Splicers - I Am Legion - IC Thread

[Psychie]

While they wait for the signal from Woodstock about what, if anything, might be waiting for them at the surface, Toni looks over at Saint Karen. “Ma’am? You said that this combination of human and machine used to be possible long ago, before the nano-tech plague was unleashed. I’ve never even heard of this before, probably to keep young children from getting crazy ideas in their heads to try it themselves. What can you tell us of this? What exactly are we dealing with here?”

 

[Sherwood]

Karen looks over at Toni and says, “I’ll tell you what I can, but much of what I know is rumor and legend. The humans on this world once had the ability to make artificial limbs to replace damaged or lost limbs and organs. This became rather commonplace as the old humans didn’t turn to bio-technology in the same way we are now forced to. Before this,” she points at the sack with the severed head in it, “the closest thing to a cyborg are the Necro-borgs that the Machine uses as shock troops and terror weapons. This is a far more advanced melding of human tissue and mechanical pieces than has been seen in generations. Once we have gotten to help the wounded waiting for me at the settlement you have got to get information about this to House Artemis. The Warlord needs to know about this.”

 

[Psychie]

Toni nods. “I agree, and as soon as possible we’ll get a meeting with our proof. But first we need to get you to the settlement. Those people need you now.”

She looks over at Chaska and says, “I might be wrong, but you have the look of someone that bit into something sour when you wanted sweet. Did you figure out something in those papers? Or is there a nasty surprise up top waiting for us that Woodstock told you about?”

Purr

 

[Purr]

There is a pair of hastily hand made notes on one of the papers showing the location of the cavern that you are going to with Saint Karen and the party most likely to be used by your squad to get her there.

Eonivar Psychie Sherwood

"Cerberusss!" Chaska snarls a hellishly-dangerous warning.

"Kraken has been compromise!" He hands these notes and shell directly to Toni while indicating that Alex and Jin ought to look and see too.

Trying to calm himself, he adds, "There is code. I can try break later?" He points up to the hole. "Woo'stock say is clear by hole, but there is... maybe-bad nearby. I go see."

Chaska fades from sight as he activates his Stealth Field and stealthily ascends to see what what Woidstock has discovered.

"Cerberus," he asks, "Only five Chaska know can compromise Kraken. He lists the five (see O.C.C. please)." The young Deliveryman sounds worried, a rare emotion from someone like him.

"After Haven, what we do about compromise? Kraken in danger!"

 

[Sherwood]

Axel lets out an angry snort. “Well, that would explain how those assholes back there knew where to find us. But I have to wonder, who would sell us out like this? And to whom? Is this another House that we’re dealing with? Or are we facing some infiltration by the Machine?”

Karen looks troubled. “It sounded like they were trying to capture me and not just kill us all, so that makes me think it was another House making that attempt. It might be possible that they didn’t know that one or more of their number was compromised by NEXUS.”

From his position at the top of the hole, Chaska can see that the air is thick with smoke, but here it is not so bad that it interferes with vision, and your Host Armor is successfully filtering the air so you don’t have any trouble breathing. Looking off in the not too distant landscape you can see a large plume of grey smoke rising up into the sky. It is clearly a sizable forest fire that is raging a few miles away, and even from this distance you can see the orange glow of the flames.

 

[Psychie]

Eonivar Psychie Sherwood

"Cerberusss!" Chaska snarls a hellishly-dangerous warning.

"Kraken has been compromise!" He hands these notes and shell directly to Toni while indicating that Alex and Jin ought to look and see too.

Trying to calm himself, he adds, "There is code. I can try break later?" He points up to the hole. "Woo'stock say is clear by hole, but there is... maybe-bad nearby. I go see."

Chaska fades from sight as he activates his Stealth Field and stealthily ascends to see what what Woidstock has discovered.

"Cerberus," he asks, "Only five Chaska know can compromise Kraken. He lists the five (see O.C.C. please)." The young Deliveryman sounds worried, a rare emotion from someone like him.

"After Haven, what we do about compromise? Kraken in danger!"

Toni thinks about the information in that map and tries to see if she can come up with a similar list of suspects that could have both the information and the ability to send out messages.

In either case she says, “I think that we need to take this info along with the severed head to the Warlord. If what we are suspecting is true, we’ll need to be careful and approach this within caution. Making an unfounded accusation against a dedicated soldier could ruin the wrong man’s career, not to mention our own skins. And the possibility of other cyborgs must be brought to the attention of House Artemis.”

OOC making my own Intelligence roll at a 61% to see if my line of thought matches Chaska’s. I’ll also spend an Action Point.

Edit: I think I made it with that roll! Didn’t need the Action Point, but if I hadn’t declared it before you know I world have rolled crappy.

