(If you are wondering what's up with me and foreign names, I roleplay as ESL speakers because I'm one myself, and I think it might be immersion-breaking to have someone with an english name have occasional ESL speech patterns. I pick nationalities at random and they have no bearing on the characters' personality.)
I start my turn in engineering's main area. The department is well staffed, with a CE (Edward Lenkmann), two Engineers (Travis Bynum and me) and an Atmospherics Technician (Nathaniel Foley). The CE prompts us over the job specific radio to state our name and position, and I embarrassingly blurt it out in the public channel, sparking up brief conversation with the Lawyer, Luna Wood, actually a Solicitor for Workplace Accidents.
I assemble the particle generator, and get curtly told to fill up the plasma tanks for the engine. Travis is off to wire up the solars, the CE is starting the singularity. The comms go down and our headsets turn themselves off, but the CE gets them back online in a minute.
Shortly after he comes back in and asks me if everything is running smoothly. I nod and ask him if there's any task for me, he denies, I state that I'll keep monitoring the engine room, and as we're still chatting we're interrupted by the inner airlock to the right of the rad collectors eerily opening up by itself. We don't think too much of it and get back to work.
Some uneventful ten minutes passes, I decide to go check if any lightbulbs in the hallways needs changing (little did I know that lightbulb changing would have become my main occupation for most of the game).
CMO (Roman Howard) at the radio asks if the Head of Security (Chris Engle) is okay since he noticed his sensors drop, he replies that he just had an accident, and Luna jumps at the opportunity, but he tells her to just lay off.
We get an atmospheric alert on the bridge. We head to the place and find out that there's no damage, but the fireaxe that was there is gone...
I was strolling in the security section, notice and join Nate and Luna for a brief chat, when the atmospherics alarm goes off right in the Law Office, weirdly not reported by the damage console. Luna's office is too cold without the heater turned on.
The Chief warns us that lights outside the bridge just blew up. I find the detectives, Matthew Defoe and Terrence Railby (actually a Paranormal Investigator) in the central hallway commenting the possible electrical overload.
I change a light tube thrice in their presence but it just keeps shorting out. The boss over the radio discounts the lights randomly breaking as the consequence of just a power surge.
I go back to the Law Office to resume my chat with Luna and Nate, and she asks us if we've seen where he went, a guy with blood all over him, carrying an axe and no ID showing.
Terrence over the radio states that any suspicious activity, criminal or not, is to be reported to him, even if he's not an authority figure he is looking for informations.
The Librarian (Alfred Wentzel) asks what happened at arrivals security checkpoint, and worryingly asks if that is a leg...
Luna doesn't see what's the big deal with the bloodied axe guy, he was probably a poor worker looking for her to make a claim. I theorize how he could be a stowaway in need of medical care, or someone pulling a sick prank. She states that he could have been someone working at hydroponics given the axe, I inquire whether it was a gardening hatchet or a fire axe, and tell her about the fireaxe missing from the bridge, and that's strange for a hypothetical injured stowaway to look for a melee weapon deep into such a secure area. We conclude that he'll get hungry sooner or later and show up, and that Security will sort it out.
Terrence over the radio tells us to find a hiding spot and a hefty object, but cannot say us why. People start doubting him and he states that he might not seem trustworthy, but we have to do as he says.
I keep replacing any broken light I find, trudging along barely lit claustrophobic maintenance tunnels and main hallways alike. I'm on my way to check more lights at arrivals, when I see a bunch of people and find out why security was called at the checkpoint: there's blood everywhere and a dismembered leg on the floor. The missing axe was found at least and brought to the Detective's office.
Shortly after, all the radios across the station start crackling, letting us hear for few moments the sound of someone breathing rather heavily. As radios start working again, Terrence urges security to arm themselves.
The Detective on the radio informs us that the axe disappeared again, and that the blood on it was unmatchable to anyone.
Terrence is being slandered as 'paranoia instigator' more than paranormal investigator, but Alfred stands by him by publishing on the newsfeed the picture of the mysterious carnage. The QM Damian Ibblestein just joined in time to read it.
