The cycles push off into blackness.

At once, the pressure compensators and heating units kick.  Even though they're dealing with the extreme environment perfectly at the moment, without a creak or a chill, there's a sense of psychological isolation that hits everyone almost immediately.  It's in the way that the powerful lights of the cycles are swallowed up almost immediately, with the nearby anomaly and the lamp of the TARDIS behind them likewise standing out as solitary lights in crushing blackness.  It's in the way the water is thick and resistant to the slightest movement, even if the cycles are pushing ahead gamely.  (Twelve kilometers and change through the anomaly and to the last signals of the SPOT is not so long a way, but pushing the cycles much beyond several KPH will start to stress them at this depth.)

As the conduit draws nearer, outlined in a coruscating pattern of blue and green, the only word for the experience is timeless.

OOC: I confess I'm fuzzy on the configuration of the vehicles and the suits.  Are the vehicles hard-shelled or soft?  I assume the suits at least have a pressure-support mode in case you need to be outside a hard shell of some kind, I didn't expect wet suits alone, but that's up to you.  I'd assume if the vehicles have an enclosed, rigid hull that that they also have some mechanism for getting outside of them.

In practical terms, they can have whatever parameters you all like, only I'd like for Trav, perhaps, to spell those out for consistency in further developments.

In reply to The Guardian (msg # 1):

OOC: Trav would have made the vehicles conventionally hard shelled with covers, with low-tech solenoid batteries that could be hand cranked, because all the weird magnetics and radiation.  The suits themselves are partially anti radiation hardsuits that are designed to resist heavy magnetics and gravitics that are powered off of ambient magnetic fields - designed off of RDF/REF-Southern Cross megadamage alloys - Stan, Sereth and Smoke Alarm should thank Louie Nichols and the dev teams at Monument City! These were adapted from Southern Cross Sea Squad armors. The helmets are so that we can see the actors pretty faces, and remember - Sereth has a big Draconian head. The wings of course are CGI fold out doo hickeys.




The elaborate armors are of course for the ATTT BBC approved toy line.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:56, Wed 27 May 2015.

Four aqua-cycles proceed into the maw of the conduit.

Now that they're in the midst of the thing, there's enough light to make out shapes of passing flotsam.  Stanley sees a thing like a short-spined urchin, and then sees its bristles writhe and shift to propel it out along the passageway.  There are definitely non-terrestrial life forms making the migration, though nothing that seems notably dangerous at the moment.

Piloting the aqua-cycles is fairly easy, given their advanced active stabilization systems.  However, the opposing current does give them a tendency to oversteer and fall off the beam.  On the approach to the aperture, this was not a hazard, as everyone had plenty of room to correct, but there is a bit of a needle to thread here....

OOC: It would be Coordination + Transport to steer through the conduit.  Plus I'll entertain other ideas for people to help get themselves through.  This is just a Normal difficulty roll.

With a soft wub-wub-wub-wub, Smoke Alarm motored her water-bike through the great pool, ever 'waring the hazards here, always outlooking around. Sometimes she saw shiny fishies and jellies and squiddies (not Daleks!), and other, stranger things. She couldn't say what was alien and what was not; all these things that lived at the bottom of the pool were alien to her. The shinier, funnier, and stranger of them brought smiles and looks of wonder to her face, but some were so weird and slimy she was grossed out, unbolded, and reminded uncomfortably of the qplotl.

Anything could be out here. The whole pool was lights-out, and even the lights they'd took with them didn't shine far through the murky water. And the pool was ginormous. It all made a Kang feel as small as a mouse, crawling through this endless lights-out, about to be chomped up by a shark.

Despite her lack of knowhow of riding the water-bike, Smoke Alarm did well enough to keep it outgoing in a straight line and not to oversteer. She only had to follow the others, mostly.


OOC: Should be a pass, unless you want to apply a penalty for not being trained in Transport.
19:11, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 12 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 6,1. coordination(5) + transport(0).

Over the throat mikes: "Old fashioned might be best. There should be magnetic grapples in the kits attached to the bikes. We should form a line and proceed slowly, with lines attached between bikes, looped around the handles and tails. Does that sound good?"

OOC: +2 circumstancial bonus to transport rolls?

It is such a different environment down here. Thanks to the darkness and the heaviness of movement, Stanley feels very aware of the fact that there is a lot of water above him. They are deep enough that you couldn't swim to the surface if something went wrong. He isn't really worried though, he trusts the suit and aquacycle. The fact that the anomaly is giving off some light also helps. The oversteer makes keeping the aquacycle on course a bit tricky, but it is manageable.

"Well...it could also mean that if one us ends up in some strong current, all us will get dragged along." Stanley replies to Trav.

OOC:
20:01, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 14 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 4,5. Coordination(3) + Transport(2) .

Hearing Traveller's idea, Smoke tried to picturespout it in her mind, eyespying the hazards. She activated her talkiphone, replying 'Mayhaps turning corners would be tricky. If the leader turns, the last one swings out. Like a row of trolleys. We have to play keep-away with the con-do-it walls... Mayhaps we save grapples for rescues?'

OOC: I would go along with Smoke Alarm's assessment -- half of you have already done fine, and everyone is at least talented enough at this that a catastrophic failure is pretty unlikely.

(Out of the box, kind of my motivation for making a roll here in the first place was the chance that someone... well, given his history with the dice roller, probably Sereth ;) ...would score a "No, But" and a save by the others would be in order.  Tension, y'all!)

The Draconian muttered darkly the whole time. He'd do much better with both his feet on the ground, and found it quite hard-going.

OOC:Oy, what's that about my dice-rolling!

16:21, Today: Sereth rolled 10 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 3,2. Co-ordination + Transport.

"Lets leave it to Smoke Alarm, then. She's our girl who knows swing lines and physical mechanics because they're in her bones. Smoke, can you take point?"

Smoke Alarm, first into the conduit, feels a bit of a wobble, but is doing a reasonable job of keeping herself on a steady track, while Stanley, perhaps warned a bit by the Kang's example, threads a careful path around her wake: despite the depth, he's finding the cycle no harder to maneuver than a Sea-Doo.

However, Sereth, following them, catches the edge of Stanley's slipstream, and feels his aqua-cycle slewing to the side, the nose angling alarmingly toward the wall of the conduit.  Trav and Stanley notice him struggling for control.  (And perhaps thinking wistfully of being inside a nice, stable minisub.)



OOC: Yes, precisely.

"Sereth, do you need help?" Stanley asks over the comm. He doesn't realise that his it was his slipstream that caused this.

'They are?' Smoke Alarm wondered over the talkiphone about things in her bones. 'Okay.' she agreed to take point, though she wasn't sure she would be a very good leader for follow-the-leader. She eased up the accelerator, pushing the water-bike forward to the front of the line, overtaking Stanley and Traveller, feeling the currents pushing back at her. The water made everything a slow-poke zone, all wobbly and unpredictable. More, there had been a suck of water coming back from Stanley in front and from Traveller further in front, making her water-bike go faster but also harder to control.

'Mayhaps we can fly two-by-two? It'll make the slippy-stream less. More, we can eyespy friends and catch them.' she advised, not realising the very reason for that had just happened behind her.


OOC: Can we actually see the conduit? How wide is it? Would we even fit going in in two columns?
This message was last edited by the player at 03:22, Sun 31 May 2015.

OOC: From the last thread:

The Guardian:

Readings on the anomaly show that it is projected to reach a locally stable diameter of 21 meters.

The cycles aren't that big, so you could go two-by-two.  And you can see the walls: the light in the passage is coming from glowing patterns that outline it.

In the present circumstance, Trav still needs to make a roll, and then something needs to be done for Sereth to recover.  Whether this would be him making a second, slightly more difficult roll with supporting bonuses from others helping him, or someone else making their own roll, depends on what you all want to try.

Smoke and Stanley can make it through OK as they are.

OOC: For goodness sake, don't make me make another roll!

OOC: Sereth, don't forget the +2 bonus for lines.
16:52, Today: The Traveller rolled 18 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 2,6. 2d6+Coordination 4+Transport 4+Cable 2.

Trav is looking back nervously at Sereth. Can he handle it? She considers using her pistols to fire a kinetic shot to push Sereth's aquacycle back on course.

But then she hears Smoke's idea.  "Good plan." She comes up next to Sereth, ready to assist, and attaches a tow line with slack.

Do I need to make a roll to connect a line to Sereth's bike?
This message was last edited by the player at 15:22, Sun 31 May 2015.

Sereth can feel the thunk of the grapple securing itself to the nose of his cycle.  As Trav's vehicle surges ahead and the line goes taut again, it pulls his course back to true, and together the two are able to steer safely ahead until the coruscating walls of the conduit are left behind them.

As everyone gets their bearings, they notice that the glow of the cycle lights gives off a color that verges slightly more to the purple than it did on Earth's side of the aperture, possibly due to differences in the chemical trace elements of the ocean around them.  The basic environment sensors continue to show the water as being basically benign; none of the differences should pose any threat to the bikes or the suit.  (It's nothing that anyone would want to ingest for long, but the same, of course, could be said for normal Earth seawater.)

The sensors also are picking up a wide variety of sonic pulses.  It seems likely that echolocation is a commonly used sensory tool among the denizens of this sea.

And finally, Trav's radio is now picking up a carrier signal on one of the common UNIT emergency bands.  Its bearing matches the direction of the last communication anyone had from Colonel Rayburn.

Trav immediately does what she used to do when she and her band of magicians and mystics visited a new universe back when she adventured in R Space - her sonic immediately matches the base physics of N-Space against what is here. A cosmos will have certain universal constants - acceleration of gravity, the speed of light, how the time vortex functions, and other physics standards, which may vary from those of N-Space. She starts that program running in her sonic.

Upon getting the UNIT signal, she sends - "Colonel Rayburn, this is UNIT rescue team Trillby, please respond. We're picking up your band but we need your location. Repeat, this is UNIT rescue team Trillby, please respond."

If the gateway will permit passage of radio signals, boosted by Sweet Boy, then hopefully Speizo and the team on the TARDIS can receive them. "Trillby base, this is team Trillby. Can you hear us? We're getting the carrier signal from Colonel Rayburn's team, but nothing else as of yet. We're through, and everyone is all right so far. Sending telemetry now. Feed my readings into Sweet Boy for analysis - I keep a log file of universes I've visited. This may be a place similar to where I may have roamed and we may have some warnings of what to expect from the local physics. Have Chibi help you."

Taking the lead alongside Stan now, Smoke Alarm concentrated on steering the water-bike through the glowing-walled duck while Traveller rescued Sereth. Outlooking ahead, she could eyespy where the conduit twisted and turned, and relayed the changes to her team so they could be ready-steady to turn. She wondered how much further they had to go. The endless lights-out void of the great pool was one thing, but the ducks with the glowing shapes and whorls spiralling around seemed to be getting always smaller and smallerer. It was just an eyespy trick, but it made her feel rather unbold.

Stanley relaxes a bit now that everyone has safely made it through the anomaly. Hopefully the way back will be even easier, with the water flowing back to Earth.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:09, Mon 01 June 2015.

The first response Trav picks up is from the TARDIS.  There's considerable distortion, but it's unmistakably an Osgood who responds: "Reading you, Trilby, three by two.  Tele<crackle> streaming and error <crackle> running.  Standing by."

Some minutes later, there's another, clearer, signal.  "Blue Lacy, calling Trilby; Blue Lacy, calling Trilby.  Reading you."  The voice has some more gravel in it, but Trav can still recognize Joshua Rayburn.  There's a pause, and then a laugh.  "I'd ask if that's you, as I don't quite place the tone.  But damn, girl, who else would come barnstorming Davy Jones' locker after me?  Over."

Trav immediately texts back, "CONFIRMED, GOING TO TEXT TO SAVE BANDWIDTH. A scroll of weird circles and greek like text follows, as Trav sends instructions to Chibi, assisting the TARDIS team in synchronising the communications across a rift, which she has done innumerable times.



"Josh? Oh, Josh, is that you? You have to see the new face, Josh, I'm a hot blonde now! Listen, we can make all kissy face later. Give me your coordinates! We're here to take you and your team home! Blue Lacy, confirmed. Immediately feed us your telemetry and status, we've come to get you. Over." Trav hops up and down a little on her cycle. To her team - "If we're getting radio reception this clear, he can't be that far. Let's go!"
This message was last edited by the player at 13:19, Tue 02 June 2015.

Trav's read of the situation proves out.  A little basic triangulation gives her a fix on the location where Rayburn is transmitting from.  It's about a dozen kilometers away and about five hundred meters down, well within the operating envelope of the cycles.

As the group sets off,  Rayburn continues transmitting.  "Trav, you want to be getting a wiggle on, if you can," he says.  "It is not safe in this ocean.  You'll see it when you get close -- but the SPOT is messed up bad.  There are flat out monsters, here.  One of 'em wrecked us, and it was as much as Flynn could do to get us here."

"Oh, golly, Josh. It's been nearly 500 years since I've seen you, I've changed faces 3 times, safe is a weird word for me. Gotta warn you, Josh, fat bottomed girl has been gone. I mean, I'm still her, but you remember when I left looking like Belle from beauty and the beast and I came back wearing glasses? Like that. I'm that girl, but lots older, and different. A bit scarred." Boy, that was an understatement If Rayburn was a Colonel now, he certainly knew about UNIT's encounters with the Marshall in the 80s and early 90s. She never killed any UNIT men or women, but not for lack of trying.

"Josh, we rode on the back of a Triceratops together. I lived for 300 years on a planet with space wizards and dragons. My people with me, they're brave. We'll be OK."

To the team: "You heard the man. Their ship was probably attacked because some giant animal was bothered by electromagnetics or motion. Let's coast the cycles in on minimum power. Eyespy and outlook, Ware dangerous beasts.". Kang speak was both poetic and compact, and Trav fell into using it more often.  That purple haired version of herself she met in the Mathematician's paradox zone on Rifts Earth - Trav may have regenerated into a Kang.

OOC: That was an actual in-game event from the tabletop RIFTS game Trav was in.

'Brave and bold as Kangs can be!' Smoke Alarm chimed in to a no doubt puzzled Josh over the talkiphone.

'Outlook and eyespy. 'Ware cleaners. Eyespy you-are-here so we can trackback.' she agreed with Traveller, putting the water-bike electricky down low and outgoing at slow-poke speed, which she found a bit unsatisfying.

OOC: Hm, anyone wishing to eyespy can choose to use Awareness + Technology (sensors and sonar) or Awareness + Ingenuity.  Assume that the latter roll will be more difficult.

OOC: And still my better roll: 17
20:08, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 17 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 3,5. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2).

OOC: Sigh. Why bother?

00:45, Today: Sereth rolled 11 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 3,2. Awareness + Technology.

Trav isn't doing much better. While she's excellent with sensors, it's harder to interpret readings of an entirely foreign sea. Trav is holding her sonic forward, it's green light shining dimly in the murk. She adjusts it to scan passively.

OOC:11:30, Wed 03 June 2015: The Traveller rolled 12 using 2d6+8 ((2,2)). Forgot to add +2 for Sonic. Trav scans the murk, Awareness 2+Technology 6+Sonic 2=14
This message was last edited by the player at 04:40, Fri 05 June 2015.

Stanley looks around and does his best to try and spot anything that could possibly be a monster. That is easier said than done, in this dark and alien ocean.

OOC:
18:02, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 13 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 1,4. Awareness(4) + Ingenuity(4).

Smoke Alarm peers all around her as she motors forward through the sea.  She isn't sure whether her eyes are adjusting to the dark all around, or they're just conjuring up cleaners and boojums from seeing so much dark.  But there comes a moment when she looks out into the black and she sees all of it moving past her.  This isn't like seeing the head-lights from one of the other cycles catching froth and specks moving past; it's actually on her side where no one is, and it's like a whole huge wall shifting past her.

Then, on her cycle, Trav pings out with the sonic.  And the feed to her cycle sonar comes back with a return that is huge.  And moments later, the water all around everyone pulses.  Everyone's sonar screen flares white, and there's a THRUM that resonates through the whole of each cycle and each suit.

Trav realizes that using her sonic to probe an area teeming with echo-locating creatures nay have been like walking into a den of hungry lions and vigorously waving bleeding hunks of beef about....

Outlooking into the gloomy pool, Smoke Alarm was reminded of an old Kang knowhow: she who outlooks too long into the lights-out should 'ware she does not eyespy unseen things in the lights-out. Or something like that. Blinking, clearing her eyespies, she outlooked again, definitely eyespying a great big something sliding past. 'Ah, Trav—?' she began, right before everything went THRUM!.

Deftly, she recovered her seat on the water-bike, eyespied the sonar picture-spout, and used the talkiphone, her voice quavering with alarm 'Something big out there. Mayhaps big as a tower. And in-coming!'

Trav immediately turns her sonic off. "Crap. Gotta think fast."

Trav immediately digs into one of her pouches, and digs up a battered old Minmei doll. With the sonic, she quickly reconfigures it to match the sonic characteristics of her last sonic pulse. Then, she stuffs the poor small gatchapon into the barrell of her left turbopistol. She adjusts that, with with a PFFTS of compressed air and a bubble, it shoots off, pinging off that same pulse, but away from them, all while singing off a tinny MP3 English rendition of my boyfriend is a pilot.

Hopefully, the monsters will be as enraged at the sonic disruption as Minmei herself at the localization of one her greatest Japanese hits. Wow, that little girl was pissed.



