Bay 12 Games Forum

Ride to the planet surface is long and boring, at least for those who didn't go into stasis. They pass time by playing Tetris, and after that gets boring, watching movies Dave streams to your faceplates on request and chatting. Some share their worries, some their beliefs, others their bloated self-opinion. Eventually stasis pods open and everyone gets fully dressed, checking over their weapons and other equipment couple of times.


The shuttle door opens, and the men and women step out into an alien landscape, almost surprised by lower gravity. The difference isn't unbearable, but it requires you to pay attention to your movement. The landing spot is on what appears to be a section of old road, flat and wide enough for the shuttle. It's surrounded by plants that look like a gnarly and twisted maze made out of roots taller than a man, occasionally sprouting tall spiraling trunks fully covered by thick layers of turquoise "leaves". Each "leaf" looks like long curly ribbon hanging from the trunk or a short branch. Behind the plants you can see a mountain rising to reach the clouds. It's very close and very, very tall. The sky is gray, wholly covered in dark clouds and nobody knows where the sun is. Above the horizon, probably.

From the maze of roots comes a man, dressed warmly and in civilized manner, wearing a large backpack. He takes in your appearance for a moment.

"I take it you are the HMRC then? Welcome to Frone. I'll be your guide to the bunker."

Whoops.

Fastest way is to fall but only direction we can fall here is sideways and that will not work for most of the people and down isn't the way to go.

Who's them?

What the hell happened to my body?

Outrun? By becoming faster than them? By making them slower than us? By preventing them reaching us?

What happened?

I think... being faster is good. Inevitable seems dangerous. Apocalypse is very dangerous underground. Drink... there isn't anything to drink. Minding seems like the only answer, but... hmm. Maybe using mind sight to scout far ahead and subtly sending information about optimal route? Or perhaps I can DRINK stone to generate straight path? Hopefully my odd physiology makes it possible to drink few million times my own volume. If not, then the plan is to scout and direct.

Thank the man and go pop into stasis, when we are finaly out go gear and suit up

Stasis. I except all that meat will be rotting in your lockers when you wake up.

"Hmm, nothing. Time to move on."
Pod.

Speedily podded.

Poddity pod pod

Pod people pod.


Bastien and Stepan are forcibly escorted into stasis by the armory master. I can't kill braindead people just because they are braindead.


Waking up from stasis feels like it happens right after getting in, you don't really even notice subjective weeks spent unconscious. Rushed by Dave's omnipresent voice everybody gets quickly cleaned up, dressed and into the briefing room.

> Our planned trip here got briefly interrupted thanks to vexiles, but here we are finally. Our target is a planet known as Frone, something we call a de-civilized world. After The Altered Wars started this planet lost its connection to rest of mankind. At some point between that and its rediscovery by UWM fleets they bombed themselves back to stone age. Funny what how four millenias worth of progress can completely disappear under 300 years.

> Now, records of the events right before Altered Wars are little spotty at best, but our glorious Magistars believe it was highly likely Altered strand was present here too. Despite of that planet seems to be rather lively which means early Altered were either swiftly defeated or our esteemed Magistars are wrong, which never happens by the way. So you should be able to see why Magistars are interested of this planet. Locals are no help in this matter; at best their oral history tells of demons rising to defeat their arrogant and mighty ancestors. Or so our brave culture exchange students do tell us.

> Anyway. What we are here for is a certain military bunker with still functional defense system, which puts it firmly into top five most interesting places on the planet. Because if its defense turrets still works, then it most likely has functional mainframe and most intact set of data anyone can possibly find on this planet. You will go in, disable defenses, find mainframe or some sort of data storage and download everything you can. Keeping its powersource and computer system functional would be really nice because less expendable people will scour the place more thoroughly after you are done.

> I think I can throw you all in there, those turrets will probably slice number of you for good, don't you agree?

Wait until after the jump or whatever when it's safe to get unpodded, then see what kind of prototypes the research guy has on offer.

Let's see. The R&D guy goes on the back room and returns five minutes later with two boxes. One is small box, about size of fist, with "Biased Red: ICH-AP-FO-Pa16" printed on it. You can buy it for 1 token.
The second box is bigger, around 70cm * 30 cm * 30cm. It has "Jovial Copper: ICH-OT-WE-Ui2316." printed. You can have it for 4 tokens.

"That's all the prototypes I you can buy at the moment. I don't offer any warranty, so don't come to complain if you get yourself hurt."

head into the Cryo sleep thingy so I don't die

It's less about cryo and more about being knocked out in a goo protecting you from massive G-forces, having your lungs filled with same fluid and getting a whole bunch of tubes inserted into your orifices. You know, fun stuff. But all the same, into stasis you go.

