Round 1:
Dunklezahn: Go
Hack-it: Go
Hostile: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Booker: TBD
Gig: TBD
Dunklezahn rushes in, hoping to destroy the nanites before they can wreak havoc on the party. He hits it twice, though his first connection was just barely on target. The flame of the Spear incinerates large swaths of nanites, preventing them from rebuilding!
Round 1:
Dunklezahn: Hits
Hack-it: Go
Hostile: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Booker: TBD
Gig: TBD
Golem: 90 (Regeneration off)
"Hit it with acid or fire if you can! It'll rebuild itself otherwise," Hack-It warns the group. He then ignores his own advice, having Hum fire at it with it's sonic weaponry.
Hum's shot sends ripples of destruction through the cloud! The nanites expand, engulfing Dunklezahn and tearing him in a million small places:
Like the animated armor in the last room, this defender is completely devoid of language or communication, seeking only death of the attackers. It eschews the mechanical Hum and targets the biological Hack-it with a filament of nanites: for
Round 1:
Dunklezahn: Hits
Hack-it: Hit
Hostile: ATK
Janzi: Go
Booker: Go
Gig: Go
Golem: 119 (Regeneration off)
Right! Janzi says, glancing at Munro. Remember, kids, always use the correct tool for the job! he says cheerily as he hauls out his dual acid dart rifle and fires.
”Agreed, Janzi! Let’s fight nanites with more nanites!”
Gig moves into the room and taps into his technomagical powers to cast Corrosive Haze.
A cloud of acid resistant nanites appear and immediately convert the water vapor in the air into a corrosive haze that engulfs the golem .
Janzi's shot is quite off target.
Gig fights nanites with nanites. His own magical cloud descends on the golem. and against all odds, the ysoki's nanites get the better of the golem!
Round 1:
Dunklezahn: Hits
Hack-it: Hit
Hostile: ATK
Janzi: Miss
Booker: Go
Gig: Dueling nanites
Golem: 129 (Regeneration off)
Booker drops the combat rifle unceremoniously to the floor, instead reaching for his artillery laser. As he does so, he raises his right foot and takes a step onto thin air, as if up an invisible staircase. Then, his right foot still suspended off the floor, he takes another step with his left, then another with the right, and so on towards the ceiling.
After reaching a considerable height, Booker turns and fires down a single lance of a laser fire.
Booker manages a unique angle on the fight. His shot is on target, and burns away a bunch of the golem's mass!
Round 2:
Dunklezahn: Go
Hack-it: Go
Hostile: TBD
Janzi: TBD
Booker: TBD
Gig: TBD
Golem: 162 (Regeneration off)
Hack-It attempts a signal boost to Override it, hoping to at least slow it if he can't take complete control.
Hum continues to fire upon it.
The nanites take Dunk by surprise and he can barely keep it together.
Hack-it gives his best go at the alien golem , but it keeps coming! Hum at least blasts a sonic hole through it.
The golem moves to the other side of the room, the nanites swirling as it does so. It stops and formulates a singular bullet of nanites and launches it at Booker: for
Round 2:
Dunklezahn: Pukey
Hack-it: Hit
Hostile: ATK
Janzi: Go
Booker: Go
Gig: Go
Golem: 187 (Regeneration off)
Booker grunts from the hit and returns fire.
Janzi kicks on his haste circuit and dashes across the room, drawing out a grenade and flinging it at the golem.
Booker blasts a new hole in the golem, and it's getting visibly slower at filling them in. His follow up is off though.
Janzi blasts it with a charged field... and the golem's nanites immediately put the electricity to use,
Round 2:
Dunklezahn: Pukey
Hack-it: Hit
Hostile: ATK
Janzi: Oops
Booker: Hit
Gig: Go
Golem: 227 (Regeneration off)
Gig quickly moves his hands in somatic gestures summoning forth arcane power and casts Explosive Blast on the golem, taking particular aim to not blast his own companions.
Gig's spell explodes, but the golem is immune to hte magic. It's not, however, immune to the Spear of Golarion. Dunklezahn's redoublement cuts clean through center mass, destroying the golem forever!
Gig breathes a heavy sigh of relief. "I was not sure what to do about that creature. The nanites had little effect and my explosive blast had none. I'm not sure what you were using, Dunk, but it sure seem to do the trick."
Gig looks around the room and then he quickly races to beat Hack to the chair around the computer system where he proceeds checks the system for more information. A smile crosses his face as he is first to check.
Hack-It scowls when he sees Gig beat him to the computer. His expression turns smug as he waits for his fellow ysoki to trigger whatever alarms there might be.
...and when you use the wrong tool -- which can happen when your team member doesn't tell you about it -- Bad Things can happen. This is why it's important to always be a team player, like your old buddy Janzi is! He holds the smile a moment, then asks Munro: Did you get that?
"The computer" isn't enough. There look like there are a trio of stations:
Booker steps down from his elevated position, reloading along the way. "Gig, you take the northwest stations. Hack-It, the east. Janzi, let's see what we can make of the south. Dunk, do what you need."
Booker heads to the south to comb through the rubble.