OOC: Trav is spending 1 SP for resourceful pockets for a Minmei doll. She's then going to sonic the cheap speaker in it to send off an identical sonic pulse and fire it off away from the group, hopefully luring away the monster. This should be two actions, one for an Ingenuity+Tech+Sonic (I'll take a 'dont get the monsters more pissed' penalty') roll and the second for a Coordination+Marksman+Turbopistol-2 multiaction roll. This should all happen in the shooter phase, so the other PCs should take their actions first. How does that sound?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:18, Mon 08 June 2015.

OOC: Sounds like a plan to me.

What's everyone else going to do while this transpires?

OOC: ... standing on guard?

Cos that doesn't require dice-rolling.

OOC: Tootling along to see what happens and ready to speed away if we're attacked.

OOC: Waiting to see what happens, I think?
This message was last edited by the player at 06:37, Sat 13 June 2015.

I decided to generate Trav's rolls as stated and go ahead.  Hope that's OK with everyone; I may get back to regular posting this week and I may not. :(

After Trav prepares her decoy, she deploys it off into the blackness.  She's a little disappointed at the speed with which it departs, but as she has applied due foresight, the doll doesn't start pinging its signal until it is a fair distance away.

The results, to put it mildly, are dramatic.  There is a great swirl of current around the travellers as the leviathan attracted by Trav's initial pulse changes direction and kicks up a turbulent storm in the ocean.  In the beam of his cycle's searchlight, Stanley sees a graat fluked tentacle thick as a redwood sweep across his path in a spray of cavitation bubbles, but he manages to keep the vehicle stable.

Perhaps a minute later, there another deep THRUM cuts through the water, but this one is considerably muffled and does not evoke anything like the same spine-rattling vibration.  It seems likely that the pulse was sent out in a different direction, probably after the departing decoy.


20:23, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 4,3. Coordination + Marksman + Turbopistol -2.
20:23, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 24 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 4,4. Fixing up the decoy: Ingenuity(8) + Technology(6) + Sonic.

As the backwash hit, her water-bike suddenly bucked and spun like an old three-wheeled trolley. Yelping in alarm, Smoke held on tight and struggled for control, finally getting the tootling water-bike shapeship-and-sound. 'Is the pool-cleaner out-gone?' she asked via the swim-suit's talkiphone. She outlooked back over the shoulder to eyespy her friends, making safe-and-sure all were sound-and-safe after that. Only when all was a-okay did she lead them off again.

"I think so... I saw something big swim away." Stanley whispers through the radio. They have just been reminded that the predators around here are focused on sound, so he is trying to keep his voice down, even thought it probably doesn't matter.

OOC: Sorry to have been away. Gary, NP on taking the rudder.

Trav holds up her fingers in a hush motion, and she urges the team to let their vehicles simply coast on the current. She keeps her eyes on the passive display, as the Minmei song echoes through the briny depths, growing more and more faint.

"It's gone for now. Sorry, folks. It's been a while since I've adventured undersea. Captain Nemo would be dressing me down. Now, let's coast in. Turn off your engines, and let's swim in."

Trav makes sure the engine is off, and uses her own fins to carefully swim the bike the remaining distance to the SPOT, making sure that her comrades are also making good time.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:41, Mon 15 June 2015.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Lin pulls her hands away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Traveller used her sonicky screwdriver and rang one up like a talkiphone... Mayhaps it tracked back after eating the dolly lure?' Smoke suggested with Kangish alarm.

A grunt. A dead sea creature. It wasn't likely but...

"If it is more serious, does this... creature, have any defenses? At all? Or are we helpless?"

"So, should we stay really quiet and hope it goes away?" Stanley asks. "I mean, I haven't seen anything resembling weapons and I doubt the exterior is strong enough to keep us safe, if one of those monster attacks."

Trav is digging into her bag. please please please be here, she thinks.

She finds a pair of her old glasses. She literally blows dust off of them. "If these work, they won't trigger pissed off monster response like my sonic would. Please please please work." she says, as she wipes them clean, uses hand tools to repair components, connect them to her Ipad, and begin the software bootup sequence.

OOC: Spending my 2nd Story point for Resourceful Pockets to transfer my sonic scanning function to a pair of old 2nd Trav glasses. I'll make a Boffin roll if you need me to. Also, the audience gets to see Blake Lively look cute like 2nd Trav for an Episode.

In talking about keeping quiet, "Depending on if we knew more about these creatures and their biology, maybe I could work up a counterwave that could muffle our sounds. why are they drawn to noise? there has to be a reason."

"Sereth, you'd be the first person to tell me that we are never helpless. We're just..." She squints as the horn rimmed glasses adjust to her new eyes, "...momentarily disadvantaged." Wearing those glasses, that adjust to her new face, she looks like a deligtful amalgam of the 2nd and 5th Traveller, her smile beaming. "And to regain advantage, we use the tools at hand. As soon as I get these up and running, I'll examine this place's nervous system. Maybe's it's not dead. Maybe, like a butterfly, it's just sleeping, getting ready to hatch into something NEW AND WONDERFUL." Being with her new companions and her old ones made her old self start to seep back, over the old wounds of the Marshall, love and affection and bravery come over her like springtime. Oh, this felt wonderful. "Don't worry, we're getting out of this. Gamburei!" she said, the japenese word for be brave, just like back in the old days.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:32, Mon 29 June 2015.

"Not unless a whole heaping helping of mass qualifies as a defense," Rayburn observes.  "Which I expect it does."

The sensors wired into the creature / base's nerve network show a spike of activity before the next sound wave hits.  This one does thrum through the structure.  Somehow, it has a deeper and different pitch than the one that lashed at the travellers on their bikes in open ocean.  It sounds... like a dirge?

Trav's senses are briefly assaulted by the music video she hit PAUSE on several centuries ago, but she shuts it off before permanent visual damage is done.

OOC: No roll, but you can make one to see how your examination works out.

Cheryl Nome and Ranka Lee assault Trav's senses!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FxGxHkiBB8

OOC: One of these days, I will drag you guys into a crossover Robotech adventure! (at least, a Robotech-ized Macross Frontier episode at any rate.)

Trav squints then goes wide eyes. "Ah, Soka Desu. Nushkushi!<<Ah, I see. Beautiful!>>"

Trav immediately starts to observe and analyze her surroundings, immediately getting used to the old interface that she hasn't used in several centuries. She especially examines the bundles of nerves of the command center.

OOC: 2d6+Awareness 2+Science 6+Glasses (Sonic) 2=2d6+10?
00:38, Today: The Traveller rolled 15 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 2,3. 2d6+2 Awareness+6 Science+2 Glasses - Trav uses glasses to check out nerve structures.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:39, Tue 30 June 2015.

Trav looks up into the heart of the nerve system, she sees the signals routing through it, and she sees them as little more than what they are: analog electrical impulses, no more the integral messaging of life than the current that makes a dead splayed frog's muscles twitch on a student's lab table.  She feels, just for a moment, the first edges of despair.

But then, there is a ripple of something else.  It pulses along the network erratically, vibrantly, chaotic and aspirant as real life.  It's not any of the signals that are coming in from the husk's petrified organs or the autonomic systems shambling along like a zombie -- but it's connected to these, twined to it somehow.  And she thinks it must be coming up from the mysterious mass at the bottom of the station.

Smoke Alarm outlooked forth and back in all the talky time, most of it outgoing over her blue-haired head. But she was a clever clogs and got the knowhow, less or more, mayhaps. The ginormous pool cleaner had comeout back, and was attracted by loud noises and alarms, just like a caretaker. 'It's like the game, Marko Poolo! It makes a noise to hear a noise then track back. But there's nothing here to make the noise... Because this big pool cleaner is unalive. The one outside is making the circle and the chant because this one is on the scrapheap.'

"Yes, yes Yes yes yes yes yes!" Lin, Stan, get over here! See! I told you so! Look look look! That's a baby down there! It's feeding off the corpse of it's mama, like some spiders do! See see see! Look look look!" Trav madly swipes and taps at her Ipad, and shows her a rough map of the installation.

"Josh, you and the rest of your team were probably helping to feed baby here with your breath and other waste! We have to go down there!I bet baby's gonna hatch soon. There are tons of hungry monsters out there. Maybe we can have baby give us a lift back to the anomaly. I bet baby is gonna hatch right before the thing closes. It might even be feeding off of the anomaly's energy. Come on, we have to move. Go go go! Move move move!" Already, Trav is tramping down the hallway, using her newly repaired specs, following the trail!

Yup, just like the old days.

OOC: I'll be happy to take an SP for either insatiable curiosity or impulsive, your pick, boss.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:51, Wed 01 July 2015.

'There's a baby in the tummy?' Smoke Alarm exclaimed. She'd remembered what she'd learned when they'd talked about this, but she wasn't entirely and hadn't expected to encounter it so soon, let alone to be inside the tummy when it happened. Then she realised: this pool-cleaner was also an animal and was also a ship. 'Ha! This pool-cleaner is a ship and it has a baby in its cargo hold. So mayhaps our Ship has baby Kangs in its cargo hold and does drop baby Kangs down the ducks! Kangs show-and-telled it true-blue all along.' she declared proudly to anyone who would listen. Since Traveller had already footed off, that left Sereth and Stan.

But this was not going to be a little dolly baby. It would be another humungous pool cleaner. And Smoke knew enough about cats and kittens to guess that the mother needed to be not unalive. 'But how's the baby pool-cleaner outgoing to comeout? The mummy's unalive now. There's no exits.' Smoke Alarm called after Traveller, footing after her with all speed now.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 13:15, Thu 02 July 2015.

Trav is trotting along. "I dunno, Smoke, I could be wrong. Let's find out. Maybe Baby Kangs might one day come out of you after you find a cute Pex you like." She giggles as she picks up speed, her glasses tracking the current. "Also, baby is on the outside. Some mommies don't carry their babies on the inside. Instead, they love their babies so much they give up their lives for their babies this way. Some ships are born this way, Invid hive ships or the way Robotech Masters use Protoculture to grow ships, although they aren't sapient. This appears to have been a real being. I've met a few. Sweet Boy is a living ship, although he's much bigger than this. And he has kids differently. But come on!"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:57, Thu 02 July 2015.

"Yeah, it could be a problem if the baby hatches and in the process destroys this structure." Stanley says, but he doesn't immediately follow Trav. He is not as enthusiastic about the idea of a little baby sea monster growing down there. "I think we should be careful. One wrong move and the baby might start to cry and attract the attention of the other sea monsters." he adds when he catches up to Smoke and Trav.

The UNIT crew trade a series of surprised looks.  Rayburn gives Lin a bemused look.  "Go on, you know you're going to be dying to know what's going on if you're not there," he says.  "Traveller, we'll keep an eye on things from here," he adds, as Flynn sets down next to the monitor equipment.

Trav traces the signal, and it isn't too surprising that it becomes stronger as she moves nearer the stairwell extending down through the floor.  She starts to descend, with Smoke Alarm and then Stanley following after.

They find themselves in a chamber filled with perhaps a couple of dozen pillars or supports extending from floor to ceiling.  Each of these pillars is covered with irregular fleshy growths, and the whole place has the vague odor of tapioca.  At the center of the area, away from the place the stairway from the nerve center led them down, is another passageway leading downward.

'What? No! Eww!' Smoke Alarm complained, chasing after Traveller. 'A musclebrain Pex! ...And what if I like girls?' The baby Philipe had been icehot cute, she sposed, but Smoke didn't think she wanted one of her own, not right now. What would she even do with a little dolly baby? She couldn't run around and jump off buildings with her. The making seemed confusing and gross, if they weren't dropped by the Ship down the ducks. Mayhaps it was better to get a leftover baby from lost-and-found.

Dashing past Traveller, she bounded down the stairs into the hall with the icky gross pillars. Taking point, outlooking quickly about, she zipped over to the next stairway down. Down, down, down. Of course the baby was in the basement. Mayhaps babies were made in recyclers.

"Like my old buddy David Bowie said, girls will be boys and boys will be girls. Gender is like time, all wibbly wobbly. There's no reason you and a blue Kang with the right parts can't have a baby, Smoke. Do Kangs have to be girls? You never made that clear. People can have babies in all sorts of ways, and they're all wonderful. I had 4, and I may have some again. It's great to have a partner, but you don't always need to. You can always adopt. The Zentraedi make some of their people in wombs and some of them in tubes but their still always Zentrans and they sing and dance and they're brave and they're noble people, my people, decultcha." Trav says that Zentraedi phrase like Smoke says Blue Kangs Are Best.

"Some people are songs or equations. Chibi, she's a person and she comes from me, but she's kind of my sister and kinda my daughter. But she's also her own person with her own choices. Hm, yeah, down this way." Trav runs down the spiral staircase as she opines on babies and personhood. "Hm. Maybe I'll make Chibi a body, if she wants." Chibi has personhood code, as do the scutters.. She's not just an algorithm, and neither are the scutters. While simple, her assistants are in a very real way Trav's family.

Trav's eyes lights up as she sees the weird, fleshy growths, her glasses analyzing the structure. Yeah, this was the stuff. She realized how much she *missed* her glasses. "Hey Flynn, we just made it to a second chamber. Sending you a feed from my glasses. She pauses to conduct a spectral analysis of both the growth pillars and the chemicals in the air.

22:59, Today: The Traveller rolled 26 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 4,6. 2d6+Ingenuity 8+Science 6+Glasses 2 - Trav analyzes fleshy pillars and air.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:07, Sun 05 July 2015.

"We have made our own analysis," Lin tells her.  "A cultured matrix of complex proteins.  Food, for the intended occupants.  I was reluctant to let anyone try consuming it, but in the end it was that, or try fishing.  I think you can understand the problems with the latter."

'Yes, I did. In the auto-car on planet Montana. I said all Kangs are girls. Whatever parts they have.' Smoke Alarm retorted. She wondered why Traveller kept going on and on about babies and her having them. She felt like she was being pushed by cleaners closer and closer to something she didn't have the knowhow or wanting of. 'But I don't want a dolly-baby. I don't want to stop running yet.'

She tracked back through the talky time, then asked 'Wait, if big baby pool-cleaner is on the outside, don't we have to be outgoing outside? With helmets and pool-bikes?'

"I think we do not know that yet," Lin says.  "It might be that we would have to examine the husk from the outside, to know for certain.  That seems a dangerous prospect, with the living beast out there investigating us."

"Then no dolly-babys. The worst thing are dolly-babys when you can't take care of them. Keep on running, blue kang. Keep them as brothers and sisters and neices and nephews for now."



"Not when there are big monsters that can hear motors. Lets see if we can get closer to baby from the inside first. That is, if it's a baby. I am just guessing you know."

Trav points to the circuitry. "See this here? This is how baby is connected to the rest of the this big husk. We need to follow this. I can see with my old glasses baby's cries and talking to the rest of this. Look here." Trav takes off her glasses and shows Smoke, the data overlay showing the impulses laid out in the walls. After showing Smoke for a few moments, she smiles and takes it back.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:39, Sun 05 July 2015.

Smoke Alarm went kind of cross-eyed as the picture-spout spectakles went on, then quickly oriented herself, outlooking left and right, up and down, forward and backward, eyespying where the signals were incoming and outgoing. In her mind, she tracked back through all the corners and carrydoors they'd taken since getting entry, and guesstimated the remaining artchitecture. 'Okay, this way, follow the leader!' Smoke Alarm called back, already running in a different direction entirely.

Footing along, she said to Traveller and Lin between breaths 'Well, if it is a big baby pool-cleaner... what if, mayhaps... the big pool-cleaner outside... is the big daddy pool-cleaner? ...Or big mummy, I dunno.'


OOC: 13:33, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 16 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 2,5. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Sense of Direction(2).

Stanley sighs and then starts to follow Smoke. "Why...are we...running?" he asks sounding out of breath. "Trav said...that the baby...was about to hatch...but surely... walking would be fine too?"

Smoke Alarm leads the others into the bowels of the structure.  (Perhaps literally.)  The signals lead her down, down and down again, finally through a vertical carrydoor that is so narrow it is hardly more than a duck.

The place that they end up is a bell-shaped chamber, flattish on the bottom and domed at the top, and one thing everybody notices is that the veins in the walls and the floor are both thicker and spongier than they are in most of the rest of the base.  There's no obvious means of egress any further down from here.  However, when she puts her hand down to feel the floor, not only does it have more 'give' to it than other portions of the structure, but there's an unusual warmth to it -- even a slight vibration, and when Smoke Alarm watches the floor, she can see that it pulses in sync with the signal.

Because Smoke Alarm didn't go anywhere at anything less than full sprint. Or rather, she wasn't outgoing anywhere without footing it all speed. But 'Hurry up, slowpoke!' was her only answer to Stanley's question. She skidded to a stop-sign in the basement hall, whirling about to outlook, but there was no dolly-baby pool-cleaner of any shape or size here. But the place was extra squishy, warm like the heaters were on, and throbbing weirdly. 'End of the line. Are we there yet?'

Trav walks very carefully through the chamber. She sniffs the air, carefully. She resists the temptation to take out her sonic, her hand twitching. Instead, her hand is on her glasses, adjusting. Her hands roam on the pulsing floor. She hums quietly. "Hush, little baby, don't say a word, Mama's gonna get you a mocking bird.And if that mockingbird won't sing,
Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring" Trav places her cheek down to the vibrating floor. "Shhh. Shhhh! We're not here to hurt you. Talk to me. Tell me about yourself, baby. Are you a baby? Are you what I think you are? Momma Trav is here to help. What do you need to be born, and be safe?" The old Time Lord opens up her mind, and stops thinking rationally. She stops her usual pretending to be human, and listens.