I happen once again in front of the Law Office, this time with Nate and Matthew in front of it, and we see the axe in there. The Solicitor is nowhere to be found, and Nate goes off to look for her, when we hear Terrence again at the radio urging us to save ourselves, that it might be too late for him, but that we can still hide. As people inquire what's going on, he still states that he can't tell us, but that it's not good.
I'm walking in front of the cafeteria and I see its door jammed and the CMO breaking a window with a crowbar trying to get in. Terrence is inside, apparently talking to someone. People are gathering in front of the place, he tells us that we're not safe, and we hear a strange, undefined lament. CE inquires as to why CMO broke the window, he said that he saw something in there with Terrence.
Then, sudden lack of pressure. We hear some unholy indecipherable whispering. Something turned on panic syphoning in the Maltese Falcon, whoever has internals ready goes in to check the air alarms, and we hear the voice again, this time clearly saying 'C-can't b-breathe!'.
Terrence yells at us to get away. The whispers become unintelligible again, but as he starts drawing some runes on the floor the voice roars its displeasure at them, and an electrical storm hits the area (by mere coincidence, but still awesome).
After the commotion dies down, I go back to light replacement duty, and find a recorder on the floor in front of dorms main door. As I go check the rest of the dorms, I find Luna lying down in the holodeck beach, and run up to her to shake her up, thinking she passed out, but she was just relaxing. Evidently the tension was getting to me.
Medbay out of power, we're sent to check APCs. The voice now is speaking over the radio, saying 'i-it h-hurts', the CE asks him to report his location and Terrence warns us to not go there in case he tells us. The Solicitor complains that he is keeping us from helping some poor man.
And at this point I sort of messed up, because I've seen some purple graffiti (it was saying 'SHIED', with another 'I' over the 'H') near the tool storage and didn't warn anyone, because I thought everybody knew about them but me.
I keep seeing all over the station Terrence's circles of teal runes with red candles in the middle. My character at that point isn't doubting him, especially after what happened in the bar, but is still strongly hoping for a logical explanation. I take care to not step on any rune as a form of respect (boy, was I wrong. The circles were meant for us to go inside to be protected). I'm looking for Terrence to inquire about the circles, but he keeps darting all over the place, understandably busy.
I was also tempted to send him a message on the PDA, but I figured out that it was probably better to not take time away from him just to chat with me when we were both supposed to be doing our jobs.
We get another warning about the Law Office, not sure about what, but seems to be only about temperature.
The HoS orders to clean more 'artwork', and we suddenly hear at the radio the voice scream 'GIVE IT BACK' (and an hilarious double 'RETUUURN THE SLAAAB' OOC message). At this point we know that Matthew is being targeted by the entity, since the CMO is following his sensors.
The Captain (Jay Wright) calls someone to check some weird stuff at port primary hallway, and I realize he was likely talking about those purple graffiti
Medbay is out of power again, with doors strangely welded shut. Me and Nate go check what's going on.
The Captain decries over the radio loss of power in his office, shortly later of air, then screams for help; he is welded in, with the voice repeating 'IT HURTS..'; people bust in, Matthew misfires on Terrence, but nothing of consequence happens.
The Solicitor retires for the night in her room in the dorms.
I'm still wandering along maintenance corridors, muttering stuff to myself, and I decide to check the Chapel, where I find Alfred moving around some coffins to enter the Chaplain's Office, but don't inquire what he is up to.
CMO warns us that the figure he had seen in the bar is now in the main hall with a welding torch. CE remarks that that ain't no ghost, ghosts wouldn't be needing a welder. Chris is saying something about sensors over the radio. I casually overhear the Captain and Detective talking about hearing whispers about killing. I'm back at engineering and see Travis by the SMES room, with a vacant, braindead stare.
Atmos alert in medbay; CMO said he felt like a wall of air, and hear the voice saying 'BURN' and 'MAIM'.
