Play@YSDC

The girl´s name is Vera. She´s a girl of about 20 years old. She has a childish face and blonde hair, with a fringe that covers her right eye. She is thin and frail. The skin of the arms and hands is dry. The breasts are almost absent, as if the belly had sucked and accumulated most of the body fluids.

Vera leads the investigators to the passage, hidden between the rocks near the pier. As the tide is now low, the entrance to a tunnel appears. The tunnel goes north towards the inner part of the island. Soon after the entrance, the tunnel slinks into the abyss of the earth, like an almighty worm had burrowed under the surface rocks. A steep descent takes the investigators twenty feet underground. Then, the tunnel continues parallel to the soil and goes towards the hinterland.
The temperature drops as the group enters into the underground cavern, sending violent chill down the spine. As soon as the group moves away from the entrance, light reaches neither wall nor ceiling.

It doesn´t seem like a natural cave, it rather appears as the product of a drilling work. Whoever built it tunneled for a straight line, not giving importance about the softest soil. The tunnel is 10 feet wide and high, and keeps this size as the investigators continue walking through it. Sea water invades the place at high tide, leaving kelp seaweed remains and the strong smell of salt.
At about 700 feet from the entrance, the group enters a large hall, which is roughly rhombus shaped and whose side measures around 150 feet. The hall has four pools of about 30 feet in diameter. They are located symmetrically in the hall.
Each pool is ten feet deep. Two pools are empty, but those closest to the exit contain the kolby slime, made of fragments of brown seaweed, salt and sand. Beyond the hall, the tunnel continues north.

Michael shines his flashlight into the two seemingly empty pools, to see if there's anything down there.

"Anybody got a hip flask or somethin' to get a sample of that slime?"

"Sorry, I don't drink," says Kathryn. Old Brian McCabe had always carried a flask around, but she had more respect for the Volstead Act.

"I too abstain from alcohol, but perhaps I have a small bottle of cologne I could empty out."

Ivy rummages through her handbag to check for perfume bottles.

Vera remains standing by the pool.
While investigators take a sample of the substance, the mass of algae of the pool closest to Vera suddenly rises, forming a column of liquid. Then, it immediately falls back, as if rediscovering the gravity force.
The falling is somehow slightly redirected by an unknown force, so that the liquid falls and spreads over Vera's body.
The girl tries to remove as much slime as possible. Her face suddenly becomes a mask of deep terror, as if she knew that all this means something horrible.

In a few seconds, the sludge solidifies. It becomes hard as a rock, and creates a continuity with the ground. The slime was transformed into a structure that imprisoned most Vera´s body as in a statue, only allowing limited movements with the arms and upper body.

Michael rushes over to Vera, smashing at the stuff with all his might.

"Stay away from that pool!" he screams at the others. "It's a death trap!

Kathryn nods, gulping. She tries to help Michael free Vera, keeping the frozen woman between her and the pool.

The pools return to being a placid inert slurry. Their reaction against Vera was similar to a reflection of a carnivorous plant. But the girl is still trapped. The resin wrapped her lower body making it like part of a marble statue. Suddenly, some noises of footsteps are echoing. A group is walking, coming from the north.

Suddenly, indistinguishable and unidentifiable voices echo in the hall, coming from the north tunnel. They sound like something between the roar of an animal and the hiss of the wind.

The girl opens her mouth and eyes, and her thin face turns white like a ghost, tinged with the most desperate and unimaginable terror. She begins to beg for something terrible. Her mind is in a plan of reality the investigators cannot yet fully understand.

"The spirits of the sea. They are coming. They are coming to get me. You can do nothing for me, don't let them take me alive. Kill me. Kill me!"

"Girl's out of her head,"Michael says, "and I don't blame her, poor kid. We gotta stop those things. He gets his pistol ready, wondering if he's going to be firing at men or devils.

"If we kill them, we don't have to kill you," says Kathryn, drawing her pistol. Taking cover behind the rock-like resin trapping Vera, she takes aim down the tunnel at the approaching enemy.

Ignoring the others’ warnings, Ivy tries to free the girl buy hacking at the material. However her efforts are in vain.

STR 40,[dice]0[/dice]

Vera knows that there´s no hope for her. She speaks with unnutural lucidity.