OOC:Trav will open herself up Telepathically, and see what happens. More insatiable curiosity. Dropping an SP which should drop me back down to 3. Don't know if this is worth earning an SP for leaving myself psychically defenseless, but this seems like a crazy kind of Capaldi/12 move:

Awareness 2+Presence 3+Psychic 2+Turn of the Universe 2+Charming 2+2D6

Sweet crap, I can't make this up - 17:01, Today: The Traveller rolled 35 using 4d6+11 with rolls of 6,6,6,6.


This message was last edited by the player at 21:03, Wed 08 July 2015.

Hearing the nursery rhyme, Smoke Alarm instinctively began to sing-song along with it, her voice hushed and haunted, an old warning. But mayhaps her words were different. 'Shush little Kangy, don't say a word. / Or Rezzie's gonna get you a cooking pot, / And when that cooking pot goes ding, / Rezzie's gonna get you an' eat your skin.'


OOC: Damn. With that roll, I think it'll call Trav Mama.

Trav's perception unfolds.  It reaches out beyond the narrow slice of time and space that she normally shares with her friends and her enemies.  And waiting there are consciousnesses of a far different sort: less mercurial than the minds of humans and Draconian, slow and sure and timeless.

She feels, ringing off from farther away in this world-ocean, other minds, like those that Stanley and Sereth and Smoke Alarm might find more like to their own.  But those are not near her.

Near her is the immense presence of the creature outside, with a slow-simmering sorrow as it lurks near the inert hulk of a form that it knows, that is familiar and companionable, but is now dead and mindless.

Near her is the waking mind of the creature bound inside the body that bore and sustained it and is now a ghastly prison.  It is slow to form its perceptions: until recently, it has been dormant, an egg or a bud that was only the potential of life, but it has taken in stimuli and warmth and activity over the recent stretch of time, and now, Trav's arrival and her contact has it coming to full awareness of itself.  It is focused and fixed on the presence of her mind next to its own, and she has the sudden sense that it looking to her for its answers.

There's a shudder through the whole of the base that everyone feels -- the people gathered directly atop the birthing sac have trouble keeping their feet.  And then there's a higher-pitched that gathers and rings through the structure like a bell.

Almost immediately afterwards, the deep drone from outside shakes through the structure.  This one doesn't threaten anyone's footing, but the resonance takes a long time to die away.

Trav's phone comes to life.  It's Rayburn.  "....Tra-av?" he drawls.  "Girl, what have you done now?"

OOC: And, yeah, I'll give you back that Story Point, because you just sort of redefined the whole adventure.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:17, Thu 09 July 2015.

Stanley struggles to stay on his feet when the ground starts to shake. He has a bad feeling about this, even fearing for the integrity of the structure. If that baby is going to try to make its way outside, they would most likely drown.

"Trav, I don't know what you did, but I don't think you should have done that." he says, after the drone from outside has finally died down.

Wow, amazing roll :).
This message was last edited by the player at 22:53, Thu 09 July 2015.

Trav isn't paying attention to any of them. Instead, she's handing the Ipad to Stan and Lin as she's laying on the floor, her cheek pressed against it. On the words are text - It's scared and alone and I need to make sure it knows we won't abandon it. Tell me what it will hatch into. Have Chibi help you. On the Ipad are her glasses, displaying readings. She sinks deep into trance again. She isn't human - she's a Time Lord. She tries to see small, to walk in their shoes, to not be inhuman and to see them. That's why she needs their good hearts. But her, her mind can unfold to it's comfortable hurricane size, although she slows it down, slow, careful, comforting, reassuring, to this newborn intelligence - and perhaps it's progenitor, outside.

She communicates to the being that she knows sorrow too - the aching loneliness of, at first, thinking that she may be the only one of her kind left. And now, that she may not be, but that she may have been rejected by the only other survivor of her kind - perhaps an even worse kind of hell.

She wraps her metaphorical arms around it, telling it that it will be allright. She can finally think in unfettered terms. But she thinks to what may be termed the life yet to be born - is the other presence one of your species? Is it your father or mother? I mean only what is best for you. We came here to rescue our own kind, and maybe your own want to rescue you. Please, let us help each other.

She takes her time, carefully creating a telepathic syntax, similar to how she speaks with her own timeship, how she's communicated with the Invid, the Singing Syntax, and other telepathic beings. She works so carefully to allay it's fears and communicate her benign intent.

OOC - OK, let me make sure I got things clearly - there is a mind in here - (The egg under the floor that Trav is in communication with), a larger and similar entity outside, and several smaller intelligences of humanoid scale farther away, probably on the scale of kilometers, right?

Tell me what rolls you need from me, Gary. I may need to be spending that free SP again real soon ;)

What is Dr Who without risk? ;)

This message was last edited by the player at 01:25, Fri 10 July 2015.

At the floorquake, Smoke Alarm yelped but kept on her feet with the balance of a cat. As far as she could show-and-tell, Traveller was talking to the floor, but the Kang could guess she had an unseen talkiphone to the baby pool cleaner, and mayhaps something more. Eyespying that Traveller was a busy-bee right now, she snatched up Trav's talkiphone and answered Rayburn urgently 'Trav can't comeout to the talkiphone right now! She's getting talky with the big baby pool-cleaner. Please leave message after beep. Beep!'

OOC: Proximity of the humanoid-scale minds isn't nearly so precisely knowable.  Trav's consciousness got BIG and they could be crazy far away.

Otherwise, correct.

Presence + Convince would be good to calm the creature, with whatever adders you feel would complement your approach.  You have a good deal of attention from the creature you've contacted.

As Trav builds her rapport with the creature, she is becoming aware that many of its thoughts are simple; primal, even.

what?

who you who is talk?

me who is me is who?

is want eat.

is want OUT.

you is can give OUT?

you is first who is with who is me.

is you is me from?


There's another trembling through the floor, though this one is not so violent.  With the simple thought patterns, Trav gets flashes of images, of the deep dark ocean around them all stretching on forever, and careening free through a soup that is mildly spicy-sweet.  She imagines these are probably reflections of instinct, rather than experiences, from a mind that has almost no experience articulating its needs.

The lurking presence outside has not made any overt contact.  Trav feels a wariness and suspicion from it.

Trav needs to divide her consciousness. She fumbles for her sonic, which she draws out, with it's laser setting on the floor -

THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE OUTSIDE, CHECK PLS



I'm me. Hello. I go here and there.

Trav plants the seed concept for 'The Traveller' in the conversation. It's a literal newborn. It probably doesn't understand the concept of travel yet.



I don't know. You're new. You don't have a name, yet. A name is what you are called, in "language." For right now, I'll call you "baby". Hello!



It knows what "out" is. Splendid progress! It learns fast.

I don't know what you eat, and I know that there are things out there that might want to eat you. I want you to be SAFE. You do not come from me, I from somewhere else. I came to rescue OTHERS. They are small, much smaller than you, and are also trapped in this place too. Please, be careful. I want to help you because everyone is important. Remember - everyone matters. You're new. I'll try to help you get you SAFE, get OUT, and get FOOD, but I have others here who need the same thing. Can you help me?,

Trav works to slow down her hurricane mind to a slow, gentle wind, matching her feelings and texture and vibration of her alien mind to that of the newborn. She's the things mother now, for all intents and purposes, and the only protector it has, as far as she knows.


OOC: 2d6+Presence 3+Convince 2+Alien 2+Brave 2+Charming 2+SP,down to 3
11:56, Today: The Traveller rolled 18 using 4d6+11 with rolls of 1,1,3,2. 2d6+Presence 3+Convince 2+Alien 2+Charming 2+Brave 2+2d6
Not as much of a destroyer as that last roll, but 18 doesn't suck.

This message was last edited by the player at 15:59, Fri 10 July 2015.

Stanley tries to interpret the readings from Trav's glasses. It takes him a while before he gets an understanding of what exactly is measured by the glasses. Trav wanted them to find out what the creature will hatch into, but that is easier said than done. Maybe you could infer something from the shape of the creature or the properties of the egg, but this is an alien creature. This is not going to be easy.


OOC: Ingenuity + Technology?
09:44, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 7 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 1,1. Ingenuity(4)+Technology(1).

This message was last edited by the player at 09:47, Sat 11 July 2015.

OOC: The glasses are just a tool; what you're doing is Science.  Exobiology, in fact, so you should be at +8 with your specialty there.

Granted, that's still a really unfortunate roll.  Rather than giving you a flat failure here I will suggest some ways you might take more active (and risky) steps to try again and learn more.

Stanley studies the readings and tries to make sense of them.  He's managed to learn a lot about the varieties of life out in the universe, over the (subjective) months since their trip to the planet Arden -- Amanda had made him a present of an electronic library covering the medicine and general biology that her century had discovered, and he dipped into it from time to time, when he was relaxing or Trav was off doing something incomprehensible.

Still, that was a lot of new knowledge to assimilate, and what he was looking at now was a lot of strange new information to try to unravel in a hurry.  The cell structure of the "baby" reminds him a little of what he knows about Terrestrial cephalopods, although that is just the roughest analogy, Comparing the cell structure of the unborn creature to that of the dead parent encasing it makes him wonder if the calcification of the latter's body was a wholly natural process, or externally engineered somehow.  That might explain why a "natural" birthing process could not complete.

He does come to the conclusion that the scan is not giving him all the data that he needs, to figure out the problem.  He's not getting a very good read on the external structure encasing the "baby", and that is likely where he needs to look to figure out more.

That would be outside, in the ocean beneath the "base", where the additional behemoth is lurking.  The same interference he is getting from the solidified body of the parent around him is also preventing him from figuring out much of substance about that one.  The question is just how much unfriendly attention that one might give him, if he went out....

hello?

Trav can tell that the "baby" seems to be calming, soothed by her attention.  She's all too aware that this is exactly how imprinting happens, of course.

i is give you help, you who is talk me give me help....  The mental presence she's sharing seems to be apprehending this notion for the very first time, and is enthralled by it.

you is important.  OTHERS is important.  i is important?  These concepts are not voiced or formed into words, so much as forming as nebulous overlapping shapes in Trav's mind, like ghostly colored Venn diagrams: these words are just how she would relay them to human beings.

i is not hurt OTHERS.  That seems to be a very firm conclusion.  is give OTHERS out, is give i out?

"Smoke, I can't get the information Trav wants from here, so I am going to try and find a better spot." Stanley says to Smoke Alarm, whilst Trav is busy trying to communicate with the creature. "You can come with me, if you want, or you can stay here and make sure Trav is safe. Or make sure Trav doesn't do anything silly that puts us in danger."

Stanley heads back up to where Sereth and Rayburn and his team are.

There was no message on the talkiphone, so mayhaps Rayburn didn't want to leave one with her. At Stan's question, Smoke Alarm thought for a ticktock, and was momentarily overwhelmed by the awesome task of keeping Traveller from doing something silly. But she accepted the responsibility, being brave and bold as a Kang could be. 'Okay, I will keep her sound-and-safe and keep outlook.' she promised seriously. 'But I don't think I can stop-sign her being a silly-billy.' She'd already gone sleep-tight on the floor getting talky with a baby giant pool-cleaner. How much more silly could this be?

Rayburn nods when he sees Stanley arrive back at the nerve center.

"What's the story, Doctor?" he says.  "We know there's another big nasty hanging around outside.  So... how com Trav has decided to go poking at the baby this critter had left inside it?  We're pretty much packed with all the gear that we'd mind leaving behind.  I am of a mind to get set on making this... Baby Bear... into a diversion.  You think if it was making enough of a racket, that we'd be able to slip away while Papa Bear was occupied with it?"

Trav still has her cheek to the floor. She murmurs out, "You can all go, but I'm not leaving a child here, alone, undefended. Joshua Rayburn, for shame.
This...being...is...SAPIENT." The intonation of the 1st Traveller rises up. She closes her eyes again. "Lin, Stan, I said, get Chibi to help you. I...pad...text...connection...sweet boy." She sinks into trance again.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:00, Tue 14 July 2015.

Stanley shrugs. "I wouldn't have woken up the creature, but I can see why she is investigating it. At the moment she seems to be communicating with that thing, so maybe she will learn something useful. I understand that you want to go back home as quickly as possible, but just wait a little longer."

"Using the baby as a diversion? That might work..." Stanley pauses, but he immediately knows it is not a real option. "I don't think Trav or Smoke will approve of such a plan and it doesn't exactly feel right to me either. We also don't know if the adult will focus on the baby and ignore us."

Stanley starts walking around, gathering some of the scanning gear they brought with them. "I am going outside to try and get some better readings....Chibi-Trav, can you tell me if I am grabbing the right devices and where to place them?"

The miniature avatar keeps up a stream of soft chatter, helping Stanley collect the equipment.  The UNIT personnel are watching him with some surprise.  "You're going out there?" Rayburn says.  "Well, son, if you think that's wise...."

Reed coughs.  "If you like, I can gear up and go out to watch your back.  The instructors in the Navy dive school said you should always use the buddy system, though I don't think they had swimming with giant monsters in mind when they said it."

A grunt.

"I'll go. I could not permit anyone else to take that risk."

Reed looks at his commanding officer, and Rayburn says, "Might not be a bad idea for everyone to get kitted out, anyway.  If these gentlemen have a problem we'll be able to respond, and if we have to abandon this place in a hurry, we'll be ready."

Reed and Flynn start readying the UNIT team's suits; he starts helping her work her game leg into hers.  They're considerably bulkier and more awkward than the gear that Trav provided her friends.

"Great." Stanley replies. "Setting things up and measuring shouldn't take too long."

Footing about, Smoke Alarm loitered uncertainly over the laying-down Traveller, unsure what she could do. She seemed sleep-tight. If Traveller did something silly or something unsound-and-unsafe, as Stanley had warned, would Smoke Alarm even knowhow? But Trav said she would not be outgoing until the baby was sound-and-safe, and Smoke Alarm would not be outgoing until Trav was sound-and-safe.

Stanley and Sereth finish their preparations and head back to the "airlock" where they entered.  Once they cycle out again, they find that the sea-bikes remain tethered safely where they were left.  They can feel the water pressure as an unnatural thickness around them, but their suits hold up to the stress without a problem.

Their helmets have small integral lights that can be turned on and off.  Preoccupied with getting the scanning gear secured to himself, Stanley forgets that he left his turned on, and as it sweeps out into the ocean away from them, he sees where it plays across the immense form of the creature lurking outside the base.  It's like tracking one's vision across a cliff face.  The thing doesn't react to the light, at least not at first.

Stanley's first instinct is to stay still and hoping the creature doesn't spot him. When it becomes clear that the light hasn't attracted the attention of the thing yet, he slowly turns the light off and waits a couple of seconds. "At least we know the monster is still out there. Let's wrap this up quickly." he whispers quietly in the radio. "Chibi-Trav where do we need to go?"

There's an expectant pause, possibly while the AI assimilates the question and correlates it with Stanley's recent preparations.

Then: "Go to the closest place where you think the baby could be?"   Chibi-Trav sounds puzzled by its own suggestion.  "There's open ocean below the place where you got the first set of reading.  Then you should be able to look at the outside of the mother...."

It seems like there is an increase in the amount of sea life now that the large creature has arrived: several smaller creatures pass by as Stanley and Sereth plan their move.  They have in common that they're compact and hard-shelled, perhaps to deal with the pressure, and a couple of them seem to propel themselves with thrashing tails.

OOC: You shouldn't need a roll just to shift position, but let me know how you plan to move and what you'll do when you arrive at the destination.

Sereth watches carefully; not making any moves that he doesn't need to.

"You might want to be quick Stanley. Not sure how long they'll continue ignoring us."

OOC: I think, we'll do as Sereth says. We'll try to quickly reach the spot Chibi-Trav indicated and do the scanning. Stanley will first scan structure/growth, the baby is in, and then try to scan the big one outside? Hopefully we will then be able know what sort of creature the baby will hatch into.

The pair of travelers descend under their own power.  They find that the structure towers some twenty meters above the sea floor on six jointed, radially spaced legs.

Looking up at its underside, they can see right away a pattern of cracking along a long seam that seems to split out from the center of the structure in many directions, corresponding to a broad bulge.

OOC: If you meant to have the bikes with you I'll revise this.

Stanley can go for Ingenuity or Awareness + Exobiology rolls, separately for the baby and the large creature.

OOC: Bikes!??!?! It's hard enough swimming let alone driving...

And I think the statement 'WE'll do what SEreth says' needs to be immortalised.

I'm here. I need to go away for a bit, but I'm nearby. It will be allright.  The Traveller slowly, gently disengages from the child presence.

Her mind still big, she reaches out carefully to the other presence, radiating non-hostile intent, a request to communicate. Not since she activated the Time Lock has her mind been so comfortably big. It only gets to be this large when she pilots the TARDIS, when she interfaces with certain kinds of things, or when she stares into the sky in her Orrery. She can see backwards and forwards here, but restricts her consciousness to now. Even in this crisis, the urge to know this new, alien world is almost irrepressible - like how her mind sang when she, in her bonnet and corset, first slipped Sweet Boy into the Time Vortex of a foreign cosm.

She rolls onto her back, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, murmuring.

*impulse*No harm meant to you, nor to the young one here. I protect the young one. Wish to talk to you, no violence, safety, peace. Who are you?

