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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5051373" data-attributes="member: 143">I'd say 95%+ of what the main characters in this story say comes from my saved logs of the games. Neverwinter Nights allows you to save the entire chat log of a session. So with that as a resource, I quoted the players directly as much as possible. Vanya mia and the others made very memorable characters for this campaign. It also made this story much easier to write, since I only had to fill in the narrative and rearrange some of the details for continuity purposes. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />* * * * * Session 13 (July 7, 2008)Chapter 43They got the call late that afternoon, while eating together in the base mess hall.  The five of them, including the Israeli scientist, made their way to the briefing room.  They ran into Agent Drake on the way, coming from the direction of the lift.  “Our newest recruit?” the FBI agent asked, giving Moshe a weighing look. “Yes,” Vasily said.  “Doctor Yahav, this is Agent Drake.”“A scientist, or so I hear.  How isMossad doing these days, Doctor Yahav?”Yahav blinked.  “Excuse me?”“Never mind.”  She continued ahead of them toward the briefing room. “Our hosts,” Vasily explained.  “We on U.S. soil out of sufferance sometime it seem.”“Let’s go see what craziness we have in store this week,” Catalina said, leading the way to the briefing room. * * * “The bogey is coming down on an arctic insertion course,” Doctor Wagner told them, bringing a global map up onto the big wall screen.  “Our best estimate is that it is heading for central Canada, or perhaps the Wisconsin-Minnesota region.”“Great, we’re meeting Santa Claus,” Jane said.  “I’m afraid you’re not going to like this,” Wagner continued, “but preliminary read on the hyperwave is snakemen.”“The ship doesn’t appear to be heading for any heavily populated areas,” Garret added.  “Interceptors one and three are en route, but given our effectiveness against them thus far, we may not be able to shoot it down.  I want your team ready to hit if it lands.”“Doctor Sandesh has the new Heavy Weapons Platform waiting for you in Hangar One,” Wagner said.  “I believe he has instructed you in its use.”“Don’t look at me,” Catalina said, “someone else can sort it out.”“All right,” Garret said.  “Get your gear.  Ken will keep you posted on what we learn as it happens.”The members of Alpha stood.  “Welcome to our world, Moshe,” James said.  “Best pray to whatever it is you pray to.”* * * The air swirled with gusty flurries of snow as Skyranger-1 descended over a landscape blanketed in white.  The roar of the ship’s engines echoed over a landscape that was almost devoid of features, save for the squat forms of a farmhouse and several outbuildings that sat quiet and dark in the midst of the white fields.  That, and the glistening bulk of an alien spaceship that crouched in the yard in front of the farmhouse, looming over its roof by a good five meters.  The Skyranger landed a good hundred meters back from the alien ship, behind a low barbed-wire fence that was almost invisible in the flurry.  Even as it settled the hatch in the rear began to open, and Catalina stepped out.  The agent was clad in a suit of metallic armor that gave her an almost robotic appearance.  “God, I stand out like a beacon in this,” she said to herself, looking at the pure white of the landscape.  The alien alloys used in the construction of the new Personal Armor had a bluish tinge, and she suspected she would be quite easy to spot coming. Jane got the cargo compartment slung under the Skyranger’s belly open, and the low outline of the HWP emerged.  “Focus on me,” Jane commanded, and the machine gave a small chirp before it moved into formation a few paces behind her.  Vasily looked over at Moshe, who was the last to exit the ship.  “The guns these bastards use are lethal.  Keep you head down, don’t get hit.”  James was fiddling with the power setting on his laser pistol.  “Lasers aren’t a lot of good on the snakes, doc,” Catalina told him.“Oh?  Should I grab an MP5 from the ship?  Are those more effective?”“Kind of,” Vasily said.  “Spray of bullets gets through their skin.  Some time.”“Great,” James replied.  “I think I’ll hang back and cover you guys.”“Just watch the autofire when Vas and I pull stun rods,” Jane said.  She moved forward, the HWP leaving tracks behind her as its treads cut across the snow.  “Jane, if you have that thing, you have to stay back,” Catalina told her. “Right.  No stun rod this time.”“I not interested in stunning any this time,” Vasily said.  “Gun them all down.”Ken’s voice came through over their headsets.  “Visibility is low, but the ship’s sensors are picking up some movement in the area of the farm.”“Come on,” Vasily said.  They set out, Catalina on point, the others following in a line with Jane and the HWP bringing up the rear.  They made their way across the field without incident, but as they neared a low stone wall that fenced off the yard behind the farmhouse, Catalina raised a hand in caution.  The Visual Display Units on their helmets offered some magnification and resolution improvements, but those advantages were offset by the bad weather, the swirling snow absorbing everything in a blur of white.  They could see the bulky form of the farmhouse, and the barn behind it to the left, but the alien ship was just a vague shadow in the distance. Catalina gestured for them to remain there.  She clambered over the wall and quickly moved across the field to the back of the farmhouse, crouched to minimize her outline against the stark white of the snow.  The others knelt behind the wall, using it as cover as they scanned the area for signs of the aliens that Ken had indicated were nearby. “There,” James said, pointing.  “Two to the left.”“I see them,” Catalina said, whispering over the comlink.  She reached the back of the farmhouse and pressed against its back wall, pulling out a gas grenade. The snakemen slithered through the snow, leaving long trails behind them as they emerged in the space between the house and the barn.  As they approached the side of the building where Catalina waited, she pulled the pin on the grenade, leaned around the corner, and tossed it onto the ground between them. The grenade exploded with a dull thump, engulfing both aliens in a cloud of greenish vapors. The wind caught up the gas and dissolved the cloud quickly, but it was clear that both aliens were affected, the two snakemen twisting and thrashing as the toxin affected their nervous systems.  One fired its weapon, the plasma bolt streaking into the sky before it was lost amidst the flurries.  The members of Alpha Team responded with a barrage of their own.  The lasers flared in bright streaks as the beams vaporized snow before slashing across the aliens’ bodies.  Vasily’s autocannon spit out a less subtle barrage of shells that raised coughs of snow all around the aliens, along with greenish pops of alien blood.  The HWP, coming around the end of the wall to get a bead on the targets, fired a rocket, the missile streaking across the battlefield, narrowly missing one of the snakemen before it hit the barn behind them and exploded.  Bits of wood and other debris were flung across the area by the force of the blast, adding to the confusion. The aliens recovered quickly from the stunning gas, but by the time they started shooting back, both were critically wounded.  But even as the firefight continued with full force, another two snakemen came around the far side of the farmhouse.  James spotted them and started to yell a warning, but before they could hear anything over the noise of the fight, Moshe was hit by a plasma bolt that clipped his shoulder, knocking him roughly over onto his back.  Catalina turned toward the reinforcements and hefted another grenade, but one of the aliens from the first group spotted her, and shot her in the back.  The shot knocked her off her feet, and she landed on her face in a mound of snow.  The alien that had struck her went down a moment later as Vasily zeroed in and delivered a stream of shells that carved its torso into a bloody mess.  The one behind it was covered in wounds, but it managed a shot that sliced past the Russian, catching Jane with a glancing impact to the side of her helmet.  Most of the energy of the bolt was discharged off into the air, but Jane hissed in pain as the side of her face sizzled with a surge of blistering heat, and she fell to the ground, her legs thrashing in the snow as she tried to pry off her damaged headgear.  With three Alphas down and three aliens still up and shooting, the situation seemed to have suddenly taken a very bad turn.</blockquote>

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