Shabad waits for her sheet lighnting pistol to recharge its capacitors and squeezes off another bolt.
This time the electricity glances off the shadowy tentacles, but Shabad doubts they penetrated to do any real damage.
Regaining his senses, Damon snarls at the oozes. "You think you can play with me like that?! I'll show you who's in charge!" Carefully stepping to the south, he lowers his weapon and clenches his fist. All throughout the structure, walls groan and loose objects skitter across the floor towards the vesk.
Recorva's supercharged shot incinerates the damaged ooze, melting it into wisps of shadowstuff. The other one resists the pull of Damon's black hole, but Stefani manages to blast it with her LFD emitter. It slithers closer to the pirate and attacks with its shadowy psuedopod, striking her even with Rain providing cover fire!
Whenever firefights break out, Shabad feels her own android physiology's signs of severe stress. Adrenaline surges and makes her muscles tense for immediate action, although she rarely needs to exert much effort to anything except movement. Her mind races trying to analyze the situation when there is no time for analysis, only reaction. So she finds herself relaxing slightly as one of the horrid psuedopods is destroyed by the fearsome array of energy directed at both.
Now, as some of the flare and flash of battle gives her a view past the enemy, she sees a fully attuned solarian within range of her lightning pistol, so she instead draws the corona laser pistol and fires at the remaining black ooze through the broken window.
Range 90 ft.
The adrenaline makes her fire earlier than she should, making the laser fire high.
Damon pulls one of the oozes just as Recorva incinerates it, ducking as the flaming jelly spashes against the wall behind him. Seeing the second ooze attack Stefani, he drops his weapon, pulls out another as he clears his firing line, and takes a shot.
"We've got your number now, pond scum!" Stefani says with a laugh as she shakes off the void effects.
Aiming at the remaining ooze, Recorva fires off two shots at it.
Rain will once again attempt to provide covering fire to Stefani.
Xio bangs on the rock wall once again, sending any small loose stones crumbling to the floor, and follows up the distraction with another shot.
Xio succesfully distracts the ooze, and even though the operative misses with her shot, all the rest of you manage to hit. The ooze quivers and shrivels as your energy blasts tear it apart, but it still remains intact enough to attack Stefani, slamming her twice more with its chilling pseudopod!
With a wordless snarl, Damonkayo lets loose a barrage of disintegration energy.
"Damn! You're like a bad boyfriend who won't give up!" Stefani snarls back at the creature.
At last, Damon and Stefani are able to finish off the ooze, dissolving it to a puddle of sticky goo.
Searching the barracks, you find a few interesting items. Indigo-13's belongings lie amid a pile of fine black ash, all that remains of the unfortunate android. In one of the eastern bunkrooms, you come across Romi, obviously dead froma self-inflicted head wound.
Shabad slumps against the wall when the last ooze vanquished. She looks with disgust at her two pistols which proved to be totally ineffective, but shrugs and holsters them. "Anyone injured?" She makes significant eye contact with Stefani and gives a secondary glance at Damonkayo.
If no one requests aid, she inspects the remains of the ooze, concerned that it might regenerate or recover. She takes pictures of it in various wavelengths and collects a few samples while describing the creatures, much as a doctor might when performing an autopsy. It's all going into her computer memory future scientific papers on the creatures, assuming all get out alive.
She pays her respects to Indigo-13 and Romi, collects some of the gear, keeping a few items (unless others wish to claim them): the semi-auto pistol and rounds, the sonic pistol and battery, and the computer.
"Do we need to take a break and rest?" She doesn't want to rest but she is running out of spell energy and could use time to sleep and recover. But if the others are running strong, she can keep going.
Stefani leans against the nearby wall and lets the heavy weapon fall from her hands to the ground. At Shabad's question and eye contact, the woman waves her off as she slides down to join the dropped weapon.
"Just give me ... a moment to catch my breath," she responds, breathing heavily. "Damn, those things ... were tough." She looks up at Damonkayo. "Sorry about that, Damon."
Stowing her rifle at her back, Recorva begins looking through the structure they find themselves in. Grabbing the UPBs, she leaves the rest of the equipment they find for the others to pick up. Looking over at the condition of Stefani and Damon, she signals for Rain to enter the room. "Yes, I think that it would be a very good idea to take a short break before we continue. It will allow for me to perform some more repairs on Rain while Stefani and Damon get some of their strength back."