OOC:A similar roll for first contact? Presence+Convince+Alien+Charming+Brave+2D6?
15:20, Today: The Traveller rolled 20 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 6,3. Presence 3+Convince 2+Alien 2+Charming 2+Brave.

This message was last edited by the player at 19:21, Mon 20 July 2015.

"Let's try scanning from here" Stanley says over the radio to Sereth, when they have finally arrived under the structure. The baby creature should be somewhere above them. Before he starts the scan, he casts a glance back in the direction of the adult creature. At least he thinks the creature is in that direction, but it is hard to tell in this darkness. It might have moved in the meantime. Not knowing where predator like that is, makes him a bit nervous. Stanley distracts himself by focusing on the scan. After scanning the structure containing the baby, he is going to scan the adult.

OOC: The aquabikes might attract too much attention from the local wildlife, so we are not using those.

I am going to spend a SP on the scan of the baby creature:
21:09, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 23 using 4d6+8 with rolls of 3,1,5,6. Awareness (4)+Science(2)+Exobiology (AoE) (2) + 2d6(SP). Scanning the baby creature.

The scan for the adult creature should be 12 not 18, because I don't want to spend another SP, but forgot to set the number of dice back to 2. Ignore the rolls of 5,1.
21:10, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 18 12 using 4d6+8 with rolls of 3,1,5,1. Awareness (4)+Science(2)+Exobiology (AoE) (2). Scanning the adult creature.

Stanley studies the readings carefully.  The glasses show him a 3-D overlay that let him visually peel back layers of the "base" structure, down to showing him a detailed image of the baby.  He can see that it is slightly elongated, with six radial appendages just like its parent.  The glasses roll up extensive data on the creature's genetic chemistry and vital readings.

As he watches, the baby flexes in its cocoon.  He sees the bottom surface of the parent flex and strain, but fails to give way completely.  With the layered view that he's able to see and study, he realizes that the radial cracks are not indicators of damage; they're the surface features of actual anatomical structure.  It seems that this is meant to be the means for the creature to bud off and get free of its parent, but whatever process transformed the large creature into a structure for humanoid use is keeping the baby entombed, unable to break out and be born.

(When he scans out toward the larger creature, he doesn't get anything like that level of detail.  However, he does pick up a fragmentary scan of its genetic makeup, and at first glance it seems to match up closely to the baby.  It seems probable that they're the same species.)

Crouching protectively over the sleepy-tight Time Lord, Smoke Alarm eyespied Trav's face from close up. Her eyes had gone all rolly and she seemed to be talky but not saying nothing. Smoke was feeling worried and unboldened. Sometimes Kangs got like this when they ate food that had gotten a bit old and funny, or had Rezzie sprinkles on them. All dozy, eyespying things not there, talking without telling, things that didn't make sense even to Kangs. For the Kangs who eyespied it, it provoked confusion, worry, and fear, feelings that led to awe, a prototypical religious experience.

But right now, all Smoke Alarm could do was make sure Trav didn't throw up or swallow her tongue. Gently, she turned her friend's head to the side and tried to outlook in her mouth. 'Say ah?' Putting a blanket over her or cushion under her head seemed like the thing to do, but she didn't have anything like one, nor could she lost-and-found anything like it in this fleshy place.


OOC: I dunno, making Trav comfortable. Or not. :)
10:27, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 9 using 2d6+4 with rolls of 4,1. ingenuity(3) + medicine(1).
This message was last edited by the player at 02:38, Tue 21 July 2015.

Echoing silence stretches around Trav.

Then:

SMALL THING.

HOW DO YOU MAKE SPEAK?

YOU HAVE DONE HARM ENOUGH.

YOU INFEST THE DEAD.

YOU STARVE THE OFFSPRING!

An angry THRUMMMM! shakes the base and batters at Trav's mind!

OOC:

21:40, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Giant Sea Creature, rolled 16 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 3,3. Presence(6) + Resolve(4): Psychic Attack.

Presence + Resolve + Psychic to defend.

OOC: You could totally get Trav a blankie from the UNIT folks.  But I think she is soon to need more direct assistance.

The ocean around Stanley and Sereth shakes and roils, and they feel the vibration ringing through their bones and their teeth.  They're partially shielded by the structure above them, but the pair of them can feel themselves being pushed away from their position, down toward the sea floor.

Trav archs her back as she is psychically attacked. Well, that was not entirely unexpected.

OOC: Spending an SP to help defend. Down to 2.
09:38, Today: The Traveller rolled 25 using 4d6+11 with rolls of 5,2,5,2. Defend from Big Daddy - 2d6+Presence 4+Resolve 3+Psychic 2+Artron Battery 2+SP.
If Artron Battery doesn't count (it usually does in most psychic contests), just reduce the total by 2.


The Traveller's mind had calculated and engaged the mighty Time Lock itself, twice - once to imprison the Time Lords, once to imprison the Shedraya time demons, and defeated an Orisian in a psychic duel to the death. Her time spent with Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, is a good memory. Her mind expands and flows around the attacking anger of the father-creature with love and compassion.

I'm at least as big as you.

Please, no harm. We mean no harm to your beautiful child. Your anger will frighten it. Please, speak to it. Know that all is well. We will leave, now. We apologize for this intrusion. My family here had no idea, as we are from elsewhere. If you would stay your anger, we would wish to leave peacefully.

Trav gently and carefully connects, telepathically, the older father-being with the offspring.

Inquisitive, gentle, beautiful your child is. She telepathically speaks to the child: You who-is-you, please show is-who-you-came-from what you know of me, and that I and these small ones mean no harm? If your child hungers, we will help feed it. With this intimate, mind-to-mind contact, the Traveller can not lie. She's actually really worried - she doesn't want the baby to starve to death, and she wants to fix any inadvertent harm Rayburn and his team caused.

Trav crafts mental packets of easily digestible information, explaining who they are, where they come from, and that they simply wish to go, unmolested, and if harm was done, they will fix it.

Hopefully, the team is bugging the hell out. Not that she can perceive her body, anyway.

OOC: Incoming social to convince big daddy that we don't want to harm the kid and simply want to go, while telepathically connecting the kid. Spending an SP, down to 1. 2d6+Presence+Convince+Alien+Psychic+Charming+SP
09:53, Today: The Traveller rolled 15 using 4d6 with rolls of 3,3,3,6. 2d6+Presence 3+Convince 2+Alien 2+Charming 2+Brave 2+2d6.
Oops, forgot to add in my skill total to the die roller. That should be 15+11 for 26.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:08, Tue 21 July 2015.

As Trav arched and stretched, so tense she might pop, Smoke Alarm jumped over her, hugging her friend tight to keep her from hurting herself if she got the shakes or stretched too much. 'Sleep tight, Trav. You're shape-ship and sound.' Smoke Alarm murmured, feeling so very unbrave and unbold for her friend.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 15:03, Tue 21 July 2015.

Trav's eyes are rolled back into her head, moving rapidly back and forth. The Time Lord is a little there, as her hand grips Smoke Alarm's tightly, calling upon the Blue Kang for support.  While she's not talking, her rate of breathing and the way she thrashes and turns is almost telling a story, as her lips move speechlessly.

Again, the sonic. The deck changes color. TALKING TO THEM. THE FATHER IS OUTSIDE. BABY IS STARVING. CAN'T STOP, HAVE TO HELP. These words appear in dark contrast to the floor.

The hard part is forcing her entire mind to focus on this delicate telepathic operation. Part of her brain is starting to cycle through biochemistry and genetics, for a solution to feeding the child. She has to shut it down and make her whole mind focus on the communication she's working to execute.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:49, Tue 21 July 2015.

"What is happening? What is that...sound?" Stanley tries to resist being pushed down by the vibration. Even though this is probably just a temporary disturbance, he doesn't want to wait it out in open water. One advantage is that this vibration might distract or scare away some of the sea creatures. He looks up at the structure, "I don't think we want to stay under here, Sereth. I have finished gathering the data, so let's head back."

OOC:

You misremember Artron Battery.  It doesn't add 2.  Do you want to invoke its actual ability, and recharge 3 SP ? :)

There's another burst that shakes the sea, although this one is not such a blast of titanic rage: there is a harmonic of question and uncertainty in it.


THIS NEVER HAPPENS.

YOU TRAP AND SICKEN.  YOUR TOUCH BRINGS THE STONE OF STILL AND DEATH.

YOU DO NOT SPEAK BUT TO TRICK AND TO TRAP.

YOU ARE NOT EVEN FOOD.

THIS NEVER HAPPENS.


The child's mental voice flows through Trav.  The words are halting, confused, fearful.


how is speak from you who is help and YOU who is LARGE?

is not know!

is you or YOU to give OUT?


OOC:

20:58, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Giant Sea Creature, rolled 18 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 6,2. Presence(6) + Resolve(4): Reaction to Trav.

The sea all around Stanley and Sereth is agitated and frothing with bubbles, and it's likely to be a challenge to get back to the airlock.

Even as the pair of them are trying to get oriented to try to make their return journey, something spiky and solid is tossed through the ocean by the buffeting and smacks off Stanley's shoulder.  It doesn't cause any real harm to him or his gear.  However, when the vibration in the water lets up, the thing uncoils and orients on him.  The vague impression Stanley has is of something hedgehog-like, with a curving tail bearing a prong or stinger.  It seems like it may normally drift in its defensive state, and perhaps opens into its more vulnerable configuration to hunt or attack....

"Get inside, Doctor." He didn't have as many qualms about attacking an animal as something sentient, though he didn't do it straight away. He did, however, take out his sword. Let's see how it moved underwater...

OOC: Just getting ready. Interposing myself between the creature and Stanley; assuming he tries to get back to the airlock.

Smoke Alarm kept on fussing over Traveller, hugging her arms around her shoulders. She eyespied the words projected from the screwdriver. 'Okay, no stopping. Be brave and bold as a Kang would be.' she encouraged.

Stanley is slow to react to the thing hitting his shoulder. Before he realises what has happened and that it is a hostile creature attacking him, Sereth has already acted.



"I can't just lea..." Stanley pauses and then starts to swim away. They were trying to get back inside, so staying wouldn't accomplish anything and he would probably hinder Sereth. "Be careful."

As Stanley turns in the water and Sereth moves to guard him, the creature seems to regard Sereth's sword as akin to the natural weapons of its prey and predators, for it strikes!

OOC: We should go to action turns now.  Moving oneself toward the airlock with any urgency requires a Strength + Athletics roll.  Your Speed underwater equals your Strength, and from where you are it will take a total of ten Areas of movement to reach the airlock.

There are no penalties per se for moving or fighting in the current environment; native creatures may be relatively effective given that they're evolved to act in it.

In reply to The Guardian (msg # 135):

OOC:
I am spending a SP on this roll because my Strength is only 2(and athletics only 1).
21:57, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 22 using 4d6+3 with rolls of 4,6,3,6. Strength(2) + Athletics(1)+SP(2d6).

Smoke Alarm wondered if it would okey-dokey to scrawl a Chief Caretaker moustache on Traveller's face.

He swung his blade at the creature; not necessarily wanting to kill it, but just drive it back, whilst Stanley tried to make it back to the airlock.

OOC:
10:05, Today: Sereth rolled 14 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 5,1. Co-ordination + Swordfighting.

OOC: Yeah, I can really use the SP. I'll take 3 SP please!

Trav continues the negotiation. The world is uncertain and beautiful. The only law is change and the unknown.Youngster, this is your parent. Say hello.

As she carefully connects them, ever working to keep the child knowing that it is cared for,  she sends, Let us work together to save your child, and my people? Cooperation, not fear, is success. I want to save your child too. She opens her mind as a conduit, so that the mind of the child can safely touch that of the parent. If you do not trust me, then talk with your child. We simply want to leave. Ask the child. We don't want to sicken or hurt any of your kind. You can see my thoughts and feelings, lying is impossible.I have children too. Please, listen. Your child wants OUT. Please, help me. Her beloved kids from Rifts Earth flood across her mindscape, despite her best efforts to keep discipline.

Part of her sings that she can be part of a child touching it's parents fingers for the first time.

Continuing negotiations:
09:26, Today: The Traveller rolled 23 using 4d6+11 with rolls of 3,4,3,2. 2d6+Presence 3+Convince 2+Alien 2+Charming 2+Brave 2+2d6.

As Trav twists on the floor, tears are streaming down her eyes. she's murmuring, as she thrashes and twists weakly, "Please, please, please listen"
This message was last edited by the player at 13:31, Mon 27 July 2015.

Adrenaline surges through Stanley as he kicks up away from the attacking creature.  Even though the strange feel of the water around him becomes more pronounced as he fights through it -- the viscosity is all wrong compared to other swimming and diving he has done -- Stanley makes a marked amount of headway, moving up past all manner of strange small creatures.

OOC: You're half way back to the airlock (5 Areas) in one shot.  At the speeds that things move down here, this probably means you're clear as long as you keep moving.

Meanwhile, Sereth executes a strike-and-bind against the thrust of the creature's stinger.  It's almost comical to him how the manuever plays out almost the same as it would against an ordinary, draconoid swordsman on dry land.  Stanley disappears from view above him, the light from his helmet swallowed up by the ocean.

OOC: You didn't specify a defense, but you did indicate that you were not particularly pressing an attack.  I'll take your roll as effectively a parry.  Ties go to the PC.

17:26, Mon 27 July 2015: The Guardian, for the NPC Stinger Creature, rolled 14 using 2d6+5 ((3,6)).

The child creature's mental voice pipes up clear in Trav's mind:

me who is me believes

you who is first with me is help!

is YOU is help too?

is me is from YOU?  me who is me was from you who was first....

There is a deafening pause.

HELP?

I WILL SHOW YOU HELP.

Images start to flood through Trav's mind.  Craft like exotically fluked and spiked starfish and seashells, burning in bioluminescent blue and green as they plow through the depths.  Creatures -- people visible through translucent viewports: exoskeletoned bipeds with spindly bodies.

Six such craft arrow toward the Traveller's mind's eye, and she sees light flare out along jutting protrusions like weapons pods.  Eerie gleaming spears of light rocket through the ocean darkness towards her floating viewpoint, and then there is a flash of agony from nowhere: fleeting, but wracking, leaving a throbbing tingle behind in Trav's tentacles and afterimages in her nerve clusters.

(After a few confused moments, Trav sorts these sensations out as being transmitted from the great creature's memories.  It is, nevertheless, a profoundly weird sensation.)

YOU CLAIM TO WANT TO HELP?

GOOD.

END THIS PAIN.

END THE HUNTS, THE SLAUGHTER, THE DESECRATION.

WHEN YOU END THIS AND THE OFFSPRING SWIMS FREE, THEN WE WILL HAVE PEACE.

OOC:
21:11, Mon 27 July 2015: The Guardian, for the NPC Giant Sea Creature, rolled 16 using 2d6+10 ((5,1)).
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 02:27, Tue 28 July 2015.

OOC: Can I tell if it's attacking to eat or out of fear? If I can see it's probably hungry, concentrate on defense. If it's more fear, I dunno. Maybe try to make it more scared to attack than not to?

OOC: Given the context of an agitated sea monster nearby, fear seems likely.

You could try a Presence + Resolve (Convince seems more of a verbal thing) to try to scare it off.  (Given the context here, your training SPs would be valid.)

OOC: Brave count? If so, add an extra 2 on these rolls.

IC: The Draconian made menacing gestures, but he really didn't want to kill the local wildlife if he could avoid it.

OOC:
14:54, Today: Sereth rolled 22 using 4d6+9 with rolls of 2,6,4,1. Presence + Resolve + Story point.

The carapaced, be-stingered creature draws back from Sereth.  Despite its alien nature, some patterns of action come across very clearly to a keen student of behavior, and Sereth recognizes surprise, consternation, and alarm.  As if the animal is thinking, This creature has a sting of its own, and it is quite prepared to use it.

The thing gives a flick of its sting-tail, propelling it away from Sereth.  He sees it curling into a protective ball as it fades from view into the blackness.

With that; Sereth swum after Stanley. Slowly.

OOC: Well if we need to roll without the threat -
01:09, Today: Sereth rolled 10 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 3,1. Strength + Athletics.

When Stanley looks back below him, it takes a few moments for him to pick out the approaching lights of Sereth's helmet through the gloom.  But eventually he does, and the pair are able to make their way back to the airlock.

They feel occasional vibratory shudders through the sea around them, but nothing like the sea-storm they encountered before.  They're able to reenter the airlock without further incident.

Trav replies, mentally: You have my word.
OOC: Taking an SP for Trav's flaw - Protect The Weak. Back up to 1 natural SP and 3 Atron Battery SPs

The Offspring must swim free first, and must eat. Share with me what the Offspring needs, and I will see to that. Then, I will deal with those who would harm children. Perhaps they are misinformed. Perhaps they do not view you as Sapient. But one way or another, the hunts will end. If they do not listen, it will not go well for them.

Her mental tenor shifts, as she feels her terrible, ancient wrath build inside of her. The hunters would be given one warning, just like she gave the Coalition, the Shedraya, even the Daleks, so long ago. For a moment, the general who commanded the legions of Gallifrey and sent Exigency on their missions is in full reemergence. She shields this from the child, of course.

I must now tell my fellows. I will leave myself open. Tell me what the Offspring needs. The Offspring's well being comes before anything else.

And as for you, as her emotions lighten, this is who you came from. This is your Parent. You are your parent's Child. Here, speak to each other. Learn from your parent. You did not come from me - but I still love you. And so does your parent. She works to establish a strong, stable telepathic link between the two.

