First Contact, Theta Style
Jul. 17th, 2004 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night was another session of Lazar's stargate-ish shadake game, wherein we made first contact with a strange, powerful species, and earned their eternal enmity. Just like we usually do.
After an rather unsatisfying two-week vacation at Euro Disney (prognosis: don't drink the water) what was left of Theta Team was returned to duty, assigned to visit an abandoned Kalian base on an otherwise boring world. This mission's cryptic warning from the precogs: "Watch out for ghosts."
As they stepped through the portal -- accompanied by 'Brick', a replacement for their missing man -- they were immediately greeted by what HAD to be a ghost. It was Nuki! Or appeared to be. Guns were pointed, DNA tests were performed, explanations were demanded, and eventually they accepted that it was probably him, regardless of the vanishingly small probability that both of them would arrive at the same world simultaneously, let alone in almost the same place -- travel to a world was through rings, but the ring-pair was specific to the world you were coming from as well as the world you were going to.
Nuki had a story to tell. After accidentally activating the tiny spherical travel device, he'd found himself on a deadly world, a massive multi-layered jungle, where everything tried to kill and/or eat him. He spent a while there, running from danger after danger, before giving up and using the device again.
The next world he found himself on was Egyptian, and after being greeted in ancient Egyptian (they mostly spoke latin) as the god Horus, he was drugged and dumped in a maze to test if he was really the god. It sounded like a thrilling adventure, with golden hieroglyphs, glowing columns of glass plates, lasers powered by base crystals (which he 'ate'), and a strange energy field which knocked him unconscious... but eventually, near death from lack of food and water, he used the device again.
He next arrived in the middle of an avalanche, teleported again into a field of corn covering the entire inside of a large torus world, then again to a sea of ammonia, and finally to this random, unimpressive world where he'd met up with his friends again.
The device was taken away from him and safely stowed. They didn't want him running out on them. Carmine remembered that they'd had some black base gems they'd saved for him, back when they still thought they might find him, and sure enough they still had them on hand. They figured he might need them, since he didn't have any real equipment -- the rest of them had new-model armor, and captured Kalian 'rayguns' that were able to make the trip through the portal intact -- and this world might have hostile 'ghosts' in it. They debated heading back immediately to drop him off, but the energy expended to open a gate was supposed to be enormous, and they didn't expect any serious or organized resistance.
The Kalian base was nearby. Kyrae hotwired the keypad on the elevator, and they descended into it. Nuki spotted a strange device lying in the hall, and picked it up to examine it. It had some buttons on it, which Kyrae pushed, curious to see what would happen, and a beam shot out the side of it and hit Carmine. Apparently, it was a weapon.
Carmine was able to heal herself, and didn't make too big a deal out of it, and they continued on to the nearest room, which also had a keypad. Kyrae hotwired this one as well, and they found themselves in a security room. Kyrae and Brick got to work on the computers, while Nuki and JT guarded the door, and Carmine just stood around watching for anything unusual, and then Nuki saw a ghost.
The ghost was a slightly transparent insectoid THING that reached for the alien gun Nuki was holding with one hand, and for his throat with the other. Nuki panicked and shot it, killing it. JT, standing right there and looking right at it, didn't see a thing -- and neither of them could touch the corpse, although experiments with the raygun showed that everyone's weapons could probably hurt them.
Faced by hostile ghosts -- but not terribly strong ones, apparently, the party decided to keep an eye out (especially Nuki) and continue messing with the computers. The language the computers were in was odd -- none of them recognized it, but they felt compelled to refer to it as 'Terry'. Related to the 'Terry Repair' building where they'd found the nuke, perhaps? At any rate, there was some success accessing the cameras and file system, although the entire base looked deserted, with no signs of life (or death).
But as they prepared to copy all the information onto one hard drive, which they'd then steal, the power went off, trapping them in the room, in the dark. Trapped because they'd closed and locked the door, on the off chance that would keep the ghosts out. Incomprehensible alien language came screeching through hidden speakers.
They weren't trapped for long -- they had plenty of thermite to burn open the door locks. The elevator was missing, though, and in fact seemed to be coming back up, presumably with a load of whatever enemies had shut off their power. The team took cover at the end of the hallway, waiting nervously for whatever was coming to arrive.
What arrived, as only Nuki could see, was a half-dozen ghosts, all carrying ghostly versions of the gun he had. He told everyone quietly what was going on, but the ghosts saw him moving or heard him talking or something, and began to advance on Theta Team's position.
