The signs of the remaining pirates echo off the walls of the huge stone chamber as they go from walking towards the area Throat indicated to running. Most draw swords, blasters and grenades while Throat halts, held in circle glowing links...
"Keep your head down dear this is going to be loud"
Then she lines up as many of the targets as she can in a line, and fires her massive seage rail gun. With a blast wave from something the saze of a battleship gun going off.
Surprise round 1st
HW Siege RailGun 100lb size large, 2H [1BP = 5 Shots]
TH+25 1 shot per 4 rounds, DMG[10d6+6] [x5 Crit 18/20] Range Increment 800' [Piacing, Sonic Shockwave, Blast] Slow firing/Ignore hardness 20/line of attack. If round hits a soft target, the cavitation waves created a shock wave air effect dealing 1d10 DMG to all objects with in 10' of the rounds trajectory. This is sonic damage blast effect, as such dose not work in airless environments.
Everything in a line for 800' takes 76DMG {P} with 8 points of sonic dmg to everthing 5' each side of that line.
As the boom reverarates evering in a line from it thats not impossibly hard is turned into an expanding mist cloud and organic shrapnel.
Terexaltherin winces. We do want to capture *some* of them probably, he comments, even as he picks out the likeliest-looking survivor and slams his will into them.
She hefts the massive weapon up, and locks it back into place on her Mecha's bodys back, it Standing some 16' tall the thing still seems large on her back. Its power cells spent it starts the long process of recharging.
"Sorry Terexaltherin, I will remember that next time"
In front of her the aftermath of mist is wafting away.
Azzim's voice rang out "Surrender and you'll be treated fairly."
"Or don't. And we'll treat you as you deserve!" Arlo sneered.
Just 100' from where they started, Lyra's blast knocks most the rag-tag group of pirates to the ground and a tall, darkskin elf (?) woman is knocked unconscious. Quickly, a husky ogre in a white flack-jacket group spray some kind of powders on the group and the women awakes - while a goblin in an electric blue power armor projects a oscillating force bubble around the group... as another goblin in a jesters costume puts her hands in the air and speaks, loudly - "We honorable. We are prepared to negotiate by the pirate code but do not assume we're push-overs... A lot depends on ..." The slightest nod of her chin...
The chains of light scintillate but Throat remains caught (though you can guess even these won't hold the creature for long).
(There are two other pirates in the group of six, a Tengu and a Were-tiger in hybrid form, all on a motley and outlandish mix of magic and tech gear)
'Throat' has you that terrified, does he? Has he told you how he's planning to unleash chaos across a wide swath of the multiverse--which may well include your home bases or your favorite pubs? Terexaltherin's telepathic 'voice' washes over the group. Did he assure you that what you care about will be spared, or is he just the 'fate worse than death' type?
The dark-skinned female looks pleadingly at Terex - "Each of us have lost our home worlds, 'all that we love', like Arlo, whom Andreecha mentioned..."
The jester-dressed golbin stares forward "We agreed to bargain, what are your terms?" He appears slightly cross-eyed, with one eye on Throat and another on the party. Throat heaves mightly but the light chains stay fixed, for a moment longer...
Terexaltherin turns his thoughts solely to his companions. Do we think they know anything useful they could bargain with? Locations they've taken components in return for their freedom? I think Throat's going to break free soon, though. We all probably need to be ready to subdue him when he does. We might let these other guys make an escape if it comes to it, better than them shooting us while we're fighting.
Knowing Terex was right that Throat would break free soon, Azzim sent ::Throat revolts me, perhaps we should take him out....
lyra lifts her weapon off her back, now fully charged,
"Say the word and I'll send Throat back to the hells"
Even from your gun one shot won't be enough, but we should see if he's willing to talk before firing. One sign he's planning something, though...
The creature Throat continues silently struggling as all eyes are fixed on it... The light chains provide eerie illumination to the stone walls of the huge chamber.
Terexaltherin reaches out telepathically to 'Throat'. We're after Fentor. Tell us how to reach him, and you won't be getting shipped out of here in stasis to someone who can pull the answer out of your mind.
Even from your gun one shot won't be enough, but we should see if he's willing to talk before firing. One sign he's planning something, though...
"Terexa, You underestimate the amount of power I can place in this thing. It has three settings, that was setting 1"
Over the link Azzim added ::And then there's Arlo's smite and the small matter of a destruction spell. Still lets see if Terex can learn anything.::
There's an oily feeling just touching the mind of Throat and with Terex' question, the entity kind of chuckles. ::I'm sure you can find that cursed gnome in The Gardens Of Zizvadin with a bit of effort but you may not like what you find little lizard, Fentor has access to a not-normal reality... at that the creature bursts it's light bonds and with a gigantic spew seems to form it's stomach and begin to be launched out of it's mouth, at which point...