The other small ones will be concerned for me. I must slip out from mind speak now. Parent, pulse in the water with this pattern, and I will reengage you with my mind. Thank you for everything. With that, Trav slowly slips away from the connection, but does not sever it entirely, so that the parent being can communicate with her.

Trav rises, her eyes a deep green, like this sea. "Oh, wow." She pulls herself up into a sitting position. "Smoke, Lin. That being out there is a parent. This," she taps on the floor, "Is it's child. They are being hunted. I'm going to protect this child - I promised." She looks around. "Where's Josh?"

She grabs for and checks her Ipad, and the time countdown.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:14, Tue 28 July 2015.

FOOD IS IN THE SEA.  FOOD IS ALL AROUND.

A pause.

THE OFFSPRING COULD NOT BE FREED FROM THE DEAD.

THIS ONE COULD CRUSH THE HUSK.

THIS ONE WOULD CRUSH THE OFFSPRING AS WELL.

THIS ONE WOULD NOT.



The walls of the husk start to ring with the higher frequencies of the child and answering tones of the parent; Stanley and Sereth can feel them in the sea outside while they are waiting to come in, as well.  These are at a fraction of the volume that the previous bursts have had.  The keen-eared Smoke Alarm can hear and feel variations in pitch and structure in those tones now that they're no longer buried in distortion: it's almost like a funny sort of music.


The group has been through the rift for about eight hours, and there are days left on the clock.  It's true enough, however, that the great creature's request sounds like it could be an open-ended project.

After hugging her desperately tight to keep her sound-and-safe, Smoke Alarm disentangled herself from Traveller and sat up too. She was glad Traveller was no longer sleepy-headed, but things weren't any more shape-ship-and-sound around here. 'Can the baby hatch from the egg-carton now?'

"How invigorating, Doctor Newton. I hope you got your data."

Moving in, he didn't really seem puffed. His sword, whilst it was being put away, was clearly -not- coated with fresh blood.

Trav hugs Smoke Alarm back. "So good to see you! Yes, I talked with big poppa. Him and baby are now talking. Yes, but big poppa is scared that he will hurt baby. So, we need to get baby out. How much time has passed? Was I out for long? Tell me what's been happening."

Trav grabs her sonic. Feeding data directly into her glasses, she uses a non-sonic setting scan around where Baby is. "This is like a crashed car. We need to get this child out of here.  Where is Colonel Rayburn, and Stan, and Sereth?"

"There are people hunting big poppa and the baby, farther away outside. I think I mentally sensed them, too. I gave my word that I would do something to deal with them. Also, I can not abide anyone who would bring harm to a child. You people need to get back to the TARDIS, but someone needs talking too or to get their asses handed to them."

Just like Trav, doing 4 things at once.

OOC:Examining Baby's space to safely determine how to cut it out and get it into the water - Ingenuity 8+Science 6+Glasses 2?
This message was last edited by the player at 18:08, Wed 29 July 2015.

OOC: Hold the roll.  My understanding was that the glasses were with Stanley, and in any event, the analysis that he went outside to do will tell the two of you what you need to know.

As Stanley meets up with Trav to relay the results of the external 3D scans he carried out, the pair of them are able to identify sets of nerve clusters and cartilage structures around the "womb" (for lack of a more exact term) containing the creature.  It seems evident that these, like the bio-mechanical structures comprising the "airlocks", could be tripped with a power surge, opening the enclosure keeping the baby trapped.

Trav, however, doesn't like the look of what that would mean for the stability of the structure, long term.  And she suspects, from the parent creature's implications, that it may want some of the current occupants to remain at its disposal as a show of faith, while Trav fulfills the bargain.  This is far from the first hostage situation she has been involved with.

Trav smirks. "Hmph," she says. Well, it is a parent protecting it's child.

She snugs Stanley and Sereth."Thanks for your hard work, you two." She lays out the whole thing for them.

"We need to get Josh and his team off of here, and back to the TARDIS. I don't think Poppa will object to that. But we also need to deal with some jerks. We need to know *why* Poppa and his kind are being hunted. Back in the 1800s, whale oil was the source for light and other applications. People don't risk being crushed by giant sea creatures unless there's a profit to be made. If that's an economic problem, we may be able to devise a solution. By the mid 21st century, humans stopped hunting whales on Earth simply because there was no large scale money to be made. We need to get to the root of the issue. I suspect that perhaps these people are hunted due to their functionality as ships."

Trav finds herself thinking of the Invid, Zygons and the Robotech Masters, all of whom used biological methods to construct their starships. Now she knows why this structure feels so familiar - it reminds her of the insides of a Zentraedi vessel, those ships grown by the Robotech Masters using Protoculture that resembled chitinous whales.

"Also, Sereth, once we find the starfish people, I think this is where your unique talents at compromise and intimidation can help us find a solution."

Trav digs out from her waterproof pack something that looks like a long, multicolored scarf. She snorts, whip-snaps it, and it turns back into her trademark fedora. She snaps it again, and it becomes a baseball cap with a UNIT logo on it.

"Needless to say, I'll be the hostage and I am staying. Everyone else who doesn't have a role to play should get right back to the TARDIS ASAP."

Trav smiles prettily as she takes the glasses from Stanley, puts them on and reviews the data he has gathered.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:20, Wed 29 July 2015.

Smoke Alarm frowned, not actually having the knowhow of what was happening right now. 'Couple tick-tocks. Others are at the brainquarters, I think, Stan and Sereth mayhaps went out for a swim... But the whole tower is song-singing! Musaz! Ear it! Touch!' she exclaimed in awe, putting her hand and then her ear to the floor and feeling the vibrations, which came in tune with the far-off humming she heard. A singing tower seemed wondrous and enough, but this was also a living, swimming tower too. But all towers were alive, in a way.

She footed quickly after Traveller back to the brainquarters, trying to process all Traveller had show-and-telled, trying hard to catch up. 'They hunt them, like cats and dogs? They must really be hungry... For ships? If these big fishies are thinkers, then the hunters are just like Rezzies!' she complained, dismayed at what was going, finding it just like the Kang-eating-disposing-and-recycling at Paradise Towers, but with whole meaty towers being recycled, horror on an enormous and unthinkable scale.

'How can we get out the baby then? Crowbars? Splosives? Mayhaps we all give it a push?'

"The same way Rayburn's team opened the door for us." Stanley says. "At least the scans show that it should be possible to open a door for the baby by zapping something. When the door is open, the baby can just freely swim out."

Trav grins widely at the mention of the sing song. "That's Poppa and Baby talking for the first time, like when parents sing-song to their kids. Isn't it beautiful?"

Trav and her friends assemble with the UNIT team in the control center.

When they've explained the latest developments, they see Rayburn's jaw set in what Trav recognizes as a clear sign of dogged Texan pride.  "Now, see here, Trav," he tells her.  "I get that this was supposed to be a rescue mission.  Thing is, it purely sticks in my craw to sneak off while someone else sticks their neck out on my behalf.  We're UNIT, lady!  This is our goddamn job just as much as it is yours."  He looks at his team.  "Speaking for myself, that is...."

"Not just yourself," Flynn cuts in.  Reed adds his nod and Lin, though she says nothing, has the same sort of stubborn look.

"Besides, you go trekking off to find these aliens, having the SPOT for support won't be a bad thing, even half-busted as it is," Rayburn adds.

Sereth spoke up, very quietly.

"I don't think you understand Traveller's point of view. There is a fair chance that dealing with these aliens will take longer than the gateway can stay open. Which means, in effect, you're asking her to choose between making sure the people she is responsible for, UNIT, gets home safely, or that this alien incursion, or whatever, is dealt safely. I suspect she'd pack us all home except she -needs- me. But she has given her word to see you safe. What do you expect her to do? Endanger you again, after rescuing you?"

He gestures to Stan and Smoke.

"They chose a life of adventure with her. I gave my word to one to whom I am ultimately responsible - not even the Traveller can ask me to break that word, because I will die first."

OOC:
14:15, Today: Sereth rolled 14 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,3. Presence + Convince.

It occurs that VoA or even leadership might apply as well; but didn't add them in.

OOC: Leadership, certainly.  More in the vein of appealing to a common experience of leadership between Sereth and Rayburn than in actually directing him as a subordinate, but it works.

We'll see if anyone else has a contribution before I make an IC response.  But this will likely suffice to get the UNIT people to go along with what you want them to do.  As long as someone can also sell Daddy Sea Monster on the plan.

OTOH it occurs to me that having your rescuees under foot is a complication worthy of story points.  Your call.

OOC: OOCly yeah sure. But it does go against Sereth's sense of honor in that regards.

Smoke Alarm listened with her ear and her foot for a while, then agreed 'It is!'

*



'So we have to lost-and-found the auto-mat doors and fixit them. But we footed all the way down to the basement and eyespied no big doors for a big baby pool cleaner. Where's the baby comeout anyhow? Mayhaps we have to lost-and-found that.' Smoke Alarm outlined the problem before them.

She listened to the to-do between Rayburn and Sereth. It was all about, she thought, everyone wanting to stay help, so she didn't knowhow what the problem was. Kangs always stuck together, even when the Caretakers rounded them up. 'Then we all loiter here and be helping hands until it's closing time on the wiggly-worm-hole.'

Rayburn looks at Sereth for a long while, taking the Draconian's measure.

Then he sighs.  "I expect you've got the right of it," he says at last.  "It doesn't sit well, is all.  I learned one lesson the day they put captain's bars on me, and that's to never leave a man behind."  He glances at Trav.  "Much less a friend.  I know if you split hairs about it, it's not up to me and mine to go busting up underwater hunts on alien planets.  But I would be sorely grieved if you let us go back, and came to harm yourself."

He shrugs.  "If that's the way you want it, then that's what we'll do.  What's the scheme for it?"

Trav rubs her temples. "Oof. Allright. So, here's a plan. Part A is to get baby free. Lin, you, me and Stan will work out the mechanics. Part B is to find out as much as we can about the hunters, why they are hunting Poppa and Paby, and make them stop. We want a peaceful solution. There may be a need that the locals are addressing - Poppa and Baby may be their fuel, their food, may be intrinsic to their society, or they may be just hunting them for bragging rights. Josh, I'd like for you and Sereth to work on that, because you are both better than me in determining a diplomatic, and if that fails, a military response, after getting appropriate scientific and sociological data." Again, experience from her days as the Marshall is showing.

Trav as always is working with her Ipad, as she's sending data back to the TARDIS. "Osgoods, Speizo, can you hear me? Please forward reports to Greyhound and Longhorn. I need for you guys to perform a biome analysis - can poppa and baby survive in Earth's seas, and what affect would their presence have on Earth's biosphere? Can they eat our plankton, and would they introduce any agents that would be a threat to life on Earth?" She's also querying readings from the TARDIS, checking to see if the gateway can be temporarily widened, large enough to see if Poppa and the team can be bought through.

"I'm all about options. We have some time. I promise that I would see Poppa and Baby safe. If worse comes to worse, and if Colonel Rayburn thinks it's safe, I'll make the case for Poppa and Baby to be granted asylum, on Earth. Hopefully, it won't have to come to that."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:01, Mon 10 Aug 2015.

Trav hugs Clayburn. "We have a few days before the bug out. I'm a different girl, and I won't do to you what someone else did to me. I just want to make sure you have a bug out option, baby. You have kids and a wife back there. I set things so that Sweet Boy will pop in. and I'll just have a crammed TARDIS full of people while I try to find a way home through CVEs. Go over my plan and let me know what you think. Now, I need to get to work to get Baby safely out of here. But we need to find out more about these clowns who are harassing Baby and Poppa here." The Time Lord is much more touch and sensual then the prim steampunk woman or the klutzy black haired girl from years past. "Hey Lin! We have a baby to disentangle. Give me a hand?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:08, Mon 10 Aug 2015.

Smoke Alarm listened for her name, but didn't ear it. 'What can I do?'

Trav snugs Smoke Alarm. "You're here. That's enough. I'm sure something will come up."

"Lady, you don't lack for ambition.  A military response, against someone who goes out loaded for a critter the size of a nuclear carrier?  But we'll see."


Trav's not getting anything but text messages and a telemetry stream back from Earth.  It looks like an expansion of the rift big enough to admit 'Poppa' would be doable -- she has managed far more impossible things, to be sure -- but she sees two major hurdles.

First, it would take a jaw-dropping amount of power.  The only obvious source of that much energy Trav can think of is the TARDIS itself, and it would likely push Sweet Boy to his limit or maybe a little past it.  She's not sure if the crew on station on the far side of the rift would be able to manage it: Trav herself might have to run the process in person.

Second, it's likely to be risky.  One of two things is likely to happen: either the widened rift would destabilize, leaving a major dimensional hazard smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, or slam shut forever.

As Stanley and Lin and the Traveller all huddle around Trav's iPad and start talking about the readings that Stanley got by going for a swim with Trav's glasses, Smoke Alarm is left hovering a bit aimlessly around the outskirts of the discussion.  Her eyes pass over lots of vaguely creepy-looking things in the brainquarters of the used-to-be-alive thing they were all inside, and she hardly likes to think about even touching any of it.

Then something catches her attention.  A thin, translucent film over a flattish dome or lens suddenly splits apart and peels back from it above and below, almost exactly like an eye blinking open.

Smoke Alarm sees that the surface revealed is dark and shiny and a deep, impenetrable violet in the dim light.  At least at first.  Then she starts to see green flecks appear in it: brilliant specks like stars, arrayed in a semicircle near the edge of it and spanning maybe a sixth of its circumference.

Almost imperceptibly, the flecks start to creep in from the outside of the disc, in toward the center.

Eyespy! A spy-eye! 'Eyespy! With my little I, something beginning with I!' she exclaimed. As icky-gross as Smoke Alarm found the big eyespy-spy-eye, she leaned in for a closer outlook. It definitely outlooked like an eye, but as she eyespied green dots moving about inside, she thought of a picture-spout, only round like a ball. A picture-eye? Smoke Alarm, who bestest of the Blue Kangs when it came to poking things, reached out and poked the eye, on one of the green dots, to see what it did. Then she rememoried the hazards of being curious as a cat, like being gobbled by a qplotl, but by then she'd committed to the poking and it was too late.


OOC: Insatiable Curiosity: poke it.

Despite her eye-poking expertise, Smoke Alarm isn't prepared for it to be quite as... gooey as it proves to be.  Her finger pushes into the lens up past the first joint before she has really noticed it.  As she jerks it back out again, she sees that the green light is spilling out all around the hole that she made, making a glowing splotch over a large portion of the "eye", and some more of the flecks are popping up and disappearing as she watches, seemingly at random.

OOC: Take a story point.

'Eww! It's squishy!' Smoke Alarm yelped, pulling her finger out.

Trav and Lin and Stanley spend a good amount of time with their heads down over the scans.  It looks to Stanley as if the triggering nerve clusters may be wired deep within ossified parts of the structure, and may take "surgery" to access.

Everyone is startled, though, when there is another major sounding from the parent creature that shakes the structure around them.

Smoke Alarm notices that the "eye" she poked seems to have "healed" a bit by this time: the bright green splotch she caused is now just a faint discoloration, and she sees the little moving pinpoints on it again.  Definitely a picturespout, it seems.

The inbetweens were all busybees and had no ticktocks for Kangs and the eyespied spyeye, it mayhaps seemed. So Smoke tried to get the knowhow of it herself. Mayhaps she could work it out and put the great pool to rights. So, poking the picturespout was no good,  coz it was all gooey. Mayhaps it was a touchyfeely screen like on a talkiphone. Gently brushing the slippery surface, she tried making a make-bigger gesture over the green ant dots to zoom in.

As Smoke Alarm starts fiddling with the eye-screen, she finds that she is able to expand the scale of it, and something she does without quite intending it makes something else appear on the view: a larger, reddish blob.  It looks like the dots are moving in little groups to array themselves around the blob.  As the scale increases and she zooms in on the dots, they reveal themselves to be little oblong ovals, and each one has a number and identifying squiggle next to it.

Around the room, more pieces of dormant equipment are starting to come to life and showing eye-screens of their own.

Well, it wasn't a game and it wasn't a cartoon, coz if it was, then it was kinda yawny. It wasn't tricky for Smoke Alarm to work out that that picturespout showed the pool outside: the big red blob was the big baby pool cleaner and the green ones were fishies or the people outside on pool-bikes of their own. 'Outsiders! Incoming, all speed! They're going aroundabout us.' she warned her friends, then tapped the number and squiggle to eyespy if it spouted any text about it.

Trav smiles and grins. "Seems like someone is waking up."

Trav crinkles her nose. Magic back on Rifts Earth was always able to break dimensional barriers stupidly easy, while it took the power of the Eye of Harmony itself to breach dimensional barriers into other universes. She was always mad jealous at how Malaki the Atlantean Time Wizard was able to do his Harry Potter bullshit and just made a glowing magic circle lined hole, and they'd carry the TARDIS through to some other universe. On the other hand, all his magical might could only carry him a few second back in time, while access to the past was as simple for Trav and her Gallifreyan science as some spare parts and a Vortex Manipulator.

So, refugee status for baby and poppa were a last resort. First things first - getting baby swimming free.

"Try not to poke the eyes too hard, Smoke? That might be Baby looking through them."

Trav gets out her sonic and gets to work, working with Lin to map out the neural circuitry and safely disengage Baby into the surrounding waters.