 

[Sherwood]

After a moment of reflection, Toni agrees with the five names that Chaska came up with as the only ones you can think as having the knowledge and ability to send messages out.

Psychie and Eonivar please give me a Perception roll.

 

[Psychie]

Perception roll off +7

lol I made up for my low Intelligence roll with a low one for Perception. Total of a 9.

 

[Eonivar]

Jin had been listening to the situation while she watched down the tunnel where they came, crouched and in her stealth field, heat cannon at the ready.

Perception Roll 1D20+8 = 4+8 = 12

 

[Sherwood]

Eonivar

As you discuss options on what to do, Jin's focus on your backtrail helps her to notice that there is a bit of noise echoing down the tunnel, signaling that there is something coming down the tunnel from behind you, approaching rapidly. A closer look shows that there are dozens of small points of light down the passage.

 

[Eonivar]

Jin's breath caught...and then she yelled through the Bio-comms.

"MULTIPLE CONTACTS COMING UP THE TUNNEL WHERE WE CAME FROM....DOZENS OF SMALL POINTS OF LIGHT COMING OUR WAY. WE NEED TO MOVE!"

She stood up and prepared to move, watching the targets coming up the tunnel passage.

 

[Psychie]

Toni lets out a few choice curse words and says, “Everyone up the tunnel! Now! Go go go! I’ll cover the rear! Axel, get the Saint out of here!”

 

[Sherwood]

Axel doesn't waste any time and grabs Karen under her arms and jets up the tunnel towards the surface. As Toni is waiting for Jin to go up next, you can start to see that you are facing off against a whole bunch of Skitter Pods, giant rat-like robots that are large enough to ride (at least for a Technojacker. For anyone else it would be a very bad idea.) By themselves, a Skitter Pod is not a serious threat to you, but you are looking at forty or more of the robots running down the passage towards you.

it doesn't take long for Axel and Karen to get clear, then Jin heads up, leaving Toni to come up last. Psychie Go ahead and roll the damage of your explosive to see if you are successful in collapsing the tunnel.

 

[Psychie]

Rolling for the damage from the Mig. 1d8x10 MD.

20 MD to a 12 foot area.

 

[Sherwood]

The blast of the Mig explosive is not normally so intense, but this one goes off in a tight, confined area shaking dirt and debris down into the bottom of the sewer line. At the moment there is too much dust in the air to see if the passage up to the surface is only partially or completely blocked, but sticking around to see the full results might not be a good idea.

Now that everyone is up on the surface, everyone is able to see the inferno off in the distance. According to your maps, it appears to be in between you and Haven so you will have to either go around it through the fire to get to your destination.

What do you do?

Eonivar Purr Psychie

 

[Psychie]

Toni looks at the flames and sets out at a run towards them. As she moves, she asks, “Is there anyone else besides me that has heat resistant armor? I’m thinking that the fastest route to get us clear is to bolt through the flames, but that will only work if everyone can survive the temperatures in there. Otherwise we have to go around.”

 

[Eonivar]

Jin was scanning the area around them crouched with her stealth field still on.

"My host armor is heat resistant."

 

[Sherwood]

Axel sets off behind Toni, saying, "Are you serious? Even with heat resistance, we're still going to be a bit cooked going through there, and that is even assuming that everyone's amor has that upgrade to it. If you are sure, you can count on me to have your back. Chaska? What about you and Woodstock? Are we diving from the frying pan into the fire, or are we going around? I guess that Woodstock can fly high enough over the fire to avoid getting hurt, right?"

Karen says, "So long as we are not in the flames for too long, I can handle the extremes of temperature. I just can't linger there for too long before getting burned."

Purr

 

[Sherwood]

Moving out, it doesn’t take long to get closer to the flames. They appear to already be dying down thanks to the heavy moisture in the foliage, but it’s still very hot. If you still plan on racing through them, it won’t take you much time before you get clear of the worst of the fires.

Getting closer does show you some disturbing things. Even though the smoke and dwindling flames you can see that there has been a massive firefight that ranged all over the area. Tracks show that there were several hundred to upwards of a thousand different combatants that were trading blows here using a variety of rail guns, lasers and missiles on each other. The more disturbing thing about that is that you don’t see any remains of the combatants. It is as if all this destruction was done by a ghost because in past fights with the Machine you would see the broken remains of destroyed robots and the remains of the dead Resistance fighters scattered across the ground, especially when dealing with a fight that was this big. It seems that the victor of the fight gathered up the remnants of the fallen.