Me and Nate go check, there's already some grouped up. Cryo has been smashed up, it's too cold to approach even with a spacesuit on. The Detective grimly states 'It's here, somewhere'.
Right when we were fixing the room, I hear the voice whisper me to
kill them.
I say I can hear something, and indeed there's more unintelligible whispers, followed by a very clear one, 'PAIN', coinciding with me feeling very sick all of a sudden. People all around me keep working unaware, Chris telling the Detective to holster his gun, Nate bringing in a heater. I babble if anybody else can hear these whispers, and I hear 'K-kill the man in the c-coat'. CE tells me he hears nothing. The pain's concentrating on the head, getting worse, with the entity urging me on to kill, to hit them, to make them feel his pain.. suddenly filling me with rage. I resist it as best as I can, the heater turns off by itself, Nate asks me if I'm okay, at that point I'm hyperventilating and clutching my head in my hands, I beg them to tell me they just hear him, and CE tells me to take a break.
I run off to the Chapel, crash down on one of the seats, remove my helmet and turn on my internals for a while to try to feel better. The whispers aren't gone, so I start whispering him back that I can't and pass out from exhaustion. There is no command to lie down that I know of, so I just used 'Sleep'.. and I guess that with the snoring it looked more corny than anything, but I had no other way to show my character collapsing.
I come back to my senses and the pain has turned into pure agony, and the axe just appears on the seat next to mine.
'K-kill the two d-d-detectives... m-make t-them f-f-feel my p-pain''...W-why me'
'Y-y-yyou w-w-were l-l-like m-m-me...'(During this, something's going down somewhere else in the station, the QM apparently was spotted trying to kill the Librarian and is calling for help at the radio.)
'..the detective did you this?'
'N-no.. he doesn't u-understand... m-m-make him understand... I still c-c-can't b-b-breathe...''The runes, the runes hurt you?'
'R-r-remove t-t-them... k-k-kill... r-r-remove.... r-r-reveng-ge... y-y-yes... s-s-symbol i-i-is pow-w-wer..'At that point I asked over adminhelp to be extra-sure I was meant to attack people, and found out I was allowed but not forced to, it still was up to me if I were to give in to the entity or not.
Now I'm the kind of player in for the roleplaying and the story-building, not for the murders; but giving in to the entity requests was the thing that I suppose made most sense for my character, given the choices he made and how he was empathizing and buying into the entity's insane logic, or maybe simply getting possessed.
'H-h-help m-m-me...''You need help. I'll heed your call, I'll help you. I'll set things right.'
I put my helmet back on, pick up the axe and start lurching towards the exit on the right. As I opened the door, Terrence was right there chatting with Nate,
with his back turned to me.
I originally planned to be way more subtle, prowl the corridors in a stupor to erase the runes before looking for the detectives, but I ended up being as subtle as fireworks because one of my targets happened to be right there.
I also panicked because I never even held up a fireaxe in my hands before and had no idea they were too large for backpacks, and I guess that people seeing me carrying that thing around would have questioned me (not that it would have been such a big deal, but still).
Thus I had about two seconds to make up my mind. No way I could let such an occasion go to waste. I had to hit him before he ran off somewhere else.
The voice prompts me with an imperious 'KILL RAILBY'. I slash Terrence right in the chest, bellowing 'YOU ARE HURTING HIM'.
Nate stuns me with his gloves, as I stand back up Terrence buys some distance and throws a banana peel, but ends up only hitting me instead of disabling me. The entity can be heard by everyone saying 'PAIN'. Nate manages to disarm me (which was for the best since I was really worried about the damage output of the thing), and I beat him down, but he keeps standing up.
And that's the time of my second (and major) screw-up of the game: actually killing Nate.
I was never meant to kill him, or to kill anyone for that matter, I only wanted to wreak havoc and at most knock unconscious whoever was between me and the detectives. I never attacked anyone before, and I had no idea how hard to hit; I regret my mistake immensely.
