Get out of the shuttle, stretch my legs. Bust out the deck of cards I'm conveniently carrying around and play solitaire by the shuttle until everyone gets back.
You sit down next to the ship and start playing solitaire.
"Shoulda brought my gameboy"
Flint Westwood - Blue squad - Sector 18
"Hmm... Strange... But also kind of awe inspiring and... beautiful." said Flint as he observed the forest. He began walking towards it. "This brings back memories of the sharkmist mission. Fractal antennae but on a larger scale. But why would beings with the ability to perform such miracles need antennae to communicate? Unless it's some sort of experiment... or maybe a school, a science lab. Hmmm..." Once closer, he noticed the grooves on the rods. "On the other hand, these carvings..." he ran his hand over the carvings. "...look man-made. Alien-made. Anomaly-made. You know what I mean. They remind me of something I had read. The stones of the ancient era outlived the paper books of the fission era. Maybe this is some kind of storage medium. Who knows what priceless knowledge may be stored here? If only we could read it..." He got down and looked closer to the base of one of the rods. "Or perhaps nothing on this place has a job to perform. Maybe they are just interesting but ultimately purposeless toys and trinkets. A form of art with no other purpose then to be aesthetically pleasing."
Take some close up pictures/video of the rods. See if the ground shows how the rods got there (do the rods look like they were forced into the ground or did they "grew" out of the ground? ie, is the ground going upwards or downwards near the rods?). Gently run my hand over the rods and try to feel anything interesting. Look how deep the carvings are. Dig around the rods and see how deep they go and if the carvings continue deeper. Try not to scratch them or otherwise cause them harm. No reason to destroy them... yet.
Suddenly, Flint noticed there was one extra man with them. After a quick search, he spotted the odd one out.
@Corsair: "Hey, you..." Flint read the name on his suit. "Michael. Aren't you supposed to be with red team? What are you doing here?"
Grab Michael Alexander [Corsair] by the scruff (like a cat) and bring him to Bishop and Mesk. "I've got a stray here. What should we do with him?"
You scan the rods carefully with your suit camera, panning slowly up one and around another. Judging from the way the ground is pushed upwards, it looks like these structures rose or were extruded out of the ground itself. You run your hand over the closest rod; it's a bit hard to tell with the suit on and all, but it feels smooth and solid as far as you can tell. There's nothing about it that stands out as anomalous as you touch it, no tingling or hallucinations or alien mind rape. The carvings themselves, which seem to consist of a single, continuous line that dips and dodges around to form symbols, like cursive. However the symbols themselves are widely varying and it is quite hard for you to tell where one starts and another ends. They're carved about two inches deep and have a rounded bottom, like they were scoped out with a melon baller or ice cream scoop.
You catch Michael before he can wander off or do anything and drag him back to bishop and the ship.
Lars raised his hands toward the sky. "Brothers! Steve has brought us to this glorious place! We shall probe its secrets, for the glory of Cog-azaon! May Algis shield us and Pathmas always be in our favor!"
Lars looked toward Bishop. "I shall lead my team toward the center of this zone, then I shall move out clockwise toward our ultimate goal. Does this sound good to you?"
Head toward the center. Observe along the way.
You head toward the center of the Black towers, observing what you can along the way. First thing you notice is that this place does have an atmosphere; one with oxygen even. Albeit a rather minimal amount of oxygen with the majority of the atmosphere being made of methane and pressurized to about 3 atmospheres. It's also a much more livable temperature at something like -10 C. Well, Not very livable for you, but still, better then molten iron.
"You guys may not want to fire off any lasers or anything that causes heat; the atmosphere around here is dense and flammable."
You make it a little deeper in, wandering through the towers, when you find something on the ground. It looks like a black stone, but shiny and segmented almost. You pick it up to discover it's hollow and, by the looks of it, organic, like a shed cicada's shell. Judging from the shell, which is incomplete with bits of it broken, the thing is about the size of your fist with a beetle like shell on it's back.
"This looks interesting"
Use laser to cut a bit of the black stuff out and store it then move further into the forest
You get grabbed and brought back to the ship, kicking and squirming the whole way.
take stock of my inventory and follow lars. Carve a rudimentary phallus into the nearest spire.
I think all you have with you is an iron pole, a bat helmet and some food and water. Do you guys just not keep your own inventories or something? Since it seems like whenever one person asks me about their inventory suddenly 10 more people do.
You follow lars deeper into the forest. When it comes to cutting it, I'm not sure what you want to cut it with.