Joanna frowns. She'd have to do this properly later though - she didn't want to die to something so stupid after surviving that last mission.

End session, borrow 3 tokens from Filgres, buy Mk.2 and Advanced Kit, head to stasis.

So the legend of undefeated little girl continues.

Tokens are quickly borrowed, suit and advanced kit bought.

Stasis'd

Buy a Mk II suit (4 tokens left.)  Try tapdancing in it!

Filgres smiles at the asker.  "Sure!  You can pay me back after the mission; no problem."

Loan 3 tokens

You buy the suit and try it out. Soft soles of the boots make tapdancing considerably harder. And "soft" here means softer than your new metal bones.

Few tokens change owner and transaction is memorized. Better keep the medic alive so you can collect the tokens back later.

Ask around for nyars box like shenanigans. Go into stasis before I get killed.

Well, there's Vik discussing with a recearch guy about turning someone's severed arm into a remote controlled weaponized multitool. You inject your question in between the banter and thoroughly throw his train of thought off the tracks.

"Ah, well, maybe I could sell some prototypes cheaply before they are finalized and introduced to armory or abandonded. Or build a customized piece."

Podded.

say below:
"I'd like to get the hands remote controled, cameral imbedded in the back of the hand. I want to get it so it can craw about with fingers...maybe even get a hand laser on them or multi tool from it being built into the fingertips so each finger tip is a different tools...so you'd could even get a removable multitool hand in  the future."

"Hmm, hmm, hmm..." The nerd hops up from his chair and starts walking in circles and taps the databad furiously. After couple of minutes he stops. "Chief says you could have that done for three tokens."

((Using that thing for anything other than walking around would be aux roll.))





1 turn until fatal acceleration.

((Yeah, but that's five tokens and Joanna has 9, and the Advanced Kit is 7.))

Joanna made a mental note of the time remaining. She'd only go for [1 turn], she supposed - better safe than sorry.

Her first match up was a little girl? She considered for a moment. While she normally would have a problem with this, it was just a simulation. Ask her to punch a real little girl, heck no, but a virtual one doesn't really matter.

Punch the girl in the face. Because Joanna probably can't reach her gut without bending down.

[Dex: 2+1]
[Girl Dex: 6]
[Girl Str: 1]

You go in for a punch, but the little girl side steps and gives you a nose beep. She takes another step back and shakes her head dismissively.

Test out new feets!  By tap dancing or something.

These make quite good feets for tapdancing, you won't even need those special shoes. And you recon these makes effective kicking weapons should you want to kick certain someone's nuts. Assuming he is indeed he.

Before I spend my tokens on anything, do we have our own version of nyars boxes here? Is that a thing?

Nyars certainly doesn't exist. But perhaps you should ask around? Who knows what services we have here...

"Should be doable."

Go to Rec room and sit down in a meditating pose.

Rec room is still stained with your blood. But there's a plenty of clean space to sit on.

Buy a Grenade and Kinetic amp

Maya then moves to the sports area to punch and kick a punching bag

Kin amp and three fragmentation grenades bought.

There appears to be a decent punching bag you can use to went frustration. It doesn't offer any challenge though.



2 turns.

Eyes. But kingly skull is fine too.

((So with that token, Joanna has 9 tokens.

My current thoughts are to buy an Advanced Kit, and then either save the other tokens and trust the others to protect her (ha) or get someone to loan a token and buy either a civic defender long coat for protection, or a Kinetic Amplifier and let Joanna be able to defend herself easier - although mind she only has a 1/3 chance of +1 to Uncon. Thoughts anyone?))

Hmm. Let's try to just punch many things. Joanna needs to work out some frustration.

((Mk II is more likely to keep you alive.))

Menu fades out and world turns into featureless large gray room. Your first opponent appears to be a little girl.

Go to R and D then

The guy manning R&D kiosk seems to be so focused on his datapad he doesn't even notice you before you knock the window. He listens your request, takes a look at the arm and asks for more details.

"Do you want it on four wheels like a little car? Or do you want it to crawl on floor with its fingers? A.I. or purely remote controlled? Cameras? Microphones? Maybe speakers? Fitting weapons will be hard, but a lower power laser could be added. It also needs protection against adverse atmospheric effects, perhaps some low level armor..."

You can tell he's getting little side tracked here, already drawing plans for weaponized detachable hands.

((I'll put the missing point into medical)) Some people on the ship might notice a rather pale girl sitting on a couch in the rec room fiddling with a screw

Sure.




> Attention all crew. We are leaving to next mission area in [3 turns]. If you aren't in stasis before that then you will be crushed fine sludge against walls by extreme acceleration and somebody has to clean that.

Name: Lalli
Level: 0
Status: Fine
Inventory: Folding Baton.
Abilities: -