Carmine freaked out, sweating heavily and looking like she was about to collapse (again). In case she was suffering from some weird poison (like last time), JT tried to cast 'purify' on her, but in fact she was just stressed out and crazy, and his 'hostile action' was answered with unfire.
And, hearing gunfire, the ghosts attacked! Despite being outnumbered by invisible opponents, Theta Team wasn't in as bad shape as they might have been -- the enemies didn't have magic, and the Nimune had a highly advanced sense of hearing that let them approximately pinpoint the enemy's location, because they could hear them even if they couldn't see them.
JT summoned a rainstorm (using his rain crystal) to try to get them to become visible, but it went right through them. It turned out to be a pretty good move, though -- apparently, the purpose of the 'environmental' spells was to vastly reduce the cost of casting more spells of the appropriate element, and boy did he have to cast a lot of spells during the battle. Carmine kept charging crazily into battle, and had to be repeatedly encased to prevent her from being a danger to herself and others (and/or shot down by the enemy), Nuki had to be turned invisible to keep him from being slaughtered (not having armor made him extremely vulnerable), and the only reliable way to do damage to the enemy was with magic, which always hit as long as you could target it.
Kyrae was forced into the role of healer (having taken the backup 'heal' crystal), and JT was mostly acting in a support role, but a combination of lucky gunshots, and magic barrages eventually led to a Nimune victory. The last few seconds were tense, as the last enemy charged at them after setting his weapon to overload, but Nuki managed to take him down before he could blow everyone up.
Everyone was out of spell-points except for Carmine, though, who while no longer berzerk was still very uncomfortable and wanted to go back home NOW. JT's psionic danger sense was also screaming bloody murder (if not immediate bloody murder) and he got the impression that there were a LOT more enemies around.
So they blew up the elevator with C4 to give them time to summon a portal, and returned with only what they could scavenge from the computer room, taking special care to have Nuki make sure no one followed them back this time. As they left, an announcement in English came over the speakers, telling them that for their heresy, their race and their masters would be wiped from the face of the multiverse.
Their commander, hearing this during the debreifing, was less than pleased at the outcome of the mission. Especially after the only real bit of tech they'd brought back (the gun) exploded, destroying a lab and killing some scientists.
So it was vacation time, again.
last week | next week
After an rather unsatisfying two-week vacation at Euro Disney (prognosis: don't drink the water) what was left of Theta Team was returned to duty, assigned to visit an abandoned Kalian base on an otherwise boring world. This mission's cryptic warning from the precogs: "Watch out for ghosts."
As they stepped through the portal -- accompanied by 'Brick', a replacement for their missing man -- they were immediately greeted by what HAD to be a ghost. It was Nuki! Or appeared to be. Guns were pointed, DNA tests were performed, explanations were demanded, and eventually they accepted that it was probably him, regardless of the vanishingly small probability that both of them would arrive at the same world simultaneously, let alone in almost the same place -- travel to a world was through rings, but the ring-pair was specific to the world you were coming from as well as the world you were going to.
Nuki had a story to tell. After accidentally activating the tiny spherical travel device, he'd found himself on a deadly world, a massive multi-layered jungle, where everything tried to kill and/or eat him. He spent a while there, running from danger after danger, before giving up and using the device again.
The next world he found himself on was Egyptian, and after being greeted in ancient Egyptian (they mostly spoke latin) as the god Horus, he was drugged and dumped in a maze to test if he was really the god. It sounded like a thrilling adventure, with golden hieroglyphs, glowing columns of glass plates, lasers powered by base crystals (which he 'ate'), and a strange energy field which knocked him unconscious... but eventually, near death from lack of food and water, he used the device again.
He next arrived in the middle of an avalanche, teleported again into a field of corn covering the entire inside of a large torus world, then again to a sea of ammonia, and finally to this random, unimpressive world where he'd met up with his friends again.
The device was taken away from him and safely stowed. They didn't want him running out on them. Carmine remembered that they'd had some black base gems they'd saved for him, back when they still thought they might find him, and sure enough they still had them on hand. They figured he might need them, since he didn't have any real equipment -- the rest of them had new-model armor, and captured Kalian 'rayguns' that were able to make the trip through the portal intact -- and this world might have hostile 'ghosts' in it. They debated heading back immediately to drop him off, but the energy expended to open a gate was supposed to be enormous, and they didn't expect any serious or organized resistance.
