Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SaberToothTiger]

ptw

[Happy Demon]

[Tina Murdoch + Priscilla]

"Oh yeah, rails. As for... housing. Modular systems, with redundancy. Like, 4 floors for each module, so an 8 floor base has double redundancy.
The more... people, the more important it's to ensure functionality.
Your paper said there's a chance of drone malfunction in the Castle itself. Not just during gate activation."

[retromach]

"So, we'll need a system that we can build by hand on the far side to get equipment out of the castles on the far side, so that we can build a base nearby like this one. And, we need every component to fit inside a 3 meter wide cylinder." She agreed. "But I like your hard-wiring solution. It might be possible to take manual control of a drone, and if you could do that with one a smaller construction drone, it could help with building on the far side. So, if you're successful, we'd be very interested."

The smaller ones had the same general shape, but their cargo container was only about the size of a mini fridge.

[Happy Demon]

[Tina Murdoch + Priscilla]

"W-well... my android has integrated tools, and enhanced strength. I set her up for construction and repair.
And I have some... heavier, attachments... in my room. For even more strength."

[retromach]

"Odd hobby. Well, bring it along if you think it'll help, but Akras won't compensate you for loss or damage to personal effects on mission."

[retromach]

August 1st, 2117

The station was busier than usual, with construction crews moving around. Thick tubing on the floor carried makeshift power to construction zones and walled off areas, while floor-drones sprayed a thin mist to gather the dust. Akras was beginning to expand. The news came on to the wall screens between scenes of nature.

"A startling discovery rocks humanity this week as Akras Heavy Industries reports that an alien structure located on Mars can indeed project wormholes to pre-determined destinations, as many archaeologists had speculated. A team of astronauts returned from outside of the Sol system earlier in the week."

The image showed a group of people in combat space suits emerging from a portal in the Castle, with corporate executives smiling and applauding, and Champagne being served.

"The team found a derelict observation post around a binary star system, and were able to explore it. They were able to conclusively prove a connection between Castles and drone malfunctions, and neutralize both our drones, and a group of alien combat drones they encountered within the facility. Unfortunately, the facility was in an unstable orbit, and crashed shortly after the team's return."

Images of drones being shot up and rushers being shot down was played.

"Unfortunately, several of the astronauts were wounded, one critically, Ms. Stella Evenglide. She is expected to make a full recovery.

The image showed Stella being taken off on a stretcher, with a thumbs up from the medical staff.

"As of this news, excitement has dominated Akras' stock prices, with the expectation of broader discoveries drives Akras to the forefront of human space exploration. Akras stock closed at 31 credits per share today."

"In other news, the EEC has agreed to a support program to assist Austria in exchange for the liquidation of important historical sites. Despite numerous requests from the Austrian government, Germany has declined any sort of merger or reconciliation process. The funds are expected to last for the next several years, after which time the budgetary problems seem likely to rise again. Critics sharply condemned the agreement from the left and right, with both claiming that this does little more than kick the problem down the road."

--

POSITION OPENINGS

Search and Recovery

Staff:
Tina Murdoch, Drone Specialist
John Boiy, Archaeologist
Stella Evenglide, Gauss Specialist
Sertan Tarf, Security
John Cross, Support and Security

[GM - Retromach. Includes Combat challenges and Technical challenges. Suitable for drone users.]

Akras seeks engineers and archaeologists to conduct salvage operations on the station lost in the asteroid impact. The gateway is still functional after the collision, and Akras is preparing to send a plasma bomb through the gate to clear hostiles. It is unclear how many hostiles will survive in the area around the portal.

Mission parameters will include securing a perimeter around whatever is left of the gateway, searching for supplies, and establishing a safe facility to assemble a scout ship for mineral exploration of the system.

Mission pay: 3kc per astronaut.