Arlo quickly holds up his shield.
Yeah, tell us something we don't already know, Terexaltherin 'says', continuing his conversation with Throat in a moderately bored tone even as the creature attacks.
As he converses, he picks out something suitable in the room and telekinetically hurls it at Throat's face, trying to catch him off-guard.
In the second after the attack, Terex can see that Throat's thick carapice is absorbing some of the damage...
Seconds before Throat broke free, Azzim made a curious gesture, attempting to twist the strands of fate...
He then cried, "Foul creature, I cast thee down!" As he spoke the spirits of this plane manifested their wrath in the form of a blinding blue white flame!
The spell rips into the iron-tough hide of Throat, ripping a huge rent, perhaps exposing a strange organ... as the creature manages a rueful chuckle.
::"Perfect"::
She sends to Azzim,
Lyra Activates Hast,
Then targets the breach in its skin. The Anaimatine round accelerating down the massive rail guns barrel, a fleashet the size of needle traveling at 14 times the speed of sound.
The vast room flickers with needler fire and magic...
Lyra's shot hits the exposed, pulsating liver and blows a hole all the way out the back of the creature... which somehow only slows it slightly as it's throat opens and a vast cone of thick mucus floods forth, covering Arlo and those nearby . The creature stands, heavily damaged yet unbowed, rushing toward the beds in the corner,
Meanwhile, the remaining pirates shuffle slowly towards the bed as well, keep up their protective sphere, keeping aware of both the party and Throat...
Within the boundary of the mindscape Azzim was able to shift the shift the fabric of reality like water.
"Going somewhere?" asked Azzim with a voice that seemed to echo from every direction. His hands turned to fists he smacked them together forcefully and the world rang like a bell and a ripple in space time pulsed out and the world seemed to bow and distort. Suddenly the beds receded into the distance as the room was ten, twenty and thousand times larger, yet curiously the distortion was uneven as the distance between and the party was violently reduced!
Lyra standing behind Arlo sees the sees the toxic mucus coming at Arlo and moves, stepping over her husband, and spreading her Mecas wings to while kneeling down, making herself a shield to protect him and take the full brunt of the hit herself.
"Love you"
She says to him softly, looking at his face, then the full brunt of the blast hits her and her mecha body.
She is stunned by the impact,which almosts knocks her over, it hurt bad but none of the veil fluid gets into her suit.
Terexaltherin was, of course, hiding in a completely separate corner of the area from the obvious targets. He knows he has no business taking hits.
He summons a web between Throat and the bed as Azzim manipulates space, knowing that the creature can no doubt brush aside such an obstruction easily... but also that it blocks line of sight and effect, meaning it can't just see where the beds have 'moved' to and teleport to them.
"LYRA!" The dwarf roars.
throw gritted teeth in pain, she says in a low voice
"Get the PS*&%(ed"
Before keling over.
The dwarf's head whips toward Throat. "Jalanwick..!" Arlo sneers.
The shining dwarf charges and the Arlo-Sword screeches as Arlo opens another huge rent in the oak-tough flesh of the creature Throat, exposing more strange organs and pulsing, gelatinous fascia... Yet the creatures howls and opening it's huge orifice, sucks the dwarf into an inner row of razor sharp tooth-like-cartiledge...
The remaining pirates keep creeping towards the now-more-distant bed...
Terexaltherin tries to identify what's actually vital in Throat's exposed organs.
Once he has a likely target, he telekinetically grabs a sharp-looking piece of debris and hurls it at the spot.
Wracking his brain trying to understand Throat's alien physiology, Terex lights upon a small, pulsing nodule roughly at the base of Throat's spine. Sending a small fragment of what turns-out to be surgical steal through the center of this cluster of nerves, he causes Thoat to collapse into a pile of something like animated, oozing preserved meat (Arlo is thrown to the center of the pile but with the only danger being to his dignity).
At that, the remain pirates, a distance away, turn to the party with one of goblins calling out "Very well, guess now can we talk terms?" They also have their defensive bubble up again.
Arlo staggers back to his feet to rush over and check on Lyra.
Lyra in her suit had to wait while it rebooted,
'System check, check, initiating reappear units, operator check, check, initiating reappear units"
lyra felt the influx of nineties into her system, starting the repair process, just as her suits systems did the same.
Cure Critical Wounds
Make Whole Greater
Make Whole
Mend
Lyra shakly gets back up, and looks for where her railgun was. Its was a mess taking the full blast on her back, now just junk. She then sees Arlo and runs over, seeing he is hurt but ok she stops before she wades in to help him out the goo. She busts out laughing.
"Well you at you, all lubricated up and no place to go"
The dwarf rolls his eyes slightly, looking down at his ruined self.
"I assure you: I don't want anything like this in you."
