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Von Junzt moves a bit away and tries to demoralize green this time.
The DC of this check is equal to either 10 + your opponent’s total Intimidate skill bonus, or 15 + 1-1/2 × the opponent’s CR, whichever is greater. If you succeed, the target is shaken for 1 round. The duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which the result of your check exceeds the DC.
Von Junzt’s Special Shaken: You take a –2 penalty to attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks while you have the shaken condition.
Cletus grievously wounds his target, and Lakritz finishes it off! Sisyar then follows up with a nasty bonk to the remaining beast, which lunges again at Ronath!
...but Von Junzt has clearly shaken this one to its core.
Cletus
Sisyar
Lakritze
Ronath
Von Junzt
Orange
Green
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Von Junzt approaches the last creature and casts Fatigue.
Fortitude DC 15 to negate, or be fatigued for 2 rounds.
Fatigued: You can neither run nor charge, and you take a –1 penalty to your Armor Class, attack rolls, melee damage rolls, thrown weapon damage rolls that add Strength to damage, Reflex saving throws, initiative checks, and Strength- and Dexterity-based skill and ability checks.
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With a smooth trained movement Lakritze grabs her melee weapon in the other hand, that kind of weapon which will work for sure in the athmosphere of Asil, a simple baton.
Cautiously still standing outside the room she aims again to shoot at the remaining hostile creature.
Nothing happens when she squeezes the trigger. Angrily she shakes her pistol.
Not good Ron, my weapon just refused to cooperate.
And stop indeed they do!
Cletus
Sisyar
Lakritze
Ronath
Von Junzt
As Ronath pulls his pike from the tiny creature with a *schlurk*, static crackles from the ceiling and an intercom pops to life. A voice reverberates from the walls, speaking in angry but halting Common:
“So, the WARDENS have returned? To take back their... PETS?! You are unwelcome! Leave now, or you will see the full STRENGTH of my forces!”
Searching this room uncovers nothing else of interest, and the door exiting this room is neither locked nor trapped.
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"Great annoucement! But we can't just leave our job here has just began! Lakritze says out loud into the room.
Adressing Von Junzt "Well he did learn Common here for sure. There must be voice messages somewhere. Good to know!"
Lakritze stays behind Ronath.
"So we take the shortest route towards the biggest dome which should be the command center?" Antennae twitching she checks if her weapon is permanently useless or not.
Ready for trouble she keeps her weapons in her hands.
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Sisyar ponders while cautiously walking into the room. "Common, yeah. Interesting. We'll have to pick his brain when we meet them."
Sisyar goes to the closest creature and kicks it to make sure its dead. "We do need to be prepared - there could be more of these creatures around. Don't let your guard down."
When the next set of doors slides open, they reveal an armory. Supply lockers line the walls of this thirty-foot-wide circular room. Varied pieces of equipment are visible within some of the open lockers, while others are piled on the floor in front of hastily cleared units.
Though mostly ransacked, the lockers do still contains some useful items. Von Junzt and Lakritz find a collection of four incendiary grenades I and a set of squad defiance series armor, while Ronath's keen eye spots a hidden compartment behind one of the lockers that contains a squad machine gun and two screamer grenades I.
The door exiting the armory funnels you into a small corridor with another door labeled "Command Center" . Neither sets of doors is locked.
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"Does it look like we can repurpose that armor on short notice? It'd be a definite boost to my defensive capability." the blue offers before the party advances any further.
If it doesn't look likely, the dragonkin moves up with his pike at the ready just in case there's a surprise waiting for the team.
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"I don't know how long it takes to adjust armour. I agree we don't have much time. Who knows what, i assume Thade, meant with full strength of his forces. That weapon, can anyone handle that kind of weapon? I know my way around grenades but i am terrible at aiming them right or throwing them far away. Let's use this stuff and Cletus can you tell if this equipment is influenced by the effects of the local athmosphere. If not we can use it instead of our weapons who could be affected like my pistol here and i don't like going up close and personal in combat." She weakly waves her tactical baton to demostrate that.
Leaning against a wall with a line of sight to fire inside the Command Center, she makes sure there is enough space for her Dragonkin friend in front of the door. Her pistol in one hand and the baton in the other hand just in case.
"Ron looks like you will kick in the door, once Cletus gives the all clear."
Take care, Ro!