OOC:Ingenuity+Tech+Glasses/Sonic?

Smoke gasped and jumped back warily from the spy-eye, then outlooked deep into it. 'How you do?' she tried, but then shook her blue head. 'It's just a picturespout. And I'm being care-full.'

Trav and Lin start working at the relevant controls that they think should be able to engage the relevant biosystems.  A few experimental signals through the station's nerve network don't seem particularly promising: there's a sickening grinding noise as the system starts to trigger, and Lin quickly reverses the mechanism, looking quickly up at Trav and Stanley.

"Exactly who," she says, "would have ever thought of an sea base with a womb?"


OOC: The sonic doesn't seem particularly viable to me based on doing something from the control room.  I'll set your Ingenuity + Tech difficulty at 27.  If one of your compatriots can come up with a way to assist you based on the scenario, I'll give them a chance to knock down the difficulty, by two per level of success.

Smoke Alarm squints at the picture-spout and the little arrays of squiggles around the oblongs.  Something goes funny in her head for an instant, as has been known to happen since she has been traveling with the Traveller, and the squiggles resolve into words like HARVEST INTERCEPTOR PRIME and LEVIATHAN INTERDICTOR AUXILIARY.

She notices that a disc on the console next to the picture-spout is starting to gently fluoresce in red.

Smoke Alarm outlooked at the wiggly words, finding that even she could read them now, but that didn't mean she could understand them. She read them out as best she could. 'What's an interdictor anyhow?' Eyespying the glowy red light,  Smoke was of course alarmed. 'Red lights! Burglar alarms! 'Ware interceptors!' She tapped the red disc to see what, if anything, it did.

A voice starts speaking from somewhere beneath the surface of the console.  It doesn't sound remotely like an electronic voice; it is in a clear, strong tenor with a ringing undertone to it.

"--identify yourselves and yield control of the station immediately.  A Level Six leviathan is threatening your position and harvest operations are about to commence: while all prudent effort will be made to vouchsafe your security; it cannot be guaranteed.  Repeating: unknown persons occupying outpost Benificence are urged to identify yourselves and yield control of the station immediately--"

'Nah-ah! We're gonna make the baby pool cleaner be born and let her run with the daddy pool cleaner. You can't stop-sign us. Blue Kangs are best!' Smoke Alarm yelled defiantly back at the unseen speaker.

OOC: Impulsive :)

OOC: Well, that's Kang diplomacy for you. :)

Trav immediately kneels up. She gets a fearsome scowl.

"Sereth, this is your call. I want to pistol the bastards. I'm sure there's a diplomatic solution to this but I'm wanting to drop my Time Lord fist on them. I'm am restraining myself. I don't take kindly to monsters who threaten children. I need you to see clearly for me, Sereth. I'm seeing a particular shade of red."

Trav pulls out her Ipad. She didn't have Chibi with her, the technology was alien. But fuck it, she was not about to allow this child to be harvested.

Telepathically: Your hunters are coming. I am working to release the child with all speed. I am not leaving.

Trav is continuing to work to release Baby. She wants to make sure it can get to and be protected by Poppa.

The whole station shakes as a blast of sound ripples through it.  It's the sound of a mountain making ready for war.  At the same time, naked fury tears through Trav's mind.

I KNOW.

LET

THEM

COME.

On the screen, the big red shape starts to move, and the hunters fan out in a complicated maneuver around it.

"Sereth. This is about to turn into combat. We have one chance to turn this into diplomacy. Please, do you your thing."

Trav works furiously.

Oh it was good he had cast aside the holo-projector for this time of the mission. He close his eyes for a moment. Deep breath. This was like before. He had stared down a hostile Senate. Had he not forced his people to realise that war was not the answer, no matter how weak their opposition was? Had he not broken Warlock, made him see his hate was wrong? This was child's play.

"Good sirs, you are in the wrong. This, Leviathan as you call it, is -sentient-. It has as much a right to live as you do. And in this place? It's home? It may even have more of a right to it." A pause. "But no. For all have an equal right to life."

He scowled though.

"Or if you want to play politics, I am Legate Sereth, of the Draconian Empire. And this area, and all the people in it, fall under -my- protection. This includes this creature you hunt. Do not anger me, Sirs, lest we have to remind the Galaxy why in times of old, Draconia forced the growing human empire to -truce-. They could not beat us. They -failed-. Even the Daleks had to resort to trickery, hoping to feast on the remains of our empire, when we disposed of the humans if they persisted in their foolish beliefs that Draconians would resort to piracy. Do not anger me. For my finger rests on the trigger."

Like the Traveller; those who would attack children had a special place in his heart. He just used words to express his disdain. A quiet murmur to Traveller.

"And you, my dear, are what that trigger pulls. If they do not listen to reason - kill them. Children are not threatened, not on my watch."

OOC: Oh yeah, die-rolls: 00:36, Today: Sereth rolled 22 using 4d6+8 with rolls of 2,5,1,6.  Presence + Convince + Story Point .

I'm not sure if it's diplomacy or intimidate though...
This message was last edited by the player at 14:40, Thu 27 Aug 2015.

As Trav is furiously soniccing nueral pathways, she thinks back to when she was the Marshall. If she had known Sereth then, the Draconian would have been her greatest general, or her greatest enemy. Oh, how the galaxies would have shook with the two of them working together. She grins at him fiercely.

Sereth and his code of honor acted as something of a moral compass for Trav on occasion, along with Stan and Smoke Alarm. With Sereth's words, a safety on the Time Lord's freedom to act had just been released.

The first priority was still the child. But now, her mind was spinning through how to use the base as a weapon, while getting Rayburn and his people off safely.

The Traveller is still merciful. "Give em a carrot too. Find out why they need to harvest Poppa. Present alternatives. We're not here to kill anyone."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:14, Thu 27 Aug 2015.

Smoke Alarm pouted as Sereth took over at the talky button, her brief role as chief as negotiator lost. 'I coulda talked it better.' she muttered and outlooked back at the picturespout eye to eyespy what the coming-in caretakers did next. She touched the large reddy blob to read what what it said about the pool cleaner they were inside now.

There is silence for a brief, agonizing space.

Then from one of the consoles that no one is currently attending, everyone notices a bulblike protrusion pulse blue.  Above it in the air, an image shimmers into existence, milky blue and shimmering.  The face it displays has two deep-set eyes under a sloping carapace, hard mandibles at the corners of a slitlike mouth, and grooves that might be a sort of gill.

"'Legate Sereth'," it says.  "We will not debate our morality or our right to the resources we have always exploited for the good of our species.  The leviathan's rights are the same as ours: to fight and to survive.  This is the way of things.  You are another matter.  We see no empire here.  We see strange soft beings inhabiting our outpost and proposing to challenge our rights to our world and the work of our minds and hands.  How came you here?  What is your claim on Benificence?"

Smoke Alarm notes that the arrangement of the boats around "Poppa" has shifted slightly.  They've backed off from it slightly.  Her tactical acumen is sharp enough to recognize that this change, while of less direct threat to the great creature, also leaves them more flexibility to move on the station.

Smoke Alarm outlooked up at the funny-looking face of the caretaker, frowning at its mean words of claims and rights. It was mayhaps so, but it didn't have to be that way. She eyespied the action on her own picturespout. 'Coming-in pool-ships have stop-signed, loitering around like cats.' she advised.

Smoke Alarm's attention fixes back on the eyeball picture-spout.  It's still only blips and blobs (and now the words) there, but the pattern seems strangely familiar.  Like a big pack of dogs circling a Kang, nerving themselves up to try to bring her down when they know that the first one to try it will be the first target for her arrowgun.

It doesn't feel quite the same as the Very Serious tone taken by the shell-face alien in the hollow gram, either.  Much more like nervous animals.  If she understands everything right, this place they were all inside was an unalive pool-cleaner.  Were the other blips more pool-cleaners that the shell-faces were using?

Maybe even ones not unalive?

'Or dogs.' Smoke Alarm revised, studying the activity on the picture-spout and eyespying the meaning. She talked quietly, so the pool cleaner (and that was definitely what the shell-face one had to be) on the picture spout couldn't drop-eaves. 'They're playing wary-go-around, keep-away – they 'ware the Poppa and us. Cowardly cutlets! They act all bold, but they're unbrave!' she hissed, gleeful.

She reflected on the pool-ships circling on the eyeball – not pool cleaners now, but le-via-thans; sometimes a Kang needed a larger vocabulary. Momma and Poppa and Baby were called leviathans, and the leviathan interdictor and level six leviathan were also leviathans, of course. So leviathans were pool-ships; she got that. No, they were recycled and renovated into pool-ships; the Inbetweens had talked that before. But unalive leviathans surely couldn't swim, and the ones on the screen moved like alive cats and dogs. The leviathan pool-ships had to be alive. The letters a, l, i, v, and e were right there at the beginning even, a clue.

The realisation dropped on her like a ceiling panel. Alive animals, alive people, guttered and cut up like food, stuffed with picturespouts and puters and mechinery, made over into towers and ships, feeling with people like ants. While alive, a life of hurt and fear. Worse than Rezzies. The Kang turned paler, her stomach rolling at the thought. 'The pool-ships, the alivethans are alive.' she gasped, shuddering in horror.

"The Roman Empire claimed that slavery was the way of the world," As she gets ready to send a pulse through what was left of the ships neural pathways, to unlock the child. "But things change. I can show you a thousand and one ways that this is unnecessary, and that you needn't work your hands to cause another thinking, feeling being pain. Far be it from me to tell anyone else how to live," says Trav, as she whirrs, whirrs into the remains of this Leviathan's brain, "But as thinking and feeling creatures you can agree that unnecessary harm is immoral. This is a predicate of language and existence. You don't get to opinion or culture you way past it. This is objective."

"So, allow me to introduce myself. I'm the Traveller. I'm from far away. I'm crazy and I have no plan, no back up and just a few friends. I'm on a dead hulk of a ship and I'm protecting a child and a parent from a pack of hunters. But I've killed civilizations and brought down gods and if you clowns know what's good for you're going to listen to me."

Trav aims her sonic at the floor. "I'm going to let this child go, and further, I and the Ambassador here are going to make a lasting peace between the the ancient one and it's child and your people. I could give two fucks less the way things have 'always been' because they've always been bullshit. Change always comes, and natural selection comes in many forms - guess what, jackassess - it's wearing a fedora and has blonde hair and has two hearts. We're going to figure out what you need to harvest from them and figure out another way. Do you know why? BECAUSE I WILL SEE NO MORE CHILDREN BEING MURDERED. I don't care what your fucking people need to survive, you don't need to kill KIDS. THAT IS A CHILD. How would you feel if someone came and harvested your children for food? You wouldn't care that they needed it for medicine or food or power or whatever! You'd be enraged! So, you have a choice. We either work out what your people need, and we both win, or, we fight. If we fight? We'll... things won't go well for you. This is for the sake of your children, as it is for those of the Leviathan." And out come those chilling words.

Trav is nearly shaking with controlled rage.

OOC:10:42, Today: The Traveller rolled 23 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 2,5.  Ingenuity 8+Science 6+Sonic 2+2d6.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:46, Mon 31 Aug 2015.

Uh oh.  Since no one did step in to give support on the technical task (per post #181), that's a bad failure.

Before I proceed with a result, I'll give you an awful choice to make:

You can spend 1 Story Point to improve that to an ordinary failure.  The broad result there will be that it doesn't work, and there is some real structure damage.  Not imminent catastrophe, but it will give the base a definite sell-by date and stress its systems for dealing with further damage.

Or you can let it stand.  I'll give everybody in the group one story point.  In this case the damage will be severe -- but it will be so severe that it frees the entrapped baby.  It also means the base will not be viable for long at all.

(This is a dramatic moment and a very dramatic statement by Trav.  On that basis I don't want to let you simply buy a success with story points.)

I'm thinking I want to let it stand. But I also don't want to endanger other PCs. SPs don't exist ICly. What do you ya'll think? If we have the resources to get everyone out on aqua scooters and back to the TARDIS, it might we wiser from an OOC POV to simply release baby and blow this place, plus exciting escape scene. Discuss?

This message was last edited by the player at 13:37, Tue 01 Sept 2015.

As Trav triggers the sonic screwdriver, the vibration and shuddering that the structure briefly experienced earlier starts up again.  Lin, watching the monitors of her own laptop lash-up, says with a certain hint of girlish excitement, "It's working... it's working...."

And then, everything goes directly to hell.

A gruesome CRACK shakes the deck.  Then the whole thing pitches sickeningly beneath everyone's feet.  Lt. Flynn is thrown off balance, staggers a few steps, and topples over as her bad leg buckles.  And from deep below, there's a series of popping and cracking sounds, and it does not stop.

What light there is in the place starts to flicker.  On the console / growths around the control, previously dormant panels start to light up in patches of bioluminescent red and yellow.  Stanley spots one near him which is showing script that reads ENVIRONMENT BREACH.  Lin stares at Trav, horrified.  Colonel Rayburn is staring at her, too, and says, "What.  Did.  You.  Do?"

However:

In all of this, as Smoke Alarm starts to slide across the tilting deck, she manages to catch hold of the console with the eye-picture-spout, and she sees something very significant.

There had been one red blob in the midst of all the hunter-alivethan-dog blips.  Now there are two, one of them smaller and darting around free as a Kang.

And a high vibration rings through the structure, and a clear impression comes through to everyone's mind, not only to the Traveller's:

you who is help!

YOU who is LARGE!

is has OUT!

'Poolquake!' Smoke Alarm yelled as the whole tower went topsy-TV about them. With the cat-like reflexes of a girl who normally threw herself off buildings for kicks, her hands darted out and caught the console, fingers gouging into the jelly-like eyeball. If they hadn't been in such perilous circumstances, she might have found it much more gross and icky thank she did.

Then she eyespied the second blob. 'Another alivethan! Baby's a freebie!' she cheered, happy for the huge and unseen alivethans despite the poolquake. As their voices were heard, she looked up in wonder, and outlooking for the talkers of the PA system.

But the poolquake kept rolling and rocking the tower. 'This isn't shape-ship and sound no more! Fire escapes, all speed! Don't use alleviators in emergency event!'

"Yes, we have to get out of here." Stanley agrees, whilst trying to stay on his feet. "This thing is starting to flood, if I am interpreting this display correctly."

The UNIT team, already in their dive gear from when Stanley and Sereth ventured out, start moving.  Lin pops a hard drive and memory sticks out of her laptop and leaves the machine itself with the rest of her lash-up; Rayburn and Reed hoist backpacks, and they all pair off to close and dog down the helmets of their hard-shell suits.

Flynn trades a look with Rayburn.  The Colonel gives her a sharp nod, and then she's moving stiffly for the exit that leads toward the docking berth of the SPOT.

"I don't know how you were planning on getting out of here," Rayburn says.  "Flynn had the thought of making a diversion by aiming the SPOT straight at the bogeys, then bailing out before it gets to them.  Long as somebody can make a pickup on her.  You got any better ideas, now's the time to speak up."

'No!' Smoke Alarm burst in. 'Trav pinky-sweared to Big Daddy to stop the pool cleaners hunting the alivethans. And they're riding in alivethans. We can't throw SPOTs at them!'

Then she skidded across the brainquarters, to the picture-spout that had showed the crab-like pool cleaner, and tapped the red button again. Curious as a cat, she stuck her face up close and wide, eyespying the alien and his brainquarters. It was like a talkiphone between the alivethans, she realised. So who was dropping-eaves? 'You! Pool cleaner! Clab-man!' she shouted defiantly down the line, getting the caretaker captain's attention. 'We made Baby alive and free! Because the alivethans – the leviathans – are alive and free, they feel and have smarts like people, like you and us. You can't hunt them and gut them and recycle them and ride them around like trolleys! It makes you monsters! Parasites! Rezzies! Eaters of babies!' she spat all the abuse she could think of, recalling the Great Architect's Kroagnon's efforts to use corpoelectroscopy on Kangs and Rezzies and Caretakers, removing their brains and riding them around.

'Shut up!' she yelled, before it could open its flap and splutter, coz she wasn't done yet.

'Leviathans! You hear me! You're not ships and towers! You are alive and free! You feel and think! These pool cleaners and crabs are just hanging on you like fleas! Be free! Jump up and down, swim around, run fast, shake them off! Help us free Baby! All the babies!'



OOC: Now that's Kang diplomacy. :) I want to give the aliens a serve, then talk to the leviation ships themselves, and provoke them into revolt, Kang-style. After all, I spent two SPs on learning, it's got to be useful. :)
14:34, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 21 using 4d6+3 with rolls of 5,5,6,2. presence(2) + convince(1) + 2d6 (correct).
I don't know what bonuses I might get on this; Kangliness isn't a trait, but I think it suits.

I spent a SP to add +2d6. I wanted to do that first, but kept hitting the new, inconveniently placed Refresh button and had to start again. When I finally got it right, I forgot the SP. Hence I rerolled correctly.

Smoke Alarm gets a sinking feeling as she sees on the sputtering and flickering display the pack of alivethans spreading and arrowing toward the red blobs of Baby and Poppa.  She's feeling an awful pressure and popping noises in her head, like when you're trapped in an alleviator and it goes into free-fall.

Then the pressure itself goes POP.

She's not sure what just happened, because she can feel the air pressure around her continuing to build, the cracking and popping noises from down below going on and on, and the noises of the two friendly monsters still ringing through the hull.  The display finally crackles and dies, and most of the soft light around the room goes out, leaving only a slowly fading glow from panels here and there.

