Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

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"It might slow us a bit, but it is the safest thing to do. What do you say Okon?"
"It will do just fine. They may want to chat as well. The locals sort of swap news by chatting with each other. It's an informal grapevine of sorts."
 
"It will do just fine. They may want to chat as well. The locals sort of swap news by chatting with each other. It's an informal grapevine of sorts."
Ida will let the convoy come to a stop, then she'll sit outside to watch the metasaur pass.
 
Ida will let the convoy come to a stop, then she'll sit outside to watch the metasaur pass.
The caravan stops and settles down, and several of the people from it come up and hail you. Someone brings out a thermos of something that smells like Wedang and offers cups of it around.

They ask about things in a sort of general way, and Janek and Okon chat with them for a while. The conversation goes on to the farmers, caravan trade (you get the impression that this caravan is a sort of itinerant door-door sales effort selling items to the local moisture farmers) and the bandits. It also touches on the rumours of Elgin's temple. They've also heard about the attempts to start a militia.

The nomads seem interested that the Bandit leader is called Stannis. There was a somewhat well known thug called Stannis at one point. Apparently he was a known nut job expelled from a nomad clan, and had been a mercenary offworld at some point. He was a bit of a folk legend and apparently ran with Hubba when he was still doing banditry, but was thought to be dead. He's also known to be very manipulative and persuasive. They're a bit skeptical that it really is him, though.

The gossip also moves onto the treasure hunters searching for Elgin's Temple. Apparently there have been a few groups searching - the rumours seem to have brought everybody and their dog out of the woodwork. The Gendarmes and the States don't seem to be taking it seriously, though, although apparently it attracted quite a lot of interest from different parties in the towns. Somebody reckons he saw one of Hubba's morlocks asking around a couple of different towns. Ministry investigators have been all over the towns, digs and treasure hunters asking about it.

The conversations go on for about 45 minutes and then the riders mount up on the metasaurs again and move off. You start driving again.
 
"This Stannis fella, he might be bad news not just for us but for the locals. If we're going to be on site a while, and eventually transporting everything along a similar route back, getting him out of the picture might be in our best interest. I feel like I could potentially rally the locals into this militia they keep talking about. Thoughts?"
 
Twitch grins "No one cries when an assholes out of the way but bodies and the underworld do last long without them. If we take him out we need to make sure his replacement isn't worse."
 
"True. My hope is that creating a militia here will at least allow the locals to band together. Wolves are less likely to come a-calling when the sheep are grouped up and armed."
 
Twitch grins "No one cries when an assholes out of the way but bodies and the underworld do last long without them. If we take him out we need to make sure his replacement isn't worse."
"True. My hope is that creating a militia here will at least allow the locals to band together. Wolves are less likely to come a-calling when the sheep are grouped up and armed."
Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -

Okon says "According to the nomads there are moves afoot to do just that - and we've got better things to do than get involved. This has been mooted on several occasions and has always gotten a hard veto from the Gendarmes. They even raided farms and confiscated weapons at one point. This is somebody else's fight and not a crossfire we want to get caught in."

Janek lets slip: "On the other hand, a team of smugglers might help in supplying them." Then he realises what he's just said and shuts up.
 
Kal shrugs, and says nothing more, but tries to slyly give Janek a nod. Out of earshot of the locals, he says to himself. "I should really stop finding ways to get involved with local insurrections, really."
 
Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -

You travel for the rest of the day, into the night, then turn up a valley where the terrain starts to get rough. Okon says that the site is up this valley. As it gets dark, Okon stops the convoy and makes camp for the night.

"We'll be there tomorrow with luck", he says.

You hear something calling in the distance, a sort of hissing-howl that sounds quite eerie. Janek says "Rock Hoppers". He and Okon put out some screamers and then come back. He says "Have weapons to hand. They hunt in packs and may attack the camp. They can be quite dangerous.". Then Okon hands out some torches. You see they have a mount that will go on the rail of an assault blaster or other weapons.
 
Ida mounts the torch and offers to take the first shift watching for the Rock Hoppers if the others want to have a rest. She offers any of the others to join her.

"I'd feel more confident with somebody watching my back out here" she says staring at the starlit desert.
 
Kal agrees, straddling his forearm with his fine blaster over another holding the torch. "I felt a little useless while you guys went joyriding so I can help take watch."
 
Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -
Kal agrees, straddling his forearm with his fine blaster over another holding the torch. "I felt a little useless while you guys went joyriding so I can help take watch."

Ida mounts the torch and offers to take the first shift watching for the Rock Hoppers if the others want to have a rest. She offers any of the others to join her.

"I'd feel more confident with somebody watching my back out here" she says staring at the starlit desert.
Okon and Lar cook some chow, which is welcome; then everybody turns in. A couple of hours later you hear one of the screamers go off, and see its warning strobe. Shining your torches at it, you can see about 20 pairs of reflections from the odd compound eyes most of the wildlife here has. The screamer wakes everybody up, and Janek shouts "Rock Hoppers! Shoot to warn them off!"
 
