Session 1c
Syd casts a light spell and slowly begins to move into the dark room.
Meanwhile, at the corner of the building, the prisoners suddenly hear the sound of booted feet! A small group of armed individuals wearing strange uniforms and armor comes running right from the direction everyone was heading. The small groups of prisoners scatter with Xerxan, Milo, Alahandra, and Orendil heading for the door that they can see Syd even now beginning to enter.
Zoltan meanwhile attempts to stop one of the apparent guards and asks what’s going on. The guard looks Zoltan up and down for a moment before ignoring him and running to the downed space shuttle.
Zoltan follows, heading back into the mangled spacecraft as he sees the guards searching about.
“He’s not here!” one guard shouts out.
“He must have already escaped.”
Zoltan cautiously approaches the guards, and asks exactly who they were looking for. The guards again take notice of him, and this time decides he is worth their time to answer.
“Who are you and what are you doing out here? Can’t you tell this place is dangerous?”
“I saw the ship crash and I was wondering if there were any survivors. If I had known some type of firefight would be going on here I wouldn’t have come. Could one of you spare a firearm so I can defend myself?”
The guards look Zoltan up and down, appraising how much he is worth. Finally they refuse to give him any weapons and just tell him to get out of the area. Obviously he is just some crazy who lives in the vicinity.
Back at the doorway, a Syd is slowly leading everyone else into the prison using his magical light. Obviously the prison was the scene of recent violence as several pieces of furniture are ripped up or melted to slag. As the group enters a small hologram appears on one of the few still standing tables. The hologram is of a man and as the group moves closer it begins to talk.
“Greetings and welcome to the Aphex prison colony. I am your guide. What can I help you with today?”
His sole thought on reaching the roof and disabling the turret, Syd quickly asks for directions to the elevator.
“Sorry, there appears to be a problem with the network. I cannot access that information at this time.”
Many other questions were asked, but the only one to get a different response was a query about the location of the Warden’s office. The Warden’s office proved to lie right beyond the melted heap of slag that had been a door on the right wall of the room the group was in.
By the time the hologram had revealed that information, Zoltan had run up from the ship to see what was going on. Falling naturally into something of a group (since there is safety in numbers after all) the now complete party begins advancing through the door directly in front of them.
As the party entered the next room they quickly made out the hissing crackle of static. Almost the entire northern wall was covered in monitors, each one filled with crackling static. Red lights provided a dim amount of light in the room, enough to see a man walking back and forth in front of the monitors, making adjustments as he walked.
The man wore a holster over his guard uniform and seemed to be muttering to himself as he paced back and forth in front of the monitors. Clearing their throats, the party made their presence known.
Jumping the man turned towards the party and asked who they were.
“We’re repairmen for the turret.” answered Syd.
“I don’t think we called for any kind of repairs on the turret,” the guard answered back.
“Well, someone did.”
That seemed enough to satisfy the guard, who quickly introduced himself as Tucker. Apparently there had been a prison revolt, which happened to coincide with all the surveillance cameras going out at once. Syd offered to take a look at the monitors and see what was wrong, but quickly figured out that they were simply not getting any feed.
“All the cameras must be destroyed or disabled.” Syd told Tucker.
“Maybe one or two, but surely not all of them. We have these cameras all around the prison.”
Tucker was obviously somewhat shaken by whatever had been going on, so the party decided to let him continue to believe that. As the party continued to talk with Tucker a few other guards entered from behind the party.
For a few moments, everything was tense, but once Tucker explained that they were all repairmen for the turret, the other guards quickly relaxed.
Apparently, the prisoners had revolted some time earlier. Fighting had been brutal, and several guard stations had not reported in for hours. There were only a few guards in the area and they only controlled a few rooms. The main offices had been attacked in force and sealed off. No one knew what was going on in there. Likewise, the prisoner levels had been sealed off. The guards, excluding Tucker, were armed with taser pistols. While there was a cache of weapons somewhere in the prison, only the Warden knew where, and he had been one of the first casualties of the riots.
The party agreed to go up to the roof and repair the turret anyway, despite the fact that the upper floors were likely prisoner controlled. The guards, visibly impressed by this repair crew’s bravery, offered them some guard vests and taser pistols. Syd accepted Tucker’s semi-automatic pistol.