Gate Exploration

Staff:
Danh Loi, Demolitions and Security
Vigil Henderson, Martial Arts
Ricardo de Castillo, Martial Arts
John Christian, Security and Sensors
Wolfram von Steinheil, Archaeologist
Kaito Yoritomo, Gauss Specialist

[GM - Aranya. Includes combat challenges, biology challenges]

While the explosive is being prepared, Akras seeks mercenaries to explore another extrasolar position. Little is known about what to expect on the far side. The team will be expected to scout the area, claim samples and relics from the area, conduct a survey of the facility and, if possible, it's surroundings, and return for further evaluation of the planet's utility to the company.

Mission Pay: 3kc per astronaut

[Please sign up for only one of these two missions each. Specify by mission name.]

[retromach]

Biology Skill Update

With the return of alien samples, characters trained in biology would know approximately the following.

Biology 0/Untrained: The rushers and horror knights are synthetic, and made of something poisonous.

Biology 1: They are silicon-based, and have a vastly different genetic structure to ours, being vastly more different from a human being than a human is from a banana. We share 50% of our DNA with bananas, and 0% with the alien weapons.

Biology 2: They use 12 molecules for their equivalent of DNA, with 500 million instructions, making them vastly more simple than human design. Many of the molecules involved are unstable out of the mix, and scientists do not believe that they could have arisen naturally anywhere. They do not metabolize food or oxygen, instead consuming some form of charge from alien power systems that is not yet fully understood.

[Happy Demon]

[Tina Murdoch + Priscilla]

Tina spends 2.5kc of the 3kc she had left from all of her studies on increasing her skills of Commando, Martial Arts, and Small Arms to rank 1, with Priscilla.
Mostly just learning from instructional videos, which have a mean paywall. She had to order some extra parts too, but they're minor ones.
She replaces a couple of servos and plates, sacrificing strength for flexibility, and sets up programs and macros for having Priscilla do combat maneuvers.
Along with shorting down the hair, because she doesn't want it getting grabbed by the enemy.

1kc spent on Commando rank 1, so she can take cover from any rogue drones that may be around. Put in a structural scanning program, to identify solid cover.
1kc spent on Martial Arts rank 1, so she can defend herself from any of those melee enemies. An overclock protocol is implemented, letting her react quicker when battle mode is activated. But will make her slow down in prolonged combat. Similar effect to fatigue.
0.5kc spent on Small Arms rank 1, so she can fire at and suppress hostiles. The zoom function has another setting, half zoom. Not as intense as that she uses to fix small things, but less disorienting, and thus, suitable for combat. Along with weaker arm servos, that allow slighter movements.

Tina applies for the Search and Recovery position.

[zomara0292]

[Vigil]
Vigil takes some of his free time and does what he does best. Studies, still having not finished his University courses, he takes a few extra ones to help him with a small plan he starts to brew up. Along side that, he actually takes some time off to learn how to fire his gun properly,
finally seeing it's importance. He had not, yet, though, taken Arkas' counsel to heart

"Hey, Ricardo! I have a proposition for you. How about we run our own dojo? If we manage to make enough money and get Arkas' shares high enough, then, we can sell our stock, Make our own Dojo here on Mars, and charge 0.5 credits for self defense classes. It will pay for itself. I even have a name for it! 'Viricardo No Jutsu.'" he spread his hands in front of his face almost as if he were to sell an invisible sign.

Sign up for Gate Exploration

[PaPaj]

Sign up for the Search and Recovery

[Bill Chompski]

[Danh]
Danh promptly signs up for gate exploration, rather be protecting some people gathering shit than worry about bouncing around in zero-Gs past more of those things.
Once he does that, he disappears to his living area to drink, eat, sleep and repeat.

Signed up for Gate Exploration.

[milo christiansen]

Spoiler: Character Sheet: Jon Christian (click to show/hide)

Jon Christian managed to scrimp and save over the years of working as a low tier bodyguard, and finally found a job with some real excitement and better pay to danger ratio. All those weapons classes will finally pay off! Years of looking for threats has given him a solid understanding of basic sensors and survival, which in his new line of work, is sure to prove valuable.

Commando 2
Small Arms 2
Sensors 3

0kc

Christian decides that Gate Exploration sounds fun. Who know what threats will be found on a new planet?

