Dunklezahn puts a bit too much zip in his jump, and his attack is off target!
Round 1:
Hack-it: Miss
Dunklezahn: Miss
Booker: Go
Alien beast: TBD
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
"Busted thrusters, what's the fuss now?" Booker groans, maneuvering quickly towards the fighting. He plugs a heavy shot at the... thing.
Booker blasts the thing in the face! It's immensely tough body withstands the blow, but it bleeds all the same.
It rears its head and it's smoking eye sockets transfix Dunklezahn. This close, the vesk can see that they're empty. Not just missing eyes, but empty like the claustrophobic, dark, and often maddening aspects of deep space.
The creature's jaws clamp down , but your armor withstands it.
The creature passes him by and closes with Booker. Booker, R1G5, and HAck-it all witness the EYES!
Round 1:
Hack-it: Miss
Dunklezahn: Miss
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: Awaiting results
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Veolisk: 17
Dunklezahn is bewildered and confused at the enormity of it all. The beast then ignores him and advances! The creature closes with Booker. Booker, R1G5, and HAck-it all witness the EYES!
Round 1:
Hack-it: Miss Will Save
Dunklezahn: Miss
Booker: Hit Will Save
Alien beast: Awaiting results
Gig: Go
R1G5: Go + Will
Janzi: Go
Veolisk: 17
R1G5 puts all his effort into resisting the Void, and misses wide with his shot.
Round 1:
Hack-it: Miss Will Save
Dunklezahn: Miss
Booker: Hit Will Save
Alien beast: Awaiting results
Gig: Go
R1G5: Miss
Janzi: Go
Veolisk: 17
Gig moves up closer to the edge of combat and uses his Magic Hack: Magic Negation ability to suppress the confusion on Hack.
"Stop with that confused look on your face, Hack. He's just messing with your mind. Snap out of it!"
"Whoa, thing's got no eyes!" Booker mutters. "Weird as my grandma's..."
His cannon blasts cut off the rest of the sentence.
Gig unravels the confusion in Hack-it's mind!
Round 1:
Hack-it: Miss
Dunklezahn: Miss
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: Awaiting results
Gig: Hack Hack
R1G5: Miss
Janzi: Go
Veolisk: 33
Janzi shoots firs t and asks questions later.
Janzi seems to be lost in the fight. Booker makes up for it with a solid shot that burns the creature's hide.
Round 2:
Hack-it: Go
Dunklezahn: Go
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: TBD
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Veolisk: 33
Dunklezahn takes a solid cut of flesh from the creature's flank! The muscle memory of the act is enough to shake him from the terror of the Void.
Round 2:
Hack-it: Go
Dunklezahn: Hit
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: TBD
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Veolisk: 53
Hack-It steps in, and both he and he drone work to light the beast up!
Hack-it is WAY off target, but Sputter's rifle strikes true. The creature is obviously injured, but seems to take no heed of safety. It turns and snaps at Dunklezahn.
, and misses!
The creature's Void gaze continues to wreak havoc on the party.
Round 2:
Hack-it: Hit
Dunklezahn: Hit
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: Bite
Gig: Go
R1G5: Go
Janzi: Go
Veolisk: 66
Go for the eyes! Janzi says, either not noticing or not caring about the irony.
Janzi resists the madness, but his aim pays the price.
Round 2:
Hack-it: Hit
Dunklezahn: Hit
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: Bite
Gig: Go
R1G5: Go
Janzi: Miss
Veolisk: 66
Gig steps around the corner and attempts to suppress Dunk's confusion but becomes confused himself. He instead pulls out his pistol and fires at Janzi.
Thankfully, Gig isn't a very good shot!
Round 2:
Hack-it: Hit
Dunklezahn: Hit
Booker: Hit
Alien beast: Bite
Gig: Confused Miss
R1G5: Go
Janzi: Miss
Veolisk: 66
Hack-It watches R1G5 in action...
The android manages to keep his mind focused, and does some weird incomprehensible movements.
Hack-It blinks a few times, wondering to himself just what the heck that was supposed to do. Still, R1G5 takes a shot with his Disintegrator Pistol.