You take a few minutes to catch your breath before continuing ever deeper into the mining tunnels. Despite your best efforts, you find it very slow-going and difficult. Another grueling hour passes as you traverse the treacherous terrain, but eventually you come upon a facility seemingly intended for the storage of mining equipment. A trio of large airlock doors, now completely sealed with stone, are set in the western wall.
As you are looking around, the doors of the room suddenly seal shut and lock behind you! Then, a cloying fog appears in the room, a mass of humanoid apparitions grabbing at you and clawing at your flesh!
Stefani stumbles back just a half-step before gathering her wits about herself. "Not today!" she snarls back at the apparition. "See what you think about this!" She pulls up the heavy weapon again and fires it at the cloud, gauging its effectiveness.
She peels off her Drow-made armor and slips into the slightly tougher suit, looking a little self-conscious about it. "What? She wasn't using it anymore," she says defensively, and stuffs the other armor into her null-space chamber. Finally, she ties her furtive garment closed, causing the new armor to appear as a svelte black catsuit, similar to the one she put away.
Xio shrieks as the apparitions grab at her and slashes wildly at them with her dueling sword, paying little mind to form as she desperately tries to direct them away from her. "This is the worst vacation ever!!!"
round
DC 18
Full damage: 26 points (SP down to 16/42)
DC 27
Shabad's whole career has been largely focused on finding ghosts and haunts, so she prides herself on holding it together when the ectoplasm hits the fan, but this onslaught is so intense that she is unsettled momentarily. This makes her slightly more vulnerable to the negative energy and she cannot quite dampen the physical assault on her internal integrity. Every joint screams with pain and her muscles start to burn as if she is exhausted from a workout. Still, she staggers to the controls for the door and tries to parse the controls and trigger the doors to open.
Jinx system ... circa 270 ... so standard Tri-Verum code ... #7, reset, #V^, and #P ... Bazzfazz!
Again, if she weren't slammed so hard by the apparitions and their negative energy, she would manage the task, but her attempts to punch the right controls waver and she hits a wrong button and receives an <Access Denied> message and she has to start the string of commands again.
As she tries to figure out the code, she yells in frustration, "These are ghosts! I told you there'd be ghosts! Everyone said, 'Oh Doc, You see ghosts everywhere!' Well guess what? There ... ghosts ... "
Recorva has dealt with a few ghosts before. However, she hasn't ever been suddenly locked into a room deep inside an asteroid, surrounded by a fog thick with the spirits. It begins to get to her quite a bit, but doesn't prevent her from protecting herself against the surge of negative energy that accompanies them.
Moving up beside Shabad, Recorva tries her hand at opening the door by physically disabling the lock. However, between glancing back the occasional apparition in the thick fog and the slight shaking of her fingers, she fails to do much. Kicking at the door with her metal foot with a quick "Damn! of frustration, she focuses momentarily on giving Rain instructions before getting back to trying to open the door.
The ghosts getting to even his artificially constructed brain, Rain swings out into the fog at the apparitions.
Stefani and Damonkayo fire into the cloud of ghosts, destroying several of them, but more continue to swirl around. Shabad and Recorva's efforts to open the door come up short. The apparitions continue to howl and grab at you, tearing at your flesh.
The sucking coldness of the undead begins to drain on the soldier, but she steels herself and fires off her weapon again.
Still managing to protect herself somewhat from the ghosts attacks, Recorva continues to work at the lock. Pausing to examine it for a moment, she quickly works loose a small panel near its side. Reaching inside, she begins rapidly unplugging wires and reconnecting them to different locations.
With the door now open, Recorva quickly steps out and to the side of the opening, leaving the way open for the others to move by. Turning to face back into the room, she calls out "Come on everyone! I doubt any of you wish to stay in there much longer."
Unaffected by the spirits in the room, Rain stays in place and swings his hammer out through the fog.
Shabad draws on her experience with ghosts and sends her reaction to her pain out into the environment, hoping to set up a feedback loop that could interrupt the focus of the ghosts. The internal damage continues and blood begins to drip from her ears and nose.
After this attempt, she calls out for others to follow, "Let's skate! They should be rooted to this spot and won't follow!" Then she moves to get beyond the ghosts' haunt.
The ghosts' touch send a deathly chill through the shapeshifter's body, and she gasps as her limbs become cold and sluggish, making it an effort to stay standing. She staggers away from the fog of undead, making an ungainly break for the door as it finally slides open.
