In a stretch of corridor with slate-gray paneling, there is no sound but the hum of automated life-support systems, and the period crackling of one of the overhead lights flickering.  Doors line the hallway, each labeled with simple legends giving a number and a function like MEDICAL BAY, or MAINTENANCE STORES, or INFRASTRUCTURE ACCESS.  There is only the slightest hint of dust on the floor.  The only thing that gives a real hint of chaos or trouble is a cafeteria tray lying flat, with a spray of red sauce fanning out from the long-cold pasta that spills over the side of the tray.

VWORP
VWORP

A tall battered-looking blue box with translucent windows and a flashing light on top slowly appears.

KCHUNK!

A rustling, bustling, hustling pile of over-large blue raincoat footed out first, gummy-boots clumping on the floor. The floppy hat tilted back, and Smoke Alarm outlooked out, taking in the carrydoor and the doors it carried. A dingy, messy carrydoor was a Kang's natural habitat, so Smoke Alarm wasn't worrywarted at all by that, but the yawny grey walls could do with some scrawling. 'It's not rainy!' she called to her friends still inside the talkiphone box, sounding almost disappointed, then climbed out of her raincoat.

"At least that is as it should be." Stanley says as he steps into the hallway. Looking around, he notices the dropped pasta and frowns. At the time Dr. Alston had recorded the distress call they had been down to twelve people. What had happened to the others? "Smoke, until we know what exactly is wrong, I don't think it is wise to wander off alone."

Trav pokes her head out. She waves the sonic around tentatively, testing the atmosphere, radiation levels, and so on.

"No. So, umbrellas will have to be fashion statements."

She steps out. "Please, everyone, be careful. We were called here by a distress signal, so that means there's trouble here."

She takes a broad look around, trying to determine more clues or details, as everyone leaves the TARDIS and she locks up.

Trav flicks her mathematics sword, and it becomes an umbrella. High Fabshion!
This message was last edited by the player at 20:19, Tue 02 Oct 2018.

'Yes. So we should wander off together.' Smoke Alarm answered Stanley, already scampering ahead to the dropped food tray. Footing carefully around it, sometimes darting in to touch, smell, taste, and mayhaps even listen, she eyespied how it had fallen and the age, temperature, and dryness of the food. She also outlooked for footprints in the dust or sauce, or left after stepping in the sauce.


OOC: I figure Smoke is good at tracking, but I'm not sure what to roll. Awareness (+ Keen Senses), Ingenuity, Survival?

She just scowled as she left, and took a big, long sniff, her eyes flickering. She ignored the chatter about wandering off alone, or not. The hunt was afoot, and the rest of them were not her. She would go where the hunt led her, whether the hunt was to protect, or to kill.

Trav aims her sonic at the control station before locking up - both to lock down the time machine in space and to continue gathering data on the transversal causeway. The sensors could continue to gather data while they conducted their rescue mission.

Smoke Alarm's eyespying around the dropped tray doesn't fit any pattern that she can readily explain.  The splatter is dry, but not too bad-smelling -- it has been there for a while, but not long enough that it has started to rot, if there's even anything in the air here that would make it rot.  And it seems mostly symmetrical around the tray.  It might have been moving slightly in one direction when it fell, from a direction down the hallway that she arbitrarily tags as "left", to the one known as "right", but not very quickly.  And she doesn't see a break or smudges in the pattern that would indicate that whoever (or whatever) was carrying it would have either been splattered by any of it, or have accidentally tracked in it after it was dropped.

Kalath's nose is struggling mightily to pick up any traces in this hunt.  This place in general doesn't have much in the way of smells, beyond the stale whiff of the dried meat-ish gunk on the tray and the floor.  Nothing like the mix of growth and decay from her home on Kestartes Delta, not even the slight homey aroma that persists inside the Traveller's box.  There's a hint of something, off in the direction that Smoke Alarm, were she asked, would identify as "right".  It's not very strong, but it reminds her of the lightning-wall around the Library building back home.

Trav's scan with the sonic doesn't turn up anything immediately alarming.  Any environmental systems of the base seem to be functioning normally to maintain norms for human survival.  There are a few traces of the atmospheric chemicals that she had noted on the orbital scan, but nothing high enough to suggest a breach of station integrity.

As everyone else does their own investigations, Trav tunes her glasses. She wants to get the distress signal again, and see if she can narrow down where it is transmitting from in terms of terrestrial coordinates.

Upstanding from her tracking, Smoke Alarm was a bit bepuzzled as she said 'The person footed in from thataway,' she pointed left, 'And dropped their food-tray here. Straight down, no splats back. Then, I don't knowhow, went away back again? Bit of a waste of spag-bowl. But cats will comeout to lick up it. Cats love spag-bowl.'
This message was last edited by the player at 06:15, Thu 04 Oct 2018.

She tensed, and gestured in the direction.

"Like library building. Sorcerer's. Like you. To contact without seeing requires sorcery."

At the mention of cats a shiver runs down Stanley's spine. The adventure on Kestartes Delta was still fresh on his mind and it didn't help that the pasta was the only thing they had found so far.



"That means we should go that way, right?" Stanley asks. The person with the pasta had fled the other way, but the library was where they had found survivors.

"Kalath, I really should take you through a CVE and bring you to a world with real magic. Magic is of the soul, of passion, and unexplainable. Science however can be repeated. True wonder working was the one thing which eluded the scrutiny of my people, the Time Lords. We banished our magicians so very long ago, and in my view, that was a supreme mistake."

"Smoke, lead on?"

'That's where they comeout from.' Smoke Alarm answered Stanley, pointing to the left. 'People, I mean, not cats. I didn't track any cats, even though there's spag-bowl.'

At Trav's suggestion, Smoke started footing leftward, whispering back to her companions. 'Now play follow-the-leader... Um, do we go sneaky or noisy?'

As the group moves off, the emptiness of the place grows more and more eerie.  The corridor starts to curve, suggesting that the building is built on a circular or domed structural plan.  Doors around the hallway bear legends like Break Room and Maintenance Stores as well as some on the rimward side of the arc that are set closer together and marked with indivdual names, some prepended with titles.  (These tend toward administrative and academic, like Associate Director or Professor rather than military.)

After a few minutes, the group comes across a hand tablet lying abandoned in the middle of the hallway.

Kalath's nose continues to tell her that the acrid smell is getting stronger as everyone has been moving along.

Trav picks up the tablet and examines it. Is it powered?

The tablet's screen is dark when the Traveller reaches down to pick it up, but as she does so, it obligingly flickers to life.  It currently appears to be displaying a feed from an atmospheric probe -- or, in more mundane terms, a weather satellite, with the exception that it is showing a readout on chemical composition as well as cloud patterns.

'Everyone's dropping stuff round here. Bad case of finger-butter.' Smoke Alarm remarked, eyespying the discarded talkiphone puterbook. That wasn't a complaint: lost-and-found was a Kang's primary means of survival. While Traveller lost-and-founded and eyespied it, Smoke footed past and onward, being outlook.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:58, Mon 08 Oct 2018.

Kalath grunted slightly. Who died and made Smoke lead? She tensed up as the smell got stronger, reaching back for her spear.

"Hm. This could be what the station was designed for. A storm may be coming." She thumbs through the tablet while following, examining the contents to get more clues.

"Yeah, maybe they just retreated to a reinforced part of the building." Stanley says. "But they did send out a distress call."

Trav finds that the tablet seems to be registered to a Specialist Naomi Hirano, a meteorology expert.  Scanning through the local storage on the tablet, Trav sees that a lot of it is devoted to records of weather patterns and analyses comparing them to computer models incorporating the moon's atmospheric composition and both the gravitational effect of the gas giant it orbits, and the interaction between the moon's atmosphere and the outer layers of the gas giant proper.

But there are also personal log entries recorded.  As Trav goes into these, she finds that people have been going missing for several weeks, as of the time of the last entry.  Most of this is alluded to or described second-hand, but it seems as if it was first ascribed to people skipping shifts and missing check-ins.  Further entries mention new security protocols being put into place, outlying buildings on the base being shut down and abandoned, and the expedition commander instituting rules for people to work and move only in groups.

Hirano's entries don't disclose any conclusions about what was behind the disappearances.

As the group comes to a corridor branching inward toward the center of the corridor's arc, the hairs on the back of Kalath's neck go up.  Then she realizes that rather more than that is being affected - the ends of Smoke Alarm's hair are starting to stand out away from each other.  The side corridor goes down to end in a hatchway about fifteen meters away, and in the last third of that length, the ceiling lights and access panels to the doorways are dark and deactivated.

The legend on the hatchway and the end of the corridor reads Operations Center.

'Stopsign playing with my hairs!' Smoke Alarm squawked, thinking Kalath was pranking her. She jerked her head away from whatever and batted at her blue hair, only to find it sticky to her fingers. 'Ah! I've outgone all staticky! There's something electricky 'round here.'

Trav decides that in honor of this fellow, that this shall be her new tablet, since she left her old IPad on Khestartes Delta - presuming that they don't find whoever this belongs to.

The weather and gravitic data gets copied into her phone. She then has Chibi begin to upgrade the tablet while maintaining it's old OS and data in a separate space.

She takes a moment to check if the local wireless is up. She's expecting not.

Stanley and Smoke may notice that Trav is deeply engrossed, giving the tablet laser-like attention, and taking her time - something she never did when she was blonde.

"Oh, one more thing." Using her sonic to actually sketch out a map, she wants to use this data to predict local weather pattens for the next 72 hours. It appears as a holo projected by the tablet.

OOC: Ingenuity+Science?
09:03, Today: The Traveller rolled 25 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 5,6.  Map The Weather - 2d6+Ingenuity 8+Science 6.

This message was last edited by the player at 13:04, Wed 10 Oct 2018.

Trav pauses from her calculations and adjusts her glasses, looking at the local electromagnetic spectra. "Let me take a look." She adjusts her glasses, as they turn from shades to spectacles.

OOC: Perception+Science+Glasses?
09:03, Today: The Traveller rolled 17 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 4,2.  Check out the static - Awareness 3+Science 6+Glasses 2.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:04, Wed 10 Oct 2018.

Trav's analysis of the current weather patterns indicate that a heavy thunderstorm is due to start within the next few hours. The storm strength should stay below levels conducive to tornadoes, and given what she knows about the construction of structures like this one, she doubts that the station's integrity is at risk.  However, the storm is likely to last between twelve and eighteen hours, and moving between this building and other parts of the outpost is likely to be difficult.

