Manhattan Knights, Act 3 part 2

Manhattan Knights Act 3 Scene 3-

Welcome to the continuing story of Three Storm Knights in the game of Torg Eternity, the backgrounds of the heroes can be found HERE, and the very first post in the Series and be found HERE. More information about the game can be found HERE.

[In last weeks POST, our heroes robbed a mall and then came up with a plan on how to bypass the Guardians of the Campus and gain access to an advanced alien bio-lab.]

Back Door:

Having moved through the eerily empty city, the Knights managed to avoid any encounters with the sentry groups. Their moods lightened and talk of parasites and psionic plagues and airborne mutagens was pushed to the wayside.

When they finally arrived at the back of the building, which was edged outside of the security perimeter they feel very disappointed. The squat, wide building before them is done up in a Neo-Classical style with false half columns running across the façade of the building. A massive faux-marble slab above the doors once had a deeply etched: MUSEUM across the top. But a simple white sign panel has been bolted over the middle of the word.

The strange cross and helix BioLab symbol is in stark red and in simple type it merely states: Genetech Bio Annex 1.

Kimiko: Does that all look like plain words to everyone else.

Sasha: I’m more disgusted by the simple sign, even in Russia we would have done a more professional job.

K: Who are you kidding, Russia wouldn’t openly declare a bio-weapon lab.

S: <momentary pause> true.

Carlisle: I’m more worried that I can read the sign.

This pauses the group for a while. The two psionic women learning the telepathically based language was beginning to make sense. But the old man from Victoria was from a far different Cosm. If it was affecting him as well, then they really were being altered by alien psionics.

Moving On:

The doors into the museum had once been three large glass double doors. But bars had been built closing off the flanking doors and left only the middle as an entrance. The door had also been reinforced and extra security, including a passkey scanner had been installed. The “Open to the Public” signs had been pasted over with “Security Clarence Only.”

Sasha swiped the card through the reader and a screen flashes to life and a voice calmly welcomes Dr. Minoru. Kimiko pauses, stating that this is a Japanese name. Carlisle pushed the women through the door, more concerned that security measures might not allow multiple people into the door with a single card.

The name is dismissed as “sounding like” but not actually being.

They enter into a dusty and dark foyer, what was once the main entrance and greeting centre of a medical museum. A map board showing the areas of the museum, conveniently color coded and several dormant touch screens greet them.

Low level lighting gives a dim ambience and while there are doorways to their left and right that open into the various wings of the building, before them a massive, 20-foot wide hall cuts right through the building and directly toward the Campus which is their goal.

Medical Mishap Hall:

A quick glance at the directory shows that the hall is the fastest way to the Campus, and also that this building has seven levels above them and almost as many below them. This is the first time that they have thought about how deep the buildings might go.

The upper levels are offices, archives, and more displays. The lower levels are the bio-labs.

Stepping into the main hall the entire length is lined with massive glass vats filled with fluid and each with a different bio-engineered horror within. The vats are filled with an assortment of things, from guns covered in chitin and fleshy bits to the small sentries they have been dodging around the city.

A creature that looks like a werewolf causes them to pause and Carlisle turns to Kimiko; “Tell me that all of these things are dead and not just sleeping?”

Kimiko reaches out with her mind sense and find two facts. The happy, first fact is that everything is in fact dead, but the second makes her fear. The ceiling above her is a barrier where her mind sense can’t past and she can only sense twelve feet below her before she hits another wall.

Sasha: Makes sense, if the society was mostly psychic, you’d have to shield offices and labs so people couldn’t steal data. All agree and move on toward the end of the hall.

A guest:

As they get to the end of the hallway Kimiko can feel the presence of a living intelligence moving up from the lower levels toward them. They have just entered the lobby at the Campus side of the building and Kimiko turns to let the others know that they are about to have a guest.

In the distance a bell rings as an elevator opens down one of the side halls. Kimiko can sense a very intelligent, but also exhausted and overly caffeinated mind. The sound of the elevator doors opening and the clack of metal on tile follows after. The hiss of mechanical things moving echo down the hallway before they stop, a shadow at the corner of the wall.