R1G5 keeps it together, but his aim is also way off.
The grievously injured alien beast continues to attack!
Round 3:
Hack-it: Go
Dunklezahn: Go
Booker: Go
Alien beast: TBD
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Veolisk: 66
Hack-It tries to keep his head...
His mind clouds though, and he turns and points his gun, point blank, at Janzi. BLAM!
Meanwhile, Sputter stays on target.
"What the!" Booker exclaims, as he suddenly sees dozens of the eyeless dragons multiplying everywhere. He swings his gun up to his shoulder far too quickly, smacking himself in the chin with the stock in his haste.
Booker and Hack-it make a mess of the battle. Sputter shoots, but doesn't connect.
Round 3:
Hack-it: Confusion
Dunklezahn: Go
Booker: Confusion
Alien beast: TBD
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Veolisk: 66
Dunklezahn's hit is devastating. The creature nearly topples, and with even a solid punch it just might!
With bestial rage it turns and bites the vesk: for .
Round 3:
Hack-it: Confusion
Dunklezahn: Hit
Booker: Confusion
Alien beast: ATK
Gig: Go
R1G5: Go
Janzi: Go
Veolisk: 87
Janzi shoots again, his mind unaffected by the creepy eyeless eyes.
Gig fights against his mind to figure out what to do. However, confusion still overwhelms him. So, he takes his blaster and hits himself with it.
Janzi and Gig bash themselves in the head!
Round 3:
Hack-it: Confusion
Dunklezahn: Hit
Booker: Confusion
Alien beast: ATK
Gig: Confusion
R1G5: Go
Janzi: Confusion
Veolisk: 87
R1G5 keeps it cool and fires off a shot from the dark.
R1G5 continues to have a bug in his program as his hiding is spot on, but his aim is off.
Round 4:
Hack-it: Go
Dunklezahn: Go
Booker: Go
Alien beast: TBD
Gig: TBD
R1G5: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Veolisk: 87
Both Hack-It and Sputter take shots at the beast...
Hack-it's shot lands, but Sputter's shot blows a hole through the monster's eye socket. It slumps to the ground, motionless.
"Creepy-ass mother..." Booker comments, loading fresh shells into his gun. "Lots o' screens here, wha-tch we got? Hack-It? Gig?"
Hack-It moves up towards the consoles, and begins inspecting them. "Alright, let me see what I can do here. Give me a bit."
Hack-it gets to work. All seems easy until he realizes that there's more than meets the eye here. Fortunately, his skill is such that he naturally makes a lot of right choices in the hack.
The datacore is a tier 3 computer with several secure data modules and a control module for the base’s system-wide comm unit. The ysoki realizes the system normally requires a voiceprint password, meaning an authorized user must speak a password to gain access. It's only a few moments to bypass.
There are 3 data modules of note; labeled respectively “Activities,” “Intelligence,” and “Sacred Lore.”
You begin to read the mission of this sect of the Cult of the Devourer in no uncertain terms. The denizens of the Star-Eater’s Spine were devoted to poring through the prophecies in a sacred but cryptic tome called The Entropy of Existence and Glorious Rise of the Void. The data contains the cult’s analysis of some of these divinations, including one prophecy flagged as high-priority. This high priority prophecy is not stored in this data module, but a link points to its location in another secure data module labeled “Sacred Lore”. The cultists focused on this one prophecy in particular because they thought it the most likely candidate for them to bring to fruition. From the data, it appears the cultists interpreted the prophecy as referring to some sort of weapon—one powerful enough to serve as a “key” to untold destruction—but they have deciphered little else. In addition to the cultists’ obsessive work to understand more of this prophecy’s latent instructions, this module details the terrible, ritualistic tortures (such as the laser wall) the cult enacted to try to pull further clues from those lines.
Because of the sensitive information it contains, this secure data module is protected behind a firewall and equipped with a feedback countermeasure.
Because of the sensitive information it contains, this secure data module is protected behind a firewall.
"Whatcha got?" Booker asks with impatience.
