Links[]
| MISSION BRIEF | MISSION START | MISSION DEBRIEF |
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Full Mission can be read in 'bookform' here
Team[]
Mission Summary[]
A simple 'breach and clear' mission for our first outing. Initially launched with 6 teams, but due to unanticipated anti-air, most of them were KIA. Fortunately, the PC team wasn't. Their target was a massive structure made of perfect geometric shapes. Floating dodecahedrons turned out to be space magic turrets that spewed death at the team, and quickly caused the first death of the game: Jim, who died by losing his entire lower half to space magic. Sadly, this is not the last we'll hear of him this mission. The turrets fire once more at Faith, and don't activate again this mission. It is later confirmed by Word of God that Feyri managed to take them out with random laser fire at the central building.
On the way down to the turrets, Faith, the medic for the outing, set a trend that most medics would follow in ER of very quickly earning nicknames for being generally unhelpful in the line of duty. For Faith, the incident was the result of a bad roll from Feyri that resulted in her breaking her foot. Faith, like a good medic, ignored her, got shot at by a turret, and then wandered out into the field of fire. This earned her the title of "Worst Medic Ever", a shame which has stuck with her to this day.
Once inside, they started exploring the area. In addition to the plaques, they found an odd cube that changed into other geometric shapes when pressed in certain ways. Later, Milno finds a small pyramid. When he tries to pick it up, it 'attaches' itself to his hand, floating a few inches away from his palm and generally refusing to obey the laws of physics and go in his pack. It is during this time that the fate of Jim starts to unfold, as Feyri goes out and collects him from his restful sleep outside the building and starts to drag his upper body around with her. Due partially to a few really, really terrible med-rolls, she becomes convinced that Jim is fine and is just sleeping, and refuses to leave him.
It is at this point that they encounter their only other enemy for this mission, a large, diamond shaped piece of metal. As you may have guessed, it behaves rather like the turrets in that it spins up and then spews space magic, burning a massive hole in the area. The team runs away, and then Feyri, who was in another room, dashes towards the sentinel, starts to powerslide ON Jim's corpse the sentinel and opens fire while screaming "We mean no harm", doing serious damage to it. Poor Jim. He's not done yet. With one hand occupies, Milno tries to do something with the pyramid, and discovers that it is a handheld version of whatever the sentinel and the turrets are using. He successfully wings the sentinel while it is trying to fire, resulting in a catastrophic melt down.
After this, they continue exploring, and eventually find an elevator, controlled by a floating cube in the center of it. When activated, it starts to rise towards the ceiling, which has no obvious opening. In panic, Ivan attempted to blow through the ceiling. When this failed, he jumped off the platform and tried to slow himself down with the recoil from his Guass Rifle. Because physics, this didn't do anything to slow his fall, but it did manage to put a new hole... in the center of Jim's chest. And this is the story about how Jim earned a full replacement body in the first mission despite being killed 5 minutes in.
After this fiasco, they get back on and trust the elevator to not squash them into the ceiling and continue their exploration of the building. After exploring a small set of rooms with some oddities in it, they finally get to the last room. In it, they discover a ton of clear boxes with crystals inside of them, and the power source for the building: an odd, weblike structure that almost looks to be made of mist. In order to help Steve get a better look at it, Milno attempts to blow a hole in the roof. Turns out, having a low exo skill and trying to use an exo weapon is a poor idea: instead of making a hole in the ceiling, he turns his arm into hamburger. Another go successfully blows a hole in the roof. Trying to take it, it turns out it also causes hallucinations when humans interact with it. A few hallucinations later, the artifact gets pulled and the entire building shuts down... including the life support on what appears to be thousands of lifepods, the remains of a civilization. Oops.
Casualties[]
- Jim's body
- Milno's
hamburgerarm
Mysteries[]
The building had plaques in it that seemed to picture the history of this planetoid. The first plaque was an image quite similar to an image on the Pioneer satellite, and appears to depict the former location of this planet in a Solar system. The 2nd plaque reads as 'we built civilization here', pointing to the indicated planet from the first plaque. The 3rd plaque shows a device radiating something on the people. Plaque 4 showed the solar system getting obliterated by... something. It isn't clear, though a supernova is suspected. The planet, however, was apparently shielded by something. Plaque 5 gives us an indication of what shielded the planet. Or part of it, anyway. It seems that the device from plaque 3 shielded a structure that looks quite similar to the one the players are currently in, while others were obliterated. Presumably, the recovered power-source is the object that shielded this place from whatever cataclysm befell their civilization.