Terrence has picked up the axe and hit me in the chest and the head a few times, I catch up and manage to down him, and start kicking him, all the while the entity whispering me to KILL and MAIM. I scream in the general radio 'YOU ARE ALL GUILTY', the voice whispers me something I absolutely didn't understand and a "HE DESERVES WORSE..."
Terrence manages to get away, Matthew has run to help him.
I whip out my crowbar from the tool belt and hit Matthew a few times. I'm careening down the main hallway pursuing the two detectives, striking out at whatever I can find. I smash some floor tiles (let's pretend that was intentional), even hit a rune, with the entity punctuating each of our actions uttering 'PAIN'.
I even wanted to perform emotes with /me for flavor, like 'is foaming at the mouth', which I eloquently summed up with a GRAAAH, since I was finding damn impossible to roleplay while fighting.
Matthew shoots me thrice with his revolver, missing me only once, and even manages to disarm me and hit me with my own crowbar, which then threw at me. I'm upon Terrence again, punching him as I can, with Matthew meleeing me with his revolver. He shoots me once again, but my spacesuit softens the blow, distracting me long enough for Terrence to cleave me with the axe and end me for good.
The detectives recover and starts processing the scene.
As a ghost, I found out that Owen Bunten (an assistant) was killed by the QM, which I had no idea was obliging the entity whispers as well. He was in prison for having attacked someone else, and suicided. The Captain was dead too from at least a hour, killed by an accident with a teleporter.
The CE was mortally wounded (no idea how/why) at some point, and the cryo to stabilize and heal him was bust, so he died and had to be cloned.
The crew is considerably thinned. Not counting the now braindead characters of those that had to log out (Travis, Alfred, Luna): the few remaining alive are Terrence, CE, Matthew, Chris, and CMO.
The tension between the Chris and Terrence are at an all time high, with only Matthew to mediate and remind everybody to not blame each other.
They get back to the chapel and to try to recover Nate's body, and find the entity in a bloodied spacesuit (nicknamed at some point Spaceman, the actual Welder of this round) standing right there.
Then I missed something because sadly I had to go afk, but when I was back they were inside the chapel and the Spaceman corpse was right outside of the windows.
Besides the usual whisperings, some knocking can be heard.. knocking against wood. Wood like that of the coffins.
Tension escalates within the group, which is deciding who is going to EVA to get a suit to go outside to retrieve the corpse, and while they're still discussing the Spaceman pops out of a casket and axes the CE (who fortunately survives); Chris manages to hit him with a shotgun blast right to the chest.
The Spaceman reappears in chem lab while CMO is fabricating a holy water grenade, and murders him in the dense steam produced by his creation. Matthew from the medical lobby (IIRC) shots him with the shotgun till he runs out of shells, then throws the shotgun itself. Then I didn't see it directly, but I was told that the corpse of the CMO started moving on its own.
Terrence manages to get the spacesuit and retrieve the corpse and finally burn it, plausibly putting the Spaceman to rest after a while, who quite touchingly stated that now he could breathe again.
The shuttle gets finally called, with bewildered questions from CentComm, that accessed the security feeds and noticed life signs dropping all over the grid.
The survivors collect any catatonic/offline people, and put the corpses in coffins to bring them to the shuttle.
As they board, a fight breaks since Chris tries to handcuff Terrence, who doesn't take kindly to that. Matthew mediates once again and has to resort to violence, while the CE sobs quietly in his suit.
----
So, I quite enjoyed my sort-of-possession or descent into madness (except for the accidental killing of Nate). I wasn't prepared for it and I wish I had been way more subtle about it. There were so many other options, like asking the CMO to sedate me, or break down in medbay, or even try to team up with the QM.
I must say that as an engineer with a spacesuit and a whole set of tools on me all the time I didn't feel nearly as vulnerable as I felt last time as a surgeon flailing around medbay, but I still steeled myself for the discovery of something gruesome in the dim maintenance tunnels, or even to meet the Spaceman himself; I rather liked that kind of suspense.
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Topic: Space Station 13: Urist McStation (Read 2123386 times)