The repair crew was led to the elevator in the prison by a pair of guards. The entire area was spookily lit with dim red warning lights. Power had been out in several areas for hours and the guards were pretty sure the elevator wasn’t working. Surely the repair crew could fix it though.
Reaching the elevator doors, the guards thanked the party again before leaving to resume their positions in the rooms they controlled. Turning to the elevator, the party tried calling it down. When nothing happened for several minutes, Zoltan pried open the elevator doors and looked up.
The elevator appeared to be stuck on the second floor and seemed to have no intention of coming down for the party. There was a service ladder but there was no way the larger members of the party could make it past. Alahandra suddenly flew into the elevator shaft.
“I can fit through. Hold on a moment.”
Flying up Alahandra inspected the elevator and the way it was held in place. She realized all she had to do was remove two pins and the elevator would come crashing to the ground! Slowly, Alahandra wriggled the first pin free, followed shortly after by the second. The elevator gave a lurch as Alahandra plummeted down the shaft and out the still open doors, just escaping the rapidly falling elevator herself.
The elevator landed with a crash and debris flew everywhere. The elevator shaft looked like a small war zone, the floor covered with twisted wreckage. On the plus side, the service ladder was now clear of obstructions.
Agreeing to stay back and explain what had happened to the guards, Xerxan walked back towards the entrance of the small elevator room. Everyone else climbed up passing the doors for the second and third floor, instead heading up to the fourth, where the guards said they could gain access to the turret.
Jimmying the elevator door open, the party scrambled out of the elevator shaft and onto the medical wing of the fourth floor. As each person left the shaft, they were greeted with a horrible squishing sound. Slowly turning around, each was horrified by what they saw.
A large mass of bulbous, almost liquid flesh sat at the far corner of the room. Tentacles waved from many places along its surface, each tentacle tipped with some kind of sucking appendage. Several corpses lay about the room, obviously victims of the creature. The room itself was in shambles, operating tables overturned, surgical implements spilled about. Most horrible of all, however, was what was attached to the creature. Lying on the floor was a man in a white lab coat. It was hard to say where the creature ended and the man began, as they seemed to almost … blend into one another. As disgusting as the sight was, it was worse when the man opened his eyes and looked at that the group. As he glimpsed the small party, he began calling for help pitifully.
“Help! Help! But don’t get too close! It will get you too!”
The party instantly shot a barrage of questions at the man and he explained as best he could.
“I am a doctor here. I was expera … er … operating on a prisoner when his trauma symbiote went haywire. It grabbed several guards and me. I am the only one still alive.”
“Don’t worry. We can kill the thing and get you out in a hurry,” called Syd as he began running a list of the spells he had available in his mind.
“Wait! No! Somehow, it’s reversed itself. Instead of protecting its host, it’s using its host for energy. That means me! If you attack it, it will drain me to heal itself!”
“How should we get it off then?”
“Find a surgeon!”
“There is a prison riot going on. We probably won’t be able to find anyone who can help.”
“I know there is a riot going on! This thing killing guards probably started the bloody thing!”
Discussing among themselves, the party quickly came to the conclusion that a surgeon was not going to be found here. Any surgeons left alive were likely to be prisoners, and they certainly wouldn’t be trustworthy. Either way, the captured doctor didn’t look like he could last much longer anyway.
Instead it was decided that Syd would quickly attack the mutated trauma symbiote. Hopefully, the safeguards programmed into trauma symbiotes were still in place on this one and it would stop draining the doctor once he fell unconscious. Milo would try to approach and cut the doctor free as soon as the symbiote was dead.
Pushing up his sleeves, Syd began casting spells. He began with a haste, increasing his speed dramatically. He then shot forth several small orbs of electricity as well as a deafening blast of sound. The doctor screamed and fell silent as Milo began to tumble forward, dodging the creatures grasping tentacles. Syd continued to blast the beast with magical power as Alahandra and Orendil began shooting it, Alahandra with the laser pistol she had concealed, Orendil with the semi-auto that Syd had given him.
The mutated symbiote just seemed to soak up the damage, holes appearing in its huge bulk apparently not injuring it very much.
