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The infected Jaguar shudders under the weight of Hathaway's mind, dropping into the undergrowth of the forest. The other two are undaunted, being transformed by the virus and the control that it entails.
New Round. Everyone has a turn.
The advanced Sentinel's head swivels quickly to Captain Connor's entry onto the battlefield. JOHN CONNOR IDENTIFIED, ALTERING MISSION PARAMETERS. TERMINATE JOHN CONNOR. The giant nanotech skinned robot charges at the star spangled soldier, its left arm sharpening into a long pointed blade, its right hand flaring with a fiery nimbus.
Connor catches the blade on his shield, but the force of the blow drops him to one knee, the shield held over him, the blade pushing down.
The standard issue Sentinel extends its hands (still hovering about 30 feet off the ground) and blasts The Sentry with repulsor blasts.
With the cannon fodder taken out, Captain Connor moves through the massive doors and into the fray. He keeps his shield in a defensive position and fires the hacking bullets at the Sentinel that netted Sentry.
The Sentinel makes a few odd head movements as it fights off the intrusion, but its programming maintains control.
Hyde's wild swing fails to connect.
The three jaguars focus their energies on their most cat-like foe.
There is nothing immediately past the jaguars but more jungle and eventually the waters of the lagoon. They are just sort of on patrol.
The advanced Sentinel's nano skin undulates as it reconfigures itself. The optic blast cuts off. If it had emotions, you might think it was puzzled. NOVEL ALIEN LIFE FORM DETECTED. SCANNING. A flat violet and green beam from the Sentinel's eyes moves up and down Sentry's struggling form as the Sentinel makes a thorough scan.
The purple and blue Sentinel fires its foot jets and moves back to where it can target The Sentry. It scans the situation, seeing his resistance to damage, and its systems switch to a different tactic. From its outstretched hand, it fires a human sized electrically charged net!
The high tech net throbs with a blue energy as it shrinks around The Sentry.
Sentry's punch knocks the Terminator's shiny Chromed skull from its spine. The body continues to move, as it still has a power source, but without its CPU, the movement is undirected and ineffectual. It topples to the ground.
One of my frustrations with our progress is that we don't have the impulsive side of our team. Jason is very powerful but inexperienced and likely to make mistakes that trigger some drama. Herakles is easily provoked to action, and that action can be misguided but keeps things moving. With those two being unable to post, we are left with the cautious and methodical characters driving the action.
The remaining T-800 Skeleton fires at Sentry.
The other Sentinel blasts the Paper Giant with its repulsor blast.
The most advanced Sentinel observes the skirmish closely. BLUE CLAD HUMAN IS NOT ENHANCED. DO NOT RETAIN. ELIMINATE. Its eyes glow red as they release a blast of concussive force (in the style off Cyclops).
The center jaguar growls again, but the sound is strained and garbled, as though something impinges on the structure of its voice. "We must kill all who do not serve the Mother." It leaps at Sehkmet, claws outstretched.
The Terminators react to Sentry inhaling, each slamming an open hand into the ground to try to stand their ground. The blast sends three of them tumbling, while one remains in a three point stance.
Harker still has Quan under control with his gaze. I think what DQ means is are you releasing her now that her circumstances have changed.
I'm loving what Maggie, Sentry, and Ted are bringing to the game. There are some elements of the campaign that were intended to hinge on the energy of gods, so if we lose our gods I may need to re-recruit or change some elements of the story, but I'm excited about the infinite possibilities of this campaign.
The human sized chrome skeletons continue their advance, pushing into the bunker while spraying the area with plasma cannon fire.
John fires his pistol at one of the advancing bots, hitting it in its chromed skull. The nanites skitter into the skull and make quick work of its protocols. Another Terminator under your control.
Ted hits with his second shot, but the nanites fail to make the desired changes in the Terminator's programming. It continues to advance.
I'm worried, have we lost Jason and Herakles? I don't think we have lost either of them in spirit, by which I mean that they definitely want to be involved. But Jason is definitely overwhelmed with some IRL issues. I'm not sure what is up with Herakles, but he is often slow to post.
The pink dolphins vanish as you come closer to your destination. The rainforest crowds closer on both sides and overhead, until the sky is completely blotted out by tall trees and the shores are lined with vines and leaves that seem to writhe at the edge of your vision. The Captain brings the boat close to shore and ties it off to a massive tree that has fallen across the river. The tree will provide you with the best you are going to get as a dock. "The boat can go no more. You must take to the shore from here," he says. Dr. Quan agrees to stay put and wishes you well. You step off the boat and make your way into the surrounding forest. You haven't gone more than a minute into the forest before you hear a low gurgling growl. From the undergrowth emerges a black jaguar, but you immediately notice that it is twisted and befouled. Plant-like growths twist across its body, tendrils writhe. It lowers its shoulders as it faces you, clearly ready to pounce. Perception DC 20: There are two more in hiding, one to the left and one to the right.
