Victory. The assault on the Phantom Train didn’t exactly go as planned, but in the end the Grim managed to retrieve X’havir – plus a few bonuses in the bargain.
Remi’s contacts were able to provide an airship for a short time, and with M’wanthala at the helm it roared across the skies towards the Phantom Train. As promised, Mireille’s agents managed to disable the train’s guns, so the Grim weren’t immediately blown out of the sky as they approached. The first team, composed of Kai’ir, Momohani, Lizbet, Remi, and Aesyra, leapt off onto the engine car, and then the airship fell back to deliver the second team to the middle of the train.
The first team quickly ran into a stumbling block: the moment they set foot on the roof, metal blisters opened in the surface of the train and spat out refurbished Allagan ADS units, obviously recovered by the Empire and set to defending the train from exactly this sort of attack. The Grim managed to disable the spheres (well, two were disabled, and one was spiked into the desert sands and left behind as the train sped onwards).
Inside the engine car, they found an Imperial engineer who was clearly far more interested in saving his own skin than anything else, and he quickly agreed to keep the train moving – especially after the Imperial troops who came running in got themselves slaughtered.
The Grim began moving through the train quickly after that – resistance seemed light, and in the dining car they discovered why: a pile of bodies, their mouths and noses oozing with green moss. Mireille’s handiwork. The car was set up for a party, with cakes and pastries laid out on the tables, and a garish banner that read “CONGRATULATIONS DAN”. It is unknown if Dan was among the victims, or indeed, if there was ever truly a Dan in the first place. They didn’t have much time to ponder this, though, as more Imperial troops – armed with heavy, rapid-firing gatling guns – came charging into the car. In the distance, an explosion rocked the train, signalling that the second team had managed to secure their car and blow the connection to the rear cars, along with the Imperial reinforcements on them.
Advancing through the cars, fighting off Imperial troops in the cramped corridors, the Grim found a surprise: a miqo’te male prisoner, but not X’havir. Instead, trussed up in a spare room, they found Roh’to Nahl, who’d gone missing several weeks beforehand. They untied him, put a sword in his hand, and told him to come fight his way out. Roh’to was quite happy to oblige.
A few cars later, they finally found their goal: X’havir, chained to a wall and drugged into unconsciousness. Aesyra ripped him free of the wall and threw him over her shoulder, dragging him along. Only two cars remained between them, and their allies holding their escape route in the final car.
However, as they stepped into the next car, massive spears tore through the walls and ceiling of the car, expanding into vicious grappling hooks. With a screech of rending metal, the car’s walls were torn apart, exposing it to the air. Two Imperial gunships were keeping pace with the car, armed with grappling guns – their tow cables detached, letting the wreckage of the car’s structure slam into the desert and fall behind the speeding train. Then, an enormous Roegadyn in heavy imperial armour leapt from one gunship and landed among the Grim.
A brutal fight followed, with the Roegadyn commander fighting using an enormous shield and a heavy gatling cannon, while more Imperial troops continued to join the battle and the gunships shelled the group from the sky. Aesyra and Roh’to kept the additional troops from interfering, while Lizbet kept the commander pinned down; Momohani and Remi hurled bolts of magic into the sky to ward off the gunships, preventing them from blowing everyone to bits. Seeing the battle turning against him, the commander eventually signalled a retreat, grabbing onto a hook fired from one the gunships and escaping. With a brief window while the Empire regrouped, the Grim retreated to the final car.
Blood and bodies filled the last car, but the Grim there – including Haru, M’sato, Qhora and Sindl – had kept the car secure. Momohani deployed a bomb (a literal living Bomb creature, which he’d imbued with some Ice aether to help contain the explosion) and a thundering blast disconnected the final car. They coasted to a stop, and the airship returned – they loaded the rescued prisoners aboard, as well as a few barrels of ceruleum the second team had managed to find on the nearby storage cars. Before the Empire could return with reinforcements, they pushed the airship’s engine to the limit and escaped back to Ul’dah.
Several people were injured – Roh’to especially, who’d taken several hits from the troops’ guns in the final fight – and they gathered at the Grim manor to recover. While there, X’havir finally awoke, and they quickly learned that his months of imprisonment with the Empire had not been kind to his mind. There were too many people crowded around for his liking, and with a feral growl he leapt down the stairwell and escaped into the night. A search team managed to find him and calm him enough to convince him to return home, but it’s obvious that X’havir barely remembered anyone and had been thoroughly reprogrammed into someone far more servile.
It remains to be seen whether X’havir will recover from his ordeal, and whether the Empire will move to retrieve him – or simply take revenge on the Grim for daring to attack the Phantom Train. Twice now the Grim have cost the Empire, and they will not brook a third time. Today the Grim are victorious, but that victory may come with a price, as the baleful eye of the Empire is now upon them.