"Forget it. They´re the only ones who know how to dissolve it. Many are coming. You should not try to face them now. Hide yourselves. If you can't kill me, hide yourselves."

Kathryn sees the shadows of six humanoid figures approaching at a brisk pace, a breeze blowing carries the smell of the seabed along with their coming. Their body is taller and wider than common human beings. They walk with some difficulty, as if the earth were not a place for them.

Terrified, Kathryn tries to find a hiding place.

OOC,Stealth roll (60% skill) to hide from the figures: [dice]0[/dice]

Ivy hesitates for a moment. Hiding would be the obvious thing to do, but she cannot allow the girl to fall into the clutches of the terrible forces behind all this. The others may not have the stomach for it, but the Ripleys have never been ones to shrink from what must be done - however unpleasant that may be.

“I’m sorry...” she whispers, before plunging her knife into the girl’s jugular.

That grisly act done, she stands back to accept her fate (assuming there is now no time left to hide.)

The girl bows her head as blood gushes from her throat and flows down to the resin that traps her. The noises are approaching, but the group still has some time to hide, but they must do it quickly.

Feeling wretched at what she’s just done, Ivy half-heartedly tries to hide.

Stealth 20%,[dice]0[/dice]

Kathryn conceals herself as best she can, knowing that a fate worse than death awaits her if she's discovered.

Having witnessed the mercy killing of a poor innocent woman, and seeing that the other ladies are trying to hide from the monsters coming this way, Michael throws caution to the wind and tries to draw the attention of the things. He runs off to the side of the road, screaming at the top of his lungs, and fires at the creatures.

"Come and get me, you lousy creeps!"

If he can't save himself, maybe the others can get away and warn the rest of the world. Besides, maybe they're just interested in females. He can hope, anyway.

Ivy stands next to Michael, arms folded in defiance.

“No, you go Mike. I’ve just taken a life; I must atone for that.”

"There ain't no shame in doin' a terrible thing for the right reason,"Michael says with unexpected gentleness. "You wanna stick around, that's A-OK with me, but don't feel like you need to make up for nothin'."

He grimly waits for the demons to approach, muttering to himself.

"Hail Mary, fulla grace . . .

While Kathryn is hiding, the others see the six creatures approaching, along with a smell of strong sickening fish.
Ivy cannot reflect on what she´s just done, as the presence of an imminent danger does not allow any moral thought at this time. Adrenaline dominates.

When Michael shoots, the creature speed up the pace until they are visible.

Their forms vaguely suggests the anthropoid, with large frontal roundish bulbs, thick scales with a fine skin and white flesh. Their skin is the colour of the forest floor in fall, fading green mixed with so many browns. There is a tightness to his skin except for a crinkle at the arms and legs. Their long paws are webbed, and the fingers clawed. Their clammy body syncretizes the vertebrate’s passage from marine to terrestrial life. The mouth is enormous and resembles that of a fish. Jaws can wide open up to the ears, showing a scary rows of sharp teeth. The bulging and lidless eyes, along with the upper part of the head, are more similar to amphibian traits, while the spiny ridges down the back point out the contribution of reptilian features. Their predominant color is a greyish-green, though they have white bellies. Their body is shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs is scaly. At the sides of their necks are palpitating gills.

They hop irregularly, staring at the the group with their prodigious bulging eyes. They seem to be yelling at the intruders. Their croaking, baying voice hold all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacks.
Their gazes are impassive and implacable, seeming to testify the head has capacity for human intelligence and cognition. They are holding big metal tridents, which seems to give them the title of undisputed connoisseurs of the deeper abyss. They emit an acute and terrifying cry as they see Vera´s dead body, thus awakening their profound beastly and brutal nature. Their mouth slobs while their figure seems to lose the little human that has first appeared.

[dice]0[/dice]
[dice]1[/dice]
[dice]2[/dice]

[dice]0[/dice]
[dice]1[/dice]

OOC:   Ivy loses 3 points of sanity Emma loses 1

The vision of these creatures causes feelings of disgust, rejection and despair in Ivy. The deep and ancient part of the human mind cannot help but recognize in them the ancestral evolutionary past, still rooted in its ontogenetic and still defining hidden features of our own being.

Kathryn remains in her hiding place for now, gripping her revolver in her trembling hand, ready to use it if she needs to help her friends.

