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Monday, October 11, 2010

Mutants of Marnharnna Pts. 08/09-

Descent into the Ancient architecture's lower level turned out, in fact, to be the highest floor of a tower which had snapped off, and plunged top-first into the karst topography of the area, while the rest of the tower had its foundation buckle under liquefaction. This all suggested a seismic event in the dim past had been the culprit, but I'm not telling.

Opening the 'hatch to the roof', now in the floor of the lowest level, caused Raylyss and Osyl to be sucked down into the grotto beneath them.

While that was transpiring, NPC'd Zalder was teaching Syl (the eldest of the three girls) some basic swordplay toward making her more capable of helping in the defence of her younger siblings.

Also at the same time, Phlavius was battling a Half-Abbekqorru Bone Shaman, winning the melee against his foe, and ultimately discorporating his Shadowform, and collecting the thing's Shadow Bloodstone.

Raylyss found a device that Osyl was guided to by Lady Arctise, and he brought it up to a watery outcropping. Phlavius and Osyl then each began pumping in a steady supply of their respective Elemental Blood/DP. While that was occurring, Raylyss noticed a sound coming from the trunk containing the two large eggs. He witnessed the creature's attempts to break the now leathery shell, and decided to pump four DP into the chick.

I had four days transpire as he motionlessly crouched over the egg and aligned the 'chick' to himself. During this time, both Fire and Frost still heeded their Elemental Leader's and pumped in a total of 120 DP. This device was some sort of Elemental-tech Cooling/Heating engine, and their cyclical generation of hot and cold air created over this period, with them outside in the storm for the better part of those four days. When they had reached that point, they disengaged and the F6 tornado within the eye of the Cat 5 land-generated hurricane, sucked the engine up into storm and began moving away to the NW -- where both the Vrun army had marched, as well as the lay of Qajwl's (the Monstrous Being) lair.

The party had eaten and slept, and then they explored nearby ruins partly uncovered in the aftermath. A long, linear mall was explored and found to have been pretty well looted, but there were plenty of black-slime zombies (shamblers) and neo-zombies (runners) to deal with. To their initial surprise, robotic gunners were apparently charged with Anti-Z duty, entirely ignoring the PCs and the girls.
--A tall, slender, pale creature (Aelbaan) was chased out into the access corridor behind the shops and doubled-back on swift Phlavius before contacting his/her? people and beaming out of there before their eyes.

The PCs were eventually led to the Supervisors, Ancient Sleepers who were awakened in shifts, and had been operating in this fashion as a closed society, largely unaware of the outside world. These folk were surprisingly tolerant of the Aberrants, and a group of Bioscience personnel and three Athletics & Recreation Instructors or Survival Trainers joined the party in exploring the surface.

A find: Bent metal door impervious to virtually anything (many points of Void damage only caused monofractures at the molecular level). That night the entire group dreams of an Ancient or Imperial shuttle pilot's struggle to safely land the vehicle, and its subsequent crash.
--They agreed to investigate further and found it smashed like an accordion. Much Elemental shenanigans transpired in the destruction of one of the Water Nodes in the Grinder, causing a geyser that helped loosen the craft from its earthen casement. Nothing much useful was stripped, but a nice vane on an intake was very crudely fashioned into a buckler of sorts.

The group then was attacked by shadowy half-Abbekqorru and/or anthropomorphised Shadow Wolves. Osyl's revolver (3d6 x 3 damage) again proved itself deadly nearly each shot, especially on the happy head-shot. One creature was felled by her triple-strength Void Blast, and its discorporation was then seemingly caught in a micro-singularity, and quickly began to draw-in local particulate matter and grow into a dirty snowball spinning and hovering in the moist air.
--An explosion caught the gun-crew from the Sleeper Arcology and lightly damaged a PC or two. Making their way up the plateau, the party saw a fully Shadow-fied Qajwl killing Vrun troops. As each one died, a screaming face was added to a black, totemic pole erected in the centre of the ring.

We held it there.