When she checks the station's wireless network, she finds that it is functioning, but has poor signal integrity.  One of the reasons for this becomes apparent when she scans the end of the radial hallway.  Someone has rigged up a set of electromagnetic projectors, possibly medium-range signal repeaters, that is generating an interference field -- it's hard for her to be sure without measuring it from a variety of angles, but it seems like they've made an attempt to encircle or encapsulate the center of the building.

The interference field isn't dangerous to humans, unless they were to live in it from years on end, and it seems to be modulated to an irregular or random pattern, rather than any sort of repeating signal or standing wave.

Still cat-curiously playing with her floating blue hair, Smoke Alarm asked Traveller 'What is it, Trav? Is it someone patting up cats?'

"I usually like to pet cats. Someone has set up some kind of standining interference wave. Why, I don't know. An interference wave implies someone is trying to interfere with something. Lets keep moving and try to find whoever sent this signal. Our answer is probably at the center of this building. Someone may be trying to protect themselves from something."

As they move, Trav tries to figure out why someone would set up such a wave. Anti-Transmat? Making invisible monsters visible? It wasn't like she hasn't been at this rodeo before.

OOC: Ingenuity+Science?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:19, Sat 20 Oct 2018.

What is most puzzling about the interference field is that it is remarkable neither for the nature of the energy - garden variety radio waves, effectively, despite skipping all around the spectrum -- nor its strength.  This suggests to the Travaller that what's important about it is the shifting pattern: either someone is trying to generate quantum interference effects, or possibly even messing around with block transfer manipulation, although if it's the latter they are using a clumsy or accidental means of going about it.

Quantum interference might indeed be intended as a defense against a remote transmat pickup.  Block transfer countermeasures, of course, could be intended to counter almost anything at all, and would imply both that it was implemented by someone very smart or very lucky, and that the force they're up against is similarly sophisticated.

14:48, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 24 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 5,5.  Ingenuity(8) + Science(6).

Trav thinks that it may have something to do with the transversal gateway, above. Maybe something was coming through and the folks here were trying to stop it? And block transfer manipulation via radio - that was clever. Trav definitely wanted to talk to whoever was behind this.

"Come on, slowpokes. Hurry up!" Trav goes into a trot as they head to the center of the station.

'You're name-calling me a slowpoke?' Smoke Alarm said laughfully, footed fastly past Traveller. 'Catch me if you can!'

Scouting ahead, she soon eyespied the sign on the door at the end of the carrydoor. 'Opper-rations Centre.' she read out loud. 'Sounds like a brainquarters. Mayhaps we'll find the people in there.'

Down at the hatch to the Operation Center, the prickly sensation and the smell that Kalath has been tracing are both at their strongest. The doorway's automatic systems are disabled, but there's a manual release.

When this is engaged, the hallway continues on for a short distance and then opens into a spacious circular room.  Consoles are arranged in the room in a concentric pattern beneath a vast, transparent overhead dome, which just at the moment is affording a spectacular view of the gas giant.  Smaller anterooms with transparent walls ring the circumference of the chanber, all with their own consoles and instrumentation.  The lighting is on, but some of the consoles and displays are dark.  Seemingly out of place, there are also a number of folding cots arranged around the room, along with a number of stacks of shipping crates.

The center of the room is occupied by a large swiveling chair with its own attached control terminal, and it's occupied -- by a haggard-looking, pale young man who gives a start when he sees the travellers open the hatch.  Two other figures also scramble and stumble to their feet, an older dark-skinned woman, and a heavy-set, bearded man of about Stanley's age.  They're all wearing similar uniforms, but the young man's has red shoulder pips whereas the others are plain.  His uniform bears a sewn name tag that reads Murcheson; the woman is Makoro, and the other man is Sokolov

"You're here!  You came!" gasps Murcheson.  He glances at his console, seemingly confused.  "But--"

"Shut the hatch!" rasps Sokolov.  "We are in danger every moment it stays open!"

OOC: I took Trav's "head to the center of the station" as not letting the door stop her.

Smoke Alarm had already footed in and around the puters and picture-spouts. 'Why?! What's the fire-hazard?' she squawked at the one called Sokolov, outlooking back to whoever was last through the door.

"Explaining can wait!  Do you want to be gone?  Inside, inside!"

Trav hustles everyone else inside, and sees to it that the hatch is shut tight.

"I'm The Traveller. This is Kalath, Smoke Alarm and Doctor Stanley Newton. We received a distress signal - what is the situation?"

Now that the hatch has been closed and things calm down a bit, Stanley notices that the man from the emergency message, Dr. Alston, isn't here in the operations room. There should have been sixteen people here. "Just for the record, I didn't see anything dangerous on our way here."

"That's because the quantum interference wave that I saw is probably protecting this area from something, right? Very nice by the way, very sophisticated, like something I would do." She smiles.

'Gone? We just came in!' Smoke Alarm had retorted.

She said a quick 'How you do!' when Traveller introduced her; the situation was too hazardous for the full ritual. As Stanley and Traveller did the talking, Smoke Alarm did the stalking, footing between the puters and around the brainquarters and outlooking for hazards, fire-escapes, hide-ins, and even unseen outways.

'We just eyespied a lot of lost-and-found.' she chipped in from the other side of the brainquarters, outlooking inside one of the anterooms.

The three station crewmembers relax visibly when the hatchway shuts.  Sokolov starts to speak, and Murcheson starts to babble over him at high, hands waving in agitation, until Makoro holds up a hand to Sokolov, and puts a steadying hand on Murcheson's shoulder.  At which both of them go silent.  "Go ahead and tell the lady, son," Makoro says to Murcheson, "slowly."

He takes a deep breath.  "I'm ExCorps Ops Lieutenant, Walter Murcheson," he says, "these are Dr. Nalah Makoro, Associate Director for planetary science, and Dr. Viktor Sokolov, astrophysics.  As far as we're aware, we're the only people left on Hecate Base.  All the rest, they're--"  He pauses to collect himself again.  "Like Viktor said, they're... gone.  Dozens of people.  If you got Dr. Alston's signal, well, we don't know what's happened to them all.  We'd thought there was something stalking the base, picking off people one by one.  But if there's anything like that, the security cams aren't seeing it."

Sokolov snorts.  "Sophisticated?  It's a lash-up, and I don't even know why it works.  I only figured it by chance.  Commander Henson had put me to seeing if I could induce a phase shift in the station's comm beacon, get a stronger signal out through Three's magnetosphere.  I was running the test rig in the laboratory, when my colleague, Dr. Schofield, she was... Taken?  Vanished?  Not five meters from where I was sitting."

He grimaces.  "We got to work trying to create a safe zone then.  By then, we were down to six.  By the time we had Central isolated, just us three."

Murcheson shakes his head.  "We've been trying to raise the other domes and outbuilding ever since then, to try to get anyone left together, or to tell them how to set up their own screens at least.  But, no answer."

In reply to The Guardian (msg # 41):

"Well, we're here to help. I'm the Traveller. These good folk are my travelling companions - Doctor Stanley Newton, Smoke Alarm and Kalath.  We picked up a distress signal from one Dr Nathaniel Alston."

"If your people disappeared, perhaps we can get them to re-appear. I'm a scientist, and perhaps we can find a solution. If nothing else, we will get you safely out, I promise."

"Now, please, I know it is hard, having lost your comrades, but you've been very brave so far. Please tell me as much as you know about this phenomenon."

Smoke Alarm footed back to the others, hearing keening at their story, and rememorising. It was way too much like the Kangs and Rezzies and Caretakers just being gone in Paradise Towers, though then they'd all had an unbrave knowhow of the whyfor and the whereto. 'Gone? Unseen? No eyespies?' she quizzed Murcheson and Sokolov.

She had an idea. 'Who liked the spag-bowl?' she asked them suddenly, from way out in left-field. She dashed to their camp, snatching up a tray with a bowl of some kind of curry. Smoke Alarm held it level with only her fingertips. 'This high?' Releasing her fingers, she dropped the tray, straight down, then eyespied the results. 'Outlook! Straight down, no splats back. Same as the puterbook. No ball-games, no fly-pasts – no person! Gone!

Then she looked bepuzzled. 'But then why'd their clothes go with them?'

"Dr. Schofield disappeared only a couple of meters from where you were working?" Stanley thinks about that for a moment. It had allowed the people here to come up with a way to protect themselves, but only because Sokolov thought something had protected him. "Have there been any instances of multiple people disappearing at the same time or do people get taken one by one?"

Trav of course crosses her arms and listens, as her companions ask the right questions.

Sokolov steeples his fingers and frowns.  "There isn't a lot to tell," he says.  "When it had been going on for a while, then we began to look at security logs, environmental monitors, that kind of thing.  I said that the cameras didn't see any thing, but once we were looking, we did find recordings of the vanishings.  No apparent energy spikes to accompany the disappearance.  No chemical residues, particles or emission -- nothing seemed to be... left behind... or radiation as you would expect from matter annihilation.  If there is something we should have been looking for, either I can not think of it, or we were never set up to measure it."

He shakes his head, then swivels back to his console and taps a few keys.  On the monitor in front of him, video starts to play: it's a young woman, moving at a brisk walk with a package clutched to her chest.  She briefly starts, with the beginnings of a surprised look on her face, and then, to all appearances, she has dropped off the screen and the package falls and slides a short way from her momentum.


Dr Makoro looks at Smoke Alarm.  "However it happened, perhaps there is some discriminating factor applied, that decides what is and isn't part of a person?  I don't know."


"It is a good thought," Sokolov replies, "but, it is one that Dr. Alston had as well. The first disappearances were all single people in isolated places.  So he ordered a 'buddy system' to be put in place.  That stopped as soon as five people vanished from the mess hall, all at once."

"Maybe there's something different about you. If you don't mind?"

If Sokolov and his friends assent, she scans them with her sonic. Anything unusual?

'Or mayhaps, where they're outgoing, they can't be nekkid.' Smoke Alarm wondered.

She'd outlooked at the viddy on the picture-spout; it was exactly what she'd show-and-telled. She might've felt as a proud as a pussy-cat about her knowhow, except it was about people getting gone, mayhaps even unalive, and all she could feel was sad and worrywarted.

'Have you tried texting any of them? They have talkiphones, don't they?'

"It looks like she noticed something just before she disappeared." Stanley remarks. No strange bursts of light or static. "What about the timing of the disappearances? Is there a pattern in the time between incidents?"

"We can determine that from the time indexes of the disappearances."

"Smoke, can you guide our new friends back to the TARDIS? Sweet Boy is probably the safest place for them while we investigate this phenomenon. If they can be snatched from him, then we have a real problem."

