D&D 5E Exodus

Brother Dave · Oct 30, 2014

"...CARTER!" Trace sat bolt upright in his bunk. He thrashed as unseen assailants tried to hold him down, grasping, pinning his arms, entreating him, until finally he landed on the floor with a thump in a tangle of bedding.

Awake finally, Trace freed his arms from the sheets and rubbed at his eyes, looking around his small, empty quarters in confusion. One thing was clear - the voices were back. Two things, for he could still see Carter, somehow...in the engine room? How...? What is he doing? Is...is that the hyperdrive? I must get to him...stop him?...save him? Protect him, certainly. He shook his head, trying to make sense of his jumbled thoughts, but the persistent voices called to him...the vision of Carter...he had to get to the engine room. He had to get there now.

Trace scrambled to his feet, almost tripping and falling against the bunk in his haste as the last of the sheets twisted around his ankles. Kicking them across the room, he frantically reached for his clothes, pulling them on quickly. Dressed, he raced to the door, barely remembering to grab the first aid kit from his bedside table on his way out. Oh, Carter....my boy...what have you done...?

Shayuri · Oct 30, 2014

For just having come out of a daze, Juno was on the ball. She was up out of her chair a hair ahead of the order and was already coming in from behind Dawson to grab him around the arms and chest in a bear hug. He reacted to her movement and whirled around, and she barely managed to intercept one of his wildly jerking arms with her own metal one. He ignored the pain to grab her shoulders and stare desperately into her eyes.

"Make it stop," he hissed.

So Juno grabbed him back and spun him around to drive him up against the wall where she pinned him.

"Permission to escort Dawson to the infirmary, Sergeant?" she asked between gritted teeth.

The Gunnery Sergeant glared daggers at them and finally nodded. "Get him out of here. Hayes, you need to visit the school nurse too?"

Private Hayes quickly shook her head even as she gingerly touched the spot on her jaw where Dawson had smacked her.

Juno didn't stick around. She manhandled Dawson to the door, one arm hooked around his shoulders where she could easily shift her grip to his neck if she had to, the other holding his arms behind his back.

"We have to go," he whimpered...still struggling, but not uncontrollably.

"Get a grip," she replied sourly. "We're going."

The briefing room wasn't overly far from the infirmary. Down the corridor, to the right, down to the next T intersection and left...and right again... Then straight. Straight. Straight.

She never even noticed as she slipped back into that fugue, and instead of following her mental map of the ship, she started listening to those voices again.

MortalPlague · Oct 30, 2014

Doctor Sanduine snapped out of a daze, her eyes drawn to the hyperdrive. She knew what it was. Someone, desperate to make sense of it, had shown her the documents when the Arkships were being finalized for launch. It was a fascinating piece; almost immediately, she forgot entirely about the bridge. It didn't even register with her that this was odd, that she'd set off for another destination with another thought entirely in her mind. No, this was natural. This was right.

She reached out a hand, her slender, dainty-yet-calloused fingers reaching for the thing's surface, longing to touch it...

KirayaTiDrekan · Oct 30, 2014

Trace and Mike arrive at the hyperdrive with a few others. As soon as they saw...it...their thoughts become shrouded in the constant swirling patterns in the oblong black egg-like thing.

Reyes and Dawson find themselves with the others...at the hyperdrive. That hadn't been their intended destination but its where the voices took them. Dawson calms immediately upon arriving at the hyperdrive. The doors, normally secured against unauthorized access, had been propped open by someone.

There were other people here. Enthralled...hypnotized. Reyes counted eight people total, not including herself. One of them, Doctor Sanduine, was about to touch the thing.

Was it Reyes' artificial arm that kept her from being totally entranced? It didn't matter. She was the only who could act. Dawson's gaze shifted from Sanduine to Reyes to the Hyperdrive...the black egg at the center of the room. Reyes could see in his eyes that the doctor shouldn't be the one to touch it...he should. All she had to do was let him go.

Shayuri · Oct 30, 2014

"Hey wait," Juno protested. "Stop!"

She had to stop the doctor, which meant she had to let go of Dawson. She tried to hang on, letting go with just one hand to reach out to grab the doc's wrist...but one hand, even a cybernetic one, wasn't enough to hold a grown man and a marine.

