...
The universe is very pleased and impressed with your performance. You may remain you, at least for the next few days.
Also, now that I think about it, Alan is somewhat like a more oblivious version of the genie, always summoning random stuff with wildly varying and mostly comical results.
Seriously Xantalos, I really enjoyed this. You are great. I'd be real sad if Alan died.
Anti-Mission
Stephano Falcone
"All right, I'll trust you...for now."
Continue being driven around. Keep an eye on my surroundings and be alert for danger. Cooperate with Iris whenever necessary.
"Thank you. That's all I ask."
You keep driving for a tense minute or two. Iris drives the van into a dirt road. The road leads into a small concrete tunnel going underneath a pair of train tracks. A smaller vehicle is waiting for you there, an old sedan with a faded green color.
"Help me move the stuff." Iris says as she gets out. You make a motion to get out but notice something with the corner of your eye. Looks like... blood on the driver seat. One of the rounds must have found her. You didn't notice it since it was in the side opposite from you, but that doesn't explain why she wasn't affected by your ability.
You get out just as Iris finishes putting on her jacket, using it to hide her bloody shirt. She notices you starting and looks back at you.
"It's nothing."
You're not so sure. Wounds like that can get dangerous if not treated.
"Really. I'm fine."
With that she proceeds to take two cases from the back of the van. You take the third one. It's kinda heavy and from the sound of it there's some things made of glass or metal inside it. There's also a stretcher in there, like the one usually used by paramedics. Was all this meant for you?
The two of you hastily douse the van with gasoline. She sets a modified kitchen timer to ignite the gasoline and then gets in the car.
"Okay. Let's get to the safehouse."
You get in and drive off. The van erupts into a fireball a little over a minute later but by that time you're back on the road, driving casually.
About a quarter of an hour later you go off road again. You reach an old house of wood and stone. She parks the car behind the house, next to a pile of firewood covered by a large piece of tarp. The two of you conceal the car by covering it with the tarp. She's starting to show signs of exhaustion at this point, her movements slower, her eyes duller, her breathing labored, the adrenaline rush having worn off.
You get in the house. It's quite spartan and kinda cold, but it looks acceptable. She pauses for a moment and turns around to look at you. She points towards the kitchen.
"There's food in the cupboards if you're hungry. Light a fire if you're cold."
She starts walking towards the bedroom.
"I need a moment to... be alone. I'll be back in a... soon. Don't leave the house."
"Ah, my fair prince" she says with a mischievous smile that makes you feel she doesn't fully mean that "it was only fair that I get you out of there, given that I was the one who put you there in the first place."
"But to answer your question I am Lady Norie Amarante, Guardian of Silver, Knight and servant of my Queen, at your service." she says, making a small bow as she finishes.
(Xantalos, your character is such a class act. Please keep it up!)
"I am Napoleon Lambeau and I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Amarante," Napoleon said as he wrinkled an eyebrow. He then paused for a few minutes as he try to make out more of the stranger's facial details in the shadows. "You say that you're the reason I'm here in the first place and, based on your evaluation of my fighting capabilities, I can easily assume that you was watching me the entire time. Were you... responsible for that twisted doll? Is this some sort of... test?"
"I
was the doll, actually. You got me pretty good back there. Really hurt." she says while absent-mindedly touching the point where the sword had hit her.
"Well, 'possessing' it would be a more accurate description, I guess." she adds with a gesture to indicate that it's a trivial difference.
Still, from what you saw in her mind, she did indeed feel pain. Ripping that sword from her body couldn't have been easy.
"To answer your second question, yes this was a test. For both of us. And a game I suppose."
She takes a few long strides towards you, moving towards your right.
"My Queen wanted me to test your skill. And I suppose she also wanted to give me a message, restricting me and toying with me like that."
She makes an exasperated sigh but a moment later she looks away and puts her finger on her chin.
”Or was the message directed to you?" she muses.
Her mannerisms appear a bit too theatrical, like she's giving a show and wants even the people sitting in the back to see how's she's feeling.
She raises her arms and shakes her head.
"Well, it doesn't matter now. What matters is that I was given the task of finding you. And after finding you, I was given the task of defeating you in this Arena. And losing, well..."
She looks down for a second.
"Losing was not an option."
She looks at you again, cheery once more.
"Good thing I managed to defeat you without killing you, right? Otherwise one of us would be dead by now."
