"We could always shoot it." Lars pats his rifle for emphasis. "It doesn't seem to care right now as long as we're not too close. Any rocks we could throw into the deathzone?"
Look for a good rock to throw past it into the area it appears to be "guarding." Give it a toss if so (after approaching closer to the "death zone" line to make such a throw possible), but be ready to run. Ponder what it could be doing.
"Uh, slight problem in medbay. Anton's leg got cut off a bit too far up for this thing to work right. As is he's gonna wobble like an uneven table. Also He'll have no knee."
((Clearly you just need to shorten the other leg.))
(Thats what a 1 med would have gotten him.)
You tip toe closer and grab stone. You toss it up and down a few times in your hand to get a feel for it's weight before hurling it toward the black thing. It flies off a bit toward the left and, as it passes the black mass, is sliced into 4 even sections. You don't even see what does it.
((Miyamoto? Summer camp.
But the base repair! So. Many. Overrolls. Ha ha ha ha ha!))
"Shoot it? No. What we have from it so far, is follows a very predictable behavior, albeit with supernatural capabilities. It reacted when I entered it's "zone," and has done nothing since then. The creators seem not to have blessed it with supreme intellect, but I would worry about triggering a self-defence mechanism.
To put in human words, it may attack us when we shoot it. If we're going to attack it, there is no point to doing so without superior firepower. Poking it with laser rifle is probably not going to be enough. Also, I am not sure that the thing we see actually fully exists in front of us, it transposed to us completely instantaneously from the center of the zone. There must be something that allows it to appear and disappear. Perhaps it's core exists in a different dimension entirely, and this is just an outer image of it?
Anyway, this is all just speculation. I don't know a thing about it, and aliens are not my forte. But I don't have a problem with shooting something past it, be it a rock or a drone." (You want to throw a rock more than 50 meters ahead of you? Because you will probably have to get near to the thing to do so. Just letting you know.)
Take out my map. Make a circle where I have estimated the thing to have sat originally when we saw it. Then measure the distance from us to the farthest ring on that circle. Use that as a radius for the "Death Zone," and now using it trace a much bigger circle. And then trace half-a subxes of error around that. Actually I'll just make a map with instructions after I post this.
Update: Here it is. ((Is it explanatory enough, or should I do labels, and cut the stuff I am not using? Click on the Zoom in, then on the View Original buttons: http://s1308.photobucket.com/user/Horrible_illustrations_for_ER/media/ERMapradius_zps4daabde6.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
I hope the stuff I actually get as a result is more focused. And uses a better color scheme.))
Updated main map. Uses the hexes, but is pretty much the same.
((Actually, I posted just two turns ago. But anyway, time to explore.))
Gather my supplies/gear and head back out through the white dome hex, to where I can see the surrounding hexes. Stay on my guard, and rock-throw if I'm on unexplored ground.
Hmm. Well, according to the map getting there without moving through an anomalous hex is gonna be a hell of a trip. You're gonna have to go in almost the exact opposite direction for a while before turning back and heading toward the domes. It's gonna take time, Days even, just to get there one way.
(Being in that suit probably saved your life, yeah. If you weren't there would be a few rolls to deal with and chances are, some shrapnel would have hit you. And once it hit you and the suit was compromised and the heat could get in..well...you'd be extra crispy style anton.)
You mercifully stay asleep for now. Mercifully because if you were awake you'd realize you're about to be mechanically hobbled and spend the rest of your time here skipping instead of walking.
((Hooray for sound tactical decisions with horrible unintended consequences! 
Also, no. A regular person would be horrified and broken, at least initially, by the prospect. A regular HMRC recruit would be highly upset, then sigh, ask the doc to do what he can, and try to be as useful as possible. An HMRC recruit technician who has resigned to the life in the meatgrinder and has a penchant for robots? He's going to offer options.))
Wake up with the force of a thousand morning coffees before somebody does something irreplaceable to those prosthetics.
"AHHHHHHH MALPRACTICE LAW SUIT! Wait, where am I?"
You look around.
You see mesk, standing over you with prosthetic parts in his hands and a contemplative look on his face.
"Gently." he mutters before repeatedly banging the pieces together like a monkey with symbols.
"Uh, mesk I don't think thats..."
"QUIET! I AM DOING A MEDICINE!"
See if there's a left knee I can use, and whether it would fit properly. If it wouldn't cause too much of a problem, use it.
Anton, like most of your patients, wakes up before the procedure can even really begin and starts complaining and protesting. He's worse then those kidney transplant kids. Ooooh I didn't sign up for this, ooooh who are you and why am I in this tub of ice. Complainers, the lot of them.
"Damn. All the rocks are cemented to the ground. Also heavy. Gonna need some robro's to help."
Head back to garage and grab a hammer, then head back and start hammering at the thinner stone gluing the boulders to the ground.
You grab the biggest hammer you can find and head back outside to smash up the rock coating. It's easy enough, the rock is brittle and the hammer's weight alone is more then enough, but it's still a tiring process.
[end:3+1] You smash up pretty much all the stone you need to. There's bits and pieces left here and there but nothing that lukas couldn't brush away with one hand.
Go find someone who needs help fixing something.
Hmm..well you're good at aux and freaking terrible at handiwork. So you're probably in the garage, giving pointers to bishop about how to fix Lukas. So thats where you go.
fix the program somehow, assist mesk as necessary.
((Anyone fix the exosuit leg yet?))
[aux:1+1]
The program continues to be a finicky piece of crap that refuses to so much as boot up without filling the screen with racial slurs.
"Hrmmm... Well, it can wait. I'll go start fixing Lukas. We'll need both his hands working properly if he's going to be useful."
Head over to Lukas and start looking for the problem and have him run diagnostics for me. Before I start poking around inside his arm, make him turn off the power to that part so I don't get shocked.
[Bishop:1+1+1(Jack)+1(Mike)]
Bishop, with advice from Jack and Mike, manages to get Lukas' arm working again, though not perfectly. Well...it works just fine, actually, it's just that it seems to be temperamental, like an old television. It seems like it may need the occasional whack to get moving properly and that it could be brought offline much more easily then before. But at least it freaking works for now.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette (Original Thread: Rules, Armory, Misson archive 1-11) (Read 3940532 times)