She then turns to Kalath. "Kalath - Hunter Jumping - you can do it to a degree, right? If you were moved somewhere against your will, could you jump back?"

Finally, she turns back to the display. "Can we get a display of the cafeteria again? I'd like to see who had the Spag-Bowl and see how they disappeared. Smoke, you were definitely on to something. If at all possible, I'd like to get video records, locations and time stamps of all of the disappearances."

Trav opines, "we could go back to Sweet Boy and use his sensors, but they're strong. The problem is that heavy, active artron scanning might disturb the local spacetime and wipe away clues. I'd rather personally inspect the disappearance sites."

She tests her phone, to see if she can communicate with Chibi back on the TARDIS.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:48, Wed 24 Oct 2018.

'Course I can!' Smoke Alarm answered, wondering how Traveller could possibly think otherwise. 'Tracking back is easy-peasy down that straight carrydoor. But should we? These ones are sound-and-safe right here and now in their brainquarters, not so in the carrydoors. If we foot outside, mayhaps what's making them gone will make them gone.

Murcheson looks glum at the question, after a pause to parse "talkiphones", and Makoro rescues him from having to say anything.  "Off the grid, I'm afraid, the ones who were carrying them at the time."


At Trav's suggestion, Sokolov turns back to his controls and starts tapping keys.  Of the three, he's perhaps the one who's showing the least in the way of emotional stress at the predicament, but Stanley can tell that he's glad to be doing something even if it's not clear that it will lead anywhere.  The display shifts over to a timescale, showing a gradual acceleration, but if there's any additional significance it doesn't immediately jump out.


At the additional query, Sokolov grunts and enters some more commands.  The screen closest to Trav comes to life with a simple interface to the security system, and the controls next to them flicker and unlock.


At once, the little avatar pops up on Trav's display.  "Hi, Chief!  What'cha need?"

OOC: Points two and three here have potential to go somewhere, so an Ingenuity + Tech roll would be appropriate; I'd suggest that you propose a theory around what you're expecting or hoping to find.

She frowns.

"To jump, I would need to give in to the Hunter, at least temporarily. And can only jump 'home'. I believe at this point that would be the blue-box."

OOC: That might not be entirely correct, but it's what Kalath believes. But she is deeply steeped in superstition.

Trav nods. "Good. Because if any of us get taken away, you may be our ticket to coming back home."

Trav is fiddling with her phone. "Chibi darling. I am sending you a set of parameters. Run this script through the diagnostics and send me the results, hm?"

Trav is using her readings of the subquantum field that seems to be protecting everything and checking to see if the TARDIS can emulate it. This strikes her as rather delicate - something as strong as sweet boy may be absolutely wrong for this kind of work - but it's worth a shot.

OOC:20:34, Today: The Traveller rolled 22 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 5,3.  Ingenuity 8+Tech 6+2d6 - TARDIS duplication of quantum protection, use wake to find monsters - viable?

She's more interested in using the data for passive scanning - stalking hunting space monsters may be leaving a wake in all the interference.

"Mister Sokolov - may I inspect the device you put together? I just want to passively scan it and look it at. I won't touch anything."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:35, Fri 26 Oct 2018.

"I don't think we should leave the safety of this room until we have a better idea about what we are dealing with." Stanley agrees with Smoke.

"Of course. You're both correct."

After a little analysis and thought, Trav decides that the best way to achieve this will probably be to reconfigure the TARDIS force field generator into a wide-band etheric field array.  This will blanket the dome that the group is currently in, but can't be extended beyond that range without starting to tax the primary TARDIS power conduits.  The other down side of this approach that occurs to Trav is that it is going to effectively lock the TARDIS in place -- the field will destabilize if it is dropped or the TARDIS dematerializes, and while it is safe enough to be inside the TARDIS when that happens, it's likely to produce localized spatial distortions and energy surges.

Reconfiguring the generator in this way is going to be a somewhat finicky process taking perhaps a half hour.  However, Trav is pretty confident that it will then enable her to detect any resonant interactions.


"It's over here."

Sokolov indicates a workbench supporting a rather marvelous-looking contraption that began life as the focusing unit for a hyperwave comms transmitter, but seems to have been augmented with additional capacitors, power and signal leads that are now connecting to ports on an adjacent console, additional breadboarded circuitry, and (for some reason) a wind-up mechanical timer.  He also taps a few keys, and a screen lights up showing a fairly simple computer program.  "Here.  The timing driver code, if you need it."

Smoke Alarm outlooked to Traveller. 'Would TARDIS talkiphones still work, if we were made gone?'

"Nothing is ever certain, but I would think so. These phones are hooked up to Sweet Boy. Whevever he can go, the phone signal can go. And he can go *anywhere*."

OOC: So, are we doing that?

Smoke Alarm didn't have knowhow of all the technicky stuff, but she could eyespy the situation, rememorised much it too well. A tower of many rooms and carrydoors and systems and systems; a little band hiding in their brainquarters, unbold or unbrave to leave; an unseen something bit-by-bit making them gone, whether unalive, wherelse, or wiped out like wall-scrawls. That had been the life of Kangs, her own life. And she could eyespy the comeout of all this; there was only one, in time. Wipe-out. 'No ball games, no fly posts, no wipe outs.' she said with Kangly determination.

'Are there no fire-escapes, no unseen outways?' she asked the three.

"Oh, look at this, it's marvelous, amazing! I love the wind up. Mr Solokov, you are a certified genorous. Not only is it brilliant, it's beautiful." She carefully examines it with her sonic, not touching anything, with a cross between reverence and childlike glee."

Stanley also had a question for the survivors. "Did anything unusual happen before the first person disappearance? A delivery or a glitch in a system."

Dr. Makoro answers.  "Delivery, no.  We've not had any arrivals since the last staff rotation, eight months ago," she says.  "And I don't know about any sort of 'glitch' -- I don't believe there was anything that had been seriously suggested as a factor, at least...."  She looks questioningly at Murcheson, who shrugs and shakes his head in the negative.

"There was the conjunction," Makoro observes.  "Two of the other moons in Three's collection aligning with us.  But it's hard for me to imagine what kind of effect it could have had.  The change in the gravitational influence on us here was so negligible, compared to what we experience just by sitting so deep in Three's gravity well.  Some influence on the storm patterns, maybe, but you would have to dig deep into the data to tease it out.  But then, none of us have really been able to work out any kind of causation for these... events... in the first place."

Sokolov shrugs.  "It is no great thing," he mutters, perhaps a little bashfully.  "You spend as much time improvising your instruments as you do on your actual science, because no one has thought to design the sort of tool you need, you get the practice in knocking together things.  But I am no sort of engineer."

Trav sets to work configuring the etheric field array.  As she works, the sound of rain starts up on the roof of the habitat and the transparent overhead dome, growing in strength until it's a drumming that rises and falls with the strengthening wind, and there's even, occasionally, a telltale creak in the structure itself.  Still, as yet it doesn't seem like the storm is anything that the base can't handle.

Finally she has the field tuned to her satisfaction, and activates it.  What it shows her when she starts to read the overall scan is interesting.  There are resonances or echoes in the field, dotted all around the base.  They all appear to be stationary.  When she maps them out she quickly finds that many line up with areas of known disappearances, and some where the Hecate staff had not necessarily marked anyone disappearing, but could plausibly be; they had not isolated every single person's last known location.

What's more, of the known matches, the strength of the resonance tracks roughly with the timeline: the weaker disturbances correspond with the earlier known vanishings.  Looking at the pattern, the travelers are put very much in mind of the surface of a pond where a person has tossed in a sequence of stones over time, the newer ripples radiating the strongest waves, and the older ones gradually shrinking and smoothing to nothing.

Unhearing any show-and-tell of fire-escapes and unseen outways, Smoke Alarm went to outlook at Traveller's work on the picture-spout. 'What's that, Trav? Someone dropping rocks in pools?'

"That is the idea, love." Trav starts texting a set of instructions to Chibi.

"So, if I have this right, it seems that the disappearances have a connection to the conjunctions of the planetary bodies in this system., I may need to head back to the TARDIS to make manual use of the Orrery."

'Oh reary?' Smoke Alarm repeated. 'But if we're outgoing again, we might be made gone. Can it be made sound-and-safe?''

Lt. Murcheson has been following Trav's analysis and the subsequent exchange with a slow boil of nerves and agitation.  "I'm not meaning to sound ungrateful," he finally says, "but why are we even debating about getting back to your ship and getting the hell out of here?  I get it, baffling scientific mystery, but we've been living it while our friends and co-workers have been dropping out of existence one by one.  Let's ponder the mechanics of it from as great a distance as possible, yeah?"

"Getting back to the ship might won't be easy." Stanley says. "As long as we don't understand it, we have to take into account the possibility of the phenomenon following us. We might just have to take the risk, though."

A crash of thunder, audible even through the sturdy frame of the building, punctuates Stanley's statement, and the rain rises to a dull roar, drumming against the roof.  The lights flicker once.  Sokolov glances up at the dome, grunts, and shrugs.

Far more used to malevolent architecture than the others, Smoke Alarm outlooked unboldly at the glass ceiling, where the rain rattled and lights flickered. 'Will that ceiling stay shape-ship and sound?' she wondered aloud.

Stanley glances at the roof. The storm was getting closer. They might have to leave the relative safety of this room. "Is it possible to take the field with us? Can the machine run on batteries?"

"For certain.  Well.  Almost," says Dr. Makoro.  "As I understand, the structural limits of the buildings of the base were planned to withstand the estimates of storm strength and the chemical precipitates typical in the rain as sent back by the early probes of the Diaspora Project.  I fear, after the data that we have collected on site, those estimates may not quite have covered the extremes that the Moon can create.  Still, the buildings are still here despite it all."


"Running on batteries is not the problem," Sokolov says.  "This is just the signal generator, to calculate and amplify the waveform.  The actual field is being projected by the relay emitters, that we rigged up all around Central."

As this discussion is going on, Trav has been absorbed in studying the "echoes" that the TARDIS resonance field has revealed, trying to figure out what physical or dimensional mechanism is involved, and whether it is really destroying its victims, or simply displacing them to elsewhere.  She notices, all of a sudden, that another source is causing a disruption in the scan.  Unlike the ones she has traced so far, this one is registering out beyond the main building that the TARDIS field covers, showing as a distortion in the overall map from the north-northeast -- possibly from a source beyond Hecate Base's main structure, among the surrounding outbuildings.

'All-most.' was Smoke Alarm's comeout, that being the last sentence of Doctor Makoro's she could track and boldly had knowhow of. 'Welp, we can't fixit if it isn't, so no point worry-warting about it.'