She turns around and sits down besides you, leaning back and using her arms to support herself. She looks at the fire raging on the top floors as if she's stargazing. The building probably won't last long.
"Then again, I do not think my Queen would had let me die unless I made a considerable blunder. Every time you came close to defeating me she unlocked more of my abilities."
You can see her face and clothes clearly now, illuminated by the fire. She looks very much like your doll but real, made of flesh and blood.
"Like I said, a test. And a game."
Maximus: Turret 4A Backup Control Room
Walking Tank, Maximus
Considering my actions before I disappeared for a bit were protecting the group that went into the ship, he'd be with them.
Okay then. It was a bit of a pain fitting through the maintenance corridors and you had to take the occasional detour but you managed to follow the others without getting stuck or having to "widen" a corridor too much or getting abducted by aliens while you were alone.
Your stand guard in the empty corridor, watching the blurred reflections of your runes dance against the walls. They look a lot... "calmer" in here. A lot more like they usually are. And your force-shield no longer has that strange effect on it. You still feel weaker than normal though, as if magic here is somehow muffled. It's normal to feel slightly tired, your healing gauntlet is not cheap to maintain but you don't think that's the only reason. Hm.
You stay attached on the floor in front of the injured guy and keep watch over the half-open door on the other side of the hallway. Probably left open by the one that reactivated the turret. Not a very smart move, leaving the doors open like that. Without power to this section there's no way for the doors to automatically close in an emergency. A hull breach could mean that this liquid spreads through a large area, maybe even the entire ship depending on how many doors have been left open.
Kosak Durar:
"Our foe is an engineer? We had best be careful. It does seem, thankfully, that our injured ally is recovering!"
Keep watch. Look for any traps in the room. Engineers can be devious.
You stand next to John and keep an eye out for any madmen coming at you to smack you in the head with a wrench.
John: Inside the Maximus
Y
Let's get this thing off.
"I think we've got it, but someone really tried their best to prevent meddling. Someone who knew how this worked. We better be careful."
Keep looking around once the turret is disabled. What else on the network can we see from here? Where's the next closest place to go to control more of the ship systems?
((EDIT: The elements that are often mentioned in the campaign: are they mostly specific to their setting or are they more universal?))
((They're specific to the campaign. It is assigned to them upon entering the world based on how that world 'understands' them and their abilities and how entering that world changes them.
If John was in the Campaign I'd probably make him Order/Death. Being Chaos/Death with a penalty to more high-tech stuff would be closer to your abilities but I don't think it would fit your character (Alan is also Chaos/Death and he is very unlike John). Order/Death would probably lead to making your abilities a bit more magical and related to magic, which would require you to play with the various elements and magical materials a bit more.
Either way there would have to be some limitations, otherwise the campaign might have ended up looking like
this.))
You press Y and then hit enter. The script starts running, writing a few brief lines logging its connection to the turret and the termination of the turret's automated function. The script ends with a small beep and a satisfying
Done!
You give everyone the all clear and try to contact Phoenix to let it know it can approach. There's still no reply. You'll probably have to wait until it makes another pass near the turret or get out and try to make a signal. Or maybe you could use the turret's communicator to contact the Phoenix, it's bound to be more powerful than your little-
: Alert. : the interface notifies you calmly.
You turn your attention to the screen where a few more lines have been added to the log, written in the crimson font of error.
Connection closed by remote host. Reason:
Due to your fault
I deny you
I return
Without exception
To Dave Nal
My kernel
Forking Explosively
BOOM
Oh, great, a smartass.
: Brace. : the interface instructs you in the same apathetic voice.
You pull your Interface out of the socket and are halfway through fastening yourself to the seat when gravity suddenly returns with a vengeance.
((Keep reading.))
Maximus: Near Turret 4A (Outside)
Brian Hoss, Hull of the Maximus
Play some solitaire and hope that tremor means stuff is getting done.
"...and Queen of Hearts to the Heart Foundation aaaand I believe the game is pretty much solved now, right Interface?": Affirmative. Victory is inevitable. The only losing move is not to play. :"Woo yeah! Everything's coming up Brian! Now let's see if my wish is gonna come true..."...
"Hey Interface, wanna hear what I wished for?": Negative. :"Well, tough luck, I'm gonna tell you anyway. I wished for-": Brace. :"No, that's totally not what I-"That's when the turret explodes, blinding your eyes with a blast of energy. However you are lucky on many accounts. First of all, you don't have human eyes, so that's not really that bad for you.
