IC - 21 - The Pit - Jojo

[Mephistophilis]

The inhabitant of the surface suit keeps moving towards Jojo. There's something unsteady and shambling about the gait. Jojo catches sight of the word CONVICT emblazoned across the left breast of the suit.

Initially there is just static over the standard Benedict's Rest frequencies, then he hears a crackle, and a reedy, unsteady voice intones over the radio, flat and robotic, '...Swimmer in Void waiting, in maze with seven thousand crystal frames...come to gate, Gate of Tawil at’Umr...crystalliser of dreams calls...'

The lurching figure staggers across the width of the black passage. Jojo is able to glance a face through the suit visor. A familiar face. Sergei Petrov. But beneath the bushy beard he looks shrunken, his eyes dark recesses, skin pallid and mottled interspersed with patches that look red raw.

There's something in his hand. A datapad.

[Starspawn338]

Jojo will watch and wait as Sergei Petrov shuffles closer. He doesn't know what is going on or how or why but he intends to find out. He will try to grab the datapad out of his hand and then move quickly away.

[Mephistophilis]

Sergei continues towards Jojo, gait like a drunk shuffling home after a night on the town, eyes glazed and unfocused.

'...Ëka-Galä waiting...Olqa forty-ninth unveiling at last...we go Court of H'rada-Theka Pannakar...'

The datapad in his hand is swinging back and forth in front of him.

Sergei seems pretty out of it so I'd say it is a DEX roll at normal difficulty to grab the datapad and leg it (past Sergei deeper in the tunnel or back towards the surface?). If the DEX roll fails then Jojo will need to be a bit more forceful and roll Fighting
Brawl combined with Zero G (just roll once and we compare to both skills) while I dig out the stats for Sergei to oppose it.

[Starspawn338]

Dex 95
1d100

OOC:   Extreme Success

Jojo grabs the data pad in Sergei's hands and jogs/shuffles through the Zero G environment back the way he came. Since the others still haven't come down, he feels the need to see if something happened to them up top... and inform them of the alien mummy he found down here.

[Mephistophilis]

It is a trivial matter for Jojo to grab the datapad from Sergei's clumsy hand and take a few jumping steps back up the sloping corridor. Sergei doesn't even seem to notice and continues his slow, shuffling gait, continuing to mutter about 'Ëka-Galä' and 'The Gate' until Jojo has put a decent amount of distance between himself and the sickly-looking miner and he loses the radio signal.

Despite little training in low gravity, and significant damage to his ambulatory systems, Jojo's mechanical servos allow him to race up the incline towards the surface, following the lights and power cables and double checking against his recordings of the bas relief carvings. Leaving Sergei far behind he finds himself approaching the opening that he has come to think of as a 'control chamber' where he found the mummified alien remains.

Taking a moment to recalibrate his systems, Jojo looks closer at the datapad. While they're all fairly standard looking grey plastic rectangles, something about this one nags at him. He looks it over, there's nothing remarkable on the surface, a few scratches here and there, one corner cracked where it has obviously been dropped in the past. He runs a quick pattern recognition algorithm through his memory stores. Ping. He's seen this particular datapad before. Based on the pattern of damage he last saw it in the possession of Science Officer Kiara Khan.

[Starspawn338]

"Oh no." Jojo thinks as he recognizes the datapad. "I've got to tell the others."

Jojo will begin the climb back up to the surface, checking his radio on the way.

"Is there anyone there? Meet me at the crater. Over."

[Mephistophilis]

Jojo is still unable to get more than static and that deep throbbing noise over the radio. He hurries through the chamber.

Roll Listen and Spot Hidden

[Starspawn338]

Spot Hidden 50
1d100

Listen 35
1d100

Hearing nothing but static on the radio, Jojo continues to backtrack.

[Mephistophilis]

Hurrying through the 'control room,' Jojo notes the six curved structures again, incomprehensible in their smooth construction. Starkly illuminated by the large site lamps their semicircular recesses gleam, empty.

[Starspawn338]

Jojo looks again at the curved structures again. If only his internal systems hadn't been damaged, perhaps he would have been able to figure out their purpose. He continues on through the control room, following the lights back up the tunnel.

"What is taking them so long?" He wonders to himself. "Hopefully we will get back to radio contact soon."

[Mephistophilis]

Give me an INT roll

[Starspawn338]

Int 99
1d100

As an android, my Int is 99. My original unmodified is 70. Not sure if the damage I took affects this at all.

[Mephistophilis]

There were six structures when Jojo came through here before. One filled with a decomposing six-limbed squid-like creature. Coming back through there are still six semicircular recesses, but now they're all empty.

[Starspawn338]

Jojo walks over to the control circle that the mummified alien was at originally and looks around to see if he can see tracks or a slime trail from someone moving the creature.

"I know there was one here and it was too gooey for me to move. I wonder what happened to it?" He muses to himself.

[Mephistophilis]

There's not exactly a slime trail but Jojo does notice some patches that seem a bit more...damp than others. It could just be snow melt but Jojo looks to see if there is any way to follow.

I don't think anyone has Track or Survival but you can roll them or try a hard Spot Hidden roll to try and follow the trail

[Starspawn338]

Spot Hidden 50
1d100

Jojo sees some what looks like damp spots but he is unable to follow it anywhere. Making a mental note, he continues backtracking towards the hole he originally came down.

[Mephistophilis]

It is not much of a challenge for Jojo to climb up the sloping black stone floor given the low gravity and his sure footing. He follows the lines of cabling, weakly illuminated by strings of floor lights. He notes from the frieze along the wall that he is retracing his steps backs towards the hole in the base of the excavation.

He sees no more sign of Sergei and no communication over the radio from the rest of the team, just that rhythmic pulsation in the background whine. After a few minutes of monotonous climbing he does begin to notice something, it's strange, he doesn't seem to be able to hear the high-pitched throbbing noise anymore. But there's something else, quite far away, a tap? No, more like a click. There it is again, click-click-click.

[Starspawn338]

Is this the same clicking sound I heard before I was attacked?

Jojo hurries his pace backtracking his path when he hears the clicking sound. He doesn't want to have to fight anything in the shape that he's currently in. He wonders what has become of the others and whether they have gone missing just like everyone else. All the humans seem to be affected by some mass hallucination... or something else. Something that would cause dead people to get up and move to the commands they heard before they died.

[Mephistophilis]

The clicking sound is quite familiar to Jojo, immediately his memory banks recall the sound of the creature that attacked him in the Administrative Building of Benedict's Rest. That unfamiliar feeling of 'unease' triggers again, presumably the subjective experience of his self-preservation subroutines activating in his preconscious awareness. Only this time the feeling is more urgent, he might even compare it with the human experience of 'panic'.

Do you want to roll SAN - 1/1d3 loss for realising the/a creature that nearly killed you is somewhere out there

[Starspawn338]

Sanity 94
1d100

Made it. Lose 1 pt

"I need to get out of here." Jojo thinks to himself as he picks up his pace. "I can't fight that thing again."