An electric pulse from Solaria's weapon connects with a stray tentacle, just grazing the yellow akata. While Spectre's shot flies well wide due to a momentary malfunction, Isu's longsword slices deep into the injured akata's side. It spasms, leaks a bucketload of vile blue fluid, and then collapses in a sodden heap.
Arc turns his attention to the sole remaining akata and delivers a serious blow of his own, lopping off a trio of tentacles!
||||Still Round 2||||
Yellow Akata
Red Akata - 7 damage
Most of the Party
Ted
Sydney
"Go on, that's it only this one left (hopefully)." shouts Solaria in encouragement to Arc and Isu.
The akata's primitive intelligence leaves it unable to recognize how slim its odds of survival are, and with a successful bite just moments earlier, it only becomes more frenzied in its attacks against Arc. It bites wildly with its jaws, missing once, but tearing holes in Arc's lighter leg armor with the second bite!
||||Round 3||||
Red Akata - 7 damage
The Good Guys
Bold are up!
Solaria, once more tries to distract the remaining creature with a shout and a fancy twiddle of her pistol.
Solaria's feint distracts the sole remaining akata and Spectre delivers a blast of laser fire that evaporates off of its slick coat while Arc and Isu simultaneously plunge longswords into its sides. Overwhelmed by its injuries, the akata staggers towards the wall and collapses in a spray of blue fluid!
With the menace of additional akata cleared out, you're able to take a closer look at the engineering bay. As mentioned previously, the long chamber stretches all the way across the width of the ship and is packed full of instrumentation, access hatches, opened maintenance panels, and assorted integrated equipment. It seems that all of the Acreon's main engineering functions can be operated from here, and the computer terminals facing the reactor core allow for monitoring and maintenance of the core itself. The ground is littered with more yellow-green crystal shards.
Solaria runs over to Arc and Isu, "Are you alright? Those things looked like they bit you hard!" She delves into her pack, picking out a small capsule encased in medical symbols and written notes. "Will either of you want this?"
"I don't think so, the captain's last entry in the ship's log to say they left the ship to seek refuge on the rock." Solaria replies to the kasathan warrior. Her eyes clouded over in thought.
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"We have the ship sealed and secure. We have the cargo for the ambassador. Clearly we need to get ourselves down to the drift rock as what is not clear from what we have seen is if this ship should belong to the Hardscrabble or Astral Extractions. This one proposes a good nights sleep first. There are plenty of crew quarters upon which to find a soft place to lie."
Isu notes that these crystals look a lot like those ones from the starboard side hold. Spectre or Ted might be able to confirm that this is additional Noqual for sure.
"Well, if we're gonna stay the night, we might as well try and make ourselves comfortable." Solaria comments, before getting on with a little bit of spaceship keeping. Tidying up where things have been set in disarray by the akatas and fights both old and new. She busies herself, using all the skill she learned working at the hotel to make sure they all get a good nights rest.
"The equipment in this section is far too technical for me, I'll let you techies search the place and find anything else that might be of use."
Solaria leads the charge on tidying up the battle-scarred interior of the Acreon, with Arc's help in spacing the akata corpses (unless you want to keep one or more of them for some reason). There is quite a lot of surface damage on the interior of the Acreon, providing evidence of laser and projectile weapons discharges from when the crew defended themselves against the akatas. Your own fights against the akatas have only added to the carnage. Blue akata fluids permanently stain sections of the ship's decks and walls, while laser burns from mis-aimed attacks mar the walls in each of the chambers you cleared out.
A bit of elbow grease from Solaria manages to clean up the worst of the chaos, but it'll take more serious repairs to get things back to perfect shape. Between Solaria and Isu, you gather up additional noqual shards from both the bridge and the crew quarters . After about an hour's work, goblin-stained sheets in the crew quarters have been replaced by new ones from storage, junk and debris has been swept into the cargo holds or out into space, and in general the Acreon is restored to look less like an ominous deathtrap and more like a place you'd be willing to spend the night.
As you all settle in to rest, Eskolar's crate safely back on board the now-pacified Acreon, the surveillance drone that Nor sent with you settles in to a corner of the room and enters into standby mode. From the way its camera remains facing the beds in the crew quarters, it almost seems like its planning to record you all sleeping.
Your group is lulled to sleep by the occasional hissing and clanking of partially damaged systems somewhere deep in the ship. Eight hours later, you wake feeling rested and restored and ready to take on new challenges. The ship appears unchanged from its state before you went to sleep.
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Arcalinte, with Isu's help, moves the "package" back on board the Acreon, making sure to place it in a secure part of the hold. After this, he munches on some of his day rations, and then visit's the ship's washroom to clean himself up before going to bed, showering, brushing his teeth, and all that good stuff. The Cycle may be indifferent to the appearance of its adherents, but Arcalinte IS a little vain.
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Spectre finds a charging station and enters low-power mode for the night, conserving energy and recalibrating his combat tracking.
Once the group awakens, he powers up and goes to the engineering computers.
"I found relatively little in the bridge. Perhaps there is additional information I can access here," he proposes as he accesses the engineering computers.
Arc wakes feeling about the same as he did the previous day (weary and somewhat nauseous). He checks the area he was bitten and infected and finds that while the wound was healed through Grix's magic, the skin in the region is still inflamed. As he touches it, he can faintly feel his skin writhing as if it has a life of its own.