He yanked himself free and pounced on the drive core before Juno or anyone else could intervene.

KirayaTiDrekan · Oct 30, 2014

A sound like the thumping of a bass drum, just a touch out of rhythm, like an irregular heartbeat.

A flash of light, like a strobe, to the same rhythm.

Dawson was gone in an instant...absorbed by the black oblong thing.

Everyone else felt something within them...something more, something magical.

The hyperdrive split in half with a thunderous crack, right down the middle, just like the egg it appeared to be. The ship itself trembled and alarms started to sound. The people in the room were broken from the fugue with only vague memories of what had occurred or how they got here.

From the egg emerged a demon. Red skin, black hair, horns, a tail, slitted pupils in its...her yellow eyes, clawed fingers and toes. She was crouched on the floor amid the wreckage of the hyperdrive, smoke rising from her skin. She had no clothing or possessions. She looked up and seemed to be as confused and possibly even frightened as the audience who had witnessed her arrival.

OOC:

You can, at this point, start roleplaying the emergence of class abilities, a little bit at a time. A spell here, a rage there, etc.

Shayuri · Oct 30, 2014

Dawson.

Juno's temples pounded like sledgehammers, and she rocked back away from where the hyperdrive had been, shoving the doctor back in the process.

She reached down for her sidearm, but of course they'd just been at briefing. They hadn't armed yet. The gun wasn't there. Biting down on rising panic, Juno instead pressed on the commdot lapel on her fatigues and said, "Intruder in main engineering! Get a security team down here! Intruder is not human!"

With backup called, she started trying to haul people back away from the strange creature, if they weren't moving themselves.

"Everyone get OUT!" the marine barked.

Brother Dave · Oct 30, 2014

Trace staggered back from the strange...woman? He stopped, suddenly intrigued, and his eyes narrowed in speculation. Some new species, like the dragons? Horns, a tail...could it..she be related to them? She doesn't look reptilian...almost human, definitely female...parallel evolution? Shared DNA? Does she even have DNA...?

Shayuri said:
"Everyone get OUT!" the marine barked.

As the sharp order penetrated, interrupting his analysis, Trace's old military training kicked in and he automatically moved to follow it. Suddenly remembering his cousin...his reason for being there in the first place...he ran over to Carter and grabbed his arm. "Carter, come on! We've got to get out of here!"

As he tugged on Carter's arm, he was struck by the feeling of vitality he felt from the young man. He could feel Carter's heart beating in rhythm, feel the blood coursing through his veins, sense the sparks of nerves racing through his body. Stunned, he stopped and tried to make sense of it. His senses expanded, exploded, and for a moment it seemed like he could almost see a..a kind of green web, threads spreading out from Carter and connecting him to the others in the room. More threads extended out through the bulkheads, connecting them all to the other people on the ship...the plants in the hydroponics section...

Trace tried to take it all in, to understand what he was seeing, feeling...and it faded, the gossamer strands of the web shredded, drifting away in an instant. He cried out softly, bereft at the loss. Closing his eyes, he tried to recapture the sense of...of...he couldn't describe it, but whatever it was, it was gone...gone for now, at least. But...maybe not forever...

Shaking his head, he tightened his grip on Carter's arm, surprised to see he had not let go. "Carter! I need to get you out of here. It's not safe." With a last, longing look back at the strange woman, he started once again trying to pull Carter towards the exit. I need to get Carter to safety, but maybe...maybe I'll be allowed to study her...it...whatever? He hoped so. He knew he wouldn't be able to get her out of his head.

Phoenix8008 · Oct 30, 2014

Mike's eyes go wide as the demonic figure appears in front of them. "What the HELL!" he curses. He reacts instinctively, and his right hand reaches out while he seems to see the face from the mirror in front of him again, but it's mouthing gibberish now instead of just staring. He can't help but to speak the words back as if he's locked in step with the reflection. His right hand reaches out and makes a grasping motion as he completes the words in a exhalation of power. Suddenly a ghostly, skeletal hand appears near the neck of the figure in front of them, but doesn't seem able to latch on to it. The hand then fades from view. Mike's eyes go wide again as he realizes that he's somehow responsible for bringing forth this freakish effect!
[sblock=Details]Chill Touch Wizards cantrip. Attack Roll= 1d20+4=5 which is surely a miss.[/sblock]