((I wasn't thinking hovercraft impediment. I was thinking sample collecting. ^_^))
Anton Chernozorov, Red Team technician, on his own and off his rocker.
"Arright. Let's get this out of the way first." Anton flicks his comms on. "To anyone interested. As per the established (by myself) experiment protocol, I report that I am about to attempt some physical violence on the surface of the Sector Two anomaly, the "Flatland". So if anything explodes or I'm never heard from again, you know what happened. Would sure be nice to have someone here as backup, but oh well."
Begin aforementioned physical violence. Start with trying to wedge a metal rod into one of the cracks near the very edge of the zone. If the rod is too thick, use the Red Hand to slice the tip off into a sort of a chisel, and try again. Attempt to pry some of the smooth rock loose. If successful, put the procured rock into the trailer - preferably into a sample container, one of the many I totally didn't forget to bring with me. >_>
Afterward, begin phase two. Take a sheet of metal (presumably large enough to form a primitive shield), hold it vertically on the edge of the anomaly. Crouch behind it to protect my body from possible debris. Take out the gauss rifle and aim it - with one hand, and using the metal as a support - roughly downward at the smooth rock just beyond the shield, aiming a little away so that if the projectile bounces it doesn't do so at me. If still alive after firing, observe any visible effects.
Your attempts to cut free part of the surface of the flatzone come up empty, even after cutting a wedge and trying to use that. The seam between the stones is so thin that a piece of tissue paper couldn't fit in there. In fact, you can't even feel the seam when you run your hand over it; you can only just barely make it out with the naked eye as well; just a hair thin line between the stones.
Second tests reveal two things: First that the stones are incredibly resilient. The shot glances off and ricochets somewhere into the distance, leaving nothing more then a minor scuff on the stones. And second, that they must be very good at redirecting energy, since the shot didn't break apart, rather it either skipped off or maybe just slid away across the surface.
""Well, this is strange."
Ponder if whatever cut the pattern in could still be alive/around while holding shotgun if on person.
Hard to tell what could have cut these patterns. Could be some sort of strange geological artifact for all you know. But if something did carve them, you see no reason why it would be impossible that they were still alive.
"Right, zones 13 to 19. Cool. Let's get started!"
Send out a drone to map the immediate surroundings and take stock of our supplies.
You don't think the drones could handle the black towers too well, or at least not in any meaningful way. They're too tall to fly over easily, and even if they did, all it would be is pictures of black circles on a dull gray-black background.
As per supplies, you have:
3 days food and water as well as a few sample containers, 3 drones, plus whatever you came to the base with. Ie
Cutting torch 7:00/10:00
Mk III
Gauss rifle 7/10
Gauss clip
Razor
[GREEN TEAM]
Follow Lars, keeping an eye on the higher regions of the spires.
You follow behind lars while keeping your eye trained on the upper regions of the towers. It's hard to say; the upper reaches being so large and so distant, overlapping and blocking each other from your perspective; But you think you occasionally see uneven sections of the sides of the towers.
Base team
Look around to see if there is anything that could be used to transport and keep a 'metal slug', maybe even keep one alive. Check if anything could be cobbled together to accomplish this goal.
((Just posting an action for action's sake really. Still, it could be useful somewhere in the future))
"How is the drop-off going? Once you're finished, you can return to base, they'll be gone for quite some time. No need to keep you there doing nothing."
You suppose that any of the larger vehicles might be useful for transporting something that heavy, but keeping it alive is a different matter. Beyond the high temps there's no telling what else it might need to survive. You'd need to get a better idea of what it is and how it functions before you can think of taking one alive.
Alright, Red, I'm done with this thing for now. Making my way over to you now.
Base, while we're out in the local lethal lava lands, I intend to hopefully sample one of the bio specimens. Any recommendations?
Rebury the chunk and go to the local lethal lava lands, sharpish.
The chunk was never buried, just set on the edge of the area. Also burying something in stone is kinda hard. Anyways.
You want to head toward Lukas' position or around the other side? Or actually into the zone?
Team Red - Lukas
"Yeah, the scenery is amazing here, but where are these biospecimens?"
Look around to see if I can see any biospecimens.
You're not sure if they're alive or not, but you see some rather strange looking things clinging to the stone islands on the falls, half submerged in the iron, half out of it. You can't really tell anything about them from this distance, but they look somewhat organic, if only in their unusual form.
Author
Topic: Einsteinian Roulette (Original Thread: Rules, Armory, Misson archive 1-11) (Read 3939113 times)