Ida will blast in the general direction of the Rock Hoppers.
A volley of shots from several people goes over the rock hoppers and they bolt and run off. You hear a hissing yelp as one is hit. It doesn't seem to have gone down, though as they all run off.

Janek and Okon relieve you and take the next watch. There's another screamer later that night and the same process ensues. You get woken up and shoot over the rock hoppers. This happens a third time before morning. Nobody gets a good night's sleep.

In the morning, there's a bit of discussion about the rock hoppers. They seem to be unusually pushy, although nobody is quite sure why. Normally after one encounter they would run away. Somebody comments that the ones in this region are sometimes more aggressive than ususual.
 
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"More aggressive than usual?" Ida says to Okon after she overhears it. "Perhaps a defense mechanism for the temple? Some Way trickery to use the local wildlife as a warding system?

Regardless, we should press on"
 
Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -

Okon says "Maybe, maybe something do to with the Apparition."

You continue up the valley over very broken terrain - it's obvious now why they're using crawlers. This looks like it used to be a glacier at one point with a lot of large boulders and rubble strewn around. It's slow going. By the afternoon, you're directed up a narrow cleft, barely wide enough to get the crawlers up it. A large flock of Psychodactyls starts squawking and dive-bombing the crawlers at the bottom of the cleft.

The cleft is very twisty and turny - and barely wide enough to admit the crawlers at some points. A few kilometres up this valley it opens a bit, with enough room to park the crawlers and move around. It's obvious why Lar thinks you won't ever get a spaceship in here. You would struggle to even find somewhere safe to land a small CG. The ground in the larger canyon outside is also far too rough to land on.

Lar points up. He says "You can't see the entrance from down here but there's a Beetle-goat track up the side of the canyon. The temple is at the back of a cave about 150m up the side of the valley. It looks like there might have been some more structures outside the temple but they are mostly crumbled away now. You can only see a few remains."

"The plan is to survey the temple, catalogue the temple contents properly, crate it up and move it out on the crawlers. There is some winching equipment that we can use to get it down. I think this process will take a few weeks.

Séadna Séadna - you can definitely feel some disturbance in the fabric here. It's subtle, but definitely there.
 
Steevo starts looking at the path they will need to use to bring up equipment to grab the obelisks.
 
Steevo starts looking at the path they will need to use to bring up equipment to grab the obelisks.
Okon points it out to you. There is a trail that starts about half a click down the canyon and it can be negotiated up. Some bits need climbing equipment, which they've brought.

After a bit of climbing and a couple of oh! shit! moments, you climb up with Okon and Joshi, who it turns out is a skilled rock climber. At the top you there is a ledge that's not obvious from below. Closer examination show the remains of some artificial carvings, and you can see a few traces of it on the other side of the canyon, which is quite close here. It looks like there may have been some structure built here, which has since fallen away.

There are points where you can anchor the gantry for the winch against both sides of the canyon. Behind you is a cleft in the rock, partially filled with rubble from a cave-in. Okon points to it and says "It's in there' We will have to clear some of the rubble to get the statues out, though."

Joshi dangles a rope down and you haul the first scaffolding to install the winch. Wade and Waka climb up as well and install the winch with your help. It has a sort of A-frame which is held into the rocks with self-moulding gecko clamps. Anvil says it's rated for two tons, which should be plenty.

It takes a few hours to install the winch but in the end it's anchored and solid. You can use it to get up and down to the camp.

Séadna Séadna, Smith Smith, Bunch Bunch -

Lar and Janek recruit you to help set up the camp. There are some shelters and various items of equipment to unpack and set up. They also have some smaller passive scrim nets that they hang over the camp. Lar says "The canyon is not marked on the survey map and we're pretty sure the sats can't see the floor. The drones worry me, though."
 
"Can they be shot down?" Twitch asks.
 
"Can they be shot down?" Twitch asks.
Janek looks at you speculatively and says "Very hard to do with small arms. The APQ-30s the Gendarmes use are long-range patrol drones. You'd really need a lucky shot. To be really effective you would need a proper air-defence mount."
 
"Can they be lured into a trap where we can net them?"
 
"Can they be lured into a trap where we can net them?"
"They're pretty big. I'm not sure how we could do that, and it would surely attract attention if we did. If a drone went down they would probably send out a party to investigate and recover it."
 
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Ida takes a minute to sit and meditate. She tries to search the hidden paths of byways of the Way fabric around here.

"What do you have to tell me?" she says tilting her head in the general direction of the temple.
 
Ida takes a minute to sit and meditate. She tries to search the hidden paths of byways of the Way fabric around here.

"What do you have to tell me?" she says tilting her head in the general direction of the temple.

There is a presence in the temple. It's old ...
... old and faint. Ancient, beyond ancient. Flickering like a candle, nearly extinguished but just holding on..
You can barely feel it, the perturbations in the fabric are subtle, but it is definitely there.
It feels ... artificial ... but a hint of something organic, alive. Something mindless and robotic about it ..., yet driven, autocthonous. A soul?
It stands in vigil, waiting for ... something.
Your minds meet.
For a brief instant you see it - a terrible alien beauty.