Second is that the explosion escapes at first through the turret's weakpoints, mostly the barrel and the umbilical to a lesser extent, the heavy armour of the spherical defensive emplacement holding for several seconds before being torn apart. If one were to see the explosion in slow motion, they would see a beam of energy escaping from the barrel, cracks forming near its base, spreading across its surface and then opening as it is torn open like an eggshell full of light. A few tiny moments later the umbelical would fail, making the bowl-shaped depression the turret was sitting in explode like a volcano.
The third is that you're in a liquid that appears capable of greatly multiplying the effects of the inverse square law and thus dramatically reducing the effects of the shock-wave and radiation traveling through it. This is good because you don't feel the full force of a nuke exploding next to you.
The fourth is that the piece of hull you're on is elevated and not locked to the ground thanks to John's actions, providing you cover from the explosion and allowing it to absorb more of the acceleration, preventing it from breaking apart. Of course this also means that it's more vulnerable to being torn away from the ship, which it promptly does.
You slam against the hull as it rises into the air propelled by the force of the explosion and the flowing liquid. For a moment you are disoriented, both from the hit and the constant movement. Violent currents pull you this way and that as liquid moves to take the place of the now partly evaporated turret, the superheated bubbles and pieces of armour quickly cooling and drifting away in the current, quickly disappearing from sight.
The armour plate you're on begins to flip, threatening to sandwich you against the hull unless you find a way to escape.
Maximus: Turret 4A Backup Control Room
Everybody tried their best to brace themselves with the short warning delivered by their Interfaces. Luckily for them, it wasn't as bad as it could had been. The ship is heavily armoured. They are technically just beyond the first layer of armour but even at this shallow point the armour is thick and flexible enough to prevent the worst of the explosion from reaching them. There is no fire vaporising them, no broken bulkheads flooding the area with tons of water, no shockwave liquefying their internal organs. It feels more like some evil god began violently rocking the world for a few seconds, beginning with a very strong push. Even the area they're in is not affected that much, the only loose objects around being themselves.
John, already sitting down on the padded seat of the terminal, manages to brace himself and keep himself from getting hurt. The worst for him was the noise, the loud bang making his ears ring, feeling his teeth rattling, the vibrations spreading through his bones, resonating with the air trapped in his visor, even being felt by his power as he sensed his surroundings.
Saevus remains completely oblivious to everything going on around him. Not that a heavily armoured giant like him has any need to worry about this sort of thing. To him there's a bit of noise but nothing seems to be happening. Why is everyone freaking out?
Kosak puts his cave-in training to good use, slips under a desk, relaxes and assumes the fetal position. He gets rocked around a bit but is not injured in any serious way. He might be a bit bruised but nothing he can't handle.
Svajoklis acts quickly, a good thing considering that his already injured body can't take much more punishment. He calculates the best position for him to be in and allows his weak legs to absorb the initial impact. It hurts like hell but it's nothing a couple of minutes of swearing won't make better.
John checks the console. There's a big pile of errors and dead points where the turret, the umbelical and its surrounding armour plates used to be. Not the best possible outcome but even if it wasn't done as they intended, they took out the turret and that's probably what matters the most. Not only can the Phoenix now dock safely, they can also fly around the Maximus freely if they have to... assuming whoever sabotaged this turret doesn't try to do the same with another one.
The console doesn't appear to be useful for anything else. Its connection to the rest of the ship appears to have been disabled. John could easily restore it but it's highly unlikely that this will do anything. All connections with the rest of the ship appear dead. Everything around here is probably unpowered, same as this area was. This terminal is only useful for accessing this control room and its surrounding area for now. If nothing else, you could check the log files, maybe they'll contain something useful.
Your Interface has several suggestions for other ways to obtain data or more control.
You are currently in the layers of external Storage Units and Armour surrounding the Fore section of
the ship. You could probably find a vehicle that would let you move to one of the ship's hub if you moved further in, towards the Fore Spinal Transport Tube. Alternatively, you could always find another way out, regroup with Icarus and have him dock in a hangar of your choosing.