Shabad's focused emotions send a ripple through the cloud of ghosts at the same time Recorva gets the doors open. As Stefani fires into the deadly mist, Damonkayo grabs her and drags her out of the room, with Shabad and Xio staggering after them. Rain swings his hammer as he backs out as well, though the drone has nothing to fear from the apparitions.
As Shabad theorized, the ghosts are unable to leave the site of their haunt. They linger for a minute before fading away, unable to maintain their manifestation for long. Once they depart, it is safe to investigate the room. The area holds only old containers, debris, and a few humanoid bones in the side chambers. On the skeleton, you find a corona laser pistol with three batteries, aura goggles, and an advanced medkit that contains three doses of sprayflesh and three mk 2 serums of healing.
Your comm units indicate that the signal's source is getting stronger. It can't be much further now...
Shabad falls to the ground once beyond the negative energy of the ghosts, gasping for breath, shivering from the drop in her body temperature, aching all over. She looks at the others and notes they all seemed to escape any serious damage, which doesn't surprise her. They are a sturdy lot compared to her.
"Anybody need immediate medical attention?" she says, more out of habit. If no one responds, she raises her own hand and says, "Yes please," in a soft meek voice. She pulls herself together and shifts back into science mode. She saves the video clip that was recorded by her glasses to her computer with a back-up to Romi's computer.
Once everyone stops shaking and the group returns to the room, Shabad is delighted to find the advanced medkit and healing materials. She transfers material from her medkit to the advanced kit and takes it. She tries on the aura goggles. As a scientist, she appreciates anything that improves her senses and her ability to understand what she is seeing, so she keeps them perched on her head unless someone asks to see them or wants to keep them.
Before settling down to try to patch herself up, she investigates the bones of the room, figuring whatever happened to the deceased was likely the cause of the haunt. She looks at them in various parts of the spectrum, searching for signs of trauma, trying to determine what type of creatures they were and how they perished.
After exhausting her tests, she can sense the others starting to get anxious to move on. She takes out the medkit first to try to repair some of the damage she sustained. She breathes in some medicine that repairs the damage to her lungs, injects herself with some nanobots to repair her internal damage, and takes some biomedical spectrum anti-toxin to repair any residual damage.
DC 20 with advanced medkit:
"There are some extra serums of healing. If anyone doesn't have one for personal use, take on of these. Otherwise, I'll keep them in the kit."
The bones appear to belong to a lashunta. The cause of death is unclear.
Stefani takes time to catch her breath and swap out the battery on her heavy weapon.
"We've got to be close now," the soldier says, examining her comm unit. "I can't wait to find this and get it over with."
"I'll take one of the serums, as well as one of those batteries." After claiming the two items, Recorva will also take a small amount of time to rest, utilizing the time to additionally repair some of the damage to Rain.
Xio's limbs shudder underneath her, and she lets herself drop to the ground as the ghosts fade away behind them. "Just going to... Sit here for a moment," she says, accentuated by heavy breaths.
Before they continue on, she adds the laser pistol to her small weapons collection.
After taking a few minutes to recover, you continue on. This time, you proceed confidently through the tunnels, zeroing in on the source of the signal. It's very close now, and as you draw even closer, the temperature drops to severe cold. Your breath fogs up the faceplate of your armor. The shadows seem to deepen, making your flashlights produce only dim light.
Ahead, you can see a steel bulkhead in the rock. A burned-out control panel in the bulkhead is adjacent to an open doorway, misshapen as if something pulled the door from its frame and into the dark room beyond.
This room is a zone of devastation. White polycarbon plating has been twisted from the stone walls underneath, metal support pillars are buckled, and other structural elements are bent completely out of shape.
Everything bends toward a point in the far end of the room. There, amid a blackened, spherical hollow, is an enormous pile of crushed and warped structural material, furniture, machinery, and a security door alongside blackened humanoid bones. Several skulls of various species stare outward, their mouths open as if silently screaming. Frost covers this pile and the concavity around it. Debris made of crumbled material is thick around the heap.
Atop the pile, perhaps five feet from the ceiling and clutched in an upraised skeletal hand, is a tiny device like a personal comm unit with a single blinking light.
Another warped, open doorway is on the other side of the room.
As you look around, whispers fill the air. "Doctor Freebairn... Welcome... Join us in shadow..."
"Stefani Mills, the time has come succumb to delicious corruption..."
"Recorva! Recorva! You've come at last! You will be a splendid new test subject..."
"Xio, she of the many forms. Bear witness to your friends' suffering..."
"Damonkayo, do not deny you are looking forward to the pain. I see you quiver with antici... pation..."