”Hack, what if we use a Fortranian duplex keycode sequence to bypass the security on this?”
Gig's idea works wonders on the Intelligence core:
The Intelligence data module contains records of all of the communications between the Star-Eater’s Spine and the Devourer cult on Castrovel. Although it appears that the cultists tried to erase this data before they deserted the base, by successfully hacking this module, you recover most of the communication logs for the base’s comm unit. These captioned recordings document the Castrovelian cult leader, Tahomen’s boastful crowing about his cult’s activities at the Temple of the Twelve, including a premature (and ultimately untrue) claim of the cult’s humiliating defeat of you. The last communication log, however, takes on a triumphantly gleeful tone. In it, Tahomen reports that information in the temple’s inner sanctum has revealed the location of the “key” emphasized in Nyara’s prophecy. In the final line of the recording, Tahomen jubilantly states, “Our future awaits, far beyond the confines of the Star-Eater’s Spine! You must fly, my sisters and brothers! Fly to (garbled static), where the Key awaits…” The recording then ends.
hacking the data module reveals that the name of the location the cultists fled to was deliberately deleted and then meticulously scrubbed from the system. The electronic signature of the hacker who performed these tasks is unlike any of the digital footprints left in either this datacore or the computer terminal you first encountered. However, there are clear signs that this data was deleted just a few days ago— sometime after the cultists abandoned the Star-Eater’s Spine, given physical clues left behind at the base...
Gig's idea doesn't work on the Sacred Lore module, but thankfully there doesn't seem to be any countermeasures there.
Booker grunts. "Someone's still here. Or came'n' went. Anyway, third party."
"Off the console, Gig! I got this."
Hack-it, does, in fact, got this.
It contains reams of information about the cult’s profane belief in the Devourer, the assured entropy of the universe, and the cultists’ unholy roles in bringing about the end of existence for the glory of their dark religion. In addition to general religious dogma and near-mad ramblings, the data module also details the Star-Eater’s Spine cult’s fascination with an ancient elven soothsayer named Nyara.
Centuries ago, an evil and malicious elven mystic named Nyara lived a depraved existence on Castrovel. At the time, the Cult of the Devourer was merely a shadow of a threat to the civilized species of the galaxy, but Nyara discovered in the dogma of the Star-Eater the nihilistic ambition for which she later became known. Nyara fed off the pain and suffering of those weaker than her, and she slaughtered hundreds and quickly rose through the ranks of Castrovel’s Star-Eater cult. As the number of atrocities she committed in the Devourer’s name mounted, Nyara came to believe that her uncaring patron would visit a terrible fate on her soul should she not work to further the total destruction of existence that the Devourer so coveted.
Committing herself fully to the Devourer’s entropic cause, Nyara began a career in dark soothsaying. Her killings became ritualistic rather than indiscriminate, and she drew prophecies from the very blood of her victims. Nyara spent her long elven life span extracting the terrible secrets underlying creation and extrapolating innumerable doomsday futures. Before her death, Nyara recorded her most profane divinations in her magnum opus, a tome called The Entropy of Existence and Glorious Rise of the Void. This work, though obscure to the galaxy at large, is considered a key unholy text to many Devourer cults. Its dark prophecies span countless realities, including dozens of ways that the multiverse and all its planes of existence might someday come to an end. But Nyara transcribed her predictions in imprecise and enigmatic language, as prophets are wont to do, and the scattered Devourer cults have had little success in parsing the elven mystic’s words and bringing her prophecies to fruition.
The data even includes a computer-generated hologram of Nyara recounting some of her most enigmatic prognostications, as recorded in her most infamous book, The Entropy of Existence and Glorious Rise of the Void, which the cultists of the Star-Eater’s Spine treat as gospel. One of these predictions is flagged as high-priority; if that prediction is accessed, the hologram of Nyara recites, “In the maw of the Twelve lies the Key. Forsooth, shall all be undone. When the knee meets the gorge, so far. The widening gyre implodes—magnificently.” An annotation on the file points to the cult’s study of this prophecy stored in the datacore’s Activities data module.