A voice calls out gently, cycling through languages it touches on Japanese for a moment and then settles into perfect English. “Hello! I mean you no harm, am merely curious as to who would visit us. I must warn you that my current form is ugly.”

It takes them all a moment to translate the languages, but after Kimiko returns the Hello, the shape comes closer. Waist down it is a mechanical spider creature, but from the waist up it is middle-aged three eyed alien. Mostly human other than the cybernetic enhancements to his flesh and extra mechanical limbs on his back that are filled with surgical and other scientific tools.

Meet Doctor Lom.

He continues to cycle through the languages for a bit until everyone is starting to communicate freely.

Carlisle: Better not be a brain parasite!

Dr. Lom: What? No… parasites stayed in the main lab, we couldn’t bring them…unless you mean… well I suppose there are two things that could be parasites. But I am not one. Funny your speech. Your mind is dense theirs much easier to grasp.

Party is very uneasy with the medical tools on the tendrils. Dr. Lom is excited that Minoru might be with them, until they tell him that they recovered the keycard from a body.

S: Your sentries killed him!

Dr Lom: Yeah… yeah they did that for a while they killed everyone. You are all welcome here. You should come into the light, come down with me and meet the others. We haven’t had guests for a while.

Sasha goes full Paranoid.

S: ahhhh… (terror on her face and head shaking no)

C: For a … visit…? not forever!

Lom: <confused> You may go as you please.

Sasha uses her Telepathy to panic and screams NO NO NO into her companions’ minds when the offer is made. She does not want to go in the basement.

Lom introduces himself to the others, and promises that everything is well, and that he is but a “servitor” toiling away at the job. He mentions that there where others who have come through the Dome and that they were less than nice. Sasha screams into the telepathy again that they are off the chart on her fear scale.

Dr. Lom winces and smiles, he turns to her and reassures her that he means now harm to any of them and that he is tasked with serving the labs. That he sacrificed his body, his “humanity” in order to stay in service when the giant Lizards attacked his world.

He enlightens them that their premise of language and the people being highly telepathic is true and that despite his trying not to read their thoughts, as is polite. Sasha’s screaming is rather loud.

Stalemate and Exchange:

They move further into the foyer so that everyone is in better light. Lom points to the elevator and asks them again to accompany him down into the labs. He offers them food, medicine, promising that their medicine could fix or correct nearly anything wrong with them.

But they don’t want to go down into the lab. They’d rather fight and die than face being “made better.”

Instead they ask about other people in the Domes. Dismissing tales of the Edeinos invading they ask about humans. Lom tells them about a large man who came to them and they helped heal him in their labs, but he didn’t want to help them and only cared about his own goals. He left. Considering he faced the Guardians on the Campus alone they did nothing to stop him from going. The guardians are powerful enough that the last Servitors also can’t cross the campus to their own main lab.

C: Was he missing a sleeve? Carlisle holds up the digital camo sleeve and Lom nods.

He again tries to soothe them into coming down below with him. But the Knights double down and ask him bluntly what he wants with them.

Lom admits that he wants to fulfill any of their needs hoping that by being friendly they will perhaps consider helping him and his five friends. They want access to some the files and equipment in the main lab, but they can’t get past the Guardians. The best event would be to get one of the servitors physically into the lab where he could shut down the security protocols. But they realize that would be a tall order.

Making a Plan:

The Party takes a strange turn at this moment. They are terrified of going into the labs below and facing whatever science awaits. They are so paranoid about the cybernetic doctor who admits that they are lab growing protein in order to survive. That they decide to look at the Guardians of the Campus and try to kill it and fight their way into the lab.

Once the trio of knights begin to formulate a plan of attack their fear melts away. Dr. Lom is rendered shocked by their actions. He had been ready to pay them in advance that he might get them to help, and here they were taking the mission for free.

Lom leads them to a window where they can view the creature in the Campus before the doors to the main manufactorum. The massive creature is similar to Lom in shape, but far far larger and armed to the nth degree. The spider bottom has two belt fed miniguns and a massive energy cannon. The upper humanoid part also has weapons. They watch it pace around, watching it on its route.

Lom uses a communicator to tell the other servitors that these humans seem to want to help with getting back into the lab.

After watching it for a while, they discuss their plan of attack, but first:

How did the lone Marine fight one of these?