But now there's a fresh chorus of noises mixed in with the sounds of Baby and Poppa, too.  They're not quite making funny head-words like Baby just did.  But the rhythm of them is weirdly familiar to Smoke Alarm; she almost thinks she recognizes it:

EEEE eeee
EEEE eeee
EEEE eeee ee EEEE

EEEE eeee
EEEE eeee
EEEE eeee ee EEEE

Recovering from the horrible falling feeling with her ears feeling all poppy, and surprised to lost-and-found herself sound-and-safe, Smoke took a tick-tock to get her maps right-way-round in the lights-out brainquarters. Had it worked? Had the alivethans revolted? Then she heard the sing-song echoing all around, a song as old when time start, a song of freedom and defiance and pride, the song of her heart. Smoke Alarm whooped and jumped up and down in joy. 'Blue Kangs! Blue Kangs! Blue Kangs are best!'

"I don't know if you have convinced the aliens that Blue Kangs are the best, but we should get going." Stanley says as he helps Lt. Flynn get back on her feet. He doesn't like the fact that the lights in the room were going out.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:29, Sat 12 Sept 2015.

'Now fire escapes, all speed!' Smoke Alarm cried, finishing her victory dance and haring for the brainquarters' exit with the proverbial all-speed, skidding over the rocking floor and bounding over toppled junk. But she wasn't leaving her friends in her wake, no; she was a blazing a trail through the collapsing tower. Outlooking around the corners, outlooking through the maps in her mind, tracking back this way and that, she navigating the ever-changing maze with the skill of a well-trained laboratory rat. She paused at one junction and waved her friends to follow. 'This way! Follow the leader!'


OOC: Finding the safest and/or shortest route to the SPOT and where we left the aquacycles: 21.
10:01, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 21 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 5,5.  awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2) + Sense of Direction(2).

Smoke Alarm is rather at home in disintegrating buildings, although not usually ones falling apart quite so rapidly as this one.  Her instincts for navigating are serving her remarkably well in this situation.

In the dim illumination, several of the travelers notice that one of the forms in the bulky UNIT pressure suits is having an awkward time trying to keep their footing on the shaking deck -- probably Lt. Flynn.

OOC: You should all come to a decision on how you and the UNIT personnel are dividing up among the available vehicles.

I'd also like everyone to make a Strength + Athletics or Coordination + Athletics roll to get to their destination safely as the base starts to come apart.  I was going to have this be a Tricky(15) difficulty, but I'll say that Smoke Alarm's navigational direction downgrades that to just being Normal(12).  Meanwhile, Flynn is going to need help with her bad leg, so someone who chooses to assist her can take a -2 on their roll.

Stanley appreciates Smoke Alarm leading the way. They have to make their way through a decaying structure in the dark and he can use all the help he can get. Especially because he is also helping Lt. Flynn, who was having some trouble. Stanley relies more on finding the right footing instead of raw strength to help Flynn get past the obstacles in their way.


OOC: Spending an SP. Stanley is going to help Flynn.
21:39, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 15 using 4d6+2 with rolls of 1,6,5,1.  Coordination(3) + Athletics(1) + Helping Flynn(-2) + SP(+2d6).
 

'Come on, slowpokes!' Smoke called from the corner, coaxing her companions on down the carrydoor. El-tee Flynn's broke leg was slowing them down, she eyespied, but no Kang got left behind. She made sure to find a sound-and-safe way they could all follow, though she could've gotten over that yawny chasm a way back easy-peasy all by herself. She had the grappler gun ready-steady on her belt. 'You can do it! Be brave and bold as Kangs would be!'

In the next carrydoor, the floor was falling down, full of nasty outlooking gashes. It would takes ages to run the long way 'round. Smoke Alarm pushed the toe of her boot against the meaty-looking floor, finding it shape-ship and sound enough to walk on, at least. 'Okay, the next carrydoor's all holey. Hold hands tight! We play skip-hop-jump!' Smoke held her hand out to the next person, then led them skipping and hopping over and around the holes. That might be a new experience for UNIT soldiers and Draconian ambassadors.


OOC: My Coordination + Athletics roll is 16, with +2 if it involves jumping (AoE: Jump) and +2 if it involves acrobatics (Kang Fu), so it could get to 20.
10:32, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 16 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 6,1.  coordination(5) + athletics(4).

By the Story Point rules (“Like this, Doctor?” in the original), with Smoke Alarm showing everyone what to do in advance, you can spend an SP and use her Athletics skill, 4, in place of your own.

Furthermore, I still have nine SPs, so I will share one each to anyone who needs it for the above.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:19, Mon 14 Sept 2015.

The Draconian, as always, waited till everyone else was out before moving out himself. He struggled through the water, he really prefered the land, and he inwardly cursed himself for not speaking more clearly. Not that Smoke hadn't done a good job - a truly admirable job actually - but it was all he offered; was diplomacy. He was failing himself, Traveller, and most importantly, his Emperor for not using his words to neutralise this threat.

OOC:
00:10, Today: Sereth rolled 17 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 5,6.  Strength + Athletics.

That's I think the first ever roll I've totally crushed without using story points.
Am I the only one using raw strength? Hmm, probably.

As the group threads its way along the darkening passageway back toward the sea-cycles, Stanley has a nasty moment when a split opens up in the floor right at his feet, and Flynn skids on her bad leg.  Stanley manages to brace and stabilize them on the treacherous footing.

"Damn it!" Flynn swears, holding on to Stanley to steady herself.  She struggles up and they're able to get moving again.  "Obliged, Doctor," she says, giving him a weak smile.

They're startled, then, by a crackling noise from overhead, and Stanley looks up to see a portion of the curving wall and ceiling of the passageway flaking off and toppling toward them -- and it abruptly stops and shifts direction, shifting to crash into the floor as the shape of Sereth looms overhead to intercept it and divert its fall.

At last, the whole group reaches the wider chamber that adjoins the airlock, where -- if their luck has held out -- the sea-cycles should still be moored alongside.

OOC: Just flavor from the rolls.

Smoke Alarm skidded into the chamber, breaking away to dash that way and this and eyespy that all was shape-ship and sound, at least right now and here as they fire-escaped. 'Now we're outgoing to the pool-bikes. Is the SPOT here?'


OOC: Does the airlock have a window so we can check outside?

Colonel Rayburn looks at Smoke Alarm in some surprise.  "No, the SPOT's hooked up about a quarter of the way around the station, counter-clockwise."  He gives a doubtful glance back the way everyone has come.  "Not all that sure that that anyone could make it there before this place is finished flooding.  With the state that she's in, I'd figured the SPOT was expendable, at best."

"In theory," Flynn puts in, "you can cycle in to the SPOT in open ocean, if you need to.  In practice, we'd have to break the hard seal we made to fix the SPOT to the airlock; also, I don't think the specs were made in terms of close proximity with frisky sea monsters.'

OOC: Argh, that's why I'd suggested you work out what the ultimate plan was before I'd placed you at a destination.  But let's roll with this as is.  Getting people to the SPOT, if you want to, should be "interesting" but not impossible.

OOC: Unfortunately, we had a quiet patch at a key moment, and left it all up to Smoke Alarm. :) Post #208, I said Smoke would lead the way to the SPOT and the cycles.

Anyway, can Smoke lead the UNIT team back to the SPOT in time? Flynn could ride an aquacycle, and Smoke could take her place on the sub, so we move faster. Or Smoke could go alone, but her driving a sub would be interesting to say the least. I rolled a 19 if required.
10:38, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 19 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 5,3.  awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2) + Sense of Direction(2).

Otherwise, can the aquacycles carry two people?

OOC: OK, let's say the following hold true:

- Smoke Alarm can get anyone who wants to go, to the SPOT, through the interior of the base.  That's basically going to be it for any internal movement, before the place floods completely and suffers more internal structural problems.

- From post #42, recall that they made a semi-permanent seal attaching the ship.  Something will have to be done to disengage it, and it's really not feasible to work on the stuff from inside the vessel.

- It's possible to double up on the cycles, but they're not necessarily designed for it; it could lead to issues.

- Assume that the cycles are easy enough to use that anyone could at least make the attempt with a few pointers.

- Assume that the SPOT is a sophisticated deep-sea exploration vessel that is going to be challenging to pilot for the untrained.

OOC: I don't see why we're going back to the SPOT; especially not now. I think I'd prefer to risk the doubling up on cycles if we have to, get everyone to safety.

OOC: I was thinking of if we needed the SPOT to get the UNIT people out. But if it's too difficult and we can use the cycles, then we ought to just use them. I'm good either way though.

OOC: Let's just leave then. Sereth will go last, making sure everyone else gets out first. Because he's a damned paladin.

If he needs to double-up with someone to get everyone else out, most likely with Rayburn; as a gesture from military to military.

This message was deleted by the player at 14:09, Mon 21 Sept 2015.

'Oh.' Smoke Alarm ran through her mind-map of the tower, tracking back through several routes and guesstimating the spreading damage. It would be close, and they would need to move with all speed. 'Mayhaps we could track back before time, but the tower won't be so shape-ship and sound. We'll all fire-escape on pool-bikes. We can ride piggy-back.' Smoke Alarm pulled her dive helmet on, checking all the seals as she'd been shown. 'Ready steady?'

The UNIT crew are dogging down the seals on their hard-shell suits as well.  Rayburn gives Smoke Alarm a thumbs-up.

When he works the control that opens the inner airlock hatch, it shudders and hesitates, but finally opens all the way.  Eight at a time through the airlock seems like it would be a tight fit.

Smoke Alarm grimaced at the poky little cupboard-like space. While she knew how many Kangs could fit in a talkiphone box, big Inbetweens in bulky dive suits was a different matter. 'We go in two-by-two-by-two, with ones you're riding pool-bikes with. Buddy system!' With a few gentle shoves, she paired Trav and Rayburn, Stan and Flynn, Sereth and Lin, and herself and the other one. It wasn't just a matter of putting someone who had the knowhow to ride the pool-bikes and how to track back through the wormhole in each pair, but also the least weight on each bike and keeping friends in togetherness. 'There, shape-ship and sound and safe. Hold righty-tighty and 'ware pool-cleaners and leviathans. Ready steady?'


OOC: Proposing two groups of four, as listed. Smoke can go first to lead the way.

In Smoke's carefully laid plans, she had forgotten one variable. Sereth.

"I go last."

The look in his eyes was unmistakeable - if need be, he would sacrifice himself before he let anyone go after him. Whether this was his culture, him, or some new form of superiority games was anyone's guess, but it was quite clear he meant what he said.

Smoke Alarm eyespied Sereth for a long ticktock. Go last? Among Kangs, going last was for slowpokes and cowardly cutlets. It was going first – into danger, into the unknown – that was dangerous, that was for the bravest and boldest of Kangs. But she knew Sereth wasn't a slowpoke or a cowardly cutlet, he just had a different kind of brave and bold. Besides, it didn't mess up her fire-escape plan any, and there were no ticktocks to squabble in. 'Okay.' she agreed. 'But remember you're not outgoing alone. Lin's your buddy unless you swaps.' Smoke Alarm had perhaps surprised everyone by taking charge on the evacuation, with a calm head and quick thinking and a safety-first strategy. But it was no surprise to a Kang: she was Smoke Alarm, warner of hazards; she was boss of fire escapes.

With no more time for talky, Smoke grabbed Reed and hauled him into the airlock. 'Stan, Flynn, come-out next!' she beckoned, thinking of Flynn's broke leg. 'Door unlocked, unlatched, ready to outgo?' she asked, because the squishy thing was kind of beyond her.

"On our way." Stanley replies and he helps Flynn get in the airlock.

Once Smoke and Reed, Stanley and Flynn assemble in the airlock, Rayburn closes it again.  After the iris seals behind them, water starts to glisten on its walls, rapidly beading, then running, then torrenting down around them until the chamber is filled with water.  More time passes, until Smoke Alarm starts wondering what the to-do is, but Stanley realizes that the system has to finish equalizing the pressure.

When it finally does and the outer iris opens, those within the airlock are surprised by what they find outside.  There are lights moving in the blackness -- iridescent, shimmering sources that are indistinct and distant in the murk, but which make erratic, darting movements.  And they're reflecting off another surface that occults about half of the view.

The bikes are nearby, just where they've been left.  The four can feel a faint vibration on the outside of the suits, from the direction of the great surface that Smoke and Stanley can both easily guess is "Poppa".

Locked in the cupboard, with water rushing in like lots of broken taps, Smoke Alarm grew increasingly agitated, footing about as much as she was able and banging on the exit door as if that might hurry things along. She couldn't wait in here while the tower fell apart and Trav and Sereth were stuck on the other side. More, she felt trapped like a rat, fearing that the exit door might never open, that they might drown in this box of water in this falling-apart tower. The Kang wanted to move.

So when the exit door whirled open, Smoke Alarm kicked off the wall and shot out like an arrow from an arrowgun, swimming eel-like in the direction of the pool-bikes. 'Come-out! All speed!' she urged over comms, flopping into her seat but outlooking up in wonder at the huge leviathans swimming about up high, like living towers that swam.

Going back inside the collapsing structure is not really an option, but when Stanley sees all those lights, all those ships, out there he briefly wonders if going back wouldn't be safer. It wouldn't and they need to get to the aquabikes as quickly as possible, but he feels small and outnumbered. It doesn't help that it is dark out here. Smoke is already making her way to the bikes and urging them to follow. Stanley does what she says and tries to quickly swim to the bikes.

Outside:

The bikes are tethered close enough that it's fairly easy to reach them.  Stanley notices that Flynn seems a good deal less hampered by her injury, now that they're out in the water.  Shortly, both Smoke Alarm and Stanley are seated on their respective sea-bike with one their UNIT "boddy" riding pillion.

Inside:

Rayburn watches the controls.  "There," he says shortly, "the airlock's been evacuated again.  Now we can get out of here, too."

When he keys in the control sequence just as he did before, however, there's an unusual grinding noise, and the iris does not open.  Instead, luminescent panels around it come to life in a dim red color, the same as the warning lights that went off around the control center.

"We may be in a world of trouble here...." Rayburn says slowly.

A solemn nod.

"You need not fear. YOu have me."

Rayburn meets Sereth's eyes.  "It ain't about being afraid.  It is kind of about the laws of physics.  Forcing this thing open isn't even the part that worries me, it's how we're going to get the outer lock open without getting smacked in the face with the pressure differential from the water outside."

Trav curses, as the place starts to crack open, try as she might. "That's not me. This place is finally coming apart. We have to go!" She follows everyone out to the airlock.

"I could try to hack into the system and work some controlled explosions from elsewhere inside the structure, so as to stabilize the pressure release in a more controlled fashion. I can try to flood inside here, here and here. I'm staying. I made a promise to Baby and Poppa." Trav checks her watch again. How much countdown time do they have, and what's the distance to the corridor?

Smoke Alarm motored her pool-bike closer to the exit door of the airlock, leading the other tethered bikes behind it so the others could hop on quicker. But she started to worry when Trav and Sereth and the rest didn't come-out when expected. 'Why're you loitering? Come out!' she urged over the comms.

Inside:

Trav's inertial locator tells her that they've come 12.7 kilometers from the anomaly.  While they have spent a fair about of time trying to check over the base and then manage the removal of Baby, there is still a substantial amount of time on the countdown -- over 150 hours, in fact.

Outside:

As Smoke Alarm and Stanley continue to wait, there's a sudden shift of pressure that shifts their vehicles sideways a little, coming from the base.  They spot a long vertical crack that has opened on the structure, where its rim starts to curve down toward its underbelly.

As they look in that direction, they see a warm reddish-orange light coming around the rim of the structure.  The source of the light drift up into view: it's a broad, flattish shape about as thick as one of the bikes and about three bike-lengths across.  Stubby protuberances around its edge push and paddle gently to propel it upwards, and they can see on its upper surface a ring of roundish, slitted patches.  It's slowly coming their way.

"I can deal with the pressure change. I'll stay here and make the adjustments. You people get out once the pressure stabilizes, and get to Sweet Boy."

Trav is seizing control of what's left of the circuitry of this place, as it's coming apart. Her Gallifreyan metabolism can deal with the changes in air pressure and she can work on the other side of the air lock. As the strange shape approaches, she says, "What is that thing? More scumbags?"

OOC: Ingenuity+Tech+Sonic for controlled venting?

"I think it is an enemy ship. Has it seen us?" Stanley ask over the comms. The rest needs to get out and on the bikes as soon as possible. "They probably heard us leaving and are here to stop us."

OOC: That works, go for it.

The nueral circuitry along the ship corpse lights up, and small explosions go BAMF BAMF BAMF BAMF BAMF along the outside, as the pressure equalizes between the inside and the outside. Hopefully, Trav executes this in a safe manner.

OOC:23:01, Today: The Traveller rolled 11 using 2d6 with rolls of 6,5.  2d6+Ingenuity 8+Technology 6+Sonic 2 - controlled pressure venting. (OOC - Derp, forgot to add 16, total 27.)

Water starts to seep in around the feet of the four people still waiting inside the structure, but the level rises slowly, not like a hammerblow.  Between them, Sereth and Rayburn are able to wrench the inner airlock open.  They find that the outer iris has released on its own: Trav surmises that her manipulation of the osmotic valves controlling the original pumping mechanism may have triggered it.