Michael can see that Ivy is badly shaken by the sight of these monsters, and he can't blame her. He steps in front of her, putting himself directly between her and the things. Time to start shooting.

Mr. Handy wrote:

OOC,Is the range point blank? If so, that means all shots get a bonus die. It would be worthwhile firing multiple shots too, as there are six of them. We need to take down as many as we can as fast as we can to even up the odds and maybe scare the others into running away. Even without the bonus die to cancel out the penalty die on later shots, I think it would still be worth it. It may also be worth it for [b]Michael[/b] to spend Luck to make that a hit, in the event that he does not get a bonus die or he misses even with it. [b]Ivy[/b] and [b]Emma[/b] could have guns now, as the guys we killed at the boat had them. If I fire, do I need to roll Sanity as well first for seeing them?

If I fire, do I need to roll Sanity as well first for seeing them?

OOC:   No, as long as you see just shadows. Also, sanity rolls require you have the time to pay a minimal attention to their features.

Three creatures approach Vera's lifeless body. They emit a moan that has something animal and something else unnatural and unknown.
Their eyes, or whatever they use to see, seem to be familiar with the place. The other three shapes appear in their horror under the beam of the flashlights, and run towards the intruders, raising the trident against them, like devils coming out of the bowels of hell.
The four investigators shoot with their weapons causing roars that overlap and echo inside their frightened minds.

Rolls,[dice]0[/dice] [dice]1[/dice] [dice]2[/dice] [dice]3[/dice] [dice]4[/dice] [dice]5[/dice] [dice]6[/dice] [dice]7[/dice]

A dense cloud of smoke accompanies the sound of weapons, followed by indistinct cries of wounded beasts. One of the monsters seems to have become one with the cavernous soil. The second one is dragging his body with difficulty and his shoulder is covered with green slurry. The third is ready to strike with the spear.

Kathryn fires again at the monster raising its trident, determined not to let them get her or her friends.

OOC,FIrearms(Handgun) roll (65% skill), shooting at the creature: [dice]0[/dice] Bonus die (if point blank): [dice]1[/dice] Damage to creature: [dice]2[/dice]

Feeling slightly better about the situation, since it appears that not even demons from Hell are immune to hot lead, Michael takes time to get Ivy to safety, if possible.

The investigators' fire overwhelms the creatures in an unexpected way. All three end up on the ground. The trident tries the blow but hits the flashlight of the investigators, which flies away against the walls. The beam has time to catch the bulbous eyes of one of the creatures, looking at Michael's weapon, with a desperate look, as if something human dwells beyond its slimy scales. Darkness and silence follow the shots.

When they resume illuminating the environment with a shaky hand, they see
Vera's body is no longer there. Somehow, the creatures have melted the resin and taken it away, leaving behind them the smell
of brackish and fish. Sounds of footsteps in the distance move away, in the direction of the tunnel, towards the hinterland of the island.

Kathryn reloads her revolver, scarcely able to believe that they've won the battle. "Come on," she says, recovering the flashlight. "We have to keep going."

Keeping an eye on the badly shaken Ivy -- and who can blame her, poor kid -- Michael heads in the direction of the footsteps.

Following the sound of footsteps, the group continues straight. The walls are dotted with plants colonies, organisms never seen before, a vegetal form of life similar to the brown kelp algae, adapted to an amphibious life. Some hang from the ceiling, so that the water filtering from the rocks passes through the plants and falls on the floor, drop by drop.
At some point, they notice another opening on their right, another tunnel going southeast. But some echo of strange foosteps still comes from the main direction, following straight on.

As they walk, a nauseating smell thickens their nostrils and penetrates straight to the brain, like pointed needles. It gets stronger and stronger as they keep walking straight on. Biological matter in decomposition. It is the same smell they smell in the pit of the Anderson´s house.

Kathryn is careful not to touch or get too close to anything after seeing what happened to Vera. "Should we check out the tunnel on the right?" she whispers. " At least it doesn't smell as bad. Or do we need to chase those things down and make sure they don't tell anyone we're here?"

"The other tunnel's gotta wait," Michael growls. "First we deal with these creeps, one way or the other."

Kathryn nods and proceeds along the main tunnel with the others.