Lom tells them that the large creatures turn slowly and almost all of their weaponry fires in a front arc. The Marine charged at the back of the creature and leapt unto the back and took it apart with his bare hands. Though again he had been augmented and changed by his experiences in the dome and before the dome.

This sounds pretty good to them. So, they make the following plan. Carlisle will move up to the third floor and take shots with his rifle, using his armor piercing rounds. Kimiko will wait until the creature is moving away from their current location and jump it from behind with her electric katana. Sasha stay at the building and cover Kimiko with either machinegun fire or telepathy.

As they calmly talk about how they will dissect the walking tank, Lom is impressed. He asks if they would mind if he called up a few of his friends so that they could load up to rush into the main lab if they succeed on killing the Guardian.

YOLO:

Carlisle gets into his sniper position as the girls wait for Lom’s friends to come up in a massive freight elevator. There is a huge rollup garage door on the side of the building and they pick this as the point to exit unto the campus. It is out of line of sight of the Guardian, so they open the doors.

Two more servitors come up, they look the same as Lom but with different cybernetics. One of them is wearing a button-down shirt and a crooked tie. He seems to be the head of the group.

All three servitors seem extremely cheerful and also utterly exhausted. Sloppy grins cover their sallow faces.

The party sends the signal and they all launch into the attack. They wait until the second it turns its back on them, at the nearest point in its path to their hiding point. The distance is too great for Kimiko to cover and attack with her sword, so Sasha starts the attack by using her telekinesis to stymie the guardian. She then starts to direct the actions of the others to coordinate their attack.

First Salvo:Kimiko

Kimiko covers half the distance to the robot and opens fire on it with the alien gun they found back at Dr. Minoru’s place. Her shots climb up the armored back of the beast but seem to have little effect.

Carlisle breaks out the window on the third floor and his handmade gun roars. The monster slayer round blasts a hole through shoulder of the guardian, completely severing its left arm and causing the creature to immediately list to the other side.

Kimiko calls on reserves of energy, emboldened by the perfect shot, she drops her gun and runs at the creature, drawing her sword she swings it in a savage arc. But the robot recoils from her, the blade misses.

Carlisle is also in a fervor and he works the bolt and loads another round into his gun. He no scope, head shots the creature, blowing the head clean off and the guardian falls over in a heap.

All are shocked, then the servitors start whooping and charge across the campus for the main lab. After all, three more of these Guardians are still out there.

Anti-climatic but FUN as Hell:

[ASIDE: I as Gamemaster was super shocked at the fact that they killed my uber beast in a single round of combat. It took me a moment to recover, now I’m going to short hand the end of this scene and next week we’ll finish up the ACT. I record the session and my voice is hilarious at this point.]

The Servitors and the Party race across the grass toward the main biolab, Dr. Klein, the servitor with a tie, leads the way. He yells at the unnamed third servitor that he is to stay out of Lab 3, the parasites are NOT to be touched.

This makes the party pause for a second, but Kimiko heads toward the central computer banks, intent on shutting down the sentries and the security protocols. Klein says he’s heading to get his research in Lab 2. He also yells back that we only have about 15 minutes before the other Guardians get hip to the missing one and swarm the area.

The third doctor doubles down on going into the forbidden lab 3 saying that the creatures are “sentient and powerful and could kill many lizards.” Klein insists that they are also psychotic and parasites.

Kimiko Saves the Day:

Kimiko reaches the main computer bank and realizes that the system is far more advanced than she expected. But at this point she is finding that the language is coming to her fluently and also that the system is the most user friendly she has ever encountered. She manages to bypass the codes and gains access to the full admin suite of utilities.

The system is suffering from some massive viral infection which might be part of the Living Land invading the computer network. It makes no sense and she starts to feel like it is beyond her. Before finally, she has a lightning strike of brilliance. Everything is telepathic.

Thinking back to the cannibal brothers and how she fixed one of them. Kimiko reaches into the computer with her telepathic senses and she washes the virus away with her Clarity power. Cleansing the taint from the computer. With full access to all systems they shut down the sentry program and take the dome back from the servitors.

END Scene 3 the party has given control of the Dome back t the last 6 survivors.