'Can we carry-out some with relay-mittens with us?'

She tensed up, and looked around at the approaching storm. Her eyes flashed for a moment, and she shook her herself.

"Yeah, we need a way to get you safely to our ship." Stanley says. "Preferably before the storm hits."

"Maybe?"  Sokolov moves across the room and pops open one of the supply crates there.  He frowns as he starts rooting through the contents and setting pieces of machinery out.  "I'm not sure, if I can figure a way to transmit... cannot go toting that around with us," he mumbles, indicating his main lash-up.

"I have something." She feeds what she has from her phone into a nearby display, sharing her data. "That may be the eye of the storm."

"But yes, we have to get back to sweet boy." Trav plots a map from their room back to her timeship.

"In regards to that amplifier, perhaps we can work together to make it into a back pack sort of set up, so we can carry it with us as we make our way back to my ship?"

Multitasking, she's setting up a script to see if the disappearances coincide with any particular conjunctions of either the moon itself with the rest of the system or the movement or orbits of Raccalan's warp gate. It could very well be the phenomena is literally scooping up people and dragging them back out, like a tide, into the metaphorical sea.

"Stanley, Smoke. Remember our visit to the lair of the Mailman? One of the transmission points that the factory was transmitting to was here."



OOC: Ingenuity+Science to check out her tide theory and looking at the sensor data to determine what the north-northeast disruption is?
This message was last edited by the player at 08:44, Wed 07 Nov 2018.

"Doctor Sokolov! You have a great brain, and I have a pretty big one myself. I am sure with two brains and three hearts we can do some miniaturization and work some tricks. Want to give it a try? Once we get inside my Sweet Boy, we'll be more than protected from the phenomenon."

Smoke Alarm eyespied all the technicky parts that Sokolov took out, and heard what Traveller suggested. She might not have knowhow of it, but she did knowhow to make-do and recycle, and she wondered if Traveller and Sokolov were being too tricksy about it. 'Mayhaps we don't need a pack-back sort of set up. We could put it all in a trolley or on a wheely-chair and push it down the carry-door, no carry-out needed.'



'A talkiphone call here?' Smoke Alarm translated to confirm, talking quietly. 'Is a Dalek cleaner here?'

As the numbers start cranking, Trav does see a rough correlation between the disappearance traces and gravitational patterns in the system.  It doesn't seem like that is the whole story, though -- while the Moon of Storms is definitely the most interesting feature of a fairly exotic planetary moon system, it isn't necessarily an exceptional one when considered among all the strange astrophysical phenomena the Traveller has come across, and she suspects spontaneous sentient vanishings in such locales would be something she would have heard about before.  It seems quite likely that these incidents are similar in kind if not in scope to the transversal bridge mapped out by Racallan.  However, having such a large number of events occurring in precisely the right places and times to displace people by chance would be to severely abuse Occam's Razor.  The events have to be occurring with some discrimination -- and that most likely means, some intelligence.

The slowly building field distortion could well be another event readying itself to 'pop': its signature is much like the decay traces, just in reverse and more quickly.  Given that the center is not the location of all the currently known people in the base, what does that say about what might be at that location now?

OOC:
22:20, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 26 using 2d6+14 ((6,6)).

This doesn't seem out of the question to Trav.  Behind one of the stacks of crates, she sees an upright tool cart that they can probably dump out and use for the purpose.  Power -- for the device itself and for signal output -- would certainly be an issue, but she suspects that she could set it up to use her sonic screwdriver as a dedicated power source, at least long enough for the trip back to the TARDIS and possibly longer.

OOC: Call it a Hard Ingenuity + Technology to do this and get back to the TARDIS before the SSD is temporarily drained.  Double that time for each success increment above that target.

Blowing a story point. I don't want anyone disappearing on me unless they want to (aka Kalath)
15:18, Today: The Traveller rolled 27 using 4d6+14 with rolls of 5,2,4,2.  Using SSD to power field gizmo - Ingenuity 8+Tech 6+2d6+SP 2d6

Yet another time having sabotaged Davro's chair comes in handy.

When Trav is done, the whole affair looks vaguely like a shape with arms and a head.

To its head is post-it noted a message - "TROLLS ARE COWARDLY CUTLETS AND MEANY HEADS"

Smoke Alarm eyespied the tetchnological comtraption worrywartedly. It had puters and wheels and arms and even a head. She'd eyespied it go all-together, but still was unbold. 'Are you egg-sure it's not a cleaner?' she asked Traveller.

She frowned quietly. Running away?

She shook her head.

"Let me go. Track me with your magic if you wish, but you need to know where people are vanishing to."

"Smoke, why would *I* of all people build a cleaner? I don't need any more brains, I have a pretty big one myself." She waves the arms up and down, smiling. "See? These can't even move."

'Well, mayhaps it could comeout into a cleaner itself?' Smoke Alarm worrywarted, eyespying the comtraption more closely while 'waring the arms. 'Whyfor does it even have arms? Or a head?' Then she read the Post-It Note, mouthing the sounds to herself. 'Trav! You miss-spelled "trolley"!' she pointed out, glad to knowhow the spelling herself now.

All the while that the Traveller and the dwellers in this place have been talking back and forth about the whys and wherefores of people vanishing -- a thing that seems like it has a perfectly reasonable explanation to Kalath -- she has been slowly growing more aware of a pressure, steadily increasing.  If she turns in a circle, she can even put a direction to it: if she understands the meaning of the image taking shape on the Traveller's screen as a map of this strange place, she thinks that facing toward this feeling is the same as facing toward the disturbance on the map.

It feels similar to the sensation of snatching prey home as a wakened Hunter.  That is a very visceral and personal feeling and this is a broader, duller, aspect in the environment -- rather like running your hand through a flame compared to basking in the noonday sun -- but the two things seem different mostly in degree, not in nature.

She flexed her knuckles, and snarled, not as the Hunter, though the grin she gave as she gave it might look a touch.. pointed.

The grip tightened on her weapon, as she faced in the direction the pressure was coming from. If it was going to snatch her, they would find she was not some weak prey, unlike the others it had gotte used to on this base. She was Kalath!

"So, we are doing this now?" Sokolov asks.  He and Trav have transferred the guts of the signal processor into the cart, and the sonic screwdriver is nestled within it as a miniature generator, but -- at present -- the device is still drawing station power and driving the array of transmitters around the central control room.  All that remains is to switch on, remove the leads into the station systems, and activate the extra emitters now affixed to the cart.

Murcheson and Dr. Makoro have gathered up several satchels with equipment and watch, ready to move.

A set of indicators on the station monitors start to switch on and off, drawing Sokolov's attention.  "Eh?"  He bends over the control.  "No.  Not possible!"  At the questioning looks, he says, "Pressure hatches are cycling in Maintenance Stores Hut Five.  Either there is a malfunction -- or someone is out there!"

'Visitors?' Smoke exclaimed, trying to outlook at the picture-spouts but not eyespying much from the condition meters. 'Is that trolley ready-steady-go for outgoing? Mayhaps I can foot out there with all speed and bring these others in afore they're made gone?' the Blue Kang offered, ready to be brave and bold as a Kang should be.

Sokolov, distracted from the problem of the portable projector, is bent over his console and calling up a big map of the complex, illustrating the location of Maintenance Stores Hut Five.  "Oh, that is not good...."

It looks like the building disturbance is superimposed on the same area.

Stanley cannot contribute much to the building of the portable projector, but he does notice that Kalath is sensing something. Personally he can't hear or see anything unusual from the direction she is facing, but just like animals appear to predict earthquakes, there might be something coming.

"Is everything okay?" he asks Kalath.

Smoke Alarm outlooked at the picturespout, eyespying the hazard bubble growing over the building with wide-eyed worry, and tracking ways thru the carrydoors to get there. 'I haveta outgo and warn them to keepaway!' she decided, afore footing out of the brainquarters with all-speed. 'Build high for happiness!' she called out a speedy farewell, opening the door and banging it shut behind her.

Once outside, she sprinted toward Maintenance Stores Hut Five, rememorising all the right and left and upward turns outgoing there, determined to rescue these visitors.


OOC: Impulsive!

She just continues to tense, and then moved in the direction the pressure was coming from. This sitting and discussing of how to be -safe- just wasn't her.

OOC: If that's the same way as Smoke, she'll try to keep up; but if it ends up being different she'll probably try to stealth.

Smoke Alarm, with her finely honed sense for interior navigation, beats Kalath easily to the obvious exit from the main dome.  It has a double set of doors, inner and outer -- what they'd called an airlock, in their great undersea adventure to rescue the baby pool-cleaner -- but the controls are showing green for air outside the building, instead of stop-signing her.  Within the airlock are some compartments holding various pieces of strange gear.

Kalath doesn't have quite the same sense for making her way through the building, but she hardly needs it, as it's second nature to her to follow in Smoke Alarm's path, tracing out toward the growing presence Kalath can feel in her head.  She arrives just as Smoke Alarm is opening the outer hatch and it irises open.

And the weather outside is fierce.  The pair are lashed by hard, driving rain almost at once, and they're both immediately struck by the smell of it.  Kalath's sensitive nose is nearly overpowered by the pungent odor -- it reminds her a bit of the smell of creatures marking their territory, only missing the earthy parts of that sensation.  Smoke Alarm isn't as affected by it physically, but what it brings to her memory is something entirely different: cleaning solution, the kind that flooded through the Towers when the cleaners began their Great Wipeout.

Still, it doesn't hurt on their skin, and neither is having any real trouble trying to breathe as they forge out into the storm....

OOC:

Both of you get a story point for Impulsive.

Give me a Tricky Strength + Athletics roll to cover making your way to Maintenance Stores Hut Five through the storm, to see if there are any interesting mishaps.

To her credit, Smoke Alarm did have the knowhow, somewhere in the back of her twitchy mind, that mayhaps she would need a spacesuit, or at least some kind of fancypants coveralls, for outgoing outside. She would've stop-signed to dress, even, if she found one at the airlock and it was right colour blue. But, luckily, she didn't need it and could just about breathe without one, though it was still hazardously pongy. Smoke's nostrils wrinkled and her eyes watered as she exited the dome and footed into the outside. Cleaning fluid rain! Sprinkle gas clouds! A planet of wipeouts. The Kangs would never believe her show-and-tell of this!

She struggled bravely and boldly against the winds, but as well balanced and speedy as she was, Smoke Alarm was much too small and light not to be picked up or blown over...


OOC:
11:51, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 13 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,2.  strength(4) + athletics(4).
This message was last edited by the player at 04:14, Tue 20 Nov 2018.