“I understand,” Dr. Quan says quietly, voice raw but without resentment. “I don’t know if I am grateful or horrified." Her hand drifts to her throat, as if feeling for vines that are no longer there. She takes a slow breath, looking out over the dark water. “Whatever happens next, I’m with you. I won’t run from this.” A cold wind coils over the deck, rippling across the steamboat’s slick deck. Beyond the prow, the lagoon’s entrance yawns wide. The water here is thick as oil and swirling in slow counter currents, as if the lagoon itself is full of doubt. The dolphins continue to arch their way through the river, pink flesh moving forward in strange ways. Clearly, their intelligence is different from yours. The Blood Orchid slides into a broad lake of black water. Far away in the darkness of the water, something vast and pale moves beneath the surface. You all feel it now, a thrumming in the bones of the Blood Orchid, and in the marrow of your own bones. You have the sense that the river, the whole rainforest, are drawing breath in anticipation. This is the place. Whatever Wells has awakened waits just ahead. If you have any last preparations or words for one another, this is your moment. Otherwise, the Lagoon awaits.
New build looks good. You can always stunt the water control if you want to. Lots of other possibilities based on your descriptors for stunts.
Sentry: A subtle vibration reaches Sentry's ears. It is the sound of a massive impact far away. Something has impacted the ground with a great force. It is between 300 and 400 miles away to the South, and so likely has nothing to do with you, but you would hear it.
The huge blue and purple robot observes the attack, its head swiveling to see the results. It's yellow eyes flash and it floats forward, its repulsors firing to hold it in a hover. "HOSTILES ENGAGED. SENTINELS, ENGAGE." The large Sentinel raises its arms and blasts plasma from its palms.
The T-800 chromed skeletons walk forward, their plasma cannons spewing fire at the mostly closed door that Ted is hiding behind. The blast door protects him for now. The supervisor Sentinel continues to observe.
Glad you are back.
"I feel...I feel strange. Sort of like I felt before, but like I know there is more to the world, and I'm missing something. Does that make any sense? Before, I could smell and taste everything. The air, the water. I feel like I've shrunk back down into something lesser now...I'm not sure it is better."
Ted sticks out like a big blue sore thumb to the Sentinel's scans. He takes cover as best he can behind the massive steel blast doors and takes a shot at one of the chrome skeletons with his BB gun.
The bullet slams into the chrome plated skeleton. At a microscopic level, thousands of microscopic nanobots crawl over the metal, finding gaps in the armor. The crawl into the crevasses, finding the cyborg's gridded CPU and flipping the toggle from read only to read/write. The nanites attempt to alter the coding on the silicon in the CPU with miniature ultraviolet lasers.
The T-800 endoskeleton freezes for a moment in its attack on the paper giant. It's head tilts in the same way that an animal might when trying to decipher a strange sound. Then the red glowing points of its eyes fade to black...and then they reignite with a fierce blue glow. This unit is now under your command.
Connor pulls a pistol from a belt holster and and lines up a shot on the massive purple and blue Sentinel.
The viny tendrils writhe in what an animal could interpret as either pleasure or pain. Amunet is a goddess of secrets, of hidden ways, and this ancient form of not quite life is drawn to her power. The tendrils pull away from the deck and hull and thrust themselves violently at Helen. The tendrils penetrate her mummified flesh, but find no purchase in the dry mummified form. As they encounter this desiccated mummified form, the incredible humidity that sustains them proves to be insufficient. The virus dies at the hands of your assault, and Dr. Quan appears to be free of it as far as your senses can tell.
The thinnest Sentinel, dark grey, with yellow glowing eyes, appears to be the field commander. It broadcasts to its troops: UNKNOWN POWERED INDIVIDUALS DETECTED. NO MUTANTS DETECTED. ENGAGE TO OBSERVE CAPABILITIES. The chrome skeleton T-800s move forward, spraying plasma bolts at the door and the paper giant.
The other shots go wild, hitting the blast doors. [ooc]Ted can use the BB Gun attack stats. Then go ahead and roll a technology check to see if you can hack them.
Absolutely! My goal here is for this to be a weird encounter that lets you guys delve into some what your character is really about.
A now familiar transport arrives, hovering a few feet off the ground and deploying 6 of the chromed humanoid Terminators. Each carries a plasma rifle. The transport has its own armaments. Two unfamiliar robots fly in behind them. One is a massive (huge size, about 25 feet tall) purple and blue robot frame with glowing red eyes. The other is a 10 foot tall robot with a nano-mesh outer skin. It looks like a robotic slenderman. Its nano-skin ripples as it observes the situation.
Sehkmet tears through some of the vinelike matter, but it recoils from her attempts to grab it and root it out.
Sentry hears the hum of small rocket engines the now familiar pulse of the troop carriers vtol engines approach. He judges there are three opponents you have not encountered yet as well as two of the carriers that you fought before (and turned into your local version of Blue Beetle's Bug). Based on their rate of approach, you have about 2 rounds before they arrive.
That was the answer I expected. We had talked about it a little a while ago. I just wanted to be sure. Some of the things you will encounter have Mutant specific powers.
Pretty sure the answer is no, with the possible exception of Maggie depending on how we are interpreting her powers, which I leave completely up to the player: Would anyone be considered to have the X-gene in a Marvel Comics sense? Anyone a mutant?
Just wanted to say that any timeline that eliminates "View to a Kill" by Duran Duran is truly the darkest timeline.
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