As the travellers draw closer to Colonel Rayburn's signal, first Smoke Alarm, then Stanley, and finally Sereth and Trav start to realize that they can make out a shape, through the light-devouring murk.  It's very faint, but also very large: a mottled green-white opalescence in the shape of a low dome, hugging the sea floor.

With the absence of other visible objects for scale, it's hard to determine exactly how big it is -- but it's motionless; there seems little danger of it being alive like the monster that blasted its ranging echo at them.  Passive checks for Rayburn's signal, as Trav ranges from side to side, indicate that it's the source the signal is coming from!

Then, abruptly, the lights of their vehicles are playing right on the thing.  As the headlamps play across it, the surface fluoresces, briefly leaving behind a glowing sheen tinged with pale pastels before it fades back to its normal ghostly illumination.

At one point on the structure's rim, they see a yellow submersible, larger and built to a slightly different design than the ROVER.  Smoke Alarm sees that one section of the sub -- from the midpoint to a quarter of the distance from the tail -- is crumpled like a tin can, and the vessel is rolled to ninety degrees from the vertical, with what looks like a sizable collar of adhesive cement fixing it to the big structure.

Positioned unevenly at other points around the structure are a number of roundish, twisted and puckered growths about an arm-span's across.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:25, Tue 16 June 2015.

Following Traveller's say-so, Smoke Alarm off-switched the engine of her pool-bike, and the woo-woo-woo sound faded burblingly away. Sliding off the seat, she held the handles and began kicking her legs up and down the way they'd show-and-telled her in the pools. With the flippery things on her feet, she made all-speed.

Though curious as a cat about where they were outgoing and what they would eyespy when they got there, the Kang was mission-focused and intent on staying shape-ship and sound in this great pool, where so many things could make her or her friends unalive and lost.

But then she outlooked ahead and eyespied the big green-glowing dome, so big and weird the Kang had no words to describe it and say what it was. It made her unbold just eyespying it, the kind of uncomfortable creepy-crawly feeling she got from the qplotl brain-thing and the octopussies.

Outlooking away, she eyespied something familiar, the pool-car they were outlooking for. 'Outlook that way!' she signalled to her friends, reporting sadly 'The SPOT. It outlooks broke, not shape-ship and sound.'

Over the radio: "Colonel Rayburn, this is Trilby, on submersible bikes. If you can, give us an entry point. Can you hear us? Do you have a functioning airlock?" If they don't, she may have to improvise one.

Trav carefully swims up, her sonic now recalibrated to scan using the wave motion of the surrounding medium, passively, as well as local quanta. It wouldn't give as nearly as good resolution, but it shouldn't make any monsters mad. She found herself wishing she had her old glasses again. She thinks she might reconstruct them - no reason not to reclaim an old piece of her past. She stops for a moment - those glasses the Osgoods were wearing did look familiar. When she gets close, she uses her cables and hook to secure her aqua bike to the structure.

She carefully examines, with her hands, the dome like exterior of the structure, marvelling at the bioluminescence. This was another world, in another dimension. She thought she'd never enjoy visiting another dimension again, but she felt the old thrill coming back.This was dangerous, and amazing. She remembers the last thing Malakai said to her, about being an explorer. That made her heart feel warm, no matter how much the two of them yelled at each other and fought during those 75 years.

She carefully uses the sonic to examine the surface of the structure. "I'll try to get some readings from inside. Let's try to find an airlock or other kind of entrance. Be careful."

When Smoke calls out the SPOT, Trav moves there to conduct her examination. "There it is! Good work Smoke!"

16:36, Today: The Traveller rolled 16 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,5. 2d6+2 Awareness+6Technology+2 Sonic-2 Safety Penalty - Trav scans inside structure/SPOT
This message was last edited by the player at 20:41, Tue 16 June 2015.

"You're here!" comes the answer from Rayburn.

There's a brief exchange of mumble over the comm, and then a new voice comes on.  It's female, aristocratic, nearly textbook Received Pronunciation with just a hint of a clipped Asian edge.

