"Holy crap!" Trace exclaimed, shielding himself from the flying ice fragments. "Still wanna dissect the corpsicle?" he says to the deranged professor as leans around to get better look at the figure bashing its way out of its icy prison; curiosity temporarily overriding common sense.

Tarys gasps.

She had spent a long time hunched against the wall, meditating and willing for an answer to come, and it had not.  That was always a danger in relying on her unpredictable foresight: sometimes it told her nothing and merely distracted her from understanding and acting on the here and now.

Now there was not the time to wait for inspiration any more.  Now she had to act.  If the Memento Mori was a weapon, well, she was a warrior, in the war it was made to fight.  Maybe that would be enough that she stood a chance of controlling it.  Maybe there was some scrap of its directives and programming left to give them a clue.  But if anything like that was even possible, there would be only one way to get at it.

"Axander," she says crisply.  "I'm going to make contact.  See if there is anything like a control matrix that can still be accessed.  If this fails, just... carry on.  Make sure the Knife does not fall into the wrong hands."

Tarys slips forward in the face of the ice fragments, sliding past Bluetooth, and reaches out to plant her hand against the plasmic shell of the weapon.  As she does, she opens her mind, trying to mesh and join with the control pathways of the Memento Mori.

"Contact."

Trying for a psychic contact with Resolve + Awareness + Psychic(+4) for a +13 total,
 and I'll use a story point.

22:41, Today: Tarys rolled 27 using 4d6+13 with rolls of 5,6,2,1.  Reading the Memento Mori's telepathic control matrix: Resolve(5) + Awareness(4) + Psychic(4) + Story Point.

It was an outer plasmic shell, but it looked and felt like a cold, wet, filthy raincoat, with a frail body beneath. Tarys had taken a great risk in touching this embodiment of Death, and in opening up her mind to it. Undeterred, she made contact with the dead mind of the revenant TARDIS, and its flinty grey eyes bore into hers.

What she saw was...

...The death of a beloved human grandmother, family weeping around her... A Draconian noble, eyes cast down in dishonour... A Terileptil slave, broken and pained, all hope gone... A Catfolk businessman, penniless and full of regret... A Time Lord watching the taking of the Cruciform, knowing in her hearts it was the beginning of the end... A Dalek crying, for there were no people left to kill...

Every loss, every sorrow, ever despair, regret, and defeat, all of it, everywhere and everwhen. This was what the Memento Mori saw and remembered, and turned into a weapon. She saw Time gone wrong, gone rotten.

A lesser mind might have fled in horror, but Tarys stood firm. The Memento Mori might have rejected anyone else, but it registered her, in its dully instinctive mind, to be Patrex, a Time Lord, one of its covert creators. It let her in, into a mind of decay and despair.


OOC: It took me a while to work this out. What would you like to do?
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:52, Fri 01 Sept 2017.

Axander glanced at the two obeying Professor Ortega's order to extract the man-shaped monster from the ice, unable to think of anything else to say to keep them safe. Then Bluetooth decided to directly talk to the thing, and the young Time Lord took a shaky step forward, eyes going wide.

"Bluetooth, keep back!" Part of him was so frightened that he couldn't move any closer to pull his friend away from the thing. Part of him, to his shame, was curious about whether it would actually work. Unfortunately, the Memento Mori reacted in the worst possible way, smashing out of the cold prison. Axander shielded his face from the shards with an arm, then rushed forward to help Bluetooth up to his feet.

"Come on, we have to get to the control room!" Even as he pulled at Bluetooth, Tarys began to move forward and explain her own plan, and his expression froze.

"Con--what? You can't make contact with a corpse! Tarys, this is...oh, I can't believe this... Bluetooth, Trace, I need you to get to the control room and find a way to shut this planet down. The rest of us will be right behind you." Tense, he watched the soldier's attempt at a psychic link with the undead time capsule. He couldn't leave her behind. More than that, she'd tasked him with keeping the Knife safe, and much as he'd be happy going all his lives without touching that thing, he was certain Tarys knew what she was doing.