Kalath wrinkled her nose a bit, before she moved forward into the storm, not even thinking about the need to breathe. She hissed, something was marking their territory. Something... not quite normal. She pushed on through the storm, not even bothering about her weapons at this point - you couldn't fight nature.

OOC:
19:54, Today: Kalath rolled 18 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 4,6.  Strength + athletics.

Before Stanley can do anything the two have left the safety of the room. "Great, now we can only hope they don't disappear."

He turns to Sokolov, "Could this really be visitors? I know we sort of appeared out of nowhere, but normally you'd have some warning, right?"

"Yes, you never did really explain how you landed," Sokolov observes.  "I suppose if we missed you we could have missed someone else.  Either that, or someone has been holed up elsewhere in the station.  We sent out a general call and we thought we had accounted for everyone, but...."

Murcheson looks unhappy, and he's still watching the exit where Kalath and Smoke Alarm have just left.  "Once we thought we were well, safe... ish... we didn't like the idea of going out again to search building by building.  Right?"  He looks to Makoro for support.

"No one here is blaming you, Lieutenant."

"But it's why I'm here."

Bracing herself through the wind and the rain, Kalath is able to crouch low and move from shelter to shelter in the lee of one building after another.  Now that she's in the lead, she is able to rely on the pressure in her head to steer her in the right direction as she goes.  She finally finds herself leaning up against a dome-shaped structure with a huge 5 painted on it, barely visible in the grey gloom and the spray.

Smoke Alarm has a much rougher go of it.  The rain is making the space between the buildings a set of muddy rivers with slightly more solid patches of ground interspersed between them.  Smoke finds out just how problematic the footing is, about halfway to her goal, when a gust takes hold of her and pushes her braced feet several meters backwards before it topples her over in a splash!  It's a sodden and bedraggled Kang who clambers up to knees and feet and starts off again.

When she rounds a hut to get Maintenance Stores Hut Five in sight, she sees Kalath studying a hatch similar to the one they'd used to exit the main building.

There's a crash and a flash of lightning, and as it briefly illuminates the base all around, Kalath spots them, in one of the "islands" formed by the rainwater.  Footprints.  They're deep and must have been made during the storm -- there's no way any traces on the previously dry ground would be left behind in all this -- but they seem to track out from the door she's standing at, then retreat back to it.

The Kang had as much love of a bath as a pussycat, and being whooshed into a puddle of muddy cleaning fluid was both uncomfortably like getting one and uncomfortably like needing another one. She clambered out of the muddy puddle (muddle?) hissing and spluttering just like the pussycat who'd gotten a bath, and then footed after Kalath.

So much for outgoing here first! Smoke had been winning at the start, but now Kalath was beating her! Footing to her with all speed, she found her at another airlock door. 'This is the one! Can you open it?'

She gave a look to Smoke, then gestured down at the footprints.

"Quiet."

She then moved to try and open the door, and once inside, was thinking stealth at this point.

Kalath spends a moment puzzling over the door, and just when Smoke Alarm is about to point out that it has automatic controls like the one on the main building, Kalath finds a manual release that causes the clamps holding the hatch closed to chunk loose.

Inside, there's another matching hatchway that she has to open the same way, and through that door, the pair get a look into the real interior part of the structure.  It seems like it is one open chamber, but filled with free-standing metal racks loaded with lots of boxes of all sizes, similar to the crates that Murcheson, Makoro and Sokolov had packed into their refuge in the central control room.  The racks are arranged close together with narrow spaces between, so they seem to have subdivided the stores hut into a sort of labyrinth.

However, Kalath suspects that the hunt for the maker of the footprints won't be any sort of satisfying hunt, because there's a blatant line of muddy footprints leading in from the hatch and off into the maze of storage racks.

The pressure in Kalath's head is even greater now.  Even Smoke Alarm feels a little funny, like maybe her hair would be standing up again if it weren't plastered down with rain.  Kalath can't put it down to anything beyond instinct and feel, but she wonders if that pressure can possibly increase much more before something happens to release it.

'I knowhow to be quiet-as-a-mouse.' Smoke Alarm insisted, almost offended.

Outlooking inside, Smoke Alarm soon eyespied the mazement made up by the racks and boxes. Whyfor couldn't they just dump things in a tidy pile? This place would be tricksy to track thru and not get lost-and-not-found in. On the other hand, the muddly tracks on the floor would make it a bit more easy-peasy.

She felt the fuzzy-head feeling again, and it was getting hard to stay focused, or at least harder than usual. Since Kalath was up front and had won the race, Smoke let her take the lead while she played follow-the-leader. 'You track the visitor.' Meanwhile, Smoke tried to eavesdrop thru the racks and eyespy inside some of the boxes, to get knowhow of whyfor the visitors had come in, and knowhow what was stacked up beside her, for when it all came tumbling down. As it probly would.


OOC: Looking, listening, learning.
13:20, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 19 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 4,6. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2).
Do the stacks go all the way to the ceiling?

She let Smoke look around more, whilst she moved to follow the tracks. Following the tracks may not be hard, but following them without being noticed though!

OOC: 23:26, Today: Kalath rolled 13 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 2,1.  Co-ordination + subterfuge + sneaking.

23:27, Today: Kalath rolled 11 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 2,2.  Awareness + Ingenuity + keen senses. Just in case.

"I understand. Searching the other buildings wasn't and isn't without risk." Stanley looks at the portable projector. "Is that thing ready? Then I suggest we start heading towards our ship. If Smoke and Kalath find someone, we'll go back and meet up with them, but for now let's not waste the distraction they are providing."

As Smoke Alarm pokes through the racks to determine the contents of the boxes, she finds that an awful lot of them contain electronic parts and components, equipment and supplies for fixing structures like metal struts, folded flexible patching material, adhesives and fasteners.  She does come into an area that has survival gear like protective clothing and packaged (and not-too-appetizing) ration kits.

Kalath follows the tracks until she notices movement from up ahead.  Moving to a position where she can observe without being seen, she sees a man with long ragged (and rain-soaked0 hair and beard huddled on the floor, clutching what looks like a shiny silver blanket around him.  There is a small nearby pile of wrappers and boxes, which (were she aware of Smoke Alarm's discovery) she would be able to identify as containers for the ration kits.

She can't get a very good look at what the man is wearing, due to the blanket.  But it doesn't seem to be the same as the outfits that were worn by Sokolov, Makoro and Murcheson, which were all uniform jumpsuits that varied only in minor details.

He doesn't seem to have noticed Kalath yet.  He's looking around in apparent fear, perhaps having heard the opening door, or stray noises made by Smoke Alarm.

OOC:

22:49, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Strange Man, rolled 11 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 4,1.  Noticing Kalath's approach: Awareness (3) + Ingenuity(3).

Per Smoke's question, the hut is a dome, but the storage racks are at a uniform height.  So the closer one is to the center of the hut, the more clearance there is between the shelves and the roof, enough for a person to move through but not stand up.

As she footed along the carrydoors made by the racks and stacks, Smoke Alarm shoplifted a few usefully odds, ends, knicks, and knacks. Some of those small strutty things could be handy-dandy arrows, while ration kits could feed a hungry Kang, and she rememorised the place of the fancypants coveralls for later.

Since Kalath was in front in the lead, Smoke waited for her to make a how-you-do. Or whatever she did instead.

There was a time when her first instinct may have been to ambush him - he wasn't one of hers, so he must be one of Them. But it's different now. She's different. She proceeds cautiously, so as not to alarm him, and though she has her weapon, it is not held aggressively, rather, it is ready to be seized.

"Hello."

The man stares up at Kalath, wide-eyed, and flinches back from her.  With the movement she gets a better look at what he's wearing -- rough white buttoned shirt and trousers, not too dissimilar from what the old books and pictures from back home showed people wearing, from before the kitlings and the Hunters came.

"Who are you?" he says.  He's puzzling out how Kalath is dressed, too.  "Where am I?  You aren't with the others, the ones who stole me away, are you?  This place isn't anything like where they took me to, not with the buildings and that rain, but it isn't home, either -- when I felt myself being taken, again, I hoped it would take me back home, but it didn't."

She just smiles quietly and nods.

"Kalath." She frowned. He looked different. Could he be from another place and the ones vanishing from here were there? It's not exactly how Hunter and Kitling home-not home travel worked, but it was similar yes?

"I cannot explain where you are, some kind of..." Despite everyone's best intentions, she was still a savage, and explaining where they had been was beyond her.

"What's your name? Where are you from?"

"Vinsen Chalri," the man says hesitantly.  "I'm from... I'm from the town of Jelen's Ford, in the county of Alsondown.  But I don't know if that is going to mean anything to you.  It didn't to the others, in the place I was before this.  A different place, not Alsondown.  It was... strange. The trees and the grass and the stones, they weren't, well, right.  The others tried to explain it to me, but I didn't really understand it.  They were also strangers to the place that I was in, that Icame from, just before I came here.  If I followed what they said correctly, they said they had come from Old Earth."

He looks around at the contents of the hut.  "Is this the place they came from, maybe?"

OOC: I figure Smoke Alarm can have picked up enough of this conversation to join into it without a recap, if so desired.

Smoke Alarm footed up behind Kalath and joined the talky-time with the visitor. 'Smoke Alarm.' she said, as usual not clear if this was her name or the beginnings of a statement about fire safety.

'Mayhaps.' she answered Vinsen. 'Sounds like these others are the sciencists taken out from here. This is Research Station Hee-cate, on the Moon of Storms, in the 55th Cancri system.' she explained, repeating what she'd eyespied of the address without really having exact knowhow of any of it. 'But we need to foot it out of here with all-speed before you get gone again. You have to show-and-tell Traveller and the rest what you saw.'

Vinsen starts to get to his feet, a bit unsteadily and uncertainly, saying, "Is it safe?  That rain?"

But just as he seems to have gathered up the courage to venture out with the others, things in  Maintenance Stores Hut Five begin to go distinctly strange.

It starts as a pressure, like a soft wind blowing against the three, inwards from the door of the dome.  It starts to build and grow as a thickness in the air.  For Kalath, it starts to hum and sing inside her head; for Smoke Alarm, it is disturbingly and uncannily like what happened to her not so long ago, when she was nearly pulled out of the world by a thing with a body like a brain and rats for its hands, back in the barn in Montana.  Their vision starts to distort, as if distances are magnifying the farther away they are.

Like they're starting to slide to the bottom of a hole....

'Woah!' Smoke yelped, surprised, as her outlook stretched outward and her feets started to feel like falling. It was like the Qplotl all over again! 'We haveta fire-escape! All speed! Now!' she yelped at Kalath and Vinsen, making egg-sure they were outcoming afore turning and footing away, tracking back thru the crate maze, rememorising the way out.

