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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5278701" data-attributes="member: 143">Hell, in all of my NWN games the player characters end up looking like Rocky at the end of any of those movies. <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 26 (October 27, 2008)Chapter 115It was a bruised and battered Alpha Team that made its way through the dark shaft into the alien base.  Behind them the two crippled HWPs rattled and creaked as they tried to keep up.  The Alphas themselves rattled and creaked only slightly less.  None of them had been successfully implanted by the chryssalids, but they’d absorbed a pounding, and Mary had depleted half of her stock of medikits in the aftermath of those initial fights, in addition to her stock of the experimental regenerative serum. Their helmet lights shone bright beams into the base interior, as their cameras recorded the scene.  The initial construction seemed familiar, even mundane, although the lighting was dim and colored everything with a deep violet tinge.  The walls, ceiling, and floor were made of long panels of material that weren’t quite plastic, weren’t quite metal, joined in almost invisible seams.  Their sensors indicated a number of unpleasant substances in the air, but thus far it was nothing that their suit filters couldn’t handle. They entered a long chamber fitted out with about a dozen large oblong vats, connected to the walls with various odd cable and tube linkages.  The vats had segmented doors in the front that provided access to the interior, and as they entered, they could see one that was open.  A dark shape materialized from within and shuffled forward toward them.  Five weapons came up immediately, but their lights revealed not an alien, but a cow.  A two-headed cow, that lowed miserably as it spotted them. “… the hell…” Vasily said.“Sacrilege!” Mary hissed.  “They will pay for that!”“Keep moving, yes?” Vasily said.  “Unless we put it out of misery, sheesh.”The mutated cow came closer, both heads mooing now, until Jane lifted her rifle and ended it with a pair of shots that pierced its skull and drove it to the ground.  The Alphas moved on, giving the rest of the vats a wide berth, and entered another corridor that opened into another chamber ahead.  Catalina frowned as she worked the motion sensor.  The unfamiliar construction of the alien base was causing havoc with her readings, but as they approached the chamber she held up a hand, bringing them to a halt.  She turned off her helmet lamp and crept forward until she could look into the room without exposing herself to fire, and took one quick look before retracing her steps to rejoin the others. “Mutons,” she said.  “Four of them.  Shall I use the last shell in the blaster launcher?”Vasily shook his head.  “Nah, is only four.”  He nodded to Hadrian, who’d replaced his lost plasma cannon with one taken off the dead guards above.  Both men took grenades from their belts, and moved forward.  As soon as they caught sight of the hulking green forms on the far side of the room they threw the grenades together, opening fire with their heavy plasmas even before the missiles burst into clouds of stunning gas.  They knew from past experience that the mutons were barely fazed by the stun grenades, but the gas obscured their vision, and their initial return fire was wild and blind, missing the Alphas as they spread out and kept shooting.  Vasily and Hadrian focused in on the alien muzzle flashes, and white explosions of plasma erupted as their bolts hit alien hides. “Come and get it, gorillas!” Vasily yelled, keeping up his fire as the mutons started forward, shooting as they came.  Jane came forward into the room, the HWPs trailing behind her.  A wild bolt clipped her arm and nearly flipped her around, but she quickly recovered and shot back, shooting the muton who had hit her on the hip.  “Jane, get the bomb back!” Catalina yelled, as the battered HWP kept rolling forward, into the room.  The four mutons were clear of the gas now, but their shots were still erratic, exploding in bright puffs against the wall behind the Alphas.  One of them lowered its weapon and drew out a vibroblade, its high-pitched whine audible even across the room and the noise of the firefight.  Jane yelled at the tank, but it kept on moving forward, at least until one of the mutons fired a plasma burst into it.  The entire front end of the tank came apart in a mess of metal shards and flame, and it keeled over, the heavy bulge on its top clunking loudly as it hit the floor.  The other HWP fired a plasma blast that struck a muton in the torso, but then its turret suddenly exploded, apparently of its own volition, showering the Alphas with sparks and and streamers of fire.  “Keep shooting!” Vasily yelled, darting to the side, drawing fire after him.  The alien with the vibroblade came after him, but Hadrian pummeled it with a shot that tore away half of its neck, and it fell, struggling as black fluids jetted from the nasty wound.  