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"hey... Do you remember that old holo movie about the 300 soldiers who fought an entire army? They had the advantage because of how narrow was the battlefield, no matter how much numerical advantage the bad guys had they still had the upper hand just because of the location! If that ghost thing is still around waiting for ambushing us why don't we ambush it first..? Let's make it know that we're here and lure it inside one these rooms... Then we all beat it up in that enclosed space! I mean... We'll have to deal with it sooner or later. proposed the Technomancer taking a more proactive approach to the situation.
You bring the battery from the sparring gym back to the engine room, and after a few minutes Weylin and Mel get it hooked up to the first power terminal. Some of the lights flicker as new energy feeds the rooms, and you hear the whirring of the door to the captain's quarters sliding open. You also see a few blinkers on the northern door light up; according to the rough map drawn on the wall of the engine room, it looks like the mess hall is now accessible.
Unfortunately, adding power to this route activates the turret. It emerges from its silo and takes a shot at the first "intruder" it sees - which in this case is Weylin.
Once it shoots the dwarf, you hear a whirring mechanism as the turret's rifle reloads.
An Engineering check could give you some insight there.
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Mel tries to remember if shooting at the turret will. Yield results or the location of it's sensors but can't remember a thing besides random movie's trivia!
"Keep shooting! No machine can keep functioning if it's exposed to a barrage of bullets for long enough..!" and so she recurs to common sense... Is hard to argue with her logic but just how many bullets are needed to actually disable the turret..?
Hitting the turret with your weapons is rather simple, since it cannot evade. However, the hardened starship metal absorbs most of the damage without affecting function. Only Sturmvanger's wallop seems to get through its hardness.
The turret takes aim at the closest target, which is now the dragonkin who bashed it.
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If only they had more time to get it to waste all its ammo on decoys! Instead, Twila-4 calls out: "It'll take forever to take it out, and we don't have time! Just run to the locked room!" Taking her own advice, she dashes down the hall toward the door they couldn't open before. Hopefully Sturmvanger's large form will provide her with a bit of cover.
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The reddish gold dragonkin is staggered by the shot from the turret.
He's also more than a little disappointed with his results since only 3 small holes show in the exterior where only the points of his doshko managed to pierce it.
And that was a solid hit.
"Twila's right! Hide-and-seek time. Get out of it's line of sight!"
He puts action to words and runs for the previously inaccessible room.
As Sturmvanger runs, the turret takes a parting shot at the dragonkin.
You hear a repetitive clunk sound as the turret attempts to reload, despite running out of ammunition.
---
In the now-accessible captain's quarters, The signs of struggle are visible everywhere. A single bed in the northwest corner of the chamber is torn, with its comforter halfway on the floor. A nearby bed table and desk are in similar disarray, covered with shattered glass and hunks of broken ceramics. A pool of blood covers the southern floor, adjacent to the chamber’s sole entry point.
Next to the bloodstain, a familiar-looking suit of power armor with subtle rends in the abdomen lies askew. You recognize it as the power armor that entered the holoprojector's recording, where it was attacked by the ghostly kasatha. A cursory examination reveals a dead kasatha's corpse still resides within the armor, and the shimmer of a barely visible force field projects around the armor at a range of about one foot. A cable on the floor leads from the base of the suit to a starship battery pack, identical to those found in the engine room.
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"Ouch... That gotta hurt, are you feeling well captain?" Ask a concerned Mel before turning her attention to the now open room.
"Gross" deadpan the human upon seeing all the blood, she then notices the power armor, it looks rather suspicious so she slowly approach it.
"Is it dead, right? I mean... This Kasatha can't be the gost since it was killed by the true ghost, any idea of what's the deal with the batteries?" Wonder the Technomacer turning to Weylin who surely can shed some light on the mystery, this ship's crew certainly was doing something with the batteries, but what?
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"Well, that's one way of dealing with it," Sturmvanger grunts as he takes another shot and then hears the relieving sound of a hammer clicking on an empty chamber.
He holds up one finger. "Just need...a little rest," he replies to Mel. But it's clear it's worse than that and he's actually bleeding.
The dragonkin leans against the wall, breathing carefully and shifting around in his armor to manage the pain.
He jerks his head at the body and contraption on the floor.
"I'm betting the batter is powering the forcefield. Not a bad design if you have a limited range, but not very practical for field use. Of course, the force field might be holding the spirit of the kasatha in...anyone know much about ghosts before we potentially free it?"
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Twila-4 digs out a vial and offers it to Sturmvanger. "Here. Mk 1 serum of healing." Keep the meat shield standing. She then racks her mind for data about ghosts, this battery-armor setup, and whether or not there are any connections.
As she does so, she edges around to peer at the inhabitant of the suit. Hmm... Did they die in the hallway or in here? Did someone else hook them up to the battery, or did they do it themselves? And where's that friggin' ghost?