"What. The. Hells. Is. That?" Stefani questions, her eyes drawn to the comm unit held up as if a prize. "And please tell me everyone else hears those voices? I'm not completely cracking up, am I?"
"I see you quiver with antici... pation..."
Shifting her hold on her rifle slightly, Recorva keeps close to the rest of the group. "I hear them too, Stefani. Don't know what it is, though it probably has something to do with that," she says as she gestures towards the comm unit. After pausing for a moment to send a quick message to Rain, she then switches language to Vesk.
Without answering, Stefani moves just a little to see if she can see the figure Recorva is referring to.
Attempting to get Xio's attention, Rain speaks to her in a lowered volume level in Drow. He repeats what Recorva said to the others.
Stefani catches a glimpse of something moving in the shadows. But then a feeling of extreme paranoia floods her mind, casting her companions in a suspicious light...
After taking a few minutes to recover, you continue on. This time, you proceed confidently through the tunnels, zeroing in on the source of the signal. It's very close now, and as you draw even closer, the temperature drops to severe cold. Your breath fogs up the faceplate of your armor. The shadows seem to deepen, making your flashlights produce only dim light.
At this point Shabad sets her video goggles on her forehead, setting the camera to record, and places the Aura goggles on her eyes and activates the ability to use them to cast arcane sight. She also changes her configurable clothing to the form that helps her keep warm.
"Big surprise, folks. That over there is very close to the shadow plane. Exercise extreme caution." She points to the spherical hollow.
As you look around, whispers fill the air. "Doctor Freebairn... Welcome... Join us in shadow..."
Shabad mutters, "As if."
Shabad doesn't wait to see what is lurking in the shadows. She expends a 3rd level spell and begins to fabricate a weapon to use against this whispering abomination.
Stefani shakes off the looming paranoia and snarls at the elusive creature. She shifts around the pile of debris trying to get a better line on the enemy.
"Screw you too!" she spits out as she fires at it.
Quickly moving over to the side of the room, Recorva aims her rifle at the shadowy figure and fires off a single shot.
Rain moves forwards opposite Stefani, activating and raising his hammer as he does so.
Xio stares into the darkness where the whispers originate, only vaguely registering Recorva's warning; it's only when her crewmates begin firing shots that she snaps back to reality and darts forward to the edge of the hollow. "Let's see you in the light!" she calls, and hurls a small object into the darkness.
As Shabad completes her fabricate arms magic hack, her left hand becomes encased in a cestus with curved clawlike extensions, a weapon modeled on the Kasathan warriors who fashioned them out of the bones of the dreaded crest-eater. This one glows faintly.
In her other hand is her already drawn semi-auto pistol that was owned by Indigo-13.
Recorva shoots the creature square in the chest with her laser rifle, setting it ablaze. It cries out, but in ecstasy instead of pain. "Ooh, yes! My flesh, it burns, so good!" It breaks into a childish fit of giggles.
Xio's flash grenade illuminates the room briefly, and for a moment, you can clearly see the horrifying creature. Only about 3 feet tall, it resembles a human child or halfling whose skin has been flayed, exposing the underlying musculature and connective tissue. Rather than being a bloody mess, however, its flesh is dull and gray. Its eyes burn red.
Thanks to her investigative focus, Shabad recognizes the thing as a cantor, one of a race of outsiders native to the Shadow Plane known as velstracs. Cantors consider themselves to be instruments in an ongoing effort to help mortals accept the velstrac notion of reality—that pain is a tool of self-exploration and development. Cantors pursue this end through subterfuge and by aiding other velstracs as scouts.
Cantors regenerate unless wounded by silver or good-aligned weapons. They are immune to cold. They rely on their horrific appearance and fear-related abilities to sow terror in mortals.
Still burning, the cantor laughs as it dodges Stefani's sonic blast. Damonkayo manages to catch it with a powerful blast of his disintegrator rifle!
Portions of the thing's body crumble to dust, but just as quickly, the flesh starts to stitch together again. "You fight against the inevitable. Embrace the pain! Embrace your destinies!" The cantor opens its mouth in a silent scream, then suddenly swells in size, towering over you and becoming even more horrifying in the process!
”That’s an illusion. The velstrac runt is invisible ... and regenerating!” Shabad yells as she moves back into the hallway, drawing Indigo-13’s semi-auto pistol and pointing it and scanning for signs of movement that might indicate the outsider’s position.
"What in the Hells do we do now?" Stefani calls out, her eyes searching for any sign of the small creature's location.