You drop out of your meditation with a start, the creature imprinted in your brain like the after image of a flash bulb.

You've seen the pictures of the statues. Now you know what inspired them. You've read the tales of the creatures that live between this universe and the next. The old smegs tales of creatures from the void that follow ships out of warp space, things found in the deeps of space. Whatever this was, they thought it was a god.
 
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Ida races to Okon.

"There's something here. An entity. An outsider. Or at least a trace of one. We need to be very very careful" she half shouts, her eyes wide with shock.
 
Ida races to Okon.

"There's something here. An entity. An outsider. Or at least a trace of one. We need to be very very careful" she half shouts, her eyes wide with shock.
Okon stares blankly for a moment and then realises what you're talking about. "You mean the Apparition?" he asks.
 
"Yes. It's probably what Elgin's original group saw. But it's no simple defense mechanism for the Temple, it's a Way entity. An old one with a very cold and machine like mind. With the trace this weak it may have little influence beyond visual manifestation. Still though this is something utterly alien and we should be wary"

OOC: Is the Way connected to Warp space, i.e. vaguely like 40K the realm of psychics and mystics is the same place as the Hyperspace of interstellar travel. Or at least would that be a dominant theory?
 
"Yes. It's probably what Elgin's original group saw. But it's no simple defense mechanism for the Temple, it's a Way entity. An old one with a very cold and machine like mind. With the trace this weak it may have little influence beyond visual manifestation. Still though this is something utterly alien and we should be wary"

OOC: Is the Way connected to Warp space, i.e. vaguely like 40K the realm of psychics and mystics is the same place as the Hyperspace of interstellar travel. Or at least would that be a dominant theory?
OOC: Yes, something like that. There are rumours and stories of entities found in warp, entities that follow ships out of warp and so forth. There is little formal study of such things, and opinion is divided as to whether this is all quackery and old Smeg's tales.
 
"Machine-like? Any chance we can recruit it's help in taking down these drones?" Kal asks with a grin, gesturing up at the sky.
 
"Machine-like? Any chance we can recruit it's help in taking down these drones?" Kal asks with a grin, gesturing up at the sky.

Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -

Lar looks a moment and then smiles a bit. "The trick to dealing with drones like APQ-30's is not to attract attention. We've put up scrim nets over the camp and the winch gantry. With a bit of luck the photo recon people won't notice anything out of the ordinary. With even more luck they won't send the drones over here. The Gendarmes use the drones for their desert surveillance patrols." You get the impression this is the voice of experience talking. "They won't be keen on Zawi requisitioning their eyes and ears."

"Zawi and Zadikun hate each other with a passion; there's going to be minimal cooperation there. Also, it's rumoured that Zadikun's people are taking bribes to avoid certain locations with their patrols. APQ-30's are big, long range patrol drones - more like small robot aircraft really. They routinely send them on patrols over thousands of kilometres."
 
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"Fair enough, you don't seem to bothered by this so I won't worry myself into a furor over here. Any chance we brought any alcohol?" Kal asks, with a devious grin.
 
Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -

After you finish preparing your camp and sleep for the night the first exploration is organised for the morning. The winch takes you up to the ledge outside the cave comfortably, and it appears to be stable.

The ledge shows some evidence of artifical stonework but much of it is eroded and crumbled away. The ledge itself is large enough for a party to stand on. You can see the entrance of a cave blocked with fallen rubble. The rubble will have to be cleared out in order to get the statues out of the temple.

You shine a torch in but there isn't a clean line of sight over the rubble. You notice there is an animal smell coming from the cave.

Ledge.png
 
"What an interested smell we've discovered..." Kal says, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "I guess we have to get busy?"
 
"What an interested smell we've discovered..." Kal says, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "I guess we have to get busy?"
Janek joins you and sniffs. "Rock Hoppers. It could be a brood."

Okon and Anvil look sharply at him and you can see Anvil mouthing something silently. Janek checks his burner.
 
"Let's get to work on shifting this rubble. What machinery do you have for this Okon?"
 
"Let's get to work on shifting this rubble. What machinery do you have for this Okon?"
"The hoist will get it down, and there's a bucket for it in one of the crawlers. We have jacks, sonic hammers and some explosives to break up and dislodge larger boulders. That should be a few days work. What's a little more concern is that a rock hopper brood has taken up residence since we were here last."
 
"I feel bad about clearing them out, but I guess we need to. Will we start a bit of a racket with one of those sonic hammers and see if they emerge?"
 
"I feel bad about clearing them out, but I guess we need to. Will we start a bit of a racket with one of those sonic hammers and see if they emerge?"

Smith Smith, Stan Stan, Bunch Bunch, Séadna Séadna -

"If it's a brood they might attack you. The hammers will break up the larger rocks but it would be dangerous to go into the cave with the hoppers still in there. We'll need to secure the cave. It might be possible to evict the pack - they may try to escape with the cubs if they think they're outnumbered. Often they're not afraid of Humans though."
 
"What happens if we collapse them in while breaking some of the other rocks? I mean I'd rather fight them starving and weaker than well fed."
 
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