5punk

Which stairwell do you want to push forwards to? The one near the lift? If so that's right through the labs.

Yeah. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but with the ghouls being upstairs, I would guess they made their home there, which also means they probably don't have too may routes down other than the stairwell and the lift shaft. We could get attacked from a variety of directions there too however. I just don't like how we're trapped.

I've still got a feeling that the rancid body pit we smelled may be more than just the ghouls feeding ground. Did we actually find it or just smell it? The central area was a dirty mess astrally, but we skirted round one of the sides.

We could go back to your plan of baiting them onto our ambush, but use astral bait instead of human bait, deej may not like that idea though.

Well they're dual natured, but most of them are still pretty mundane so they won't be able to project (i.e.: I can zoom around faster than they can move).

Leland wrote:Frank, you think we should just run like hell? Wouldn't we have a better chance goinng around the side instead of up the middle?

Al wrote:Lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet guys. I'm hoping I can find something in here that'll shut off some areas so we can pick them off in groups. That was the plan, remember?

Anything from the terminals or other tech down here Joose?

Yes but didn't the god awful screeching come from 'upstairs', i.e. the floor we'd have to run through to get to the lift?

Edit:

Chopper wrote:Al is right. Besides, these things are fast - we'd never outrun them.

Frank wrote:I don't like running, nothing macho, just that when people run they trip over, or they get pounced on, and they can't fire back.

I think if we move quickly we can get to a place that's better than this, even if it's one of the labs. If we move around the edge the way we came in, we know it's pretty clear of obstructions, it gives us a chance to react to the ghouls and doesn't leave us trapped in the teeny little sub-basement.

There's not much if anything we can control from here in terms of security doors or containment systems, we might have a better chance in the security room and that's past the stairs.

So, we take the fight to the ghouls at or near the stairs, we hit them with grenades, shotgun fire, Leland's spells and anything else we got. Then we get in the security room and see what buttons do what. It's a massive gamble, but I don't think we can hold here without taking damage.

Right now, we need to get helmets on, goggles on, masks on, anything that covers up from the ghoul blood, because we don't have long before they find us.

*Puts helmet on and pushes a red apple through a small valve and lights it with his old zippo*

Frank wrote:The best mod I ever made to my armour, you guys want to hold here? Or should we move out?

Chopper wrote:Hold. We've no idea what's in any of those labs, never mind the security room. We'd be running blindly into a shit storm. This place may be confined, but there's only a handful of us and a fuckload of them - we need to use our surroundings to our advantage.

Dog Pants wrote:Anything from the terminals or other tech down here Joose?

The server room boxes don't give you much in the way of controls, but there is an AR status display. Theres a bunch of technical gubbins that you just don't understand, but heres a bit that is at least in whole English words (mostly):

Code: Select all

Core boot
AF1...ok
Inf1...ok
Sec1...WARNING: Db1 MISSING
Sec2...FAILED: Proceed to EP5

Sec5 activated
Proceed with minimum system check
Outer Seal...WARNING: Gate 1 malfunction
Sonics...ok
Drones...1 Activated, 2 FAILED, 3 Activated, 4 FAILED
Scanning...Vectors logged, WARNING: Prime Vector Active
Door lock reset in 5:00...
4:30...
4:00..

Al wrote:Fucking hell. I can only guess at what this means, but a timer can only be bad and whatever's being locked we're not going to be able to unlock from here. Or vice-versa. Also, missing databases probably mean it'll go into lockdown as a safety procedure against hackers.

Frank, over his pan to Al wrote:What was that? You say something about a countdown to a reset? You think the security alert has auto-locked all the doors and they'll open again in however long? I hear you mutter about drones too? Is there anything to interact with on the AR to pull up more info?

I'm thinking the ghouls may be contained and they made more noise because they found that out. The countdown sounds like it's heading toward a door release not a door lock, I think that happened on every working security door when we flipped the switch, and it'll open them again in four minutes.

Also, sonics - Ghouls would no doubt dislike sonic things, maybe its a defence system, maybe the drones are too. Maybe we can use them!

Al wrote:I'll see what I can do but I've not got much to work with.

Chopper wrote:If they are all locked up nice and tight, let's fucking leg it.

I'm guessing Leland's astral scouting will be able to tell us either if they're locked away or charging towards us.

Roman Totale wrote:
I'm guessing Leland's astral scouting will be able to tell us either if they're locked away or charging towards us.

Yeah let me do that real quick. I don't think they know we're necessarily down here as of yet. I don't know if Frank set the charges yet or not, but if we've got less than 5 minutes he should get his ass moving.

