given period. He supplemented by a few casts of Protection on the lowest-health victims, just in case the tripod sent another shot before he had a chance to heal them up. Soon, he had the entire trebuchet crew healing up.

By now the Rorks had gotten two more trebuchets erected a bit further away. One of the Rorks whose health had stayed in the green was struggling with the first trebuchet. There was a glowing wrench icon floating over it, and its bar was half-down.

Daniel had gone over while Rick was healing and was helping the man with the device. How Daniel knew anything about archaic siege engines was anyone’s guess, but the wrench icon was pulsing, and the health bar above the trebuchet was slowly filling back up.

Did this mean they were winning? Gambit's battle cry echoed through the village, and everyone stood straighter and moved faster.

The deep thrum warned Rick the tripod was firing again. He glanced up. The tripod was tilted, pointing toward the trebuchet crew on the opposite side of the village from the canals.

Rick focused on the group and cast as quickly as he could. Soothing Mist, Soothing Mist, then cast a Protection onto the one closest to the tripod. Even as the third cast went off, the tripod's thunderbolt split the sky. The trebuchet exploded, and its crew of Rorks were knocked flying in all directions—all except for the one protected by the translucent shield.

The shield popped, and the Rork was left standing there, blinking in the charred crater. There was still a health bar over the crater. It read [2HP] and had a little icon of the trebuchet on it. The scattered members of the crew pulled themselves up and rushed toward the smoldering ruin as Rick cast heal after heal to get them back up.

Daniel jogged over and lent his assistance in repairing the trebuchet. The health bar started climbing up, though how they were turning a smoking crater back into a trebuchet made no sense to Rick.

The tripod loomed over the town. One of its feet smashed down into a farmhouse, punching through the roof into the interior. With its next step, a leg came down on the edge of the courtyard. Gambit charged the leg, yelling and swinging his razor sword. The blade clanged off the metal foot. Gambit swung two more times in rapid succession, and Rick saw the health bar twitching down by a handful of points each time. The Tripod was now at [67/100] HP.

Another trebuchet stone clanged off the bottom of the tripod's hull and fell to smash into the farmhouse below. The war machine's health was almost halfway down now. The leg Gambit was attacking raised up in the air and then stabbed back down at the Mongolian warrior, sending him tumbling away with his health half gone.

Rick hit him with a Soothing Mist, and he was up again in a flash. He charged back in, sword swinging. The tripod's third leg swung in and slammed down in the middle of the courtyard. Three of the Rorks rushed it with cries of fury. They carried farm implements—rakes, shovels, and a sickle—but swung them with vigor. These did even less damage than Gambit's sword, but they swung them over and over.

The tripod's stalk tilted over the side of the saucer to aim a shot almost directly below. It was pointing at the trebuchet by the canal again.

"Look out!" Rick yelled, trying to get the crew's attention. They stayed at their stations, cranking the windlass on the trebuchet and trying to point it at the war machine looming overhead. Rick desperately tried to heal and shield the crew, but the thrum of the lightning gun came a moment later, and the bolt from above smote trebuchet and crew.

Two of the Rorks were tossed into the canal. The trebuchet simply vanished. This time there was no durability left, only a smoldering hole. The Rork Rick had shielded toppled into the hole as the shield evaporated around it. He ended up at the bottom of the hole.

Another member of the crew was blown across the courtyard and slammed hard into the wall of a farmhouse. He fell to the ground with his health bar grayed out—dead. Rick's Soothing Mist had been on him, but it wasn't enough.

The tripod stepped out of the ruins of the farmhouse and into the courtyard. Now all three of its legs were accessible. Rork farmers charged, swinging sticks and tools. The machine lifted one leg and swiped it through the crowd, sending Rorks scattering in all directions. Even Gambit took damage from that blow. Rick desperately cast heal after heal.

When the next leg came up to slash the melee crowd, Rick got a Protection off on Gambit, so at least he didn’t take damage. Again, Rorks were sent flying. One who Rick hadn't gotten all the way up from the first strike was left with the tiniest sliver of health. Rick concentrated his heals there. Then he frantically spread Soothing Mist to as many targets as he could. It was a desperate and losing scramble as the courtyard turned into a madhouse.

Rick was so focused on heals he didn't notice when the robot's health bar hit zero.

"Look out!" someone yelled, and the crowd scattered. Rick looked up and saw it starting to topple just in time to scramble away before the bulk of the robot's body slammed down. It crushed half of a farmhouse and embedded itself in the courtyard.

[Quest stage complete! Defend the Incursion! Success!]

Rick stood there staring at the devastation, having a hard time believing it had all been earning them points for the quest to defend the village.

Daniel came over, grinning. “I made level 6!”

All Rick could do was shake his head.

After the battle with the tripod, Rick and the team tried to assist in cleaning up the village, but they soon found they were only getting in the way of the Rork crews, who all seemed to know exactly what they needed to do. After a bit of standing around, they left.

The sun was getting low in the sky, but they had not finished either of the other quests, so they went back out across the fields to see what more they could accomplish. Daniel had hit level six with the robot attack, and Gambit was well past.

There was no sign of Team Technique or Sam and her robots. They cautiously scouted the edge of several paddies before triggering another Hexabunny attack. There were two dozen of the normal bunnies and three of the bosses this time. Rick just put his head down, kept his allies alive, and covered Daniel while he set up another spear trap. Then Gambit kited two of the boss bunnies in. After that it was just a matter of mopping up the stragglers.

The largest of the boss bunnies dropped a crystal that proved to be a clue for their quest. Rick didn't read the quest text too closely—something about resonance patterns pointing toward a place outside of town—but it showed up as an obvious point on their map.

They moved to the edge of the farm fields and considered their options as the sun reached the mesa top. The excavation hole was gone ,as if it had never been, surprising Daniel, but not Gambit or Rick.

"It's a repeatable quest. They do things like this," Gambit said.

"How could it just be gone?" Daniel asked.

"Because it was never there to begin with," Rick replied. "You have to remember this is all a simulation, and some of the changes to the world simply go away when the system moves past them."

Daniel clearly didn't like the answer, but he didn't press it. Gambit was studying the bottom of the city mesa, where the map indicated the next step of their bunny quest.

"I think I might see an entrance—a cave or a tunnel," Gambit said.

Rick nodded and yawned. "I suggest we go back to town and tackle it first thing in the morning."

“Agreed,” Gambit said, and started for town. Rick was about to follow him toward Angels Landing and their caravan when he spotted the figure moving across the dunes.

It was Sam, and she was coming from the direction of the mesa.

Gambit noticed her about the same time. He stiffened, then turned to Rick. "Do you want us to leave you alone?" His face was bland, with no trace of mockery.

Rick nodded. "Yeah, if it's alright. I just—"

"You don't have to explain, man," Gambit said.

He made like he was going to punch Rick in the shoulder but instead turned away. “See you at the caravan.”

Daniel hesitated for a moment. "Don't forget to get her contact information. We, uh..."

Rick eyerolled. "I won't forget."

Gambit did punch Daniel in the shoulder this time. "Come on, man. He'll be along in a minute."