Torg Eternity: Manhattan Knights Act 2 Part 2
Welcome to the continuing adventures of Three Storm Knights, the backgrounds of the heroes can be found HERE, and the very first post in the Series and be found HERE.
Manhattan Knights, Act 2 Scene 2:
In our last POST, our heroes had approached the doors to the domed city and realized that it was another Cosm pocketed within the Living Land. They were discussing the meaning of such an event, as their training had told them that three Cosms couldn’t exist in the same place (Earth being the 3rd cosm).
The machinegun emplacement above the door is what really holds their attention. The meta-physics of layered dimensions could be discussed when they were in a warm and safe place again.
Super Easy, Barely an Inconvenience:
Sasha’s young eyes notice that the machine gun mount is pitted with rust and that the barrels seem to be drooping. The living land has the effect of breaking down technology and materials. The Russian psionicist reaches out with her telekinesis and merely pushes down on the barrels of the gun, the rotting mount and gravity do the rest.
The gun crashes to the ground and the sensor pod on the back breaks open, a thick sludge pours out into the sandy gravel. Carlisle moves in to survey the destruction and the rest follow. He inspects the goo, repelled by the odor and his first thoughts that it is biological. That last thought proves true as within the broken sphere he discovers a protein soup and a skull with the flesh quickly sloughing off in long ropes of slime.
The head was a humanoid, very much in the size and shape of a normal human. Save that it has a third eye socket in the forehead.
Entry:
The massive doors are heavy reinforced steel, and when opened would create a doorway twenty feet wide and equally as tall. Beside the door is a screen and an alphanumeric keyboard. Despite the alien figures on the keys they feel familiar, especially to the two women in the group who have seen and used computers. To Carlisle it is more alien technology.
Sasha uses her psychometric talents to relive the moments of the last person to use the keypad and quickly absorbs the passwords and other uses for this information kiosk. While she triggers the door open, she also activates streetlights, air purifiers, scores of other systems within the domes.
These people were (are?) highly social and inter-connected. They all existed on a massive social media network which was central to their lifestyle, government, and culture as a whole. Pushing the vast amount of information to the back of her mind, Sasha gestures for one of the others to be the first to enter the airlock.
Kimiko is the first to enter the airlock, the others follow in her wake. Not wanting to allow Sasha to hand all of the “heavy-lifting” aka all the information gathering, she activates her own psionic powers and turns herself into a sensor. Seeking out all mental activity for a hundred meters in every direction.
Into the Habs:
The airlock cycles the trio into the lozenge-shaped building which is filled with neat rows of block houses, all identical concrete blocks, five stories tall, with neat strips of green lawns. It’s rather idyllic, a gentle breeze created by air scrubbers. But the eerie silence and the lack of movement or people on the streets is unsettling. As they enter the first road, they are confronted with the first signs of violence.
There is a roadside bench that is burnt and shot full of holes. And several electric cars with more holes in them. These holes look melted and deformed, the plastic fenders of the cars looking like they got hit with some type of energy weapon.
One car is covered in crusty blood, but there are no bodies anywhere on the street or in the cars. Kimiko reaches out with her mind sense and there is nothing thinking within 100 meters of them. Sasha touches the bench with her psychometry and relives a moment.
Vision of the Past:
A young couple sits on the bench. A man and a woman, both with a third eye in their forehead, but otherwise very human features. The man is nervous, his body language and emotional output clearly indicating that he has a more than platonic interest in the woman.
But he is yammering on about working in a science lab and loving his research and how if they can just “tame these mind parasites they recently discovered then they might prove to be extremely beneficial.” The woman, is aware of his interest and mostly annoyed that he’s too nervous to make a move. But she is also worried about his job and doesn’t like what his lab is doing.
Both of them finish a quick lunch and then pull out large phones. The devices sync and they schedule a new lunch date for the morrow. They were not on the bench when it got shot up.
Inspiration
Kimiko finds the phones that auto synced to be interesting and pulls out her own cellphone. Its been little more than a paper-weight in the living land. She finds that the phone is functioning well though she can’t connect to a phone service her WiFi is registering full bars.
Tapping the icon, she finds that there is an open public wifi and several locked personal networks nearby. On a whim she connects to the public WiFi, whose name is in oddly shaped glyphs that again seem very familiar. A line of script runs across the screen of her phone and then it turns off, after a few seconds the phone reboots, the entire UI has been changed.
Kimiko: Oops
The other two: What do you mean oops? (almost perfect unison)
K: Looks like my phone switched to a new browser, I’m hooked into the domes network.
Sasha: And?
K: Can’t see anything different other than this entertainment icon, that apparently has new messages.
Kimiko accesses the new icon and immediately is given the options for entertainment, news, and messaging to hundreds of thousands of missing people. One of the messages is marked with a ! so she tapes that. It has a scrolling message all in caps that keeps repeating. Interesting enough the message cycles through several languages including one that looks like English.
The Warning:
WARNING! SAVAGES AND MASSIVE REPTILES HAVE BEEN ATTACKING OUR CITIES ALL ACROSS THE SOUTHERN QUADRANTS. DESPITE DYING IN DROVES TO OUR SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY THEY KEEP COMING. TRAVEL BETWEEN THE DOMES IS LIMITED OT MILITARY PERSONAL ONLY.
Kimiko finds it easier and easier to use the interface, despite the otherwise alien script, some of the symbols seem to correspond to her native Japanese and appear rather close to Kanji. She looks back through previous messages and pieces together a narrative where the Living Land invaded their reality, and where the domes dismissed the “inferior” threat for far too long. Not realizing that the cosm would over-write their own reality.
The fact that biolabs were more interested in capturing the lizards and savages for experimentation and advancement than they were in defending their lands is also part of the problem. Also the fact that most of the populace was more interested in their entertainment than with the outside world all contributed to the doom of the realm.