Also, it's worth mentioning that if we do have to fight drones my only weapons against them are Powerball and maybe using Levitate to smash them into stuff or something.

Er, I'm not entirely sure we packed it. I'm going to have to skim through the 17 pages of stuff until I find the point where we decided to bring it or leave it.

Jebus. I never mentioned whether I brought it or my backpack. So lets assume I did!

I did also notice that the level we're on is the one with the charnel pit of bodies and it's got loads of weird test tubes for growing stuff. Some 14ft long and 10ft wide. The ghouls may be locked upstairs but something else has been going on. And Leland couldn't see what the hell was going on in the security room, or most of the labs or the mess in the middle, we may currently be trapped on a floor not with ghouls, but with some nasty spirits and/or lab engineered bio-mechanical monstrosities.

Frank wrote:I can crawl through and set the device now. But I have no idea how long it will take me to prep the lift shaft, or if we'll even make it to the lift shaft. If I set it for an hour or two that should be more than enough.

As much as I'm worried about the ghouls, I'm intrigued as to what the hell was going on in the middle lab. If we find some stuff in there we might be able to get more money to keep quiet, or we may end up dead for it.

Regardless, I'll set the device. When I'm ready to fire it up I'll pulse a mark to your pans, it will set you a countdown timer for two hours.

*takes off backpack and shotgun and starts wriggling through the access tunnel toward the back of the honeycomb thingy dragging the device in its holdall.*

Also, joose, have my fancy ears been picking anything unusual up since we turned the lights on, or is it just ghoul screams and screeching metal? And how successful is the lighting overall, are we looking at good enough for normal vision, or emergency low lighting so we're still on low light vision?

Dude, no we're one level below that one. The big surgical area is above us. The place where you're planting the bomb and where the generators and shit are is one down, not even using the same stairwell. There are no ghouls on this level.

I was at the top of the stairs to the sub-basement with honeycomb thingy before I moved. Where we busted the door in. As are you unless you've moved again. We were at the busted door whilst Al and Chopper did switch flicking, then Chopper joined us up the stairs.

I could have made that clearer however.

So, I've headed back down the stairs and put down my backpack and shotty to crawl to the bomb site with the device.

OK, now we're on the same page here. I still need joooooooose to do my astral reconnoiter.

Okay. I'm confused now (well, I normally am, but this is specific not general)

I'm thinking the ghouls are on the level we skipped clearing, the highest basement level, with the subject habitat and test range, this one -

As it is I see us spaced like so - Al and me are on the lowest level, Al poking at the AR in the first room on the right (power) and me crawling through to the column beyond the airlock thing -

Leland and Chopper are at the top of the stairs from this sub-basement and they are on the level with the subject storage/main lab and the opposite end of the level to the security room -

HereComesPete wrote:Jebus. I never mentioned whether I brought it or my backpack. So lets assume I did!

I had kinda assumed you brought it with you until you started talking like you hadn't, so I'll let you off

HereComesPete wrote:Also, joose, have my fancy ears been picking anything unusual up since we turned the lights on, or is it just ghoul screams and screeching metal? And how successful is the lighting overall, are we looking at good enough for normal vision, or emergency low lighting so we're still on low light vision?

Shortly after the nasty metal screech, you heard a low throbbing noise start up. Well below normal human hearing, and not particularly loud, but definitely artificial. Kinda reminds you of sonar.

HereComesPete wrote:stuff about locations of people

Pete has got it pretty much spot on as I understood it, except Al is in the Server room poking at AR displays, not the power room. The screamy noises are definitely coming from above the floor with the Security and surgical lab, the detect enemies is a bit of a huge blob of readings, but certainly seems centered on the same floor as the screaming. Although most of the thunk noises came from above you, some came from the level with the surgical lab too.

deject wrote: I still need joooooooose to do my astral reconnoiter.

quickly checking out the floor you are on, it all seems the same as before, as far as you can tell. Looks like the security door to the bit with the lift and the stairs has closed though. You nip through, and up to the next floor, into the corridor and ZOMG! Astral bullet-time! Deject, roll for astral initiative (don't forget that astral initiative is intuition x2, not reaction+intuition)

Oh, and by the way: Due to the server displays AR nature, you can slave it to your PAN, and wander off around the building still reading it. As long as you don't lose connection to the servers wireless network, you will be fine. The only control available here though is to scroll back and forward through the log, which is not much help to you as it seems to start at the point you restored power.

5punk

The Second Forumised Shadowrun Adventure