Trav has been distracted in getting the cart ready. She pokes her head up and pulls up her goggles - her transformed hat - and says, "Always running off, now I have to keep track of two of them! Stanley, where did they go?"

The Call was well.. calling. The humming, the singing, who would want to run away from that? Besides, didn't the Sorceress need answers, and this was the way to get answers. She turned to Smoke Alarm, and though she wasn't full-on catted-out, she grinned at Smoke.

"Take Vinsen to the Sorceress who likes to travel. Find out answers her Magick-way. I find them the way of my people."

OOC: Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

'What? By blapping there and back like a Hunter or kitling?' Smoke asked worrywartedly, unbolded by the idea. Wasn't Kalath an enemy of the Cheetahs? 'You don't know where you're outgoing. It could be space. It's too hazardous.' she warned.

"If they haven't disappeared, they should be somewhere around Maintenance Stores Hut Five." Stanley says. "At least that is where they were headed. Hoping to meet our mysterious guest."

This prompts Trav to glance at the map and the readings from her scanning field, and she gulps at what has developed while she has been otherwise occupied.  If the map of disappearance sites was reminiscent of ripples slowly dispersing over the surface of a pond, the readings centered atop Maintenance Stores Hut Five are a huge iridescent soap bubble drifting in the air, hanging in that pregnant moment before the inevitable POP.

She just grinned at Smoke.

"Oh come now. Isn't this why you travel with Her? To explore new worlds, to find out everything you can? Just sitting and reading books isn't the answer, but this, this might be!"

She then howled, and sung along to the song in her head, willing it to take her wherever it wanted. To explore, to find answers in practical experience! She no longer had to protect her people, so any chance to explore was almost like an aphrodisiac to the not-exactly-former-Hunter.

Kalath's words made Smoke feel brave and bold as a Kang should be, ready-steady to go and run and jump into the dark as she'd done afore so many times. Yet Sereth's sense of sponsibility rose in the way and stop-signed her. No ball games, no fly-posts, no leaving anyone behind. 'But it's not just me now. I have to get this one sound-and-safe to Trav and the others.' Smoke Alarm show-and-telled, 'waring the bigger needs here, however reluctantly.

She eyespied Kalath closely, saying in farewell. 'No ball games, no fly-posts, no outgoing where you can't track back from. Build high for happiness!' She put her fists on top of each other in the traditional gesture, then snatched Vinsen's hand, footing out with him at all-speed.

Smoke Alarm splashes out into the driving rain with the bigger Vinsen dragging behind.  They're barely to the next hut when she feels a dizzying

POP

that seems to pull them backward, momentarily.

But then it's over, and there's just the pelting, dizzy-smelling rain and the wind.  She knows without having to look back, that whatever it is Kalath was planning on and where she meant to go, she's gone and there now.

But Smoke Alarm outlooked back anyhow, to make sure-as-eggs that the whole building hadn't been made gone too, and that Kalath hadn't tracked back with her after all. She hadn't, she was gone. 'Build high for happiness.' she wished her.

Footing on, she led Vinsen thru the driving cleaning fluid rain. 'This way! 'Ware the rain, it's not water. And the mud is a slip hazard.' she urged him as she tracked back to the main domes and the airlock, rememorising the way back to the brainquarters.

Over the phone is Trav's voice.

"Smoke, are you alright? I can't see Kalath's signal. Did she bloop out?"
She toggles, trying to ring Kalath as she runs. "Kalath, Kalath, can you hear me?"

This message was last edited by the player at 14:35, Thu 06 Dec 2018.

Trav starts running madly to where her companions are, protection be damned. If they disappear, she'll disappear with them.

"It is not..." Before Stanley can finish his sentence, Trav is gone. The only thing stopping him from following her is that the only thing keeping them safe is the machinery in this room. He understands wanting to check if Smoke and Kalath are okay, especially now that it appears that Kalath has disappeared, but if everyone disappeared... he doesn't like to think about it, but Trav has prepared for situations like this. He would probably be able to go back home if he could get to the TARDIS. He looks at the people still in the room with him. They would have to come with him to 21st century Earth. He shakes his head. Trav and Smoke weren't gone yet and if anyone could come back it was Kalath with her unusual power.

He claps his hands to get everyone's attention and points at the portable generator. "Is that thing ready? We need to get to them, but with the field protecting us."

Ominously, Trav's phone is displaying her thumbnail for Kalath and giving an accusing buzzing noise, displaying the message Out Of Service.  That shouldn't happen if Kalath's phone remains functional throughout most of space and time.

OOC: Trav and Smoke Alarm can run into each other without major issues.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:08, Fri 07 Dec 2018.

OOC: Give me a Presence + Convince to gauge your ability to get the others to follow your lead.  Voice of Authority applies, as does Reliable.

Smoke Alarm snatched out her ringing talkiphone, 'earing Trav's voice over the splattering rain. 'I'm sound-and-safe and tracking back with a visitor. But Kalath chose to stay and be taken. She was cat-curious to eyespy where she'd comeout.' she reported swiftly. Meanwhile, she made it back to the airlock, hit the Open button, and waved Vinsen inside.

OOC: 22:46, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 20 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 5,5.  Presence (3) +Convince (3) + VoA (2)+Reliable(2). Convincing the people in the room.

The station personnel are taken aback by Trav's frantic and speedy departure from the control room -- Murcheson perhaps moreso, Sokolov perhaps less -- but Stanley's assured manner focuses them again.  Perhaps it's the way he appears completely unfazed by Trav's behavior, like this is just the way she is and Stanley has seen it all before.

In any event, they respond with brisk agreement.  Dr. Makoro gathers up a satchel that she has been quietly filling with gear and ration packs while the others have been working.  Sokolov gives the field projector a final once-over and starts to maneuver it toward the exit where Stanley and the others originally.  "After you, Dr. Newton," the phlegmatic physicist says.

OOC: With your result, this group is going to be taking their lead from Stanley in particular for some time, even after they have reassembled with the other characters.

"Good, then let's get going." Stanley says and starts walking. He only briefly looks back to check if the others are following him and more importantly that they are bringing the machine.

"Oh Darling, thank goodness you haven't disappeared." She tags on her phone where Smoke Alarm is. She couldn't be mad at Kalath for running off like that, but she was intensely worried. There was a piece of her in all the cheetahs, just like there was a very tiny piece of cheetah in her. "Do you know where she disappeared at?"

Smoke Alarm jumped thru the airlock, pulled a bewildered Vinsen in after her, and kerchunked it closed again. Footing off down the carrydoor, they soon ran into Traveller as she cameout to meet them. 'Right in the middle of Maintenance Stores Hut Five, where he lost-and-found the visitor. She was howling.' she show-and-telled, made unbold by the sound she'd heard.

'This one is Vinsen. He's from... some place else. He can show-and-tell you about it.'

Stanley leads the group back to the TARDIS, Sokolov and Murcheson steering the field projector between them.  There's a bit of consternation when Murcheson thinks they ought to be headed for the airlock, but they quickly follow Stanley's lead anyway.

Judging by the readings on the sonic screwdriver by the time the group arrives back at the TARDIS, Stanley can tell that they've made it with time to spare.  He realizes, though, that the others are all sharing a second collective double-take when they get their first look at the blue call box.

"This is your ship?" Makoro asks quizzically.  "It's... snug. no?"

Right, the TARDIS didn't look like it could fit four people and all the stuff you need in a spaceship. Stanley is used to just walking through that doorway and into the space beyond, he completely forgot that that wasn't normal for everyone.

"Actually, there is more room..." Stanley pauses. He could tell them that the TARDIS was bigger on the inside, but he couldn't explain it. At least, not in a way that would pre-empt their questions. He uses his key. "Maybe it would be easier to just show you."

Despite the unusual size of the TARDIS, and the evident skepticism of the station personnel, Stanley is able to coax them inside.  The varying reactions of the trio are interesting.

"This -- this is impossible!" Murcheson splutters.

Makoro says nothing, but looks around in fascination.  She moves out from the door cautiously, with a hand held up and outstretched as if she expects that she's going to contact a barrier behind whatever projection or trick is giving the perception of depth and space.

Sokolov only mutters, "Hmph," and steers the field projector inside.  He starts to circle the console at a discreet distance, hands held behind him but plainly curious about the instrumentation.

"And this, this ship is able to get us out of here?" Mucheson asks.

In the rain, Trav smiles to the newcomer. "Hello, I'm The Traveller. Yes, I'd like to know about this whole thing. We're here to help. If you want, come back to my ship, we can get you something warm to drink and into some fresh clothes. By now my comrade Dr Newton should have your colleagues there by now. Please, can you explain what you know? And just one moment."

Trav calls the TARDIS console. A holo pops up with her profile. "Hello Stanley! I presume you and everyone else made it to Sweet Boy allright. Smoke Alarm and I have a Mr Vinsen with us. I am sure his colleagues will be delighted that he's returned."

Stanley has to admit he enjoys seeing their reactions.



"Yes." Stanley says confidently. Getting away from this place wouldn't be the difficult part. Telling them they wouldn't be able to go home... he wasn't looking forward to that conversation.  "Once we are sure there's no one left, we'll depart. Until then we should be safe here."



"Trav..." Stanley tries to keep the surprise from his voice. "And thankfully, I am not talking to a recording. Great that you found another survivor," he looks at the little group in the TARDIS. "We made it here without any problems."

He hesitates. "And Kalath? Any sign of her?"

"Recordings are only when things are very bad. No sign of Kalath - she's off the network and I can't ring her. My suspicion is that she's through Racallan's gate somehow." She transmits a request for the Scutters to guide the new guests to places they can rest, eat and freshen up.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:06, Wed 12 Dec 2018.

Smoke Alarm didn't want to loiter around in show-and-tell. 'Let's track back to the talkiphone box afore we get gone too.' she urged Traveller and Vinsen, footing off and playing follow-the-leader back to where they'd parked Sweet Boy and where it seemed Stanley and the others now were.

"I don't know anything!" Vinsen blurts out.  He's looking around in bewilderment at the walls and trappings of the station, plainly miserable.  "I'm a farmer!  One day I'm plowing for the spring planting and, all of a sudden, I'm in a place with trees that aren't trees, a sky that's not a sky, and a lot of people making a lot of talk about being in the same situation -- and not too long after that happens, I try to get back home, I end up here, where the rain isn't even rain, and it's worse.  Please -- if you can just get me home I'll do anything you ask, give you anything that's in my power to give.  I just want all this to be over."