The Kalian base was nearby. Kyrae hotwired the keypad on the elevator, and they descended into it. Nuki spotted a strange device lying in the hall, and picked it up to examine it. It had some buttons on it, which Kyrae pushed, curious to see what would happen, and a beam shot out the side of it and hit Carmine. Apparently, it was a weapon.
Carmine was able to heal herself, and didn't make too big a deal out of it, and they continued on to the nearest room, which also had a keypad. Kyrae hotwired this one as well, and they found themselves in a security room. Kyrae and Brick got to work on the computers, while Nuki and JT guarded the door, and Carmine just stood around watching for anything unusual, and then Nuki saw a ghost.
The ghost was a slightly transparent insectoid THING that reached for the alien gun Nuki was holding with one hand, and for his throat with the other. Nuki panicked and shot it, killing it. JT, standing right there and looking right at it, didn't see a thing -- and neither of them could touch the corpse, although experiments with the raygun showed that everyone's weapons could probably hurt them.
Faced by hostile ghosts -- but not terribly strong ones, apparently, the party decided to keep an eye out (especially Nuki) and continue messing with the computers. The language the computers were in was odd -- none of them recognized it, but they felt compelled to refer to it as 'Terry'. Related to the 'Terry Repair' building where they'd found the nuke, perhaps? At any rate, there was some success accessing the cameras and file system, although the entire base looked deserted, with no signs of life (or death).
But as they prepared to copy all the information onto one hard drive, which they'd then steal, the power went off, trapping them in the room, in the dark. Trapped because they'd closed and locked the door, on the off chance that would keep the ghosts out. Incomprehensible alien language came screeching through hidden speakers.
They weren't trapped for long -- they had plenty of thermite to burn open the door locks. The elevator was missing, though, and in fact seemed to be coming back up, presumably with a load of whatever enemies had shut off their power. The team took cover at the end of the hallway, waiting nervously for whatever was coming to arrive.
What arrived, as only Nuki could see, was a half-dozen ghosts, all carrying ghostly versions of the gun he had. He told everyone quietly what was going on, but the ghosts saw him moving or heard him talking or something, and began to advance on Theta Team's position.
Carmine freaked out, sweating heavily and looking like she was about to collapse (again). In case she was suffering from some weird poison (like last time), JT tried to cast 'purify' on her, but in fact she was just stressed out and crazy, and his 'hostile action' was answered with unfire.
And, hearing gunfire, the ghosts attacked! Despite being outnumbered by invisible opponents, Theta Team wasn't in as bad shape as they might have been -- the enemies didn't have magic, and the Nimune had a highly advanced sense of hearing that let them approximately pinpoint the enemy's location, because they could hear them even if they couldn't see them.
JT summoned a rainstorm (using his rain crystal) to try to get them to become visible, but it went right through them. It turned out to be a pretty good move, though -- apparently, the purpose of the 'environmental' spells was to vastly reduce the cost of casting more spells of the appropriate element, and boy did he have to cast a lot of spells during the battle. Carmine kept charging crazily into battle, and had to be repeatedly encased to prevent her from being a danger to herself and others (and/or shot down by the enemy), Nuki had to be turned invisible to keep him from being slaughtered (not having armor made him extremely vulnerable), and the only reliable way to do damage to the enemy was with magic, which always hit as long as you could target it.
Kyrae was forced into the role of healer (having taken the backup 'heal' crystal), and JT was mostly acting in a support role, but a combination of lucky gunshots, and magic barrages eventually led to a Nimune victory. The last few seconds were tense, as the last enemy charged at them after setting his weapon to overload, but Nuki managed to take him down before he could blow everyone up.
Everyone was out of spell-points except for Carmine, though, who while no longer berzerk was still very uncomfortable and wanted to go back home NOW. JT's psionic danger sense was also screaming bloody murder (if not immediate bloody murder) and he got the impression that there were a LOT more enemies around.
So they blew up the elevator with C4 to give them time to summon a portal, and returned with only what they could scavenge from the computer room, taking special care to have Nuki make sure no one followed them back this time. As they left, an announcement in English came over the speakers, telling them that for their heresy, their race and their masters would be wiped from the face of the multiverse.
Their commander, hearing this during the debreifing, was less than pleased at the outcome of the mission. Especially after the only real bit of tech they'd brought back (the gun) exploded, destroying a lab and killing some scientists.
So it was vacation time, again.
last week | next week