Axander's request tears Trace away from staring at the emerging monster. Tapping at the controls of his gauntlet, he brought up the makeshift map of the area on the holographic display. "Control room ... got it." He says, thankful to have something to do that was actually within his expertise ... kind of.

The boy turned to depart but paused for a second. "Actually, how do you shut down a planet? ... Never mind, figure something out." With that, he ran out of the room. Not that he wanted to get away from the growing number of aliens that wanted him dead or anything.

The manifold image of despair surging through Tarys' mind, she realizes, would be enough to destroy the minds of many people -- and that realization makes a laugh burst from her, loud and ringing.  She had seen many-faceted disasters, countless times, when the veil of possibility tore apart in front of her, as it was wont to do.  Indeed, of anyone to expose their psyche to the Memento Mori, Tarys thinks she might be uniquely qualified to stare into that depth of oblivion and, despite the horror, stand within it and not shatter.  For a time, at least.  How do you break a mind that's already broken?

Or....

"I've got it.  I've got it!" she shouts.  "Yes!  Do that!  Find the control center, see what you can do to stop the drive.  I know what the Memento Mori is missing and there is every chance I can give it that. Even if this doesn't work in the long run, I can buy you time. Go!"

She smiles wide and laughs again.

"All that despair, all the lives smashed down and left in ruins?  Poor empty thing, I pity you, because you've only been built to touch half of the story.  Let me show you what I've seen!"

And she knows without a doubt, as clearly as if she were looking through the gulf of time and straight into his hearts, that this is what the Doctor would be doing, if he were here.

Perhaps, it's something that he already had.

She calls them up, from her own memories: resistance fighters on Teltenn Four raising a hymn before battle, the Exigency agents Failas and Severin sharing one last desperate kiss before they plunged into the heart of the Perdition Spiral, mothers and fathers giving puppet plays to wide-eyed, enraptured children even as they all huddle in a Garzin raid shelter.  Even in the heart of the blackest nightmare, it persisted.

(And inwardly, she dares to wish that her own peculiar curse might show itself, and show this thing the possibilities of what might be, if she and the other might band together, and come at last to defeat the Daleks' engine...)

"Memento Mori," she says, "open the eyes my Chapter gave you.  And let me show you hope."

I dunno what sort of check this would be, but I'm prepared to go all in on it.

EDIT: I guess, to expand on that, the ultimate Hail Mary plan would be to implicitly reprogram the Memento Mori in terms of what it had access to.  I know this is a task I really can't deal with on a technical level.  At worst, as alluded above, this sort of projection I am trying to give it may keep it occupied while the others go and work on the drive.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:21, Fri 01 Sept 2017.

For some reason, he felt he should know where the control room was, yet... he didn't. Where would it be on such a thing as this war planet?

He looked around for some kind of sign, or indication, or... oh, never mind! He let his instincts take over, and started running for the control room!

He had enough time to think that once he got there, he wouldn't know what to do, but, when it doubt, push the Big Damn Red Button!

The awakening of the Memento Mori seemed to have triggered something, namely all hell breaking loose. The ground rumbled beneath their boots. The ice cave trembled and cracked, chunks rained from the ceiling, and whole sections of wall sheeted away, revealing gleaming new shapes. Brutal angular structures, slender towers linked by walkways, hemispherical forms, all horribly familiar.

Oh, and there were Daleks.

Frozen Daleks entombed in the melting ice or lying on their sides like turtles on their backs. The first victims of the Memento Mori. The Yag Haz had just been blasted to dust.