The final item that strikes home with you is that along with the familiar tracks of the various robot combatants there is a set of footprints that are at least twenty feet wide and made by something on the order of several hundred tons, making it the largest vehicle ever created by either side of this war. And considering that it isn’t here would suggest that it was on the winning side of the fight.

Haven is nearby and it’s only a few miles away from here. It should only take a few minutes to get there. Perhaps the residents will have some answers for you.

Axel looks at the remains of the battlefield with an expression of wonder and says, “Whatever did this is not something I’ve ever heard of before. I hope that it’s not a new weapon of the Machine that we’ll have to deal with.”

 

[Purr]

Chaska immediately goes to work. He assumes nothing. Instead, he wants facts to tell the story. The Deliveryman examines the tracks, debris, blast marks, shell casings (if any), and all battle-related evidence to give him a true picture besides the ringing in his head that keeps asking him, "Is this house versus house? A great Splicer battle?"

"Toni." Chaska moves into the battlefield. If we go through this, I counter-track and help lose enemy behind us. You say yes?"

Chaska is trying to determine, at minimum, the following:
1. Are the tracks leading towards Haven?
2. Who were the combatants?
3. Are there any survivors? Barring that, are there any parts of human corpses?
4. Are there any items left behind?
5. Is there any metal whatsoever (this is, as always, to be noted and avoided)?

As he searches, Chaska wishes the team had the recording devices the scientists on the Kraken mentioned.

 

[Sherwood]

Chaska immediately goes to work. He assumes nothing. Instead, he wants facts to tell the story. The Deliveryman examines the tracks, debris, blast marks, shell casings (if any), and all battle-related evidence to give him a true picture besides the ringing in his head that keeps asking him, "Is this house versus house? A great Splicer battle?"

"Toni." Chaska moves into the battlefield. If we go through this, I counter-track and help lose enemy behind us. You say yes?"

Chaska is trying to determine, at minimum, the following:
1. Are the tracks leading towards Haven?
2. Who were the combatants?
3. Are there any survivors? Barring that, are there any parts of human corpses?
4. Are there any items left behind?
5. Is there any metal whatsoever (this is, as always, to be noted and avoided)?

As he searches, Chaska wishes the team had the recording devices the scientists on the Kraken mentioned.

1. Chaska can see right off that there are a bunch of tracks numbering in the hundreds heading towards Haven; a mix of different robot styles, but that huge set of prints veer off slightly.
2. Splicer weapons have their own signature to them, a tell-tale chemical trace and scent that is not present here. Your initial examination suggests that this was robot versus robot.
3-5. There is no blood that you can see, no human body parts, and it even takes a bit of effort to find metal bits, and the largest one you come across is no bigger than your hand. Everything else has been gathered up.

 

[Purr]

Eonivar Psychie Sherwood
"Toni." Chaska indicates his squad leader but motions to include everyone. "Is robot versus robot. No humans. Some head toward Haven," he points towards one section of tracks, "but not Big-Big." He tries to show the tracks of the largest tracked robot and how they're not quite headed toward Haven.

"Need speed now. We zoom-zoom through fire to Haven?"

 

[Eonivar]

Jin patrols and watches out around the parimeter of the team while Chaska looks over the battlefield, looking out and around for any possible surveillance, scouts, or anything left over from the robots or another Splicer that could be monitoring the area. Jin listens to Chaska's talk.

"Robots fighting each other?"

Sherwood
OOC Jin is going to make a Machine Lore roll to see if they know anything about the Robots fighting themselves.

Jin's Machine Lore skill is 62% = Jin rolled a 34%

 

[Psychie]

Toni wasn’t sure as to what to expect, but this was not on her list. “We need to get to Haven as fast as possible before it’s too late. Saint Karen, I hate to have to do this to you, but we have to fly to get the best speed possible. We’ll fly low to avoid detection, and I promise not to drop you. Chaska, take point. Jin, watch our six. I’ll carry Karen, and Axel, stick close to us. If anyone spots something, give a shout out. Let’s move!”

 

[Sherwood]

Jin patrols and watches out around the parimeter of the team while Chaska looks over the battlefield, looking out and around for any possible surveillance, scouts, or anything left over from the robots or another Splicer that could be monitoring the area. Jin listens to Chaska's talk.

"Robots fighting each other?"

Sherwood
OOC Jin is going to make a Machine Lore roll to see if they know anything about the Robots fighting themselves.

Jin's Machine Lore skill is 62% = Jin rolled a 34%

At this time, Jin has not ever heard of robots fighting one another unless one of them is being controlled by a techno-jacker. You have heard that NEXUS has suffered from what is basically split personality disorder, giving it something like seven different and distinct personalities, so perhaps it is possible that there is some infighting between the different heads of this hydra.