He hugs himself, starting to shiver from the water cooling on him, and hunches up against the corridor wall.

Smoke Alarm couldn't believe it: Vinsen was sitting down like a lazybones when they needed to be footing at all-speed. He was unbrave and unbold, she eyespied sadly, a cowardly cutlet. But that wasn't going to get him anywhere. 'Come on!' she urged him. 'Traveller's talkiphone box can take you any place and any time, all thru space and ticktocks. We can take you home-sweet-home. You just need to get up and foot there and help us find these others, afore you outgo some place else again.' she show-and-telled him, but mayhaps she needed to go a different way with him.

She crouched beside him. 'Outlook, I knowhow what it's like. I got mousetrapped in a Cyberman factory and fire-escaped by jumping into a big blue bubble. When I came out, I was lost-and-found in a big towery city in the far-far-far-far future, and I had no knowhow of you-are-here or where to go. Then caretakers came and I had to fire-escape to another world. But there I met Traveller and others and in a roundabout way she's taking me home-sweet-home.' she show-and-telled him, a wistful remembering in her words. 'I knowhow that, wherever you are, you can't go anywhere by sitting still.'


OOC: Trying to bolster Vinsen's spirits, spending a SP: 19. I wasn't sure of the best attribute; I went with Ingenuity, but if you like Awareness (Smoke recognising a similar situation) then make it 20.
16:02, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 19 using 4d6+4 with rolls of 4,3,3,5. ingenuity(3) + convince(1) + SP.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 03:38, Fri 14 Dec 2018.

"We could all disappear again. Please, come with us, somewhere safe and warm. I promise I will do everything I can in my power to get you home. Now, come on, up, up!" She gets to one side of him and helps him up, and urges Smoke Alarm to help.

Vinsen draws deep breaths, trying to calm himself, as Smoke and Trav help him up.

He looks at Smoke Alarm.  "I know.  I'm sorry.  Thank you," he says.  "I'll help you with whatever I know.  The trouble is I don't know what out of the things I saw is going to be able to help you."

The pair of them are able to guide Vinsen back to the TARDIS and on inside without further incident.

'You just show-and-tell us everything you eyespied,' Smoke reassured Vinsen, 'Like where you comeout from for a start. Traveller will knowhow what's importent.'

She led them to the talkiphone box and footed inside, loitering around the walls and carrydoors and furniture and outlooking around 'waringly. Sweet Boy was full of visitors now, and Smoke knew the Us would be worrywarted by all the extra feet.

Trav, wet, strides into the TARDIS with their new guest. "Hello my friends. My apologies if this is a little unusual. But I can mostly guarantee that you should be safe in here from random teleportation effects. Please, avail yourselves of coffee, donuts, sandwiches, towels. The scutters will lead you to showers if you want to clean up. I will do everything I can to rescue your comrades from wherever they may be." Immediately she's at the panel, using what data they've gathered so far on the teleportation phenomenon to make sure that Sweet Boy and everyone on board remains safe. "Smoke, Stanley, thank you both for great work so far." She's also starting up the scanning sequence orders to the Orrery, continuing to take and process readings on the anomaly. She suspects that is where Kalath and everyone else went.

"Oh, and this is the TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. This is my ship and home. Please, make yourselves at home and relax - you've all been through a lot."

She then sits down Vinsen. After making sure he is comfortable, warm and fed, she softly asks, "Mr Vinsen, it's very important that you try to remember everything that happened to you, from the beginning. Describe it verbally, as best as you can. In the meantime, I'm going to... take a look, so to speak. If you don't mind."

If Vinsen assents, she attempts to telepathically view his memories as he describes what happened to him, touching his temple. She is working to be as gentle as possible with her psychic reading.

OOC: What is the roll for Psychic again? Doing what 10 did with Madame Du Pompadour

After playing outlook for the Us and show-and-telling them to their hide-ins, Smoke Alarm footed back to the console and beamed brightly at Traveller's compliment. She played you-are-here for the visitors. 'This is our brainquarters. That is the demateriali-thingy control, and that over yonder is the horizontal hold, up there is the picture-spout, those are the doors, and that is a chair with a Puddy on it. Sheer poetry!'

Stinking of cleaning fluid, stinging her nose and eyes, the Kang began peeling off wet and sticky clothes and wringing them out on the floor.

Vinsen starts to recapitulate his story as previously related to Kalath and Smoke Alarm.

As he describes his life before his initial abduction, it becomes clear to Trav that he must have been through some sort of temporal displacement.  His prior life was that of a farmer in what seems like a Level Three or Level Four civilization, but one that retained a history of Earth as a semi-historical, semi-legendary place, and as far as Trav or Stanley can determine, he's completely human.  While this doesn't give Trav enough information to conclusively determine his origin, she suspects he might have come from a regressed colony world from sometime between the collapse and subsequent re-establishment of one of the great interstellar Earth Empires.  Even the First Empire is centuries in the future from the current time frame, part of the initial burst of interstellar exploration.

"Welcome to the Moon of Storms, Mr. Vinsen." Stanley says with a friendly smile. "I am sure this whole situation is very confusing, but we're trying to get to the bottom of this and hopefully we'll be able to help you and the people who disappeared from here. You arriving here safely is at least a good sign."

Trav carefully examines Vinsen with her sonic as she works with him. "Mr Vinsen, I'm called the Traveller. This is Smoke Alarm, Dr Stanley Newton, and Kalath. I'll do everything I can to get you home. It seems like you've traveled through time. I'm sure this is all very confusing but you have my promise on that. May I?"

Trav suspects that Raccalan's phenomenon may have something to do with Vinsen being here.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:54, Thu 03 Jan 2019.

Vinsen's skittishness seems to reassert itself at the close proximity of the sonic screwdriver.  "May you what?"  But he suffers Trav's examination.

OOC: Awareness + Science for the scan.

(And Kalath is currently residing in an entirely different thread. :D)

'Trav will scan you with her sonicky screwdriver. Don't worrywart, it only beeps.' Smoke Alarm tried to reassure Vinsen, who seemed a scaredy-cat about everything. She tried to distract him from the screwdriver with another story. 'Show-and-tell about the other place with the other people, the ones from Earth. These ones are their friends.' she said, waving a hand at the three explorers.

She scans him up and down. "There, that wasn't so bad. Let's see."

OOC:
18:52, Today: The Traveller rolled 22 using 2d6+11 ((5,6))

"Well.  The place itself is... hard to explain.  The grass, wasn't like grass.  The trees, weren't like trees.  You could tell what they were supposed to be, but it was as if all the pieces were poor drawings of the real thing, drawn by someone who'd only had them described."  Vinsen shakes his head.  "Except for the people, of course."

At his mention of them, Dr. Makoro's interest is perked up and she closes in Vinsen, asking him for descriptions of the individuals, who seemed to be in charge, and so forth.  As she draws those explanations out of Vinsen, she and the other Hecate Station staff start to be able to confirm their identities, and Murcheson grows more excited.  "We have to figure out how we can get there, and get everyone back!"  He seems almost pathetically eager to retrieve anyone of higher rank and authority.

Trav's examination shows that Vinsen's body has absorbed an unusual count of delta particles, indicating that he's been subjected to highly advanced projection technology.  What's more, she's finding the unmistakable genetic scarring characteristic of translation across a transversal interface.

'Drawings?' Smoke Alarm echoed with amazement. 'Like on a picture-spout? Or in a wallscrawl?' she asked Vinsen, fascinated by the idea. It could be a whole wallscrawl world, filled with all the things you made. What could be more icehot?

"And that is what we shall do. Except you do understand that if I take my vessel in, we may not get out again. Before we make a rescue attempt, you may want me to drop all of you off somewhere safe. I have a good idea idea of where this man was, but I have to confirm it.  I suspect that he was in an artificial world - one perhaps created as a fancy by the Warpsmiths of Phaidon, who had never a real tree or blade of grass. Stanley, please look after this gentleman, and see to it he's examined and fed? I found some evidence of genetic scarring. Thank you, Mister Vinsen."

And off Trav runs to the Transversal Power console. Popping it open, she links its systems directly up to the Orrery sensors. A few whirrs of the sonic later, she's running up to the Orerry. Having gotten readings from Vinsen, she knows where to aim, and what to look for - delta particles, and a transversal interface similar to an osmic projector or a time corridor.

She hops into that seat, and shouts down the stairs - "Mister Vinsen gave me something to aim it. But it will be a wild ride. It's been centuries since I've slide down a dimensional slalom - I've always liked roller coasters, but some of you may not appreciate such a bumpy ride! Dr. Makoro, do you and your group want me to drop you somewhere off safe before we go?"

OOC: Ingenuity+Science to find the interface and plot a course through it?
This message was last edited by the player at 06:37, Fri 04 Jan 2019.

"Will do." Stanley says. "Mister Vinsen, if you would follow me to the infirmary we'll do some tests and then we'll see what we can do about food."

Murcheson, Makoro and Sokolov all look thoughtful at Trav's summation and her offer to drop them off elsewhere.

At last, it's Murcheson who takes a deep breath and speak up.  "I think we had better go with you," he says.  "i'm not understanding half of what you're describing, but if there's anything we can do to help to get Director Alston and everyone else back -- it's my job, I'm responsible for doing whatever I can."  He doesn't look very happy at the prospect, but game nevertheless.

OOC: Trav, go ahead with Science + Ingenuity

Vinsen nods and rises to follow Stanley.

He holds up a hand and turns it over to study it, front and back.  "...Genetic... scarring?"  He stumbles over the word genetic, in a way that makes Stanley think it's one he isn't familiar with.

Worrywarted, Smoke Alarm footed up to Traveller at her puter. She seemed to be unrememorising something. 'What about Kalath?' she protested, 'Can't you lost-and-found her? Mayhaps with the talkiphones?'

"Ah..." Stanley tries to think of a simple way of explaining. "Your cells are little factories that make stuff according to blueprints. You appear to have some damage to these blueprints. This could be relatively harmless, like using a different colour of paint or something more serious like forgetting to put a wheel on a car. The full extent of the damage is something only the tests will show , but don't forget that our bodies have repair mechanisms for the blueprints. You'd be amazed at how complex and efficient they can be. Of course, this is a simplified version, nature is a lot more complex than what I just told you."

Vinsen nods, like he's at least trying to sincerely follow Stanley's explanation, as Stanley leads him off into the TARDIS interior toward the infirmary.

When Stanley has taken a few samples and run them through the specialized analysis equipment, he doesn't find anything to be particularly alarmed about.  There are definite traces of cell damage to be found, but they probably add up to a few percentage points' worth of increased cancer risk, all told.