OOC: The list of locations, all liberated from the ice now, nothing keep you back:

• Shelter (pyramid): 0/5
• Computer Core (dome; a military command centre): 0/5
• Archive (ziggurat): 0/5
• "Not-Enemies Nest" (angular quarter, a Dalek base): 0/7
• Weapons Depot (ziggurat; radiation source): 0/7
• "Rocket Shaft" (deep well or pit): 0/10
• Temporal anomaly (the Memento Mori): 0/10

Memento Site: Axander, Tarys:

'You fools!' Toz Raz screeched in panic, his shell a bright shade of blue again. He'd been reddish-brown or puce before; Axander realised the Yag Haz must change colour to communicate emotion. Perhaps he exhibited hatred and disgust earlier, but right now the only emotion he could be feeling was utter terror. 'The Memento Mori will slay us all! I knew not to trust you lying Time Lords!' He turned about and scuttled away as fast as his pincers would carry him, making, of course, for the Armoury, no doubt to collect as many weapons as he could.

Meanwhile, Ortega gazed on the uncovered Dalek base with stars in his eyes and glory in his heart. 'Daleks!' he breathed in awe, and gathered a worried Vax and Hali to him. 'At last! Look! A fully intact Dalek base, not bombed to oblivion, not defended by hateful Daleks, but fully open to archaeological and anthropological investigation. We can learn about them! This, this is our chance for discoveries, recognition, documentary deals! Come on!' Ortega marched boldly into the Dalek base.

Axander was left with three options of who to follow...

And Stirix the Martian scientist seemed to have disappeared from time.

Psychic Timescape: Tarys

Tarys poured hope and life into the Memento Mori, stimulating its dead heart like an electric shock. For a brief instant, it knew what it was to be alive again...

But then its ruthless programming switched in, resisting this effort to disrupt its mission and sway it from its purpose. It wouldn't attack a Time Lord, but this one was in its way and working with the enemy Yag Haz. It pushed back, tried to push her out.

Tarys and the Memento Mori found themselves in a psychic time vortex, her memories of hope and life and new beginning warring its temporal echoes of despair, death, and ending. Here was Tarys, the young seer and warrior. There was the Memento Mori, the old revenant time-ship. It raised an arm and pointed at her with a bony finger...

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace:

Bluetooth and Trace hared off across the snow to the so-called control room, the dome-like bunker of the Yag Haz military command centre with its computer core.

Inside, the strange, alien control room was active, blue and yellow lights winking in the dim light. Diamond-shaped screens, large and small, were set into the walls, some just above eye level, others much higher for the whole room to view. These were filled with the strange alien script, scrolling lists of data, maps of the city, star-charts, targeting systems, flight controls.

The keyboards beneath them were arrays of tiny switches and toggles marked with the odd Yag Haz hieroglyphs. They were arranged vertically and lay against steep-sloping desks, making them very difficult for humanoid hands. Fortunately, the interface Trace and Bluetooth had rigged up was still  plugged in and ready to use, and Axander's translation program was making the hieroglyphics readable.

A map of the city showed the power supplies to the various facilities. There was the Armoury, with a shockingly long index of all its weapons, power being supplied to some of the most potent. There were more Yag Haz shelters, still buried in the deep ice but still receiving power and therefore apparently with working life support.

Trace and Bluetooth pounced on the flight controls. There was a navigation system, showing a course locked in across half the Galaxy, to coordinates somewhere in the Kasterborous constellation.

'E-mer-genc-y! Time ship detected.' a harsh computer voice grated out. 'Halting gravitational slingshot and resuming course.'

Only pressing the Big Damn Red Lever-thingy did absolutely nothing.

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace

"Does anyone else think its weird that an alien computer system from a supposedly extinct ancient culture is speaking Terran?" Trace says offhandedly as studied the computer system. "The way I see it is we got two options. Try and reprogram the navigation system to alter the course up and out of the galaxy into the void. Or try and shut down power to the planet's engines."

Not knowing exactly how to shut down a planetary propulsion system, safely anyway, Trace started trying to access the navigation system. How hard could altering the course of a planet be anyway.

Even as Tarys remains with her palm held hard against the shell of the Memento Mori, she feels the caverns of the rogue planet slipping away from her senses.  Instead, she finds herself on the floor of a blasted, dead valley.  Nothing grows here -- the clumps of scrub among the maze of craters are just the husks left behind by the air-bursts of retrogression shells; a few desiccated carcasses are a twisted mix of insect and mammal and cyborg, victims of evolution gas.  The walls of the valley rise dark around her, stretching up to a smoke-shrouded sky lit by an occasional crackle of green lightning.