Neither door appears trapped, but you do recognize a security camera nestled into the ceiling of the connecting corridor—although Thade is obviously already aware of your intrusion.
Opening the final door reveals a bare but immense circular room lined with several functional computer screens and databanks around the perimeter. Chairs jut out from computerized desks, and hiding behind one is a sneering native in black-and-gold armor, ominously holding an azimuth laser pistol in your direction as two more of those baboon-like creatures advance on your position!
“I warned you, WARDENS! We proved STRONGER and SMARTER than your predecessors ever imagined... now fathom the power that your technology has bolstered upon my MAGIC! ”
Thade
Lakritze
Ronath
Sisyar
Pink
Yellow
Von Junzt
Cletus
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As Cletus works on the armor, Ronath works with others to remove all the plates for his Golemforged plate, leaving the underarmor in place so the discovered outfit can be slid into place over it.
Surprisingly, Cletus is able to get the outfit to working shape and fitted out to fit the dragonkin, and after taking a few exploratory steps and arm swings the blue chuckles amusedly.
How does it look, Lakri? Better than the other suit? It seems to move better, too.
Now equipped with much better armor, the blue strides forwards even as the 'exile' attempts to give him a migraine!
The dragonkin lets out a grunt of pain as he pokes at the egomaniacal native.
"The Wardens are busy, they sent us to take care of their 'light' work." Ronath snarks.
Lakri, shoot at the leader!
The environment is clearly interfering with Lakritz's shot again, and Sisyar's projectile just barely flies over the head of his target, but Ronath lands a solid strike on Thade!
“You... have stolen my DESTINY! I will have my REVENGE! ”
Both of the beasts bare their fangs and leap at Ronath's ankles!
...apparently the boots didn't fit Ronath's oversized feet after all.
Von Junzt
Cletus
Thade
Lakritze
Ronath
Sisyar
Pink
Yellow
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Von Junzt moves in to the room, activates his whispering gyrus and yells at Thade.
"We are... here... for research... and... discovery... you... damn... dirty... FOOL..."
The DC of this check is equal to either 10 + your opponent’s total Intimidate skill bonus, or 15 + 1-1/2 × the opponent’s CR, whichever is greater. If you succeed, the target is shaken for 1 round. The duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which the result of your check exceeds the DC.
Von Junzt’s Special Shaken: You take a –2 penalty to attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks while you have the shaken condition.
ROL-R's shot obliterates the chair Thade was taking cover behind, but the renegade native is unscathed. Something about Von Junzt's choice of words particularly unnerves the man, though, leaving him angry and shaken.
He steps away from Ronath , and commands the dragonkin to fall to the floor.
Von Junzt
Cletus
Thade
Lakritze
Ronath
Sisyar
Pink
Yellow
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Lakritze looks him up and and down and seeing the testing movements when the armour is finally don.
Looks more protective then your own armour and i can already tell you feel better in that one. Curious if there are more options to customize that kind of armour. I would pick a different colour. *wink*
Advancing into the tiny little corridor between Command Center and the Armory Lakritze peeks into the Command Center hiding her fragile body behind Cletus. She still feels something is not right after that fall in high gravity down that bridge.
Using the special Dragonkin bond, Lakritze protects and helps her friends in her own special way. For victory meal at Jane Doe's Diner! First one faceplanting will pay this time!
A worried telepathic warning to the whole Starfinder Team. "Don't forget those little ones they have hurt Ron badly!"
"Surrender, and you might just..."
*SCHPLORK*
With Thade downed, Sisyar redirects his mental blast to the yellow-furred beast...
...and its head explodes! The remaining creature tries to take a couple bites out of Ronath again...
...and collapses the mighty Triaxian into a heap.
Von Junzt
Cletus
Thade
Lakritze
Ronath
Sisyar
Pink
Yellow
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Von Junzt demoralizes the last creature as a move action and tries to scare it away.
The DC of this check is equal to either 10 + your opponent’s total Intimidate skill bonus, or 15 + 1-1/2 × the opponent’s CR, whichever is greater. If you succeed, the target is shaken for 1 round. The duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which the result of your check exceeds the DC.
Von Junzt’s Special Shaken: You take a –2 penalty to attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks while you have the shaken condition.
Then he casts Fear - Will DC 16 to negate the effect.
Von Junzt
Cletus
Lakritze
Ronath
Sisyar
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Lakritze rushes over to Ronath. Ron? "Ron?"