"Traveller," the speaker says.  "Lin Xian speaking.  You will observe that the husk in which we find ourselves retains certain autonomic reflex functions: it is my opinion that the creature was bred and cultivated for post mortem repurposing as a deep-ocean habitat.  Have you noted the circumferential structures?  They are sphincter valves; they may have served as excretory organs during the creature's life, but we have discovered that they retain a cartilaginous structure that can be dilated through direct galvanic stimulation."

Trav's passive scans seem to confirm this: a network of conductive fibers extends around the "sphincters".

"We try to conserve power," Rayburn explains.  "This cadaver here generates a little with a sort of ambient heat exchanger, but it doesn't afford us much more than keeping the farm growing and making air for us.  And we nearly drained the SPOT just getting set up here.  We can spare the juice to let you in, but I'd recommend you all share the trip...."

"Oh, Josh. Hey, baby!" and then, deadpan:

"Joshua Clayburn. Did you ram a sub up a sea monster's ass?"

That's very 5th Traveller - not at all 1st or 2nd.
"Trust me, sweety, we're gonna catch up. I know I sound very different and this is all weird. But we need to get you people out of there and back through the portal. If you can please forward to me a report of what your status is, who is injured, and so on, we need to start making plans for immediate evacuation. We didn't come with heavily charged batteries, but I brought along a few fusion packs, and these bikes work with high grade solenoid batteries and hand cranks. I'm sure we can extend your power a bit. Show us where we can enter. I have here my companions Smoke Alarm, who found you, Ambassador Sereth of Draconia, and Doctor Stanley Newton, who can treat your injured. If you can, please forward a map of the complex, as well as any bionueral characteristics. If this structure is alive, then we want to avoid triggering any responses that can accidentally open or close valves we want to stay a certain way. We need to hurry. We only have hours left before the anomaly closes!"

Trav toggles her com. "Trillby remote team back to Trilly, Longhorn and Greyhound. Osghoods, Speizo, do you copy? We've made contact with Colonel Rayburns team. Repeat, we've made contact."

A living base. I wonder who built it?
This message was last edited by the player at 15:21, Wed 17 June 2015.

"Lady, weren't you the one who was always saying to me, any port in a storm?"

With a little logistical negotiation, Rayburn and his crew direct Trav to an entrance and trigger the cycle.  True to Lin's description, there's an inner valve that opens only after purging the admitted seawater out through a set of gill-like membranes.  The inner surfaces remind Trav, somewhat, of the design and workings of a Zygon vessel, although this clearly isn't that, and the walls, floor and other structures are dry but not desiccated, and more rigid than fleshy.

They're greeted, as the airlock opens, by Rayburn himself and a much younger, Caucasian man.  Both are in dark UNIT fatigues that have seen better days.  But after Rayburn takes a moment to pick Trav out from the new arrivals, his face splits in a grin.  "Damn, girl!" he exclaims.  "They pour you into that pressure suit?  If the missus was here, I'd have some explainin' to do."

He sighs.  "If only I was back in my mis-spent youth.  C'mon.  This is Reed; we'll take you up to the nerve center."

'How you do!' Smoke Alarm called excitedly down the line as Traveller introduced her. She didn't have any knowhow of what Rayburn and Lin Xian were telling, but guessed mayhaps she wouldn't want to knowhow they would make entrances into the thing.

Slowing, 'waring any more pool-cleaners that might swimming up on them, she outlooked all around, knowing she had to look up and down as well as left and right and forward and backward. Eyepying no pool-cleaners or others, she paddled onward to the glowing under-pool tower-thing.

Gaining entry, Smoke Alarm outlooked all around the weird entryway. It all outlooked like something found in an unalive dog, and Smoke Alarm was now sure she didn't want to knowhow all this worked.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:11, Sat 20 June 2015.

For a moment, Trav feels like she's 250 again. "Oh, Joshie!" She leaps up and gives him a hug. For a few seconds, she's transported back to long ago, when everything was right and she adventured amidst the stars.

