Verne closes his eyes. "Let me rest for a moment while we talk about what our next move is..."
"We can't heal you any better here, but I don't think we have the time to go back to recuperate. We have to push forward."
"Agreed, but let's give Verne a few minutes to get the wind back in his sails. That worm had a pretty nasty bite on him. In the meantime, I'm going to run out and see if there's anything left of that Azlanti squib worth taking."
Mallura runs down the gangway and moves to investigate the body for salvageable equipment.
Mal collects the rounds and the knife, bringing them back to the crew. "Alright, fellas. Let's see if Abadar's ready to cash us in yet shall we?"
She approaches the hatch and looks for a way to open it.
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The hatch, incredulously, is open. Looking into it, Captain Mal sees a sleek hall well lit by gold-trimmed sconces and the blinking lights of a wall-mounted terminal near an exterior hatch to the west. The eastern end of the hall is crushed and collapsed, leaving only a doorway in an alcove to the southwest and another doorway in the centre of the south wall.
The ship's interior seems exceedingly opulent but desolate, consisting of sleek, durable metal bulkheads adorned with sweeping lines of gold and silver throughout. The ceilings inside the vessel are over 10 feet high.
JD takes a moment to marvel at the ancient wreck as he moves off the ramp and up into the vessel. Aside from the scare with the creature at the ramp, he tries to quiet his nervous excitement at pushing into the bowels of the ship.
He pauses at the terminal to see if he can make heads or tails of the readings there in the blinking lights.
Mallura steps a short way inside and turns to activate the wall terminal.
Jarix keeps his rifle at the ready as he stands watch while the others fiddle with the gizmos.
The ship's interior seems exceedingly opulent but desolate, consisting of sleek, durable metal bulkheads adorned with sweeping lines of gold and silver throughout.
"It certainly seems that this ship was designed for someone important."
Verne takes a look around for any sign of arcane symbols or magic remaining in the ruined hall.
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Verne has little clue as to the origins of anything within this place. JD and Mallura, on the other hand, recognise some familiar mechanical and technological memes by which they can orient themselves.
JD peruses the control panel of the terminal, determining how best to activate or de-activate the door locking mechanism for the portals leading in and out of this room. Confident of this, he then assists Mallura with hacking into the computer, summoning into being a pixilated holographic bust of an elder Azlanti man composed of tiny blue glyphs. The virtual intelligence of the shipboard computer raises its eyebrows at the two of them, then addresses them through the audio equipment in the room in sonorous tones.
"ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ သငျသညျတော်ဝင်အကျိုးတူ, ဘုနျးကွီးသော Azlanti စတားအင်ပါယာ၏ဖခင် Ameondria ၏ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်ရေးသင်္ဘောပေါ်တွင်ဖြစ်ကြသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်သည်သင်၏သင်္ဘောဖြင့်ချိတ်ဆက်ထားသောကွန်ပျူတာဖြစ်သည့် li လိယဖြစ်သည်။ ငါအင်ပါယာ၏ဘုန်းအသရေမှအစေခံနိုင်သလဲ"
Mallura raises an eyebrow at the A.I., then smoothly addresses it in Azlanti, "Good day, Ellioch. Please, can you tell us the status of the Royal Venture's engines and other propulsion systems?"
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The A.I. sighs forlornly in reply to the question.
"အို။ သင်္ဘော၏ဆိပ်ကမ်းခြမ်းသည်ကံဆိုးစွာသောမတော်တဆမှုတစ်ခုကြောင့်ပျက်စီးသွားပြီးအဓ ိကအင်ဂျင်ခန်း၏မြေမျက်နှာသွင်ပြင်အပိုင်းပြိုကျသွားသည်။ အင်ဂျင်ကိုပြန်လည်စတင်ရန်မကြာသေးမီကကြိုးစားမှုများသည်ရှုပ်ထွေးသောကိစ္စရပ်မျာ းသာဖြစ်သည်။"
Ellioch shakes his holographic head slowly and sorrowfully.
"ဒီသင်္ဘောရဲ့ပျံသန်းတဲ့နေ့တွေကအဝေးကြီးပါ။ ငါကအထောက်အကူဖြစ်လိမ့်မယ်လျှင်, သင်သင်္ဘော၏သိထားကိုပြသနိုင်ပါတယ်။"
At this, a map of the ship springs onto the screen, complete with labels (in Azlanti) displaying each room’s name and purpose; this schematic also notes the crumpled port side and the aft starboard collapse. The schematic constantly flashes with symbols labeled “warning” and “inoperative” over most of the rooms.
