Team Blue:
"Huh. Never seen something like that before... I think we should see how far up it goes and how far across it goes as well. Maybe we can go around it or fly over it, and if we can't, then we can just send a drone in and leave for a new zone. The drone may take awhile but hopefully it could map out the whole thing given enough time. In the meantime, we should just map out the edges of this distortion so we don't accidentally walk into it in the future."
Bishop keys his radio to reply to Simus.
"This is Blue leader, we've hit a snag. We've just come across a place where everything in motion seems to slow down a lot, like a rock hanging in midair sort of slow. We're currently checking to see if we can go around it, since I don't think anyone wants to volunteer to walk in and see if their mind slows down just as much as their body would. Some advice would be handy right about now."
Check the map for our position and mark down the start of the zone. Then take a walk with the others to map out the edge of the distortion.
Flint Westwood - Blue squad - Zone 3
"Hmmm... That's interesting."
Science time! Throw some more rocks and try to determine where this slow-mo area begins (how high, how wide, does it move, etc). Mark the boundary with spraypaint. Fire a short laser burst at the ground inside the slow-mo zone and at a hovering stone and observe the results (does light travel at the speed of light, does it diffract, does it move strangely, do the pieces of ground boiled by the laser move slowly, etc). If my previous observations show it is safe, try to put one half of an open sample container in the slow-mo zone and scrape a ground sample, while I'm holding the other half safely outside the zone.
EDIT: Distribute spraycans to the rest of the team so that they can use them to mark the edge of the slow-mo zone.
@Simus: "Anybody has any good ideas on how to test if this thing slows down time or is just viscous? Simus, you're the science officer, what do you say?"
@Bishop: "Should we try to destroy it or just bypass it? Should we send a drone? Blue leader?"
Vich: Team Blue
"Thank you. But I'd still prefer to have sticks with caution tape too. Easier to see."
Apply spraypaint on the area around the anomaly to mark it's boundaries.
((You didn't actually give that much of your backtory yet. We haven't even got to your birth yet, for Steve's sake. (unless I missed something). I will do it a lot more once we get to it. Right now, there is theoretically a lot of stuff to critisize, but practically, not so much. One, it's not that interesting to me, since I want to critisize your, not your planet's backstory. Two, you could just say "I wasnt very good in my history classes," something I am not very keen to hear. Three, while there is a lot of stuff to critisize, most of it has to do with complex sociological patterns and human behaviors. It would take a page just to phrase my complaints, and a book to explain and argue them. And then people would just tell me that they don't trust me because I wouldn't cite any sources confirming my position. I'm not ready for that kind of commitment yet. 
And I think you have some misconceptions about my upkoming nitpicking. One, I am not going to pick on your writing. Probably. Only on your plotholes. Two, all, or almost all my nitpicking will be done In Character. So if Vich doesn't feel well, or is distracted, I'm out of luck.))
((To Below: ...um ...Nope?))
Flint's experimentation reveals several things:
First, that lasers do indeed seem to be slowed by the area. The beam itself is still invisible, obviously, but it's effects are not as instant as one would expect. Indeed it takes almost a full second from firing to hitting the ground.
Second that, that the beam does not seem to refract or otherwise scatter. It and all other light passing through it seems to pass through without being distorted.
The third realization is a group effort resulting from attempts to map the edge of the effected area. Using stones and spraypaint they begin marking the area, quickly coming to the realization that it's much larger then they thought. After about a half mile of walking along one edge, something changes. One of the rocks thrown enters the area and hits the ground abnormally fast, but not abnormally hard. It appears as though there might be more then one type of distortion in the area.
Team GreenBrother Lars: Green Team Lead, Zone 6
Lars stopped as the radiation level started getting through the suit. "Gentlemen, we are reaching a point of personal danger. I do not believe we are adequately equipped to fully explore this on our own. We shall deploy a mapping drone, once I get confirmation that it will be unaffected by this radiation."
He then set his radio to call back to base. "Sister Simus, or anyone else knowledgeable, this is Brother Lars. We have encountered a zone of steadily increasing radiation. Are the mapping drones capable of surviving a strong radiation field?"
"Looks like the ground is charged, and the atmos is xenon. The blue glow may be ionization? I dunno. Feels creepy though."
Continue scanning, follow Lars. Unless he walks into an anomaly. Then stay put.
Jack Hansan- Green Team- Zone 6
"What is causing this?"
Stay with team and warn them of anything major.
Auron kell- green team - Zone 6
im afraid i did not bring anything to innoculate us against radiation poisoning, perhaps we should continue to our next sector and return here after insulating a drone against radioactive interferance?
activate bathelmet, try to see if there are any light bending objects in "visual" range.
Follow lars again.
The team halts while their suits are still giving them almost complete protection and Lars converses with home base while the rest of the team waits. They see no signs of light bending or other distortions beyond what they've experienced already. Lars' radio call is choppy and static ladden, but still works, at least for now.
Team RedThrow some rocks around, including above me. If nothing strange happens to them, fly a few meters into the air and look around with the various vision modes. Then zoom in on the lights/structures in the distance.
You throw some stones onto the flat surface. They hit the ground and skid off as though on ice. You fly up a few meters and look around with the different vision modes. The only thing that is odd is the thermal one; The planet is cold to begin with, somewhere between 20 and 15 K, but the area in front of you is so near Absolute zero that your suit's sensor's aren't precise enough to measure it and are just reading 0k. The lights are hard to see from here, but look like hazy chains of light, more distinct then an aurora, but still not entirely solid. Hm. The structures are hard to see as well, but they appear to be crystalline in nature.
Lukas gazes at the smooth floor and then at the distant lights. "Should we proceed, boss? I have a bad feeling about this, but I am really curious about those lights."
((Hmm))
See what its approxiamte density / resilience is by shooting 1 second worth of laser into it at different angles in short bursts. Dont chop anyones legs or arms or anything's off.
You fire at the smooth ground. It glows slightly with heat but doesn't show signs of damage. Must be very heat conductive.
Team Base:
Team Base, Anton Chernozorov, Mechanic/Detective:
Anton wakes up after a short nap, and sees the fleshtech guy - Mesk, he recalled - watching the monitors. Quietly, so as not to attract undue attention, Anton moves to a terminal further across the room and opens up some of the previous team's feeds.
Open several feeds from other previous team members, and rewind the leader's footage on the pad back to the point where his feed cut out at the beginning of an argument. Try to find the same moment on other feeds, and see if the dialogue can be heard in full.
It seems the other teammembers weren't in the habit of keeping their suit cameras on nearly as much as the leader's, or if they are on they're not in a helpful position. The best you get is a walkby of the conversation in which you hear about "Next time the difference between the zones might not be survivable".
All teams, this is the Nest, status report and map updates, if you please.
Integrate map updates into the master map and redistribute the updated map to the teams.
((I'm assuming that radio is team-specific unless coming from base or otherwise noted.))
We're gonna have to find a way to handle this since colors are limited. I'm thinking using a rather messy but effective system of labeling subhexes with numbers and then having a key on the bottom of the map. Since there isn't room on the map to add text to each little hex.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette (Original Thread: Rules, Armory, Misson archive 1-11) (Read 3991478 times)