Spectre, you check the information on the engineering bay computers and find a variety of maintenance and status logs. Among the various pieces of data, you identify a few interesting items:
According to the log of the Drift Drive, it was temporarily set into 'neutral' (ie. hold location within the Drift) for a period of time a few days ago. The trouble with the akatas seems to have started not long after the Drive was re-engaged. Other logs from the engineering bay suggest that the ship was struggling with the additional load of hauling the Drift Rock with it, but that the total load varied very slightly as the Rock was tugged along, almost as if its mass was fluctuating.
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Arcalinte takes a shower using the ship's washroom, which is where he self-examines to learn he's still sick and that whatever this illness is, it's more disturbing than he initially thought.
"Bad news everyone," he says after getting his armor on and rejoining the others. "I think this isn't exactly a disease we're dealing with. I felt something moving where my wound was. The akatas may have given Isu and me some kind of parasite."
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With the rest of the party apparently just as inept as he is, Isu pulls out a medpatch and attempts to fix it to his body, hoping to provide some comfort against his disease. This one has four hands... so maybe that will help.
Thankfully, Isu gets the patch affixed without issue.
Ugh... didn't do the trick... This one feels really, really... awful. Just going to lie down a sec....
"Bletcchhhh!" Isu vomits all over his bunk.
Isu similarly feels wretched, despite his strong immune system trying to eliminate the infection (or parasite, perhaps?).
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Isu pulls himself off the ground and wipes the vomit off his mouth with two hands.
"Shall we proceed then? This one suggests we seal our suits and spacewalk over to the drift rock. There are cables that connect our ship to the rock. We should be able to pull ourselves alongside the Acreon until getting to said cables, and then pull ourselves along the cables to the rock. Minimal effort. Has everyone had some experience in zero gravity before?"
Solaria does her best to keep morale high, cleaning up after Isu's morning sickness. Giving him a cold damp cloth to mop his brow and clean his face of the vomit. "It won't be long before, we get back to Absalom Station. Using their medical facilities will get you on your feet in no time."
After all the chores are complete, the meals eaten and the company of adventures ready, she dons her spacesuit and is ready to explore the surface of the asteroid. In reply to Isu she says, "Zero gravity, it's quite new to me. Do we have any readings on the level of gravity out there?" she says with some excitement.
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Arcalinte goes to help Isu clean up the mess.
"I've had some zero-g experience from the Cosmonastery. Sometimes we'd be asked to spacewalk on the outside of the building to meditate directly among the stars. It's surprisingly soothing, and it's a feeling I try to recapture meditating in normal gravity. Some students, who went on to become star shamans instead of actual solarians, eventually learned how to spacewalk without spacesuits, even!"
Checking the computers on the bridge, you can all pull up an exterior visual feed of the drift rock. This nondescript asteroid is small in galactic terms, but several times the size of the Acreon (a couple thousand feet in diameter). Its exterior surface is pitted with hundreds or thousands of irregular crevices, though you notice that one side of it seems smoother than the others. A series of long, durable chains link the Acreon to its cargo.
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Spectre shares what he learned from the engineering bay computer.
Later, he begins examining the drift rock.
That's no moon...
"According to my science database, this drift rock has been shorn from a larger asteroid. Even so, there are no impact craters. It has no atmosphere, and is composed primarily of rock and metal."
He presses a few more buttons. "An interior reading is impossible, but there is no meaningful gravity."
"Isu, are you sure the scanners are working correctly, how can they not provide meaningful details about the interior. Surely just a rock would let the scanners do their work. Either the scanners aren't working or there's something interesting about this rock." Solaria's voice gets higher as her excitement increases. "Oooh, so my first experience of no gravity and on a rock that is mysterious. Doesn't it just make you ..... well.. excited!!" The lashunta girl impatiently waits for the others to get ready ... "I suppose its dangerous too?"
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"Interior? This one thought it was just a big rock? There is something inside it?"
"The interior may very well be solid rock," Spectre replies. "I only indicated that a reading is impossible. Perhaps there is something about the nature of the rock that reflects our sensors. Further analysis is required."
After gathering your gear back up and sealing your armor against the void of space, you head back through the engineering bay and out to the aft airlock. A quick cycling of the system and you find yourselves looking out into the void of space. The chains and the Drift Rock itself lie ominously ahead.
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Hauling yourselves across the hauling chains to the Drift Rock turns out to be a fairly straightforward affair. Your armor's environmental seals protect against the cold of space without any issues, making the trip only a little awkward for those of you not used to zero-G traversal. The Rock itself looms closer and closer in your vision until you find yourselves touching its cracked and uneven surface. The locations where the chains are anchored appear unremarkable, but much of the Rock remains beyond your sight unless you stray from the chains and go exploring!
The slight lashunta makes her way down the chain, her legs floating a little in zero gravity. "Whoa, this is great, it's really weird!" lets out Solaria. "Lead on. I'm having such fun."
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"In order to eliminate this drift rock through explosives, you would require an unpractical quantity of explosives," Spectre points out.
His circuits seem to compensate well for the zero gravity, and the droid seems to handle the conditions without problem.
"I suggest we continue to follow the chains," he adds.
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Arcalinte closes his eyes as he pulls himself along the chain, meditating on the sensation of weightlessness and the silence of space, until they arrive at the Rock.
"Given what we don't have is concrete information about the inside of the Rock, I presume we'll have to look for an opening on its surface. Want me to take point, Isu? Solaria?"