Now they're able to move out into the open water.  The oxygen capacity of the less advanced UNIT suits is now the real limiting factor affecting matters, but Lin has assured Trav that they're rated for hours of operation -- they should have more than enough range to get back to the anomaly,

The large form approaching the group turns this way and that, occasionally making short, tentative, yet somewhat alarming motions toward one individual or another....

Outlooking toward the glowy thing as it cameout closer, Smoke's eyes widened in awe and wonder behind the face-plate of her helmet. It was big and beautiful and icehot. 'No! I think it's Baby!' she exclaimed over the suit talkiphones. The Kang waved eagerly up at it. 'How you do! You have freeness now!'

"And that's what makes this job worth it. If I can pay back anything, this is it!" She whips her hat in greeting past the porthole as Baby approaches!

"Be that as it may; but we need to get back. You did well; but you have done your part Traveller. It is now time for the family to do theirs. And for you, to get your people home."

He is talking about UNIT, not him.

Trav kneels to the floor, and opens up her big mind.

<<Elder one. Are you and your child safe yet? I will not leave until you have reached safety.>> She pulls her mask on, as the water starts to fill up. She's checking what's left of the systems, seeing if there's anything left of this cracking corpse of a body-ship that she can use. With her other free hand, out comes a turbo pistol, her thumb switching to wall-be-gone mode, ready to make an exit for her and Sereth.

"I'm getting ready to make us an exit. But I made a promise to make sure that father and child are safe, Sereth.I'm not leaving until everyone is safely away. Josh, honey, what is the status of you and your team? Do you have the transponder signal back to the anomaly and Sweet Boy? Get your ass back there! Evac now, Sereth and I will hold the line while you get away."

OOC: I'm assuming that Sereth and I are on the inside with the base rapidly filling with water, and Smoke, Rayburn's team and Stan on the outside, with Baby swimming up from the bottom, please correct if I am wrong.

"You misunderstand me. Whilst you are still ensuring their safety, that is good. It is however all too easy to get lost in the miracle of life - that is what I am talking about."

The Draconian would wait till the very end - whilst Traveller had work to do, he would not move. He would just ensure that once that work was done, she did not find other excuses to stay back. Him staying back if she did ensured that.

More sonicing as the place is filling up with water. "Are you trying to tell me, old friend, that I have suicidal tendencies and that you're making sure that I meet my responsibilities? I'll have to confess that such self indulgent notions occasionally cross my mind. Not today, however. And I doubt you'd let me, regardless."

She points to a nearby panel. "Sereth, if you can look at that sensor panel and see what those hunters are up to. I'm seeing if we can put those old corpse of a hull to one last use, if those bastards insist on being difficult."

OOC: Well, I thought I said the doors were both open in post #241, but you need not make another roll nor edit what you've posted just to conform to that.  Get yourselves free at your own pace.

OOC: You did say just that. :)


Smoke Alarm shouted to Sereth and Traveller, who outlooked to be loitering in the collapsing fish-tower for some reason, 'Don't have a to-do over who goes last for manners. It makes us all slowpokes! Fire escape, now, all speed!' she urged, wondering why she always had to be the sensible one around here.

Most of the hunter-pack that had been surrounding the station seems to be dispersing, their bioluminescent forms dwindling into the inky depths.  Freeness, it seems, may be more than a little contagious.

Most of them.

"Poppa" emits another jaw-rattling dirge, calling Smoke Alarm and Stanley's attention, and as they look around they see a burning green shape emerging from the blackness.  It's long and sleek; stubby fins protrude from it at seemingly random places; and by some telltales of scale, Stanley thinks it might be close to the size of a tractor-trailer.

As the two travelers get a bearing on it, they see one of the massive appendages of the parent creature sweeping down through the water, but even at the approaching hunter's size, it's more maneuverable than the titanic parent.  Smoke's sharp eyes can spot a bulbous mass at the head of the thing, with a bluish form inside.

She recognizes the crab-faced visage that spoke over the base hollow-gram.

'Pool cleaner!' Smoke Alarm exclaimed, recognising the clab-faced caretaker from the hollow-gram. It was going to attack! And they couldn't run until Trav and Sereth were on their bikes. Smoke jumped up in the seat of her pool-bike, waving her hands through the water, pointing and jeering, shouting and taunting. 'Go away! We don't want any! No ball games! No fly posts! No to-dos! You're a cowardly cutlet! Scaredy cat! Litterbug! Slowpoke! Blue Kangs are best! And you're a cowardly cutlet!' It was a fearsome display designed to frighten away predators. Like cats and dogs and Rezzies. It wasn't quite the same against alien sea captains. Did he even have a talkiphone?


OOC: Talk: Smoke makes herself look big and fierce to scare him off, 17:
16:16, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 17 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 6,6. presence(2) + convince(1) + Brave(2).
I rolled unexpectedly well for that.

"Sereth, we should follow Smoke Alarm's advice. Lets get to the cycles."

He smiled grimly.

"After you."

Not that he actually did expect Traveller to do anything but this time - but if something went wrong; and things went haywire, the Traveller would not be the one trapped.

Though if he'd seen the threat being caused by the survivors of the aliens, his tactics might be different.

Stanley doesn't know if the aliens can hear Smoke, but he is looking for any sign that her attempt at intimidating the enemy is working. If she can buy just a little more time for the others to get out and to the aquabikes, that would be great.

The pool-cleaner and its "pilot" may or may not have heard or understood anything that Smoke Alarm had to say, but judging by the way that the beast jinks and veers in her direction, it certainly noticed her antics, and it may even have recognized her from their talk-talk earlier.

"Hey!  What's the big idea?" Reed says over the comm.  Smoke Alarm can feel the soldier tense on the bike behind her.  "Was this part of your plan too?"

OOC: I feel like intimidation and taunts are all mixed up in Smoke Alarm's head....  You had a good roll; if you want to take a further action that is based on being the focus of this person's attention, take a +2 to it!

'Comeout together-like!' Smoke Alarm yelled at Sereth and Traveller, then outlooked back to the clabby caretaker coming right at her! Even better!

'What plan?' she answered Reed with a mad grin. 'Hang on!' She revved the pool bike engines into a sharp WUB-WUB-WUB, then tootled off at all speed straight toward the oncoming chief clab! Driving manically, she threatened a head-on collision, before veering away and waving back at the pool-cleaner, inciting it to chase her. Mayhaps she couldn't drive it so good, but she felt just like Dev on his sky-bike.


OOC: Yeah, the tactic was never going to suit the circumstances. I was kind of expecting a total failure. I'll take being a distraction. :)

So, playing chicken and leading the bad guy away and back toward Big Daddy. I rolled a 16 for straight Coordination. Speed is 6 with Run For Your Life
15:03, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 16 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 5,6.  coordination(5) + transport(0).

"Hold on, we are leaving." Stanley says to Lt. Flynn. They have to make use of the distraction Smoke Alarm is causing, so he has decided to speed off in the direction of the portal.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:47, Sat 03 Oct 2015.

The alien swimmer twists and angles to try to intercept Smoke Alarm as she buzzes toward it, with Reed leaning against her to stay on.  As she swerves aside, she notices that the creature that the crab-face is riding in bristles with several long pointy bits, like spikes or lances or spears.  The whole thing is semi-translucent, and she can pick up hints of internal structure like muscles or organs.

Looking back, Smoke Alarm can see that the attacker is swinging around in pursuit.  She's feeling some cross-current now.  It seems like Poppa may be moving and causing some turbulence around them.

OOC: 19:39, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Crabby Alien, rolled 12 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 3,4.  Coordination(3) + Transport(3).

Stanley checks the inertial tracker on the bike to make sure of his bearing, and kicks the vehicle ahead, with Flynn holding on behind him.  He starts to open up some distance between himself and the ruined base and Poppa.  Baby is turning in a loose circle around the spot where the bikes were parked (and where Sereth's and Trav's are still waiting for their pilots.)

He can see some more of the hunter-creatures dispersed in the ocean around them, but they seem not to be moving to intercept, nor in any common direction at all.

Outlooking back over her shoulder, Smoke Alarm was grimly satisfied to eyespy the chief clab chasing her, away from the others. Now she only had to give them tickstocks to make a fire escape, then lose this cowardly cutlet in the great big pool. The Kang zag-zigged right and left, up and down, then finally threw the pool-bike into a tummy-turning spin, not so much to shake her chaser off but to get him completely lost in the 3D pool. 'Catch me if you can!' she whooped. But overall, she was outgoing up and up like an alleviator, outlooking for the big daddy alivethan. 'D'you play chasey, Reedie?' she asked the UNIT soldier clinging to her for dear life.


OOC: Is Big Daddy or his flippers/tentacles close enough to try a stunt with?

"Well... I reckon I do now, miss!" comes the answer through Smoke Alarm's helmet.


OOC: I would never deny a PC the opportunity to try something insanely dangerous. :)

'Are you a top-gun shooter too, soldier-boy?' she asked, wondering where she herself was outgoing with this... Yep, that was where. 'Grab my grapple-gun! It's on my belt. Don't lose it!' She waited for Reed to get it and get the knowhow of Dev's grapple-gun. 'Think you can tag the pool-cleaner chasing us? Be ready-steady.'
This message was last edited by the player at 07:10, Mon 05 Oct 2015.

"Miss," says Reed as he checks the grapple, "I could quote you my rifle scores from Quantico, but I'm not so sure they mean all that much at thirty thousand fathoms.  Still.  This feels like the fish story of a lifetime in the making, so I'm game if you are."

A quick look back confirms to Smoke Alarm that he has the gun's strap fixed to his arm, and that he's twisted around toward the pursuer, tracking its approach.

"You just say the word, miss."

'A Blue Kang is always game!' said Blue Kang cheered. 'Now, aim left a bit, hold righty-tighty. When I did this, my arm popped off like a dolly's. Mayhaps hook it to the back like a trolley-pulley. Unlease the cable on my say-so.'

Rising ever higher, Smoke Alarm eyespied the great big tentickle of the big daddy alivethan cresting hugely through the pool, and the vast shadow above, filling her with awe. The tower that swims! 'Ready...' Steering the pool-bike with care, she adjusted the course, just a bit here, just a bit there, a correction every ticktock, apparently intending to miss the great big meaty tentickle. After all, who would dare mess with that? 'Steady...' She levelled her course off, slowing down to draw the pool-cleaner in. 'Now!'

As soon as Reed fired and hooked the pool-cleaner, Smoke Alarm squeezed down hard on the go-faster button, the pool-bike jetted forward with all speed, towing the spiky thing along! Then she quickly dipped the bike downward, straight down, darting under the massive tentickle, as the high-tension cable continued pulling the pool-cleaner, swinging it around in a great circle, aiming not for the tentickle, but where the tentickle was outgoing to be! 'Unlease!'


OOC: Giving Reed an assist, 13.
15:40, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 13 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 4,1.  coordination(5) + marksman(3).

Speed is 6 with Run For Your Life.

Setting up a wildly dangerous stunt, with a Story Point: 23
15:28, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 23 using 4d6+5 with rolls of 5,4,4,5. coordination(5) + transport(0) + 2d6.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:44, Mon 05 Oct 2015.

Trav trots to the cycles quickly, powering them up. Sonic and pistol is at the ready, in case the hatch is stuck and she needs to make an exit for her and Sereth.

Reed's shot positions the grapple perfectly for the bike's sudden acceleration to snag the hunter-fish behind one of its stubby fins.  There's a tremendous lurch and a huge spray of bubbles all around Smoke Alarm and Reed as the line goes taut, arresting the bike's motion, and the pair can feel the little craft buck and shudder beneath them.

But the line holds!  And the bike's speed hauls the big creature forward after it.  As Smoke throws the bike into a dive, the line goes slack.  A storm of turbulence from above them makes Smoke look up, and all she can see is the glowing creature vanishing into a huge cloud of froth, careening straight toward Poppa's appendage.

A ripple of impact follows.  It's blunted by the heavy pressure in the water, but Smoke can still feel it as she continues to dive away.

Smoke hears Reed give a funny little laugh.  "Wipeout..." he says.

OOC: Using a whole stack of Strength in addition to the pilot's skill:

22:50, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Piloted Hunter Leviathan, rolled 19 using 2d6+13 with rolls of 5,1.  Resisting the grapple: Strength(10) + Coordination(3).

As Trav emerges from the open iris, she sees the large and ungainly form of Baby, twisting to and fro in some agitation.  There are clear trails of dispersing bubbles leading off in two directions fro the bikes' mooring spot, Stanley's leading back toward the rift, and Smoke Alarm's arrowing off in the direction of Poppa.  There's nothing threatening in the vicinity, though, and Trav and Sereth with Rayburn and Lin are able to get on their respective vehicles without interference.

Trav gets onto her cycle, and revs up. She toggles her radio. "What's the situation? We need to deal with these hostiles before we make our way back to the Anomaly. Trillby, can you hear us?"

'Ha-ha-ha! Wipeout!' Smoke Alarm cheered with Reed, as the shockwave slammed into the little pool-bike, making it hop and skip and corkscrew wildly downwards away from the smash. Smoke let it spiral; down was down, and she might need one of these angles later. 'Good fishing, soldier-boy!' she called back to Reed. She caught the

Hearing Trav's message, Smoke pulled out of the dive, caught the trailing grapple-gun, then sped off, tracking back to the trail of pool-bikes. 'No to-do! We made chief pool-cleaner go splat like pave-cake on side of Big Daddy. Mayhaps Big Daddy'll show-and-tell him not to make live-in alivethans no more.' Smoke Alarm reported, puffed with victory. 'We be outgoing home-sweet-home now?'
This message was last edited by the player at 23:52, Tue 06 Oct 2015.

"Figured you'd take care of everything, Smoke baby! Good to hear you and the team are ship shape!" As she and Sereth join the team on their aquabikes, Trav opens up with her telepathy. <<Great One, Little One. Will you and your child be safe? I am not leaving until those who would harm the two of you are rendered harmless. I owe the safety of myself and my family to two of you.>>
This message was last edited by the player at 20:15, Tue 06 Oct 2015.

"Everything okay. No problems here." Stanley responds. He decreases the aquabike's speed, to keep the distance between him and the others from growing to quickly. "Thanks to Smoke's distraction they didn't chase us."

Trav nods. "Josh, get you and your team to this point, ASAP. There are already UNIT personnel aboard Sweet Boy. Hustle! Don't stay here any longer than needs be." Trav marks the anomaly's location on the inertial locators of the entire team. "Trillby, this is the team. Colonel Rayburn's team is incoming, I repeat, Colonel Rayburn's team is incoming. We'll be along right behind. Prepare for reception!"

OOC:  Trav and Sereth are both doubled-up with someone from UNIT.  Don't sweat it, though.

Trav hears Rayburn clear his throat over the comm, and realizes belatedly that he's sitting behind Sereth on his vehicle -- and that Lin is right behind her.

She doesn't have too long to try to cover for her embarrassment, though.  She and Sereth are suddenly caught in a powerful current -- not too strong to keep their bikes stable, but strong enough that they have to work at it.  Baby, rotating and counter-rotating excitedly, hovers nearby as a wall of flesh looms out of the blackness at them, and in the center of it an eye two stories tall, radial veins gleaming gold in the light from the bikes' headlights.

SMALL TRAVELLER, WHO HAS SIZE BEYOND ITS SIZE, comes the response.  The mental spill is enough that Trav's friends get at least the gist of this, although perhaps not in exact words.

THE OFFSPRING SWIMS FREE.  YOUR PURPOSE IS GREAT BUT THE OCEANS ARE GREATER.  THE HUNTERS WILL HUNT.  THE OFFSPRING WILL GROW AND ENDURE.  IT IS THE WAY OF LIVING.

There's something like confusion in its sense now.

THIS ONE SEES NOW.  YOUR KIND IS NOT THE HUNTERS' KIND.  THEIR EVIL IS NOT YOURS.  WITH THE OFFSPRING FREE WE WILL SEEK NEW SEAS.

Baby's voice pipes in:

is has OUT.  is has can SEE and SWIM and LEARN.  one who is help is...  A pause: puzzlement.  one who is help is FRIEND.

'Shape-ship and sound.' Smoke Alarm reported back to Traveller, with a hint of correction on the Kang speak. She motored down to the procession of pool-bikes, shepherding them nose-to-tail again, before arriving at her place in front as leader and trailblazer. 'All piggy-backers keep outlook for more pool-cleaners.' she told the UNIT team. Then, as the pool-bikes rocked and rolled as the massive tower-sized Big Daddy came up behind them, she added quietly 'And leviathans.' Outlooking back, she saw the humongous leviathan, bigger than big in all ways she knew. Filled with awe, the Kang felt like a little mouse or even an ant before something so vast.

<<Swim free, FRIEND. May you grow to be as big outside as you are INSIDE. I love you both. Be well! Both of you, swim free and stay safe! Maybe, I will see you again! I do not HUNT, I TRAVEL. THERE IS ALWAYS TIME TO TRAVEL, SEE AND LEARN AND HELP. BE SAFE.>> Trav feels her hearts swell as big as the Grinch's did on that Christmas day.

Trav blows a big MWAH kiss to Baby and Poppa, and then spins her aquacycle back towards Sweet Boy. "Lets move, people, clock is still running down! Back to Sweet Boy!" Making sure that all heads are accounted for, Trav herds everyone back to the anomaly and the TARDIS. She spins by and picks Lin up, helping the other woman onto her bike."Just like the old days, right? Except I'm skinnier!" After making sure everyone is accounted for, she roars back to the TARDIS with all speed.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:39, Wed 07 Oct 2015.