Vinsen still seems to be dealing with a fair amount of culture shock at this point, but he seems to be getting used to things and at least is growing calmer in a place of relative safety.

"There doesn't appear to be any significant damage." Stanley says looking at the results. "I cannot completely rule it out, but I am pretty confident there will be no lasting effects. Don't use this time tunnel, or whatever it is called, too often though. Oh, and eat healthy and exercise."

"I have to say I am glad that all the disappearances here turned out to be something relatively harmless. Sure, it is quite inconvenient for you and the others who have been teleported, but see it as an adventure. One you won't forget. And now you are in what is probably one of the most advanced infirmaries in this sector of space, maybe even this time, so do you have any other complaints? I wouldn't mind taking a look. Or we can go to the food." Stanley says.

"I'll try again, but the universe is like one superbig Tower or brainquarters. Kalath is *somewhere else*. Luckily, Sweetboy and I have run to quite a few different superbig towers, like the place with my signing girlfriend and the giant people and transforming airplanes, or the place with the dragons where I used to live. Hopefully, I can bring Sweet Boy there, and we can pick Kalath up."

'She said she wanted to lost-and-found the others in "the way of her people".' Smoke Alarm show-and-telled worrywartedly. 'She wanted to explore like me and you. She was howling.'

She frowned, rememorising what had happened before. Mayhaps it could help Traveller lost-and-found Kalath and the others? 'When it happened, everything went all wobbly. Dimensionally. Like with the Qplotl. Things got further apart, moving without moving. We feeled we were falling sideways into the middle. Footing out of there was like running up stairs on a flat floor.'

Stanley makes sure that Mr. Vinsen has had something to eat, and then heads back to the console room.

Trav pays attention intensely. "Got it. She may have done a Kitling jump at the edge of this math slalom. And we did make them curiouser cats. Well, I'm you're OK, darling. Can I see your phone?"

With luck, the phone's telemetry function that normally connects it to Sweet Boy may have recorded some of the strange fractal data that was surrounding Smoke at the time. Smoke Alarm may have stumbled across the rabbit hole that Trav wanted to take them all down.

OOC - Intellect+Science?

The Traveller moves back to the console.  The analysis she set running when the TARDIS first arrived at the Moon of Storms is still iterating on the model she set up from the transversal route data sketched out in Racallan's journal.

It seems hard to credit that Racallan was able to capture something as much like a coherent transversal bridge as he did: it speaks of genius, or madness, or a bit of both.  Having said that, it was still far from a navigable route, mathematically anchored at neither end, nor after all of the TARDIS' computations has it reached the level of resolution required.  The Traveller had expected that.  Brute force computation would only get you so far, and for all of the TARDIS' idiosyncratic methods, it wasn't capable of much beyond that.

But, armed with the data captured during Smoke Alarm's close interaction with the transversal interface, Trav realizes she may have the key to unlock it.  Applying the waveform atop the still-processing model as a harmonic transform, Trav sees the graphical representation sharpen and firm, extending notional filaments at either end.  One end resolves to a point in 5-space and a set of coordinates in the Vortex: a spot to aim for.  The other end -- Trav can't say for sure, but it shows a hint of structure that just may represent an interface into another continuum.

It's a tightrope.  But it may be enough of one to dance across.

OOC:
21:59, Today: The Guardian rolled 21 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 6,1.  Ingenuity(8) + Science(6).

Smoke Alarm handed over her talkiphone, then eyespied curiously as a cat as Traveller went to work on the puzzle. Mayhaps one day she could get knowhow of this sciencing stuff too? But the Kang could really only get the knowhow by copying and doing, just like this. She outlooked at the picturespout. 'Is that the mathy map of the universe here? Outlooks like noodles.' she decided, now eyespying it closely. 'Mayhaps I can have a helping-hand? Where's you-are-here?'

Stanley and Vinsen have returned to the console room by this point.  The Hecate staff, by now, are gathered around Trav at her study of the transversal threshold.  Of the three, Sokolov is the most intent upon the display -- Trav catches his lips twitching soundlessly like he's trying to puzzle through the math he sees there -- while the others are just watching Trav, expectant of a conclusion.  Though admittedly Dr. Makoro is displaying a great deal more in the way of patience than Murcheson.

"I think I know where our cat girl went. It will be dangerous - very dangerous - and I will be happy to drop you bunch off first before we go down this sled. But I did promise to rescue people, and so I shall. So, who ever doesn't want to go, speak now or forever hold your peace." Using Smoke Alarm's data, she starts keying in coordinates and a course.

"Do you want us to drop you off?" Stanley looks at Vinsen. "She isn't joking about this being dangerous. You are a victim and nobody expects you to risk your life."

"I don't have any idea about how hard it would be, to get me home, when there are so many other people that are still in trouble right now," Vinsen says.  "I would be taking the Traveller's word for that in any case.  So I think I'll stay with all of you, until this is over.  I wouldn't want to leave other people at risk just so you could take me back, much as I want this to be over."

Trav smiles. "That is very brave and kind of you, Mr Vinsen. As for the rest of you? All I need are some stellar coordinates, and I can bring you anywhere in this galaxy."

At Traveller's offer, Smoke Alarm outlooked at the others, wondering what they would choose, if they would be scaredy-cats or brave and bold and they could be, if they would speak now or forever hold their pieces. The idea of choosing to outgo some place sound-and-safe was strange to her; she'd never ever been some place truly sound-and-safe. Well, except one. 'But what place could be more sound-and-safe than the talkiphone box?' she asked. 'They can loiter here until we lost-and-found the others. Can't they?' she asked, outlooking next to Traveller for confirmation.

Murcheson's jaw sets and he gets a bit of a stubborn look to his features, but Dr. Makoro holds up a hand to still whatever outburst he was about to make.  "The lieutenant spoke for all of us when he said we're in.  We're in."

Trav replies - "Sweet boy is about to take us somewhere new, and everywhere we go is dangerous, even for him. I want to let these good folks have the chance to get off the ride before we head on in."

Upon Dr Makoro making his pronouncement, and checking the faces of the others for nods and assent, the Traveller grins proudly. Humans - indomnitable. "Hold on, here we go!" She reaches over to the old transversal station, works a wheel and pushes in a plunger. Then, she throws down the main drive lever, as they are off!

'Icehot!' Smoke Alarm whooped as Traveller made Sweet Boy ready-steady-go! As the talkiphone box flew down those space-noodle things, the Blue Kang footed around the console, excitedly eyespying the picture-spouts and check-upping the puters, everything short of flicking buttons and pressing switches. After all, Traveller tended to dash around the console, and Smoke Alarm was beginning to get knowhow it was needed for the journey. After all, she was never outgoing anywhere without footing it either. 'Are you sure-as-eggs we can track back, Trav?'

Stanley decides to give a good example to their guests and actually does hold on to something. After all their adventures he was somewhat used to the 'turbulence', which wasn't really too bad yet, but he wouldn't be running around like Trav and Smoke.

The TARDIS engines start to trumpet and roar, and there's a lurch and sensation of falling as the timeship starts on its way.  The overhead projection shows the kaleidoscopic maelstrom of the Vortex rushing past as the craft hurtles into it.

Flashing block capitals in blue appear on the display: Transversal Power System engaged and priming.  Transversal Aperture Navigation enabled.  A pattern of six hexagonal reticules superimposes on the racing imagery of the vortex, each shifting in color and the pattern drawing closer or expanding again as it traces across separate temporal skeins, seeking the "thread" that indicates the flaw or fissure that can serve as the entry point into Racallan's transversal route.

Intercepting the skein at the right inclination and the right rate of temporal shift is going take a deft hand....

OOC: Trav, give me a Transport + Ingenuity.

The Traveller circles around the entire control console, making adjustments here and there. Unlike the blond, who would be frantically running around, Blue takes her time, listening, adjusting everything like a Maestro. It's been a long time since she's done this - maybe she will put her hand to interdimensional exploration again.

"Everyone ready? Holding on? Good. Because HERE WE GO."

Two levers down, one level up, a footpedal goes down and a plunger goes in!

OOC: 10:20, Today: The Traveller rolled 25 using 4d6+12 with rolls of 5,5,2,1.  Ingenuity+Transport+Story Point.

Stanley Newton is an old hand at being a passenger in the TARDIS, and even he isn't all that sure about what to expect from this journey.  As the Traveller slips the TARDIS neatly into the transversal aperture, the display shifts from the whirling colors of the Vortex to show the perspective falling at breakneck speed along a branching spiderweb, veering off at fork after fork after fork.

There's the slightest sense of momentum with each change in direction, and an unfamiliar, pulsing vibration through the soles of Stanley's shoes, but the effect in general is actually more exhilarating than dizzying -- he feels like he's riding over twisting mountain roads at full throttle, with a sure-handed driver at the height of her skills behind the wheel.

Then the trip down the web is over and the TARDIS bursts into another Vortex, one that looks on the screen like a weird photographic negative of the one they've just left.  The engines blare out as the central column oscillates up and down, until at last it comes to a halt, there's a final powerful THRUMM through the vessel, and the cheery ding! of arrival.

The only thing that seems off now is the scanner image.  It splinters up into a colorful, irregularly pixellated pattern that shows no sort of real image at all.

As they rode the transversal roller-coaster whatsit, Smoke Alarm cried out 'Wheee!' and 'Woohoo!' Then she jerked suddenly to a stop-sign at the end of the ride, whatever the laws of physics said she actually should do. 'Icehot!' she whooped, then eyespied the picture-spout. 'Outlooks all pixelly. Do you knowhow where you-are-here is?'

"Huh" Stanley takes a look at the scanner display. "That doesn't look good."

Trav whaps the monitor a few times. "Sweet boy, now is not the time for your 8 bit fetish."

"I've been to video game realms before, but not via Sweet Boy. The best way to see outside is to go outside! Lets take a look!"

And she replies to Smoke Alarm - "No idea, sweet. Not knowing, isn't it wonderful?" She adjusts her hat, as she joyfully goes to discover a new place.

And there she goes. She marches right up to the door, opens it up, and pokes her head outside. What does she see?

OOC: Can I claim an SP for Impulsive or Curious?
This message was last edited by the player at 01:02, Sat 02 Mar 2019.

Smoke Alarm eyespied Traveller outgoing. 'Not when you hop-skip-jump off a tower, it's not!' she retorted, rather wisely she thought. 'You gotta knowhow to land too.' Still, footed after Traveller, and wondered just how she was going to hop-skip-jump on pixels and colours anyhow.

"Relax, Smoke, I'm looking before I leap." Indeed, she takes a look around. What is outside?