Brookwillow makes sure there isn't another exit from this area that we're missing.
Brookwillow spots what appears to be a sliding panel on one of the walls.
Shelldrake views the readouts, but they neither demonstrate further changes nor yield any additional information.
Dramatically, he yells, "We command you to stop."
No immediate response is forthcoming. However, the hum rises in pitch slowly over several seconds and the light in the center of the room now grows very bright, approaching a near-blinding intensity.
The sole human in the party pauses to consider the options in light of what his allies have already tried.
Suddenly, the sound of a loud, bass rumble begins to reverberate all around you!
Third Round of Initiative Begins
Shelldrake
Mobius
Ashtif
Brookwillow
Kat5e
Gil-Oloth
?
As Ashtif and Shelldrake attempt to decipher the bio-readings on the equipment in the room, Mobius and Gil-Oloth struggle to pinpoint the speaker, and Kat attempts to discern the exact nature of the glowing pillar, it becomes evident to all that penetrating the security features and understanding the nature of the high-tech equipment in the room likely would require several months of dedicated effort from Starfinder technicians.
But, such a luxury of time does not appear to be an opition.
For, as the Starfinders search for a way out or a manner by which to expose the ruse, there is a loud, bass rumble and the lights go dark!
The lights remain off for just a moment before returning to normal. The chamber is now silent. Where once there was brilliant illumination, the lighting is now quite ordinary.
The suspicions that the ordeal was a ruse is now confirmed.
An exit from the chamber now opens, revealing the waiting forms of the denizens of the Duskmire.
Having reached the power conduit hub and having learned much new information about the vault in the process, the Starfinders have the information they were tasked to obtain and to provide a report to Venture-Captain Vex.
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Kat stares at the other Starfinders in disbelief. "What did we learn here? I wanted answers. I just got more questions. Was this some kind of adventure amusement park or escape room?"
What did we learn here? Warning NSFW explicit language. It's the ending of the movie "burn after reading", so spoilers for the 15 year old movie too I guess.
Upon your return to Venture-Captain Vex, you find the senior Starfinder is immensely relieved to see you and congratulates you all on a job well
done. Vex calls an end to further investigations for the time being, focusing instead on studying the temple’s technology and extracting any survivors from the vault.
Based upon the data you party obtained, Vex believes that the Duskmire Accord vault is a re-creation of a swampland, likely from some forgotten planet. To satiate whatever inscrutable task the vaults serve, the intelligence responsible for Salvation’s End had populated the vault with three disparate groups removed from their natural environment: gnolls, yetis, and a unicorn. The tallies from the prior experiments recorded in the "temple" suggest that the Starfinders intervened in the ninth iteration of experiment, one that involved three groups having no concrete knowledge of their pasts, except they each know that they’ve been taken from their homeland and forced to adapt in this strange and unfamiliar environment.
One side effect of the memory alteration and displacement of these groups would appear to be that their typical alignments and behaviors have drifted away from those commonly associated with their species. Thus, the gnolls had built up a strong communal and agrarian lifestyle within the hilly northernmost region of the cavern after having been driven out of the southeast by the yetis. Removed from their native arctic environment, the yetis sweltered in the swamp’s heat and spent their days inhaling a mildly hallucinogenic smoke from perpetual underground fires.
Finally, the unicorn who dwelt in the south had become an aggressive defender of her territory, treating it as she would a forest and performing grisly acts to keep others out of its area—effectively becoming a sort of horrific bogeyman to the gnolls and yetis.
The memory adjustments for each species ensured that they all believed that their only means of escape lies in the central "temple", the sensor node seemingly used to record the events within the vault which could not be disturbed until two of the three powers within the Duskmire were removed or, at least allied. All three groups within the Duskmire simulation maintained tense relations with one another, but had avoided setting off a larger conflict, that is until the Starfinders managed to forge a common pact among all three.
Despite the initial claim from the mechanical message, the product of some controlling intelligence, that only one group would be allowed to leave the Duskmire, the Starfinders make efforts o remove all of the resident groups from, what the Starfinders have concluded is some sort of experiment chamber. The Society is not prevented from doing so.
None of the simulation’s inhabitants wish to stay within their artificial habitat, but they are poorly equipped for the world that they have been thrust into.
Even the best of the yetis are addicted to the endemic narcotics, while the worst of the tribe soon sets about trashing the Starfinder Society’s holdings on Salvation’s End with destructive parties.
Sparklemane is deeply alienated by the technological surroundings of the Starfinder’s current operations and still feels invested in protecting “her” swamp even if she has now chosen to depart from it.
The members of Corev’s tribe are the most likely to adapt to a new life in the Pact Worlds, but the jarring shift in technology and the threatening stereotypes about gnolls commonplace among most Pact Worlds species ensures that even these cooperative creatures will have a difficult time adjusting.
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Gil-Oloth is quite happy to have been able to resolve this without firing as such behavior is quite tiring. She also happy to have been able to mingle a little more with Salvation's End technology but a little sad that it stays like a kind of mystery to her.
But more, she met a freaking UNICORN! A Dream come true !
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While Kat is satisfied that everyone displaced by the Duskmire vault has been freed by her party's actions, the mystery of the ruse in the temple and the larger mysteries of Salvation's End will itch a part of her brain that she can't scratch. She decides to return to the artificial moon again one day and keep exploring if the opportunity presents itself.
On the shuttle back to Absalom Station, she watches out the window as the moon shrinks behind them. A brief flash of the murderous daydream she had when the unicorn presented itself to the party in the swamp flashes before her eyes. She then imagines what the unicorns head would look like mounted over a fireplace, but brushes that image away with a shake of her head. No, we did a good thing here. No trophy can replace how it feels to help people.
In her own ears, she mentally loads a her space travel playlist and reclines in her seat.