But she's now the 5th Traveller. She looks down at herself, as she pulls off the mask. "Well, yeah. This isn't that bad,. When the change came, someone hit the hot blonde switch. Although some stupid goof had the titty slider locked to the butt one, all the way down to zero. All in all, not bad. Been wearing this for, oh, 150 years now. Kinda tough." She smirks. The last time Rayburn saw her, it was as the Marshall, scowling from a Gallifreyan cell, walking away sadly with the Doctor and the Corsair. She kisses Rayburn on the cheek. "Thank you for being kind to me, even when I didn't deserve it."




Trav smiles easily and extends her hand. "Pleased to meet you, Reed."

Trav sighs."I'll save the major catching up for Nanny's pork shack, but I met another Josh. Stayed with him for 80 years. I had kids, Josh. You know, the planet with the wizards and the dragons and the dinosaurs?"

From another pouch comes the polaroids again, and the folded up pile of pictures of her kids that Trav always has with her (Trav also has them as wallpapers on her phone and her Ipad).

"But you look great, and I'm here to bring you home, to your missus and kids, Joshie. All debts are paid."The Corsair and Rayburn never saw eye to eye, with that Time Lord pirate having sticky fingers and Trav often caught between him and UNIT in various shenanigans. But she intones the Corsair's first rule. "Not that I wouldn't have come and gotten you anyway, but I do owe you a lot, and not just for when I was a bad, bad red head."

Trav introduces everyone else with an expansive wave."These are my current posse - Dr Stanley Newton, 2015 Earth, the noble and wise Ambassador Sereth of Draconia, from the 25th Century, personal envoy of the Draconian throne, and Smoke Alarm, the bravest and boldest and bluest of Kangs. Blue Kangs Are Best, always remember that. She's from a place called Paradise Towers - I have absolutely no idea where that is, but I'll find it when Smoke Alarm is ready to go gome. Until then, she lives with me, on the TARDIS."

Trav runs gloved fingers along the walls. "No, definitely not Zygon. Hey Stan, we could really use Amanda or her mom, they'd be flipping out around this place. This reminds me of an Xiticix or Invid hive, a little - the Invid made use of rigid, alchemically transformed protoculture structures. But I'd know if this were Invid because I'd feel the hive brain. What do you think? You know more about internal medicine and organ science than me."

As they make their way to the Nerve center, Trav says, "Josh, are your people ready for immediate evac? the only thing holding the anomaly closed is sweet boy, and we're on a time limit. As much as I'd love to study this place, we have to leave, immediately. We're in another dimension. If we overstay, we're all stuck here."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:41, Fri 19 June 2015.

'Blue Kangs, Blue Kangs, Blue Kangs are best!' Smoke Alarm whooped. The colour blue to a Blue Kang was like a red rag to a bull, or, indeed, a Red Kang, it seemed. She'd pulled off her pool-helmet, revealed a grinning face and damp blue hair. 'How you do!' Having learned the UNIT how-you-do, the Kang performed a sloppy salute, slapping herself on the head.



'The talkiphone box is my home-sweet-home-away-from-home-sweet-home.'
This message was last edited by the player at 02:07, Sat 20 June 2015.

"Yeah, I am sure Amanda would love examining this thing." Stanley's curiosity gets the better of him and he also touches the walls. He can't help but admire the skill of the people who engineered this creature. "Lin Xiang said this thing was specifically grown for post-mortem use. It is dead now, but it is not decomposing and the "door" still works....how did they achieve that? And why post-mortem? If it was still alive it could repair itself or produce oxygen or do something else useful. Maybe we should damage a small internal section and see what happens..."

"Stan, that's like saying, 'let's knock out a wall and see how it looks.' I'd love to do an autopsy on this place, but, we're on a rescue mission." Oh, Stan is super awesome, because he's been with me the longest since I got back, he's super brave, he's an amazing doctor, and he fills out a wet suit quite nicely. But, Josh, we really can't be hanging around. What's the status of your team? Do you have any injured? We brought supplies, power packs, and suits." Indeed, attached to the aquabikes are folded down wetsuits, tools, medical gear, everything Trav and UNIT thought was needed for a rescue, based on REF equipment that wasn't too far ahead technologically, mostly simply 21st century miniaturized equipment.