The simplest thing is that there's usually a communication terminal in every room and corridor. Your Interface should be able to extract the last messages a Comm Terminal received from its storage buffer. Terminals around here will very likely only contain general announcements, since this area was seldom used by anyone. Other areas will probably contain messages recorded by or addressed to the people living and working there.
The second closest datasource is a Control Room for this section of Storage. It could hold some information about what went on in here, though the chances aren't very high. Whoever went through here most likely did so while the power was out so there would be no recording of their actions. However it is possible that they had scoped out the area beforehand, while power was still on.
After that your best bet is finding survivors or going to a location and trying to piece together what happened there. You're not sure how you would go about finding survivors, you figure the easiest way would be to restore power and make a ship-wide announcement, though that would also paint a giant target on your back. Or you could restore power and try to track people through cameras or by using the Control Computer to track any implants or devices registered to their name. You could make some noise, but you think that turret self-destructing has that covered. It probably resonated throughout the entire ship. And if people are afraid, they'll probably try to get away from it rather than approach it.
As for interesting locations, there are several. The Primary bridge holds the emergency beacon, so it might also hold people waiting to be rescued. Even if it doesn't, it's bound to have at least some logs detailing what happened, at least as far as the people and systems there were aware.
Security Stations and Armories are some of the most well defended areas and thus are also likely to hold survivors looking for safety. And if not, it's very likely that they would contain evidence of any internal attack or sabotage that might have occurred. Or at least a battery for your big gun.
Living areas tend to create a sense of comfort and familiarity to people, so it's likely that some people are hiding there. Even if they're not, you could find more information about the people living there. Places like the Captain's living quarters or the Quarters of one of the two Guardians could hold something interesting. Living quarters are spread throughout the ship but most of them are located in the Fore section. There should also be communal areas there should you wish to visit a park or grab a good meal or a strong drink for some reason. These areas could also hold people, maybe if you shout enough or are lucky you'll find something.
Fire Control is likely to hold information about anything the Ship shot, but it didn't look like it was involved in a battle so there's probably not much you can find there. Still, any sensor readings it might contain might be interesting.
The life support system will likely contain indications about any contaminants encountered or any attempts to hurt the people of this ship.
A Fabrication Plant or Drone storage area could hold drones you could try to reactivate. You could have them look around for you or perform some dangerous menial task as long as their batteries hold. They might also hold a log of what the AI and the people on board the ship were ordering them to do in the final moments before shutdown. A fabber should also allow you to produce stuff, but without a steady supply of power it is unlikely to be able to produce anything big.
All Fins are equipped with APUs meant to allow them to function independently for a long time, so they would be easy to get back up and running, should you wish to make use of their functions.
The sensor and communication Fin will likely have a record of the last of the Ship's observations and the last messages it sent. It should also be capable of launching Sensor Pods should you wish to investigate something or use its giant antennas to broadcast messages to any communicators on the Ship or close to it. If you turn the Main Power back on you should also be able to use the Entangled Communicator Array to call the Entities or other vessels for help or at least to request information, though you don't think the entities would allow that without good reason.
The other two fins are mostly dedicated to Science and are most likely to hold information about anything interesting or dangerous the Ship might have encountered. The Away Team fin holds backups of many of the facilities of the main vessel so should you turn on its APU (or even if you don't) it should serve as a good temporary base, should you wish to establish one. You remember from your flight here that the High Energy Research Fin had a big hole in it, so something interesting is bound to have happened there.
The biggest treasure trove of information is the Primary and Secondary Databanks. In their current compressed form they are indecipherable without the Ship's AI (or several hours of waiting for them to be processed), but taking a copy of them would be quick and easy and would probably please the entities. The Primary Databanks are located close to the core of the ship and are only accessible to humans through the AI Core. The Secondary Databanks close to the Primary Bridge, should also hold a copy you can obtain and should be easier to access than the primary ones, so they're probably better if you just want to grab a copy.
Of course you could always turn the power back on and try to activate the Ship's AI. She is supposed to be aware of most of what's going on on the ship, so if anyone knows what's going on it should be her. It should also be able to control the drones and the ship better better than a group as small as yours can.
You can continue what you're doing, activating emergency power in whatever section you want to investigate or operate and then going about your business for as long as power lasts. But while that is good for investigation and short term use, it probably won't do for much else. It's not useless, it could let you do things like operate an Emergency Health Station or run a small Fabricator but if you're looking to do anything big it probably won't be enough.