Seeing the activated armor, powered by a precious starship battery that the surviving crew hooked up to it, helps Twila-4 connect the dots. The spectral kasatha is likely a driftdead, a restless spirit that manifests when a sentient creature dies in the Drift while consumed by powerful emotions, like wrath or terror. If returned to the Material Plane, a driftdead becomes incorporeal and can move through material objects, much like you saw in the holo-recording. It would also explain why the monster could rend its targets from a distance, as driftdeads have a notorious ability to pull apart the flesh of living creatures within 30 feet.
As an incorporeal undead, a driftdead could through the powered armor, but not through force effects. When you saw the creature dive "into" the kasatha wearing the powered armor in the projection, the wearer must have sacrificed their life to turn on the forcefield and trap the driftdead inside with it. The surviving crew could then drag the powered armor into the captain's quarters (thus leaving the trail of blood) and hook it up to the battery to ensure the driftdead remained trapped.
You would need more evidence to confirm that's what happened, but all the parts make sense. Unfortunately, it means that disconnecting the battery to open the bridge would likely release the driftdead once again.
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Twila-4 shares what she remembers about driftdead and what probably happened here in her normal bored tone. "... If we detach the battery to open the rest of the doors, that driftdead will attack us. Assuming I'm not wrong about its location. <sigh> I guess we could surround it and hope we take it out before it phases into the deck. We'd better hurry, though, whatever we do." She hefts her laser in her hand, checking its charges despite the fact that she knows exactly how many are left.
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Sturmvanger looks grim. Grimmer than normal when he hears the details. "Well, we can't proceed without that battery, unless we can find some way to prop open the door to the cafeteria then switch the battery we have in place to the other lines.
"But before we unleash this thing, if we unleash this thing, lets take stock of what we have that can hurt it. That force baton is going to be extremely useful so if Sam goes down while using it, somebody pick it up. Who has energy weapons? Who has spares? Mine are both physical and not magical. I'll be able to hit it with a dose of fire, but only once and I'm betting it's going to take a lot more to put it down."
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"It's not that bad, now that we know that it'll attack us and from where will it come, we can start the fight on our own terms... Let's get a little rest and then... Destroy that ghost! Those force sticks may work, I however wonder what would be a better approach... Supercharging them and leaving the bludgeoning to you or I could instead try to hit it with an overheat spell?" Wonders aloud the Technomancer as she tries to brew a plan that doesn't involve trapping the ghost like the previous one...
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Holding up her azimuth laser pistol, Twila-4 drones: "I got this. Look, we'll probably only be able hit it hard enough to make it mad, then it'll phase into the floor where we can't get at it and attack us at will."
She again accesses her databanks to determine if she knows how much force the door to the cafeteria would exert on whatever item they may use to prop it open, as well as sorting through all the loose items (and assessing their sturdiness) which she's seen so far that could serve that purpose.
All the doors in the ship are steel doors that slide sideways. Propping it open may be possible, but the biggest problem is that the doors along the central north-south axis of the ship are all airlock failsafes in the event of structural compromise. Based on your evaluation of their structure, compromising the power system of the Mess Hall door by removing the battery will automatically activate the failsafe to seal the door and maintain atmospheric pressure. If you had a way to reduce the pressure throughout the ship you may be able to minimize the force exerted by the failsafe system, but working that out would require much more time than you actually have.
Speaking of which, a 10-minute rest hear is possible. The lights continue to flicker ominously as you recover, and occasionally a flare from the planar storm baring down on you causes the entire derelict to rock back and forth. You receive a ping from your Pegasus: Sensors indicate unstable environment will overtake these coordinates in approximately 30 minutes.
The room south of the Captain's quarters features four beds, suggesting it is where the crew of the Struggle's SCholar slept. Each bed is neatly made with a prominent item placed atop its center. Above the beds are tightly sealed storage compartments. A single-tier metal shelf curves around the southwestern wall, its surface pristine but entirely empty.
One of the items left atop the bed items is an electronic scale model of the Idari (the roughly cylindrical kasathan worldship that currently orbits the Pact Worlds’ sun) rotating slowly in the air above a smooth stand. The Idari model is worth 100 credits.
Another bed holds a personal datapad, flashing with a low-battery warning. Any flashlight or similar battery can be used to power the datapad, unlocking the most recent personal logs of one of the kasathas from the original crew, named Teliu.
I am worried about Yotto. She is furious about what happened at the Bulwark and seems to be withdrawing more and more—she didn’t even attend this morning’s spar. Instead, I battled against Blue Sky-101, who is a skilled opponent but lacks the same vitality and understanding of honor. I thought Yotto would at least work some of her anger out by taking baton to bot. Perhaps it is her youth getting the better of her. I will give her a few days to restore her balance.
RECORD 2
The loss of Yotto is unbearable, and to make matters worse, the damage to the ship was more extensive than we thought. The captain sent out a distress beacon in the Drift, but it is too dangerous to stay in this minefield, so we have returned to the Material Plane.
