Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers, are ready to leave Riverbend yet again, but first they will investigate Lathar's ladyfriend, Thunnelda's latest discovery in the wilderness.
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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 nearly 10' tall sentient sunflower artifact examiner with trusted Restorationist ties. Knowledgeable, but not a good one with device repairs or upgrades. Just went out of his comfort zone to rescue Lathar from becoming a human sacrifice to "The Beast."
Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble, and finding it often. He has been subject to genetic testing and developed super-human strength, a more human body, and a thick coat of shaggy white hair.
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. Former jousting champion of Fair-Town.
Thunnelda Haycock: A peculiar local woman, who has a penchant for wandering the surrounding territories for particular oddities, and possibly could be winning the heart of Lathar.
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The Explorers had wandered the wilderness for the better part of two days. Thunnelda Haycock, Lathar's new ladyfriend, had a penchant for "hinge walks," meandering the woods until she found ruins and trying to recover and restore any hinges that survived the Great Disaster. Except this time she came running back to Riverbend with a new find "a door with no hinges."
Everyone knew exactly what she meant, so the next morning, everyone embarked on the journey to retrace the woman's steps.
"I just hope I can find where I re-hid it," she admitted a day and a half into the journey.
Finally, they arrived at a copse of trees. Within the growth was an obvious rectangular patch of dead moss. Thunnelda removed the moss, revealing a steel door at about a 30-degree angle off the ground, against a small hill.
Sonnny immediately went to work, clearing more growth, and discovering control panels. The electronics had been damaged from decades of exposure, but the sunflower pulled out his tool kit and tried to repair it.
The rest of the group set up a camp immediately behind Sonny, to watch him attempt to open the door. They quickly regretted it as the door beeped three times and then exploded outward, the whole group (except Pete) took shrapnel.
Thunnelda: Ow! That's why you need hinges... for safety!"
After recovering, Sonny crawled over to find a set of tiled steps leading down from where the door once existed.
The group lit torches and wandered down the steps and into an otherwise empty and long hall. The hallway ended at a metal gate, with blue sparks occasionally sparking where it met the floor. Lathar quickly sprayed his waterskin at the gate, causing a flurry of sparks for a moment... and then the sparking stopped.
Finally getting the gate opened, the Explores entered a large room, full of ancient computers, monitors, and tables. Most of the items had significantly deteriorated, but only some were concerned that the there were a few paths perfectly cleared of debris.
A search discovered a number of paper files, most damaged by water and mold. Lathar found a motherlode and his delicate fingers peeled back the pages.
Thunnelda: What is it Sweetie?
Many pages could not be read, but quickly Lathar was reading sections aloud:
"Toard Jakey Research and Development."
Sonny: "Toard Jakey is where we got the Alchemical Laser"
Squiggles: "The CHILDREN'S Alchemical Laser. Imagine how powerful the full version is."
There were numerous ways out of the room, so Sonny focused first on another "hinge-less" door. He had much better success with the undamaged and barely illuminated keypad on this door. After some considerable time it opened up to reveal an oversized closet. Old metal file cabinets, covered in rust, moss, and mold were filled with more damaged files, and a number of ancient devices Sonny couldn't get his head around. He probably couldn't figure those out because he was much more intrigued with an odd Ancients device lit up on the floor and up to three feet on the floor.
Pete: "These are charging stations of some sort. Definitely not for power cells"
While the others were inside this large storage closet, it was the normally astute Squiggles in the back who was surprised.
A small, silent piece of Living Metal on tracks, flailing two operating tentacles in multiple directions. Despite fighting off the tentacles, Squiggles dove over a broken table to make space, and alert the others.
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| Guardian of the Toard Jakey's Lair. |
Cleaning up the smoking wreckage, and applying some salve to the minor cut, Sonny further searrched the closet, accidentally setting off a tear gas grenade!
Sonny was blinded, but everyone withdrew from the room, shutting the door, and proceeded to investigate the rest of the facility. After some experience with the risk/reward associated with it, they avoided rooms dominated by, or at least obscured by the plants, lichen, and mold.
Diving deeper into the facility, they blew away more of these annoying Living Metal, uncovered an old recording device and uncovered two facts: (1) Something violent happened in the facility in ages past, but (2) outside of a small room with a few odd skeletons, there were no other bodies....
Obtaining a key card from a stashed backpack, they were able to access another sector of the facility, with a giant clear-walled empty tank, and an obvious observation/control room beside it...
Next: Gamma World goes on hiatus during #RPGaDay , although their will be episodes of the BECMI D&D Adventures in Gulluvia filling more than just Tuesdays in August. We'll return to Gamma World on September 2nd with episode #88 - The Alchemical Laser
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