[Insanegame27]

Ricardo signs up for GE with Vigil


"Maybe drop the i in the middle so it's Vircardo?"

[Cynicalwhovian]

Stella will sign up for search and recovery. Better the devil one knows.

[Insanegame27]

Spoiler: Mission Report: Thermopylae (click to show/hide)

Note: Until officially given a name, Thermopylae is a placeholder. It is not entirely accurate, as we were not beaten at the end of the day, but our efforts can be likened to the 300.



[Transcript to come soon]


The operation started the minute we stepped into that portal. It was an experience like no other. We seemed to be tumbling but at the same time we were stabilised by our suis to be... upright? I'm not even sure which way was up, but our suits kept us from tumbling uncontrollably. It kind of felt like we were falling upwards.


The first thing we found was a pineapple frozen solid just floating in the middle of the room. Crewman Sertan immediately expressed interest in eating said pineapple. Recommend sating crewman's desire for pineapple and classes in restraint for Sertan. Crewman Danh stopped Sertan before anything came to *fruition* and before the situation turned *sour*. Crewman Frazz soon revealed that the pineapple was a previous experiment, along with a dozen mice (not recovered, scanners detected 38, possible cloning anomaly or was Frazz off with his numbers?) and an unspecified number of recording instruments (scans revealed 4). A major note to take is that the layout was nearly exactly the same as the Mars complex.


Full initial scanning results displayed below:
 - XV-38 Heavy Combat Drone, Autonomous
 - 12 Type 3 Armed Survey Droids
 - 4 Remote transceiver probes
 - 38 standard lab mice, with electrosensor implants
 - 1 Pineapple
 - 1 Coffee Mug, 'World's Best Daughter', Pink.
 - 1 Akras-Issue Note Tablet.


Of these, the pineapple was located and abandoned in the escape. The coffee mug was located in the same room and the tablet was found immediately after.




First Contact - "Friendly fire, isn't."


The first hostiles we came across were the haywire drones which seem to have their IFF systems all screwed up. Why they didn't target each other, I don't know. Within three minutes from arrival, the light drones had engaged us. Crewmembers Kaito and Vigil each took a hit, Kaito losing suit pressure, Vigil losing blood as well as pressure. Crewman Danh scored the first two 'kills'. I [Crewman Ricardo] noticed Vigil was in need of assistance getting to the autodoc, so I ran out and dragged him back to the 'safety' of Crewman Frazz's medical care. I put safety in inverted commas for a reason, as the good scientist thought that a wad of cotton and duct tape would suffice to treat Vigil when there was a perfectly functioning autodoc there. Recommend crewman Frazz get mental health checks and require him to pass a basic first aid course before he can go on active duty again.


Presuming incorrectly that Vigil was in safe hands (Commendation to Crewman Vigil for operating the autodoc on himself after Frazz's butcher-job), I returned to the firefight to find the hallway filled with gauss-smoke. One kill to Stella. I bag one drone with an arrow, and Sertan downed two.


We had a brief respite as the drones seemed to retreat. During this time, Vigil finished operating the autodoc on himself, Soon after, the linguists (including myself) decoded enough of the alien language to figure out the conveniently placed signs. Vigil declared a desire to head to the crew quarters and ran off (recommend compulsory course in caution for Vigil). We all followed. We were unfortunately unable to locate the door's operating mechanism, and upon declaring no known time limit for the mission, Crewman Frazz demonstrated a complete lack of memory when he declared Vigil still had a bullet in him after he had watched Vigil remove it.


Unable to access the crew quarters, we headed to the control room, where we ran into the heavy combat drone. Darwin seemed to be taking a stab at Frazz as the crewman ascended the ladder, but however fortunate it may be, Frazz was not seriously injured. We split into two groups, a flanking and main force. We were to keep the heavy drone occupied while the flanking team flanked and ultimately gauss it. While we kept it occupied with random bursts of gunfire, Crewman Danh mocked Vigil, insulted Sertan and myself in the same sentence.