Beta Helvartram Six.

If there was a darkest day among the ones Tarys has lived through yet, this was probably it.  She knows basic psychic theory well enough to realize what's happening here: this is the result of her sensorium trying to present her struggle against the Memento Mori in some manner she can grasp.  Even Time Lords took comfort in a model of the mental world that subscribed to ordinary concepts of time and place -- at least, to move beyond them required one to be a good deal less functionally sane than Tarys.

But if this battle was painted as a reflection of Helvartram--

There.  She picks it out on the nearest slope, one of the recall beacons that the recon team had planted to allow the larger expeditionary force to navigate its capsules through the Dalek entropy screens around the system.  Dead and dark like everything else here -- but if she was right about the landscape her mind had constructed around itself, it also reflected an empathic conduit within the Memento Mori's systems, amputated to make the Type 103 into the thing it had become.

Light the beacons, and perhaps all this can live again.

Tarys starts to move from crater to crater and between the mounds of debris, alert for the inevitable defenders that would emerge to stand in her way....

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace

How hard was it to alter the course of a planet? Surprisingly difficult, as it turned out, judging by how much effort the Daleks had put into it.

Trace accessed the navigation system, finding flight logs, course, and course corrections. The planet had launched from the fringes of the Milky Way Galaxy, passed the Tantalus Spiral, and was simply making a turn at its current star, not orbiting it at all. The dates of the journey, mathematically translated, were odd to say the least. This planet had launched in 4024 CE. So much for Professor Ortega's theories of a world lost seven million years ago. It had been seven years ago. But he might forgiven there: the astronomers' models naturally didn't account for motorised planets.

Psychic Timescape: Tarys

Tarys picked her way over the war-torn wasteland, feeling a very literal sense of déjà vu. She could almost have expected it when it came...

'Ex-ter-min-ate!'

There it was, a Dalek with a dent in its dome, rising menacingly out of a crater. She'd destroyed it, the first time. She'd given it that dent. But the Memento Mori had brought back its temporal echo, had given it a second chance. Fortunately, this was only a psychic assault; in reality, she'd be facing its exterminator blast.

It fired its gunstick; the Memento Mori assaulted her with the Dalek's killing nature and utter hatred.


OOC:
Memento Mori: Resolve + Fighting = 21.

Shutting down the planetary engines was probably futile--it involved technical knowledge that he didn't have. But, that never stopped him before!

Thanks to Axanar's translation program, he was able to locate the engine controls. He had two goals, as he started pushing buttons randomly--shut down the engines, or blow them up. Mutually exclusive goals, of course, but the latter seemed like the better option, since that way they couldn't be restarted.

Ingenuity (2) + Boffin/Jiggery-pokery (?) + Technology skill (+3)
17:44, Today: Bluetooth rolled 11 using 2d6+4 ((2,5)).

If adding a Story Point will help, then I'll do that!

When the Dalek manifests, Tarys is already falling sideways, letting the focus malice burn past her and gouge a furrow through the landscape for many meters.  She tucks and rolls and comes up with her brow furrowed, determined neither to yield, not to try to matching it hate for hate -- she'd learned clearly enough from the adepts of the Cabal that this was a tactic that would only corrode the soul.

She's quite surprised, however, when between her and the Dalek there rises a three-man squad from the Eighth Shadow Legion, raising their entropic screen projectors against the blasts.  Disruptor bursts shatter against the shields in a torrent of light.

"Chaos keep you!" she calls to the legionnaires, momentarily forgetting that they're only constructs of her psyche.