"Does anyone has a healing potion or healing magic?" Lakritze does not believe her friend dies that easily and can't tell right away if he is still alive. "Is Thade dead or just unconscious? Please check that and i have some binders here should he not be dead." She fishes all of her binders out of her backpack putting them on the groud at her side towards Thade. There are six binders in total.
Kneeling at Ronaths side "Let's take care of him first and then make sure no more surprises are waiting for us here." With a gesture to include the whole outpost "We should be able to get the data for our mission but let's also check all the other rooms we did not enter. Who can say to have seen a hundreds of years old outpost? And i hope there is something to predict weather i don't want to walk through another storm!"
Searching the rest of the Outpost provides a plethora of data and equipment , but most importantly, you begin to piece together exactly what happened here.
Thade had not only outfitted himself with modern weapons and armor, but also possessed a functional comm unit capable of sending signals to any ships in orbit (graphically represented as pulses of light leaving the location of the outpost and moving towards the intended target). Recent attempts at communication with an unknown orbiting entity have returned multiple "Error 30005 - Unknown destination" alerts.
Image archives show a spatial rift forming shortly after the initial colony ship departed, leaving the original colonists alone to handle the phenomenon. The only data available from their limited sensor capabilities was some sort of mystical tear in space, possibly Drift-related. Shortly after that, their technology began to experience regular disruptions, and quality of life declined.
Security footages shows several cages with different species of apes housed within them. Surprisingly, static-laden video of an aging woman catalogs perhaps 30 years of reports listing the declining Xenowarden population and the increasing ape population, with one audio loop repeating the observation that "The apes proved far stronger, and far smarter, than we ever could have imagined." The last entry is nearly 170 years ago.
The vast majority of these computer systems and logs are unsecured, possibly part of the reason the exile used them to such efficacy, and likely how he was capable of learning the Common tongue over time.
Investigation of the Xenowarden's technomagical equipment, which relied heavily on primal magics for ecosustainable power generation, reveals that the very energy powering the outpost is likely doubling as an amplifying force for the storm, and perhaps was responsible for the formation of the original rifts themselves. Dismantling the outpost and removing the generators will likely remove the ongoing threat of the storm to the planet (and yourselves).
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If you return to the natives you find them thankful for all of your hard work, and they offer to throw a celebratory feast to honor both of your shared "ancestors". When you return to Absalom Station for your report, Guidance greets you just as before:
“Welcome back, Starfinders. The Xenowardens are eager to review the data you have recovered. I’ve prepared a list of subsequent missions that might appeal to you, once you’re properly debriefed. There are a multitude of other lost outposts in Near Space, and with your experience handling this venture, we hope you will take these assignments into consideration. Now, what have you to report?”
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Sisyar is energetic as they return. "That was an exciting mission. There was a storm you see. We nearly died. But we made it out of there. Then there were these ape people. They seemed friendly. Oh, did we tell you about the space monster we fought?" Sisyar recalls the whole story, but out of order.
"When's the next mission?" He asks after exhaustively detailing the whole mission.
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Ronath is a bit bleary as he comes around.
Next time remind me to don't pull my punches. the blue offers when woken back up. "I guess today isn't as horrible as it could have been."
He then gives Lakritze a nearly carapace-shattering hug. I'm so sorry, I thought I had him and then suddenly Sisyar was poking at me....
"We should probably try to fix this so it's not a hazard to anyone else, or at the very least report it. I'd prefer to not go back out through a storm like the one we came in here through, if possible."
Ronath will offer 'dragonback' rides to the smaller children with short hopping flights as a part of the celebration and entertainment. When he's not doing that, though, he's nearly inseperable from Lakritze, standing guard over her and making sure nothing happens to her.
"There is an indigenous race that is partially up-lifted that has adapted quite well to the incredible gravity of the world. They are incredibly healthy, even among their aged, and they bounce back from pretty much any injury that doesn't kill them outright.
It looks like the Xenowardens kept the base going for about thirty years after they lost contact with the outside, but their careful guardianship of the locals led to their downfall. Not so much from 'actual attack' but just the Xenowardens getting old and being unable to maintain their equipment.
It's entirely possible that they freed the sentients they were testing. It is also entirely possible that they were able to use their partial up-lift to overthrow their apparent 'oppressors' and develop a society and civilization of their own. In any case, it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on that sector of space -- they may be reaching the stars any day now."