"There are crew present in the cargo hold," Verne remarks. "Fascinating. I recommend we go there first to see if there are any survivors of this wreck."
Jarix looks at the schematics and plots a course to the cargo hold.
Go to N4 and open the door.
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Silently, Jarix moves to the door to the room marked 'Technomagical Lab' on the map produced by Ellioch. As he approaches, the door automatically slides open to reveal a darkened room carrying a faint stench of decay. Jarix has little time to ponder the shadowed outlines within the room before two shadows hurl themselves out of the darkness at Jarix, hungry skeletal jaws gnashing below glowing purple eyes!
Jarix steps back out of reflex and, with his back against the bulkhead, fires at yellow.
Mallura turns to Verne, "No, I think that must be the commander and some of her guard. I doubt any of the original crew survi--AH!" Just then, Jarix opens the door to the lab and the pair of skeletons lunge out of the darkness!
"Get back Verne! Watch out!" JD calls out in concern and horror for the android.
He fires a shot at the creature, and the drone fires as well.
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JD's shot blasts into the wall behind the thing menacing Verne, but the drone's laser blast thunks straight into the thing, burning away remnants of a tattered jumpsuit.
And doing no apparent damage.
In the meantime, the other thing lurches forward on stiff legs, shoving past the slowly-closing doors from the darkened room towards Jarix.
Verne lashes out at the skeleton in front of him.
He then backs away .
Mal pulls her laser pistol and fires at Yellow. "What the heck are these things? I mean, seems like they're undead, but what are we dealing with here?"
Cornered and with little option, Jarix draws his knife and strikes out at yellow.
Fight Defensively +2 AC
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Jarix misses as he attempts to keep his guard up. The faster of the two herky-jerky foes attempts to bring down a forearm on Jarix's head.
JD fires again at the closest creature.
Seeing that the laser weapons don't seem to have any effect, the drone holds it's fire.
"Occult zombies!" Verne exclaims. "We're better off trying to take them down with magic."
With that, Verne takes a step back and launches the nearest bit of debris at the closest zombie.
Verne takes another attempt at lobbing a projectile the zombie's way.
"Uh...what was that?!" Mallura shouts in alarm. "Why didn't that shot hurt it? Ugh, fine. Let's try this instead." She draws her arc pistol and tries that out on the yellow undead being.
Realizing his dangerous position, Jarix cautiously steps closer to his allies.
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"Occult zombies!" Verne exclaims. "We're better off trying to take them down with magic."
Not heeding her crew mate's sage advice, Mallura continues firing away using a non-magical device, scoring a wound that seems to do little as Jarix extracts himself gingerly from a hemmed-in position. Unfortunately, the nearest zombie wheels around and swings a heavy fist at Jarix.
The zombie's fist batters into the operative once more, blood and teeth spraying from his face.
"Our guns aren't working! What now?" JD calls out to the rest of the crew. Not having any options left to deal any damage to the creatures, he waits to see what the crew decides to do.
Now that he's got a little space, Jarix slashes back at the zombies.
"Let's retreat out of the ship. Put some distance between us and them."
Seeing that the team is struggling to put any kind of damage on the zombies, Mallura instead calls out to her operative, "Jarix! Don't let these things beat you down! We can win this fight!"
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The captain encourages Jarix. The operative slashes at the zombies, but scores little in the way of damage. Suddenly, the zombie targeted by Mallura and Sh-Ux slumps slightly as bits of charred flesh fall out of its jumpsuit. The creature still remains mobile, though. The other creature doesn't look touched.
The drone fires onto the advancing horror.
Because shux held for last turn because it didn't seem effective, he technically missed out on a shot.
Well, he missed anyway.
Verne casts the command Halt on the untouched Zombie in an attempt to slow it down.
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Verne reaches out with her mystic energy, commanding the undead creature's brain to heed her command. Unfortunately, Verne cannot find the creature's brain, and it continues its course.
The undead thing in front of Jarix swings again at the operative.
Jarix takes another blow to the face, a nasty bruise forming over his left brow. The other zombie facing Jarix slowly raises its arm menacingly.
Sh-Ux fire the laser pistol again at The most damaged creature.