A second went down a moment later as Catalina and Jane both hit it.  The last two kept firing until their plasma cannons fully depleted their energy cells, then they drew out vibroblades and surged forward.  They ran into a brutal crossfire from the Alphas, but even then nearly made it to melee range, the last one falling to the ground a scant two feet in front of Hadrian.  “Good shooting, mister Jones,” Mary said, as Hadrian reloaded his cannon with a fresh power cell.  They’d taken a few hits in the exchange, but none of them were seriously hurt.  The same could not be said for the HWPs, however.  “Crazy tank,” Vasily said, as he came to the destroyed bomb tank.  He bent over it for a moment, checking the integrity of its cargo, the atomic explosive that Grace had prepared for them.  It seemed to be intact, its armored shell unbroken, at least to casual examination.  With a grunt he lifted the wrecked chassis up, and saw the faint LED indicators on the bomb’s side were still lit.  “Going to carry it the rest of the way?” Catalina asked.Vasily grunted, and started working on the releases that fastened the bomb to the tank.  It took some doing, but he finally got it free.  Grace had prepared a rude harness for them for just such an eventuality, but it took a few minutes to get it hooked up to his satisfaction.  Not that he could be truly satisfied with an atomic bomb strapped to his back. Hadrian had taken advantage of the delay to scout out the rest of the room.  “Lift over there,” he said, indicating where the mutons had been standing guard.  “Looks like it leads to a lower level.”  “Plasma tank’s a bust,” Jane said, putting away her tools.  “It must have taken damage during the last fight, broke the power coils or something.  When it powered up its cannon, it overloaded.”“All right.  We still need to find commander,” Vasily said, leading them toward the lift.   The next level of the base was very different from the last, and definitely more “alien.”  The chamber at the bottom of the lift was similar to those above, but the exits led them into rooms that were populated with an eclectic collection of alien growths, multicolored flora that vaguely resembled terrestrial spores and fungi.  The floor became a spongy, textured substance more like flesh than dirty, and the temperature rose quickly, until they could feel the heat even through the heavy insulation of their suits. “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Jane said, wiping moisture from her visor.  “This some kind of greenhouse?” Vasily asked, carefully avoiding a bulging ovoid sack that dangled from the ceiling.  The pod rippled slightly as he moved away. “This isn’t soil,” Catalina said, bending to examine the floor more closely. “This isn’t a science field trip,” Hadrian said, checking his plasma cannon. Mary had taken out a small medical scanner, and was looking at the readouts.  “This air might be a problem,” she told the others.  “We can’t stay here long.”The rooms were connected by short tunnels, the whole forming a complex that seemed to go on for quite a ways.  “Mary, can you sense that thing?” Catalina asked.  “The commander?”“Um… Yes.  No.  I think so.  I don’t know.  I’ll try…” she put away the scanner and furrowed her brow, concentrating.  Meanwhile, Catalina moved to the closest of the tunnel exits, scanning with the motion sensor. “Anything?” Jane asked Mary. The Indian doctor started to shake her head, but then she lifted a hand.  “Wait… I sense something…”“Maybe you need take helmet off,” Vasily suggested.  “They insulate these helmets against alien mind power.  Maybe it work both ways.”“A mind…” Mary said.  Her eyes widened.  “It senses me!”.  “Gya!” Vasily exclaimed.  “Better not take off helmet, then.”Catalina moved to the second exit, and paused.  “I’m getting something!” she warned.  “Half a dozen and… small?”“Sectoids?” Vasily asked her.Catalina shook her head.  “Not sure.  Signal is… erratic.”  She breathed heavily.  “Is it getting hotter in here?”Jane checked one of the sensors embedded in her armor.  “Air temperature is 112F and rising.”“Get ready!” Vasily warned, as he and the other Alphas formed a defensive half-circle facing the exit.  “How far?” he asked Catalina, who continued to study the sensor.“Close… there!”They lifted their weapons, but no sectoids, or anything else, materialized in the tunnel opening.  For a moment they stood, quiet, waiting for the enemy to show itself. “Catalina—” Vasily began.“There!” Jane warned, pointing to the wall.  Something was coming through it, an amorphous, slightly glowing… blob was the best description, some sort of amoeboid thing that was clearly alive, passing through the substance of the wall as it moved in jerky pulses forward.  Its hide was an unpleasant mottled purple, slick with some sort of oily secretion that trailed behind it as it moved.  The opening it left began to slowly seal itself closed once the creature was fully through, but more were starting to appear nearby, all moving toward the nearest human.</blockquote>

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