Milo nearly reached the doctor, but suddenly found himself attached to the monstrosity by one of its tentacles. Using his knife to scrape it off of him, he quickly moved back out of range as Syd, Orendil, and Alahandra continued to rain death onto the blob of flesh.
Finally, the creature began to succumb to its wounds, and with a sickening squelch, started to dissolve into a sticky goop. Milo moved forward again, but the doctor was unfortunately beyond his help. The doctor had apparently been drained to death by the symbiote before it died. The party mourned the doctor for a moment, but at least he was no longer in pain. Moving his corpse to where the other bodies lay, the party saw that the symbiote had been blocking three doors. Before the party could go through any door, a noise from the elevator shaft caused them to turn around. An elf wearing a strange looking orange jumped had climbed out of the elevator shaft and was staring at the destruction with wide eyes. He had come up to see what the noise was, and had found a scene from a nightmare.
The party explained some of what was happening and what they were doing, and the elf offered to tag along. He had been getting bored wandering about. The party agreed to let him come along and deciding to try the center door first, opened it and walked through.
Inside was a narrow hallway, both walls lined with medical supplies. At the far end lay another door. Ransacking the medical supplies, the party quickly found several boxes of medical patches, small sticky patches that released healing chemicals when applied against skin. Several large bottles of painkillers were found as well. Both dermal patches and painkillers were pocketed by Milo.
Opening the door slightly, the party peeked out and saw two figures standing next to the turret. Obviously either they had shot down the transport as well as vaporized most of the escaping prisoners, or else someone inside the turret still had done the dirty work. Either way, the party would make them pay.
Moving back in cautiously, the group asked Alahandra to scout out the area somewhat. She had already proved herself somewhat sneaky, and would likely be able to slip by unnoticed. Sniffing at the inconvenience, she turned invisible and silently flew out to get a look around.
No one else was on the roof except for the two figures standing next to the turret. The figure farthest away was a male centaur wearing a bright orange shirt over his human torso. In his hand was some kind of makeshift club, a table or chair leg.
The centaur’s companion was a large, green, ugly monstrosity. The female troll had wicked claws as well as razor-sharpened teeth. Flying back, Alahandra explained the situation. While trolls and centaurs were both strong, they were out numbered plus the party was armed while they weren’t. Victory was nearly assured.
The party checked the ammo for all of their guns before opening the door and charging out. Guns leveled towards the two creatures Milo shouted out
“Freeze and we won’t shoot!”
But where there should have two, there was only one. Suddenly the female troll emerged from the other side of the turret, charging forward into the group swinging her mighty claws. The centaur moved forward beating at Zoltan with his club.
Several taser darts were fired, but they seemed to have no effect. Milo quickly dropped his taser and pulled out his steak knife. Orendil began firing at the troll nearly point blank with his auto pistol while Alahandra hovered above the troll, invisible firing down.
Syd cast a spell and his hand was surrounded by a sickly white glow as he advanced towards the troll and began trying to touch her. The elf ran forward and began attacking the troll with a makeshift club he had.
The troll’s claws ripped into Syd, shredding his clothes and leaving bloody gouges across his chest. Orendil was struck as well, while Zoltan received a beating from the centaur’s club.
Syd continued to attack the troll as Alahandra’s invisibility ran out. The troll proved to be very quick, and the sickly green skin proved to be very tough. Many of Orendil and Alahandra’s shots were simply dodged, or stopped by its tough hide.
The centaur was not faring so well, as Milo quickly began to hamstring the beast with his knife. Zoltan abandoned his gun for his fists and began attacking the centaur with his bare hands.
The troll ripped into Orendil and Syd again, blood beginning to spew from several of Syd’s wounds.
The centaur collapsed in a bloody pool as Milo stabbed it a final time. The troll took yet another piece out of Syd and Syd fell to the ground, unconscious and mortally wounded.
Milo ran forward and applied one of his patches to Syd, ducking as the troll swung at him. Handing Syd the remaining patches he approached the troll with his knife, and began searching for a weak spot. Zoltan approached the troll from the opposite side and continued to use his bare fists as he attacked the troll again and again. Alahandra continued to take pot shots but the troll was too difficult to hit.
Syd crawled back to the wall where he began applying dermal patches to himself. The rest of the party attacked the troll again and again but it simply shrugged off most of their blows, and healed the few that landed.
Things weren’t looking good …