But the Dalek is still an obstacle, blocking off the only passable route to the beacon.  It's not her wish to try to pit raw force against the Memento Mori's strength, both because she's aware of how that balance is stacked against her, and because destroying its systems is counter to her goal.  She needs the formation of focused hate the Dalek represents, not obliterated, but shifted or displaced

Her mind reaches out... and on her right flank there is motion: here are Ahali and Teleda, war-sisters of Karn in battle-gear from the time of Morbius, each with palms outstretched toward the Dalek:

"Sacred flame..."

"Sacred fire..."

Shimmering mist swirls around the Dalek form, attempting to invoke the Sisters' discipline of teleportation....

OOC:

Defense --

17:50, Today: Tarys rolled 30 using 4d6+12 with rolls of 4,5,5,4.  Defense against the Memento Mori: Resolve(5) + Fighting(3) + Psychic Training(2) + Brave(2) + SP.

Attack as second action -- Got double sixes to trigger Unlucky.  So after the reroll, that's a 14.

17:51, Today: Tarys rolled 20 using 4d6+6 with rolls of 6,6,1,1.  Displacing / redirecting the "Dalek" : Resolve(5) + Fighting(3) -2 (2nd action) + SP.
17:51, Today: Tarys rolled 6 using 2d6 with rolls of 5,1.  Reroll for Unlucky.

Now at 4 SP.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:17, Tue 05 Sept 2017.

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace

As Trace had already found, the engine controls didn't work. They continued not doing anything as Bluetooth hit buttons at random. The engines didn't shut down and manifestly did not blow up. Which, as the Daleks had extracted the planet's magnetic core and replaced it with the engines, and they were currently very close to the hole, should come as something of a relief.

Under this punishment, a panel beneath the console popped open, revealing the internal circuitry and wiring. All of which had been industriously chopped up by the pincers of an angry decipede – sabotage to prevent the Time Lords from stopping their attack on Gallifrey.

Psychic Timescape: Tarys

Engulfed in smoke and flame, the Dalek was spirited away by the Sisters, but the Memento Mori resisted this alteration to the timescape. Reaching out, it yanked the Dalek's timeline back into play, rewound it, gave it a different choice...

...The Dalek reappeared over by the cracked casing of an exploded retrogression shell, ready to run this battle again.


OOC: I'm not sure what you wished to happen in terms of the battle. In any case, you get a "Yes, But" success, so I figure the "Dalek" is out of position and needs to take a Move action to face you again. So the Dalek appears on Movers, and takes its second action on Fighters.
15:40, Today: GM BadCatMan, for the NPC Memento Mori, rolled 19 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 2,6. resist displacement: Resolve + Ingenuity.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:34, Tue 12 Sept 2017.

OOC: No, I failed.  Since I had to reroll the double sixes, I actually got a 14.

I would have figured that (if successful) this would cause Resolve damage, but the narrative would have represented that I was getting closer to the "beacon" which I would "attack" in a different way.  I don't figure that this this fight is about metaphorically "killing" anything, not for me.

This message was last edited by the player at 13:38, Sun 10 Sept 2017.

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace


"Dammit!" Trace cried. "It could take hours to rewire this. And that's if it follows anything close to standard practices." There was no way that the console could be rewired in time. Unless ...

What if instead of rewiring the console, he used a wireless transceiver to hook his gauntlet into the system. He wouldn't be able to run the entire console's functions through the gauntlet; he'd only be able to access one system at a time, rewiring the receiver each time to access a different system. Even then he'd only have the most basic of controls. But a simple command to switch off the power might not need complex access.

Of course, first he'd need a portable wireless transceiver. He had have one in one of these pockets somewhere. [spending a story point to activate Resourceful Pockets] "A-ha! Found one!" From a pocket he pulled out a small black object, about a centimetre or two long with a series of flashing LEDs and an input/output port. Trace scanned the console, and looking for the wiring that would normally connect to controls for the main power grid. Finding what he hoped was the right connection, he wired in the transceiver. Using the info from the translation device that Axander had set up previously, Trace sent what he hoped as a simple command. The command to shut down the power to EVERYTHING. In theory, with no engines, the planet couldn't resume its intended course. "Here goes nothing." He muttered, and pressed the send button on his gauntlet.