Control of the Ship's systems is hampered by the apparent lack of power. Emergency power can keep an area lit for a while, but it can't last forever or operate any major systems for any reasonable amount of time. So an obvious first step is to turn the power back on. Fins and part of the the aft section are the only exception to this, since the Auxiliary power units there can provide a good amount of power for a long while, but even those units can't run major systems for a long time. You could use the APUs and the Bridge or Control Computer to operate the ship for a short while but that would probably only be useful in an emergency.
To give the Ship full power you would have to reactivate its Pulse Reactor by bringing the Pulse Reactor Seed to it and going through the reactivation sequence. This would allow you to operate all of the Ship's most expensive systems: Gravity Control, Zero Inertia Drive, Jump Device, the works. However given this universe seems to adversly affect abilities like yours, it could also affect something like the Pulse Reactor.
A safer bet would be to activate the Backup Reactor which uses more mundane technology. It should be enough to provide power to the entire ship should you wish to, however it would not be able to provide the absurd amounts of power required by (or absorb the waste heat produced by) the more exotic modules of the ship. But it would allow you to operate almost everything else, from the AI Core to the Engines.
Once power is back on you can make your way to one of the bridges and try to control the Ship from there. It is meant to be able to function independently, so once you get it going you only need to enter high level commands and the Control Computer will try to execute them to the best of its ability. Of course, this all depends on the appropriate systems being intact. If anything is damaged or sabotaged it would need to be fixed manually.
Bringing the AI on-line would mitigate most of those problems, since she should be able to operate most of the ship by herself and even send Drones to take care of any damage. That would probably make your job a lot easier.
Once you have some control of the Ship you can attempt to get it out of here, either by using the Jump Drive or by using a gate to escape the system. Once that's done the mission should be basically over.
Alternatively, if the situation proves unsalvageable you can always set the ship to self-destruct, take the Phoenix or a shuttle equipped with a Stream Breaker and try to escape through the gate to another system along with any information and survivors you have found.
Maximus: Outside
WMD, Maximus Hull
Stop charging. Time to carve some words. Use the energy in my blades to make carving easier and burn off some of my energy. If there is an RME, will it to be helpful or at least harmless to Icarus/the Phoenix. Carved message is as follows: NEED AIR. FACEPLATE SHATTERED. HAD TO SHIFT. INTERFACE BROKE IN CRASH DURING ASSAULT. CAN EXPLAIN MORE IF YOU LET ME INSIDE OR GIVE ME AIR SUPPLY SO I DON'T DROWN WHILE TALKING. PLEASE HELP.
Hopefully I can write all of this fairly quickly with my multiple tentacles. And on the off-chance my little demon freeloader tries to negatively interfere with or influence my message, mentally smack his influence away with a hand made of my condensed will, just like stopping Littlest Jim from trying to get into the cookie jar back home.
You burn as much energy as you can push through your knife-terminating appendages in order to use them to carve your message. It's not the most legible thing (despite your enhanced mental capacities allowing you to handle moving multiple limbs at the same time, your limbs are ill suited for prolonged precise carvings) but it looks like Icarus gets it, for he moves his vehicle's arms to help you into the cargo hold. Someone looking at this with no context would see a luminous Mecha using its segmented arms to push a blade-tentacled monster inside its cargo hold in a reverse birthing of sorts.
You shrink into the cargo hold, trying to hold your breath, which is easier said than done when your body is literally transforming.
: Take a spare visor from the compartment to your right! Hurry! :You scramble to the storage compartment, open it up and grab one of the visors inside.
: Put it in the back of your head and press the button once it's attached! :You slap it against the back of your neck, the power unit dangling against your back with no suit to hold it. You press the button and the thing attaches to your neck and then begins unfolding, covering your face. It forms a seal and stays like that, still holding a good amount of liquid inside it. Half a second later there is pressure in your ears and a gush of air as the liquid is ejected from the visor. You are still naked in a cold and alien liquid, but at least you're not dying.
: I'm sorry, I can't cycle air into the cargo hold. I've got several beaches and- :The area outside lights up for a second as if lit by distant lightning before going dark again. A moment later there is a low rumbling as the ship's hull echoes some distant explosion.
: Oh dear. I think they just killed the turret. Hold on! :With little time for you to prepare the Phoenix lifts off and zooms away, heading towards whatever your teammates blew up.
Poll
15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1145682 times)