Trav checks her phone again. "Trillby team to Trillby. Peizo, Osgood, can you hear us?" She checks the phone for the superphone uplink.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 01:27, Sat 20 June 2015.

Too late, Stanley had show-and-telled it more clearly and Smoke Alarm now knew what this place was and why it outlooked the way it did. 'Alive? You mean, this tower was an animal? A ginormous pool-cleaner?' she wondered. 'And now it's unalive? We're footing about inside a giant unalive animal? Eww!' she groaned loudly, poking her tongue out to show her disgust. The Kang shrank away from the meaty-looking walls. She'd hop off the floor too, if she had some place to go.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:32, Fri 26 June 2015.

Introductions make the rounds as Rayburn and Reed lead the way, away up the corridor.  Small phosporescent globes stud the walls and ceiling in an irregular pattern, giving off a dim blue glow, alongside fibrous veins running lengthwise through the passage.

They pass several crossing passage before the passage opens out into a wide, star-shaped area where several similar corridors branching away from it, as well as a sort of spiral ramp that extends up and down through ports in the ceiling and floor.  It appears that Rayburn's description of a "nerve center" was literal: the "veins" leading in from all the entrances to the chamber meet and gather in a great convoluted cluster on the ceiling.

There are some obvious imported item in the chamber as well: a collection of bedrolls clustered together and a number of small supply crates.  On a raised protrusion in the center of the room, there is a collection of electronic gear: part of it seems to be a dismounted radio, and there are additional units with cables that reach up to leads affixed in the nerve cluster, and a laptop and flatscreen wired into them.

Monitoring this display is a woman with Asian features of about Rayburn's age, with hair that is far more silver than black.  She turns, and Trav recognizes Lin Xian.

Meanwhile, hobbling out of a side passage is a red-haired woman of about Stanley's age, leaning on some sort of metal strut that appears to have been repurposed into a cane

"Dr. Lin Xian," Rayburn says.  "Lieutenant Anna Flynn.  It's thanks to the lieutenant that we were able to dock here at all after we had a run-in with one of the monsters.  Had a fifth crewman, Mr. Shopansky... he didn't make it."

"That is exactly what I would like to do. I really wonder if this thing still possesses some sort of regenerative capabilities. If it was meant for long-term use, than it probably has. Maybe even some form of repair organisms living inside it...." Stanley speculates replies to Trav. "But you are right, the mission and the safety of the colonel's team come first. Also, I don't want us to get stuck in this dimension because of my curiosity."

Stanley notices Smoke's reaction to finding out that the structure used to be alive. "It is kind of disgusting when you think about it, but it could be a lot worse. Especially the smell. It is really clean as far as corpses go.  Maybe it helps if you think of the walls as the animal's bones... I don't know if that makes it any less creepy."



"Recent injury?" Stanley asks Lieutant Flynn when he sees her walking with the cane. It probably is, considering the improvised cane. "I am a doctor, want me to take a look at it?"

Flynn gives Stanley a weak smile.  "We've been here a while, Doctor," she says.  "Long enough for a broken leg to heal, after a fashion.  Appreciate the thought, but at this point I think it's going to take an orthopedist to take a good look at what needs to be done, in a proper hospital."

'It doesn't.' Smoke Alarm pouted. Footing about inside the unalive pool-creature like a little teeny-weeny ant made her skin go all creepy-crawly and gross-feeling. More, it was so sad, being reminded all around of the unalive, the recycled meat, the scrap-heap. What huge amazing animal could this have been when alive? A shrunken, quiet, subdued Kang followed the others to the brainquarters, feeling sick in her tummy to realise there probably was an actual brain-quarters around here.