When we return to the Idari, I hope the adata will accept Yotto’s body and grant me dispensation to query her soul. I’d like to speak with her one last time—and ask her why she was in the cargo hold when we were hit. For now, I have shrouded her body and placed it in the sparring chamber.
RECORD 3
At first, I thought it was a dream—a nightmare. I walked into the sparring room and there was Yotto, but… changed. She swung at me from across the room, but I felt her hand rip through me as though I were made of paper. I tried to subdue her with the sparring equipment, but my blows simply passed through her. It took all of us armed with force batons to eventually lure her into the captain’s quarters, where the captain sacrificed herself to trap Yotto—or whatever she has become—within her suit’s force field. Kela has rigged one of the ship’s batteries to amplify the field and keep the creature contained, but we may soon be faced with fighting this thing for our lives.
FINAL RECORD
As our forebears faced the dimming of Kasath’s sun, so do we know that our ship’s power reserves near their end. Traska has encrypted our ship’s log, and tonight we will gather in the mess to partake of our final meal. We have placed our sacred items atop our beds, as tradition requires. I hope those items, as well as something of the captain, our pilot, and even Blue Sky-101, find a safe return to the Idari should we not. Eloritu guide us.
– Teliu Davead Mord of Clan Ferrous, House Elwood, truth-keeper of the Ferrous Stone
A ceremonial Idaran force training baton (same stats as listed earlier), engraved with the lengthy lineage and titles of its owner, rests atop the third bed. This uniquely crafted force baton could be sold for 650 credits.
On the fourth bed is an elegantly bound copy of the book Customs of Kasath, a gift traditionally given to a kasatha who has just completed the Tempering, a coming-of-age ritual. The nameplate inside identifies the copy as belonging to Yotto, one of the kasatha crew members. Nestled inside the cover is a least photon crystal.
The compartments above the beds are locked.
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”These compartments seem to be a little stuck. “
He pries open the compartment to find three medkits. He then take the battery out of his comm unit and plugs it into the datapad.
”Hey guys! Check this out! “
He examines the logs.
”It looks like the things on the beds are heirlooms. We should also bring back Blue sky 101 and the power armor of the Captain. We should look in the mess hall next after we defeat...well, what was Yotto “
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"Nice done Laanok! That's practically half of the mission already done! The problem is that there's no way around, we must fight the ghost trapped in the armor." Says the Technomacer as she watch the the records once more trying to find a clue or overlooked detail but discovers little else than what they already knew.
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"Well, we have one more force baton now. Just make sure whoever uses it doesn't damage it. Let's pile the important things by the airlock door so we can grab them on the way out." With on final look around the room, Twila-4 grabs the model of the Idari from its spot on a bed and follows her own advice.
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Sturmvanger just nods and gives a little wave of confirmation to Twila's suggestion and as acknowledgement of the group leaving.
Once they're out of the room, he looks around and suddenly realizes he's alone (except for Sam) with a ghost trapped only by a forcefield with a potentially dubious power source.
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The lights flicker ominously once again as you gather around the bloodstained power armor. You cast worried glances at each other, taking your positions for your standoff against the restless soul of Yotto.
Confused for 2 rounds.
Confused for 2 rounds.
Round 1 (bold may act)
Twila-4
Sam-12 (confused)
Mel (confused)
Laanok
Weylin
Sturmvanger
Driftdead
The moment the forcefield drops, the wispy figure of a badly burned kasatha materializes in the center of the room . It screeches as it takes form, immediately calling to mind the sound you heard when you first boarded the Struggle's Scholar. However, the proximity of the tortured soul makes its wail batter not only your ears, but the core of your being; you feel the rage and terror flood your senses as the monster's agony fills the room.
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As the party prepares to release the force field, Twila-4 maneuvers into position, then crouches down and holds herself as still as a shadow. As the unsettling screech of the driftdead kasatha rends the air, she smoothly and silently rises to her full height before shooting her pistol straight into its midsection.
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Sturmvanger stays where he is and distracts the dead Kasatha long enough for Twila to get her (inaccurate) shot off before taking a step to the side. The reason why becomes clear after a moment as a gout of flame shoots out of his mouth, across the undead being and billows powerfully against the wall opposite him.
It's likely not going to do much to the creature, but it is what he's got, at the moment.
Or...maybe it won't do anything at all...
Pellet pivoted and fired a frozen chunk of ice at the drift dead.
Sturmvanger's breath causes the driftdead to recoil, but ones the flames dissipate it lunges at the dragonkin in a fit of rage.
Round 2 (bold may act)
Twila-4
Sam-12 (confused for 1 more round)
Mel (confused for 1 more round)
Laanok
Weylin
Sturmvanger (6 damage)
Driftdead (1 damage)
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Realizing that this thing is harder to hit in close quarters than she'd assumed, Twila-4 mentally mutters: Sorry, Sturm, as she ducks and tries to stealthily step into a flanking position as the driftdead reacts to Sturmvanger's firebreath. Hoping this doesn't cause her to get roasted momentarily, she rises up and tries to shoot the ghost again.