Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers, investigating Rho Facility, to aid the Hissers of Notex
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Sneaky Pete: A mutated weasel scout. Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers.
Sonny Helianthus: a sentient sunflower artifact examiner with trusted Restorationist ties.
Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble, and finding it often. Previously "gave birth" to a litter of sentient earthworm babies, but recently has been subject to genetic testing and developed super-human strength, a more human body, and a thick coat of shaggy white hair. Currently under the care of RHA-9 in the lab.
Lathar Bracken: A pure-strain human from River Bend. He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters. Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does. Looking for trouble in all the right places. Recent jousting champion of Fair-Town and has been awarded... a peacock he has named Chambray.
RHA-9: A lab assistant piece of "Living Metal" that seems to have befriended the group... for now!
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After evading potential disaster with four killer living metal droids in one room, the explorers, specifically Lathar, continued to push through level 4.
Most of the level was badly damaged, with small pieces of debris laying were office furniture once stood. Even where areas survived the chaos from eons ago, bodies littered the floor. Finding flickering terminals and a new type of pistol, Sonny played with the terminals while the others tried to ascertain the pistol. The weapons appeared to have a full energy cell, but nothing came out when they experimented in the lobby.
Sonny surprised even himself by navigating into the terminal's software. The rest of the group grew listless, but the sunflower discovered a number of new folders and subroutines. All was for naught as Sonny simply looked up and said one word,
"Run."
Lathar scooped up a damaged skull with significant blaster burns/destruction around the temple area, and pushed the sunflower out the door, swiping the door before the terminal exploded.
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| With everyone else hovering around five hit points, Lathar was feeling a bit more swole than normal. |
Sneaky Pete brushed himself off,
"I told you all these devices are evil."The group hastily herded themselves back into the lift and travelled back down to Level 3. Giving the explosion time to settle, they went back up in a few minutes to find a good portion of the Level 4 levelled. With no sign of deadly living metal coming out of their room to investigate, they covered their mouths to avoid dust and finished the remaining rooms outside the blast area.
The final door on the floor opened to flickering lights, the sounds of buttons being pressed could be heard, and they saw a single piece of living metal frantically pressing and moving a series of buttons, switches, and levels on a six foot long control display. It did not acknowledge the explorers, but would make random statements.
"Re-routing power from Section A1 to Section B2."
"No response from power unit C7. Terminating."
"Should I just shoot him, Sonny," Lathar asked.
"Noooooo!" Sonny pleaded.
The sunflower tried to engage the living metal, but it seemed to ignore him. He did manage to key beside the machine and view mostly random numbers appearing on a screen.
There was one terminal which appeared to display maps for the facility. Sonny was able to ascertain that a considerable source of power was being routed to two levels above their current one, Something
powerful was operating on Levels 5 and 6.
Sonny quickly sketched out the maps on parchment.
Lathar and Peter quickly cobbled together a plot to activate the living metal in the "SE Y" room and lured them into the blinking light room with movement inside, but Sonny quickly put the kibosh on that.
Instead he herded the other two into the lift to go up to level 5.
Everyone was caught off-guard by doors opening to the front and the rear of lift, giving full view of the carnage in the hallways.
There had been some sort of technology ringing the outside wall, mostly damaged. Dozens of skeletons littered the floor, with even more scorch marks on the floor and ceilings. The outside wall was actually made of a clear, glass-like substance riddled with cracks, concussive marks and obscuring spidering.
Pete ventured out to look for traps, but could only find the same horrors around the corner. One room was filled with a thick green mist, which they smartly avoided.
Another room had a room with a live terminal in it, which they put off until investigated all the rooms. Not many treasures of the ancients could be found, although Pete found two weapons fuel cells. Sonny, kicking through a pile of skeletons dislodged and a live and quite active grenade from the closed hand of one of the bodies. Sonny did not run for his life, rather instantly teleported back to the elevator as the room erupted.
Once the smoke cleared, a surprised Pete looked at the sunflower in the lift. "I didn't know you could teleport."
"I forgot that myself."
While the others cleared the remaining rooms, Sonny scanned the lobby for anything of interest, while avoiding live grenades in skeletons. He did manage to come across a hand-written book. It wasn't too long a journal and he managed to complete it as the other two came back around.
Sonny held the book up, "I think I know what happened."
"This is the journal of a Corporal Burl Ross. During the Great Disaster that destroyed the Ancients, this Rho facility was being evacuated. Everyone was supposed to leave, and the computers were supposed to protect the medical wing with the injured, but the system locked down early, trapping most of the staff on the wrong levels for their appropriate keycards. There was plenty of food and water, but the Ancients were as greedy as we are today and killed each other over everything. Sometimes, the "Security Bots" would come out and kill off some soldiers. Nothing about getting bombarded from a distance."
With his new-found knowledge, Sonny went back to the working terminal, and hoped it wasn't going to blow up.
It took over an hour, but his previous attempts netted positive results: Sonny was into the facility's system. He confirmed the four living metal downstairs were in "sleep mode," but two additional living metal were operating freely upstairs in level 6. Something separate appeared to be operating the facility, moving the large dish object atop the mesa, and engaging in something called Protocol-Gamma-6-Charlie.
He was a little confused, being a simple country sunflower, but objects that were flying high in the sky were being commanded to return to Rho Facility. He was also concerned that the protocol initiated after a large power surge about five weeks prior.
The only way to override to command was to access the terminal being operated on level 6. It would also require the use of a silver keycard, which happened to be under Sonny's keyboard. It also appeared that the main terminal controls could be re-routed to this terminal on level 5. The killer living metal seemed to be responsible for only the floor they guarded, so they might not pursue.
Sonny turned from the terminal to address Lathar and Pete, "Let's get Squiggles. I've got an idea to bounce off all of you."
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