Arlo see his wounds slowly close. The paladin uses one of his lay on hands, and it's super-effective!!!
x2 = 20hp
Terexaltherin had been pretty sure Lyra wouldn't be seriously hurt from a single attack, so he's not too worried about what's going on with her and Arlo. He's focused on the remaining pirates.
Yes, talking terms would be a good idea. There's a hint of iron to his telepathic tone. What can you offer us that we would actually want? More information about Throat or what you did for him?
"You remind me that time we went to the buti-spa and you sank in the mud bath. Let me sort that for you dear"
her nanite field extends and starts to clean of Arlo
"You scrub up well don't ya"
She out in laughter again as she finishing off cleaning him up.
Then more seriously she says
"Lost my gun, so its hand to hand form here out"
Yes, talking terms would be a good idea. There's a hint of iron to his telepathic tone. What can you offer us that we would actually want? More information about Throat or what you did for him?
The pirates look around, seemingly exchanging information with quick glances (apparently having a sort of hive mind themselves) and then the Jester-goblin answers again "We can offer you all the information we have on this operation, each shipment as well as some control mechanisms Throat had us use to maneuver the viruses closer to the center. The mechanisms are back at our ship. Joabeen has eidetic memory so we could get you any information what you want now. As you'd imagine, Throat didn't tell us more than we needed to know - and also put a soul lock on each of us (but gone now). What are your terms? We'd just want to like leave - we'd far prefer jobs that just pay gold. We can't deny we knew something was afoot but we really weren't aiming for the end of the world or whatever you say this was..." As the spokesperson says this, the other pirates sit down on the stone of the vast chamber with a resigned air.
I think that's the best we can hope for out of these pirates, Terexaltherin 'says' to the rest of the party. So, should we agree to let them free if they give us this information?
Azzim muttered "Better make sure Throat is actually permanently dead." He considered how they might ensure that, and if he deemed it necessary he uttered a spell that doused the corpse in waves of acid.
Over the link Azzim replied to Terex ::I think so.::
Azzim muttered "Better make sure Throat is actually permanently dead." He considered how they might ensure that, and if he deemed it necessary he uttered a spell that doused the corpse in waves of acid.
Arlo assists by cutting Throat in two with The Arlosword.
Throat's corpse is destroyed though it's stink remains, filling the vast chamber. Azzim's guess is Throat is a native outsider to some horrible plane and thus was destroyed with it's physical body ... but all sorts of cloning, phylactory and return to the Abyss scenarios are possible.
Then the group begins the process of debriefing the pirates. Taking you to their ship, they show you their cnc (command and control) server handling two significant viral penetrations that the pirates have managed to create over the two years they've been - two compromised servers on the Secondary level waiting for an opportunity to penetrate into the Primary security ring (though such things can take year).
Snobarny, who's a bit sheepish about the low-profile he kept during the fight, does says "I feel like there's link to the code Gift gave us here but I'm not sure what it is..."
The goblin-Jester, who you learn goes by Boinga, asks the part at some point, "It may not be for me to ask but I'm curious what you are doing with Andreecha. She mentioned Arlo a couple times after we encountered your ship and said you had a history..."
Arlo tried to be vague. "Andreecha are I come from the same world, Žemėia. She was a pirate there, too."
Lyra jumps out of her suit and sits at the C and C,
"Ok lets see of I can undo this mess, and find that link to my daughters code"
Her finders move with blinding speed as she starts to code, making her own AI Agents to hunt for the code form gift, and well as check the fire wall branches and making it so that only she could use them, at some point her fingers stop and she formed a direct link to the system. The speed now is impossible to follow.
Her voice comes over the ships PA, while Lyra sits unmoving.
"I am in the systems now, checking data space and Machine spirits for info on this code"
Mastering the C-n-C is child's play for Lyra. Gift's code is something else... But the idea you had before seems stronger. The code is likely an inoculation against hacking for XmintyX - but possibly something more, code that aims at a counter-stroke against the plans of Fentor Fizzlebrow, coded to go back up the command chain... The code itself would have to be installed in secondary system itself and that would be risky maneuver... And it might have to wait for Fentor to send another agent himself...
Meanwhile, the pirate Boinga ask to Arlo, "Did you not capture her? We fled the rendezvous when she failed to appear or sound all-clear"
Meanwhile, the pirate Boinga ask to Arlo, "Did you not capture her? We fled the rendezvous when she failed to appear or sound all-clear"
Arlo breathed. "I did capture her. Several times. But she always found a way to escape."
Terexaltherin does his best to follow what Lyra's doing.
He gets the broad idea, but he definitely can't fully keep up.
All right, I think that's about all we can get out of these guys... so we agreed to let them go, but we should make sure to do it in a way that won't get back to Fentor for a while, if possible. And then we need to see if we can get Gift's code in place in time for him to make another move, unless we want to go looking for him immediately.