The Flanking force soon had the full attention of the drone as it decided that blasts of gunfire that were no threat to it was less of a threat than the flanking force with a gauss gun. As it retargeted, it lit up Kaito with a laser beam, injuring the crewman badly. Vigil and I decided to launch an assault on the drone to take it's attention off the gauss gun. We used the zero-G to torpedo ourselves at it, my blade hitting it hard at the bottom, denting it badly and sending it into an uncontrolled spin where it was a defenceless target for the gauss gun. The resul was messy. In addition to a free lightshow, the drone was utterly annihilated by the gauss.




Respite - "It's quiet..."


Crewman Boiy took scans and concluded that we had about 2 hours before a fatal collision would occur. Vigil was able to patch Kaito's suit up, but declared the injuries below the suit to be out of his ability to fix, and the good scientist lent no hand. The respite we had was short and we quickly split up into two teams to try and find a way back home and stabilise the station's orbit. The engineering team found some kind of relic, which they broke when they tried to move it. Then all hell broke loose.




"Things..." - "Too quiet..."


When the relic broke, some kind of black fluid shot out and formed the image of an armored knight and some ten to twenty creatures, later designated Horror Knight and Rushers, respectively. They were not there to play nice, either. One of the Rushers leapt on top of Stella, clawing for her and quickly breaching the suit. At this point the rest of the team was alerted to the damage done, and Vigil and myself lead the charge to reinforce. Boiy attempted to shoot the one tearing at Stella, but was diverted by another Rusher attacking him. He barely drove his own Rusher off himself. Then Vigil and I arrived, still not knowing what we were in for. The first Rusher I targeted dodged my initial blows, but it wasn't fully expecting me either and was unable to counterattack me. Vigil had it slightly better, managing to drive off the Rusher attacking Stella, but not doing any significant damage to it. We were soon encircled in a half-moon shape around the edge of the room, our combined fire and strikes only just keeping them off us.


Then the Horror Knight began moving towards us with it's sword. I tried to push out, fighting probably five at once as I drew their attention away from where Vigil was trying to evacuate Stella. I wasn't able to kill any, but I was able to occupy their attention and not get injured myself in the process. After Vigil had left with Stella, I pushed off the wall with a heavy bowie knife and a kris - upon reflection I should have been using a kukri or a stiletto, but that's what hindsight is for - and charged the knight. I deflected its sword into the floor where it made a not-insignificant hole. I observed that when the Knight had its focus on me, the Rushers seemed to lose their drive and direction. I theorise (I have no formal training in science but whatever) that the Knight had direct control of them, but when he became distracted he was no longer able to direct them. This may be important in future dealings with the same being.


I closed with the Knight while it had its sword in the floor, driving the point into what seemed to be a chink in the armor. However, I was unable to penetrate it, and with some fancy footwork, weaved my way behind it, out of striking distance. It turned around to face me, and exposed all of its back to my team. Vigil came back, having stabilised Stella, and helped me in occupying its attention.with Vigil and myself at the Knight's 11- and 1- o' clock, and my team at it's 6 o'clock focusing their fire on it and no minions to defend it, it soon fell to gunfire and melee strike. I am not entirely sure what killed it for sure. A bullet did knock the Knight's helmet off and more went into it's head as I stabbed its neck with my Bowie.




Escape - "Just by the skin on our teeth"


Immediately after the knight fell, I went to pick up the helmet as a sample and trophy, but it melted and slipped through my fingers. Having no sample containers on my person, I called for someone to take a sample. Wolfram informed us that the portal was operational, and nobody wanted to stay any longer, especially because the walls of the engineering room had just begun to bleed out at least five times the amount of black fluid the knight and rushers had been made out of. I recovered my gear then helped Sertan with Stella towards the portal.Just before I got to the portal I looked back, and immediately wished I hadn't. Beyond the horde of Rushers stood no less than three more Horror Knights. Luckily, we reached the portal with less than ten meters between us and the last rusher.


-----


I will attach a full audio log as soon as I am able. I apologise for any inaccuracies in my statement, I am no less fallible to bias than the next person. To my immediate recollection, not having reviewed any of the footage, what I outline is correct as humanly possible.

[/size]