Trav's eyes light up. "Oh my, Lin Lin. 你看起来很漂亮，那么的优雅！<<You look so beautiful, so graceful>>" She remembers when Lin Xian was just a 23 year old technician, when they gossiped about boys. "It's been a long time, since we stole dinosaur eggs from the Athros, or snuck onto Zygon ships." Trav blushes and looks away. "I'm... That girl is gone, been for a long while, but she's still here, you know it's complicated. But I hope you dig this girl. She's a little more Skrillex than Idol Singer. A few more scars. Can we still do awesome things together and see awesome things, Doctor Lin Xian?" She smirks. She takes the older looking woman's hands. "Please, introduce me to -your- posse." This Trav is different from the bold but polite and genteel 1st Traveller and gawky and courageous but nervous second Traveller. Rayburn could probably see traces of a command style she might have inherited from the likes of Lisa Hayes, Lincoln, and other leaders... and maybe that red headed terror they had put away. Not entirely military, but this Traveller was more of a planner.

Trav frowns at the news about Shopansky."My condolences.  And Lt Flynn, pleased to meet you.  We need to devise a plan. I think I can speak for my companions in that we will do everything in our power to get everyone safely home. We need to make sure that his sacrifice wasn't in vain, then. Brief us about what your original mission parameters were, how you got here, and your current situation? And... monsters." Trav checks her phone. Still no response from the TARDIS?
This message was last edited by the player at 18:35, Mon 22 June 2015.

Lin pulls her hands away.

"Traveller, as you say, that girl is long gone."  She looks tired, but she also looks like a person who has had a great deal of her independence and curiosity drummed out of her over decades.  "I found when I returned to my homeland that... the things expected of me were not as I would have had them.  The Ministry assigned me as liaison to UNIT because they knew that the fewer people know uncomfortable facts, the easier they are to control.  I am afraid I have had to live with that for a very long time."

As Trav takes that in, she sees that her phone is flashing with streaming text.  RIFT STABLE.  SIGNAL INTEGRITY DROPPING, USING HIGH-REDUNDANCY MESSAGE PROTOCOLS ONLY.  SUGGEST TIMED SIGNAL VERIFICATION SCHEDULE.

Rayburn is hovering near Trav, but his explanation carries to everyone.  "At first we didn't know the passage was going to phase in and out like that," he says.  "We'd been sending signals through it without an answer.  But we had to know what became of the Jenny Dee, right?  Whether this was, ah... just some freak of nature, or if it was enemy action.  Naturally we had to go take a look."

"Active sonar was our first mistake," Flynn observes.  "Caught the notice of one of the big... squids... and she was a frisky one, no mistake.  Before you know it, the aft compartment's crushing under the pressure and we had to trip the emergency seals.  Knocked out the EM array too, and then we were creeping around in the dark, the hull groaning like a banshee.  Until we found this place."

"After we had some chance to look around -- and establish that we were not about to suffocate or even starve," Lin goes on, "we found that this... structure... was highly sophisticated, purpose-adapted."  She points at the cables running up to the nerve cluster.  "I'm not fixed up for advanced biochemical analyses here.  But it looks like a lot of this organism's systems were designed, or bred, to maintain very specific catalyzing agents in its cell structure.  When the organism terminated, and individual cells started to starve and die, those agents released into the cells to cause reactions that -- hardened?  Fossilized, crystallized?  Something of all three, anyway.  Those nerves up there, they're semisolid silicates; they might as well be fiber cables.  And at the end of them?  Complex multi-band sensor structures.  'Eyes' and 'ears'."

"That's not to say we really know all that much about it," Rayburn adds.  "We have explored the place out a bit -- that's been my boy Reed's job -- and some things are close fits to what you'd expect out of a closed system: air scrubbers, heat and power, waste, the like -- but there's a lot we've not got a clue about.  Down on the underside, the belly if you like -- there's this big sac of something.  Gel or goo, but we took a couple of pings at it with the SPOT and there's solid structures too.  Not a clue what it might be for."

"We did get some proper study done," Lin says.  Despite her demeanor, which is almost painfully professional compared to how Trav remembers her younger self, she still manages to sound a trifle wistful.  "I suppose that it is long past time to evacuate, however."
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:41, Tue 23 June 2015.