Moving on:
Sasha is terrified of the “brain parasites” in her vision, but the other two wish to get inside the central dome and see what this place was really all about. As they move down the street Kimiko notices that the personal WiFi’s fade in and out and she soon realizes that many of the houses along the street have their own systems and power running.
They decide to investigate one of the homes before they move out of the Hab-Block. The last two buildings on the street, one looks like it might be a public building the other is the final door in a hab-block. There is a bloody hand print on the door and burned holes all around the door frame, this helps them make the decision.
Sasha uses her tricks on the door and unlocks the hab, as the team files in they notice movement down the street. It is the first signs of life they have encountered in nearly two hours of walking down the streets. Instead of engendering excitement it causes them to freeze in fear.
The Sentries
Finally, Carlisle hits the button to close and seal the door. Six small creatures lope down the road, looking at each door of the habs as they come down the street. The creatures are small and look insectile, with chitinous plates forming armor on their backs and six limbs to their bodies. They balance on hind legs and have four arms, two of which end in nasty claws and the other two cradle a gun which looks to be made of the same chitin as their backs.
The trio hold their breath as the sentries pause outside the building. Two of them rush up to the door but stop before the landing. After sitting there for a full minute, they rejoin the other four and then wander around the corner continuing their route.
Kimiko apologizes for letting her mind scan lapse and reactivates it. She can sense the sentries moving around the block to the next street over, after a few minutes they leave the aegis of her scan.
They search the place, it is rather spartan and weird. It looks like a normal bachelor pad, with a massive TV, gaming systems and cable, a closet full of coats, and the main room is half living space half kitchen.
The stairs to the second floor have blood splatter and hand prints on the treads and smears up the wall.
Homeowner:
Sasha enters a psychometric trance as she ascends the stairs and finds the bloody door at the top of the stairs.
Oh god I’m bleeding out, it’s not supposed to bleed… it’s supposed to cauterize…
She opens the door the door and they discover the first body in the city. Sprawled on the floor the man has pulled a bunch of junk out from under his bed, but he succumbed to his wounds before he could accomplish his goal.
The corpse has become a desiccated husk, a bloody blanket clutched to his stomach clearly denoting the manner of his death due to massive blood loss. A gun is on the floor beside him and a box is covered with his blood, apparently, he couldn’t open the box.
Figuring things out:
The box and a badge on the man’s shirt both have the same symbol, it seems like a combination of a medical caduceus and DNA Helix. (It will take them a while to piece that together).
Kimiko picks up the gun, loving high tech toys, but throws it away in disgust. The handle is lined with a series of needles, that bore into the palm of the user. The badge is actually a laminated passkey to his work. When Kimiko takes a picture of the badge with her phone it automatically creates a map of the inner Dome and lists a bunch of buildings. However, all the information is the alien script.
After staring at it for a couple seconds Kimiko suddenly announces that the man worked in a Bio-Lab and that the pass will open a lot of doors for them. She also names the streets and some of the surrounding areas. She highlights a bunch of areas on the map on her phone and suddenly seems to know how to find her way around the domes.
Sasha and Carlisle both stare at the young girl. Bothered by her sudden understanding as Kimiko cheerfully starts looking into more of the app’s features. Carlisle opens the box and pulls out a strange medical device, he assumes its purpose is medical as why else would a wounded man be scrabbling on the floor for it.
Sasha Panic’s
In an incredible leap of (ill)logic Sasha begins to panic that the entire dome is a quarantine zone and that they have all become infected with microscopic brain parasites. This outburst goes on for several minutes as the Russian woman screams that they need to flee into the jungle and escape the dome at all costs.
Shocked the others try to dismiss her fears… and yet they don’t seem that outrageous. Kimiko puts her phone away and begins to worry that perhaps there is something wrong with her. But then she hardens her resolve.
One of their missions is to find allies and weapons to use against the High Lord of the Living Land. These domes obviously have a much higher tech level than Earth and they were working on weapons, both biological and energy based.
Carlisle puts it bluntly: If they leave now all they will have found is a gun, medical device, and many unanswered questions. Being the “wise elder” he pushes that they must continue, that he has HOPE that they will succeed. Besides, both women are psychics and wouldn’t they be able to sense a parasite trying to take over their minds?
They decide they will enter the main dome.
Run for it:
The party waits in the house for the better part of an hour, sensing the pattern of the guard sentries as they near and then walk away.
Knowing they have plenty of time they run from the hab block and towards the massive doors into the main, central dome. Off to their right a building opens up and a massive bio-engineered monster lumbers out. The creature is nearly four meters tall, and its body is covered in obscene levels of muscle that are wholly in-human in their proportions. Luckily the face is encased in a massive metal helmet and sensor array saving the trio from looking on its lab created visage.
Massive armored power gauntlets arc with energy as the creature slams its fists together and begins to run at our heroes.
Praying for luck Sasha pulls out the laminate pass card recovered from the dead scientist and swipes it over the door sensor. Her psychometry and/or typing in the pass code from the previous doors would be far slower.
The light over the airlock turns green and the trio fall into the airlock before the massive Brute can close the distance. The pass card also switches some of the security measures off. The Brute slows down, no longer sensing any threats in the Hab block and the doors hiss shut on the airlock.
Aftermath:
With the third scene successfully circumvented, the party catches its breath in the air and then step out into the main Dome. A massive city of skyscrapers stretches away before them. With that we end the second ACT of my TORG campaign.
Next week I will have Act Three starting. Most of the dome acts were hours of investigation and exploration and there was not a LOT of action going on. As such these posts will probably only take a few posts to run through as I cut out some of the minutia to streamline the story.