OOC:
15:05, Today: Trace rolled 23 using 2d6+5+6+2 ((4,6)).
+5 for Ingenuity, +6 for Tech incl area of expertise, +2 for Techically adept

OOC: Okay. This metaphor is getting increasingly strained. :) I realised I could keep my last post, retcon and all.

Psychic Timescape: Tarys

Engulfed in smoke and flame, the Dalek was spirited away by the Sisters, but the Memento Mori resisted this alteration to the timescape. Reaching out, it yanked the Dalek's timeline back into play, rewound it, gave it a different choice...

...The Dalek reappeared over by the cracked casing of an exploded retrogression shell, ready to run this battle again. Bypassing the Shadow Legionnaires now, it fired another blast, this time of pure, weaponised frustration


OOC: Since that reaction was a 2nd action in the first round, it should have had a -2 penalty. It comes to a basic Failure for you.
15:40, Today: GM BadCatMan, for the NPC Memento Mori, rolled 17 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 2,6. resist displacement: Resolve + Ingenuity -2 (2nd action)

Round 2:
Psychic assault: 19
13:21, Today: GM BadCatMan rolled 19 using 2d6+12 with rolls of 4,3. Memento Mori: psychic assault.

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace

Interfacing two, no, make that three different technologies and software communications protocols in a handful of minutes was impossible. For Trace, it was merely difficult. Working feverishly, quickly Macgyvering a replacement wireless interface, he sent "a simple command to shut down the power to EVERYTHING"...

And duly shut down the power to everything.

The planetary engines powered down and fell dormant, and the ice-cave stopped shaking. Then the screens in the computer core went blank, and the computers shut down. Then the lights went out. He'd shut down power to everything.


OOC: This feels like a Difficult task, 21, so you get a Success and a "Yes, But..." you were too successful. :) Well, you said it. :D

Computer Core: Bluetooth & Trace

Lit only by the glow from the screen on his gauntlet, Trace grinned. "Giving that I reckoned there was a 50/50 chance that would have resulted in a planetary meltdown, I'd say that worked."

There was so much going on all at once. Everyone was running off in different directions, even Tarys had completely left the physical plane to engage in psychic contact. Axander still had one thing he had to do, and took a deep breath before doing it. The others could wait. Aiding the expert technicians with their job was not his responsibility. Keeping the Professor from bumbling into some dormant hazard left by...did he say Daleks? There were a million reasons not to follow him. Toz Raz would need someone to make sure he didn't make another, more successful, attempt on everyone's life. Before any of that, though, Axander needed to do as Tarys asked.

He wasn't keen on touching a temporal abomination, in this case the Probability Knife, but it was the only way to be sure it was safe in the event Tarys's approach failed. The other temporal abomination in the room, the Memento Mori, wasn't as likely to be repulsed by it as a living Time Capsule was, and who knows what horrible fate would await the world if Toz Raz or worse, Professor Ortega, got hold of such a tool. As such, he edged as close as he could to Tarys and the revenant Capsule without physically touching either of them, and carefully reached out to take the Knife. He certainly didn't want to be inadvertently drawn into the psychic struggle, especially as he'd never finished his courses on psychic contact and would essentially be helpless. At the same time, he was hoping contact with the Knife wouldn't have any unwanted effects either.

Axander took the whole procedure slowly and cautiously. He'd have to hurry to catch up with Toz Raz afterward, and he would certainly need some sort of a plan. Perhaps he could make one on the way.

[Again, sorry for the long delay. Been out of sorts and busy. I don't recall a post of Tarys giving Axander the Probability Knife, but she did give him responsibility over it, so he's gonna try to take it. Imagine a game of Operation, with your hands as tweezers, pulling out an unstable nuclear ordnance, with your brain melting as the buzzer. That's how Axander is seeing this. Also he will find any excuse to not go near a Dalek facility, up to and including opting to wrestle with the centipede man instead. :P]