Trav is fiddling with her Ipad as she composes a reply. "Sexy Lin Lin, who is as sexy as another Lyn on a big battle fortress, that girl is just asleep. We're going to go looking for those girls. We may even find them. It'll be an adventure. I bet those old creepers at the Ministry haven't beaten all the fun out of you yet." She smirks from behind her Ipad, the same one she used from back then. "I promised you that trip to Casanova, the planet of romance and seduction, and I keep my promises. But first I need to get you and your team out of her. So, let's work together, like we did back in the old days, when neither of us could admit our mutual crush. And I did crush on you so badly, when I had glasses, Lin Xian."



Trav taps in, ACKNOWLEDGED, as she codes in the timed signal verification and high redundancy verification schedule.



Trav taps her sonic to her lips. "Something just occurred to me. This place might not just be a base. It might be a trap. A habit trail for people. A study environment. It might he been designed to lure life forms that match the home sapies profile here, for study. Is this place insulated enough that I can use my sonic in here without pissing off any monsters? If we can get people into suits, I'm tempted to turbo open a hole in the wall and get the hell out of here as quietly as we can." Trav is taking Clayburn's chrono and tapping her sonic physically to it, quietly updating the countdown to it.

"In regards to getting out, I think we have two options. We can either swim out, using the aquabikes, loaded up with as many people as possible, or I can try to repair the SPOT. What are the pros and cons? If we can get back to Sweet Boy, I can close up this Rift."
This message was last edited by the player at 14:51, Wed 24 June 2015.

That big sack of something has Trav worried as well. This thing may be reproducing. Her normal impulse would be to scan the hell out of this case, but Lin and Rayburn can tell that Trav is spinning the sonic between her fingers, but is restraining herself. The American Time Lord is curbing her notorious tendency to shove her sonic into every single place.

Stanley frowns. "It could be a trap, this structure is certainly interesting enough to investigate, but somehow I don't think it is a trap. To me, growing this creature and generating that anomaly seems like an awful lot of trouble just to catch some humans. "



"Swimming out and taking the aquabikes is the quickest option. We don't know how long it will take to repair the SPOT or if it is even possible. However, if we are attacked by a sea monster the SPOT might be safer." Stanley pauses. "...I say we get out of here as quickly as possible and leave the SPOT for what it is."

Another wave of realization crosses Trav's eyes. "Another thing this corpse may be is that this may be a vehicle, and in exchange for our waste products, we're helping whatever is below, reproduce. I'd have to do some analysis. But that's secondary. We need to get everyone out, first. Josh, did this thing have engines and controls? Do you thing this thing may be a vehicle? If not, using the aquabikes, maybe we can turn it into one?" Trav runs some quick mass estimates, comparing the thrust of the aquabikes and the SPOT to the mass of the structure. "The bikes are probably safer, but I want to consider all options."

While the Traveller theorizes wildly in multiple directions, Lt. Flynn and Reed are starting to sort through the gear arranged around the room, packing up some equipment, setting other parts of it to the side and out of the way.  "The SPOT might have a rough time of it," Flynn observes.  "Like I said, one of these over-grown cuttlefish kicked in its side.  It still holds pressure in the forward compartment, but it lost one of the screws, it drags to port, and I wouldn't want to be in it if something else got cranky in its neighborhood."

Rayburn is about to add something when a prominent yellow icon starts to flash on the display hooked up to Lin's rig.  The woman quickly turns from Trav to check the data there.  "Not good," she says.  "Another creature is approaching, a large one."  The floor gives a shiver around everyone, and Lin adds, "It pinged us.  Not hard, but it did."

Smoke Alarm was feeling unbrave and unbold to be footing about inside this giant unalive thing, all curvy carrydoors and orifice doors. She eyespied gristly walls and wasn't sure if she could wallscrawl them or not. As the others got talky and Traveller how-you-do-ed old friends, Smoke Alarm footed uncertainly about the brainquarters, pushing her boot against the floors and walls to test their hardness, and outlooking about and eyespying the electricky stuff and picturespouts.

The safety hazard got her attention though. 'Another big pool-cleaner?' she asked, worried. 'Are we sound-and-safe in here?'

"This has happened a few times," Reed tells her.  "Never got particularly interested in threatening the place.  Then again there's been a lot more activity here lately, when you showed up.  It might have attracted some attention."