Janzi and Booker search the south end of the room. Broken vials and
beakers litter the floor. Warped chunks of metal are all that remain of what was once specialized machinery unknown to the Pact Worlds. As you
sift through the wreckage, you find a data chip containing schematics for
a “quantum drive” prototype. The file’s corruption makes it impossible to glean any understanding of how the technology functions or how to reproduce it sadly. There are also a pair of identical badges that look valuable, though who knows why
Gig starts eyeing the central part of the lab. These stations aren't like computers as Gig knows them. They seem almost mystical.
"Hey Gig, any idea what these are?" Booker points out the badges.
Hack-It moves over to the eastern computer terminals. He drags his feet at, yet again, being bossed about by Booker and irritated by Janzi. But he finds his happy place in front of the computer.
Janzi gets bored quickly, and wanders over to the southernmost eastern terminal.
Gig starts exploring the central part of the lab and tries to figure out what these computer systems actually are.
He also looks at the valuable looking badges and tries to figure out what they are.
"Hack, look at all of the buttons I get to push over here."
Gig looks at the badges. He's heard of these. They're Entanglement badges
Janzi looks over the area and concludes that it's some kind of spell crystal machine. The actual machine is long since ruined, but there are some crystals he thinks he can recover. Gig and Janzi then work to extract them all and manage to recover a few: a spell gem of arcane eye, a spell gem of flight (5th level), and a spell gem of slow!
Gig then checks out the final set of computers. Before he sits at the station he spies the form of an android! The creature is unmoving, hidden under the desk!
"Neat," Booker says, clipping in one of the badges and tossing the other to Dunklezahn. "Here. Wear this."
"Janzi!" Booker calls, spotting the kasatha and hurrying over. He first checks the researcher for signs of life, wounds, or cause of death.
The kasatha is alive, though dehydrated and bearing a massive bruise on the head that surely means a concussion.
"He's alive at least," Booker notes, fetching a healing serum from his pack. He pries open the kasatha's mouth and pours in the serum.
"How did he survive that nanite golem? This is sort of miraculous."
The kasatha's eyes flutter open as Booker delivers the serum. It's just in time to answer Gig's question.
"I feigned death for days, using slow, subtle movements to consume the rations in my pack without attracting the golem’s attention. I... I don't know how long I've been out of commission." With a bit more strength he adds, "Are you a rescue party? Tell me, have you found the others?"
"You're the first we've come across," Booker replies, laying an R2E in front of the kasatha. "You've been out for a day or two, I'd guess. What the Hells happened down here? How'd you get separated from the others?"
"We... We were sent in by the company. While exploring we accidentally restored power to this part of the facility, and its computers interfaced with the nearby terraforming equipment, creating climatic chaos. We got trapped within the facility by powerful automated defense systems and a fierce blizzard in the valley above. In the crucial seconds between our tampering with equipment and the full activation of the facility’s defenses, I fled the control room in panic, leaving my teammates behind. I managed to avoid many of the nexus’s automated defenses through a combination of stealth and luck. However, my good fortune ran out when I encountered a nanotech golem here. I'd like to think that I put up a valiant fight, but I was no match for it. The golem’s final attack sent me flying into the corner. When I stopped moving, the golem retreated to its post... and I've been here since."
"'This' part? You mean this is just a nexus for somethin' bigger? How much bigger?"
Janzi looks over the kasatha carefully as Booker conducts his interrogation.
A rescue party of sorts, yeah, Janzi says. You've been presumed dead, and while that doesn't appear to be the case, I'd like to keep it that way.
"And what, specifically, did you do to restore power to the facility. I need details."
You think the serum was enough. This is no Starfinder, no adventurer, so a little bit of trauma goes a long way. You also don't get any kind of hunch of dishonesty. You do sense a fair bit of fear to get out of here...
To hack-it he says, "In the south east we came upon a surgical room, but there was something of a hidden door inside. It lead to some kind of control room. That's where we were able to turn the lights on... and so much more."
"Why'd you run?" The question is direct.
"When you finish Booker's question, can you tell me how a nanite golem got in here? Do you know anything about this?"
"Once we returned power to the facility, a scanner automatically started on each of us. By luck we were able to dodge the disintegration beam. We made a break for it, and scattered in different directions. We're not military, we're scientists, don't fault me!"
To Gig, "The thing was already in here when I got here. I haven't had time to actually do any research, and to be honest, the sooner I get out of here the better."
Booker shakes his head. "Scientist or not, you stick with your team. Otherwise people end up dead." The admonishment is delivered lightly, but firmly.
The old soldier stands. "For now, it'll be a bit before we can get you outta here. We gotta find the other two first. Can you walk?"
To the ysoki, he gestures over at the northern workstation. "Have we gotten what we can outta that yet?"
"Sure!" says Gig as he races over to the northern workstation where he starts typing in a series of code as he delves deeper into the inner guts of the system to find anything worthwhile.
The workstations aren't computers, they're microscope stations. Gig looks over and there are a slew of slides with what looks some kind of strange biomass. It's not like anything he's ever seen before.