Tribes [2075: Game World], Persistent World [SR5] IC Sub-Thread Options

[adamu]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The confusion intensified on the doomed guard's face as he dropped his weapon a second time nanoseconds before pulling the trigger. And then Cam's pistol blast rendered his visage a dead mass of tenderized meat.

Hoping to press their initiative, knowing their time was up, the three rushed through the door - Silkie scooping up the dropped AK as she went - and down the obvious staircase. Emerging from the stairwell into a dimly lit gloom, they stopped short in dismayed amazement.

Around the edge of the huge basement chamber, with too few faintly guttering torches afixed to the walls, stood seven figures in voluminous black robes, faces enshrouded by billowy dark hoods. All but invisible in the ebony-frosted air, their sinous gyrations made them nonetheless easy to spot. They appeared far too lost in their ritual dance to have taken any notice of the commotion at the top of the stairs or the entry of three strangers.

That was the good news.

The bad news was the huge pit dominating the center of the room. It's bottom was aswarm with tiny red dots, a hundred reflections of the failing torchlight in the eyes of dozens of huge devil rats. Direcly above them, suspended from the ceiling by seven chains on pulleys afixed to his flesh by vicious meat hooks, hung the naked form of Steamer. Blood drizzled steadily from his wounds, sending the demonic rodents below into a feeding frenzy, climbing atop one another in a futile attempt to reach the nectar's source.

But it would not be futile for long, as some sort of unseen mechanism was steadily lowering the hapless ork downward, and with each inch closer to the pit, the expression on his face spoke new volumes in terror.

[adamu]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Swallowing back the horror of the scene, the three started scanning the room for any way to stop the fatal descent or get the upper hand on the chanting figures in robes. The guttering torches provided plenty of illumination for the low-light enhancements with which all three were equipped.

It was obvious that what had once been a large boiler room serving the school had been completely stripped out and redone, from the giant pit in the center, to the medieval system of chains hanging from the ceiling. Silkie could see that all seven chains came from one large hole in he ceiling, spread out in seven directions to the walls, and there fed through seven large pulleys before reconverging on Steamer's body. More and more slack was slowly being given the chains - when they had entered, chains from the pulleys were nearly taut, perpendicular to the doomed ork's body, but as they lengthened the angle steepened, now approaching about thirty degrees. At about seventy, Steamer would be in reach of he most energetically leaping rats.

Looking for anywhere the mechanism might be controlled from, Silkie finally spotted a single door. It had once had some sort of letters stenciled on it, but the words were long faded to illegibility. The door was shut, and at just about the furthest point from them, on the other side of the pit, reachable only by circumnavigating the meter-wide walkway around which the seven cultists were evenly spaced.

Meanwhile, Maus was focused less on the mechanics and more on the opposition. She didn't have a lot of education, but it quickly became clear that the various figures were not all chanting to the same rythym - or even in the same language, as far as she could tell. She was no linguist, but knew something about magic, and this didn't sound like any sort of ritual she'd ever heard of. Slipping her gaze into the astral she was hit across the nose by the emotional stench of the place and the overpowering despair or Steamer's fear, but it was also clear that the chanting held no arcane power whatsoever. In fact, a quick glance revealed that only three of the seven were even awakened.

[Aria]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie pointed out the door to Cam and he nodded in turn

"Frag this, we don't have time for subtle...shoot the bastards, I'll do something about the rats..." and he unlimbered the shotgun from his back and twitched the choke to its widest possible setting, the green of the laser sight jumping over the bodies of the seething rats

Silkie braced the borrowed weapon against her shoulder "let's rock" she muttered to herself as the weapon spat a burst of fire in a great sweep around one side of the chamber

[adamu]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The blast of the shotgun and the explosion of rat blood were as one event, shattering the pinnacle of the swarming rodents that had been straining to reach Steamer, buying the ork a few precious seconds.

The pop-pop-pop of Silkie's recently confiscated AK was equally effective in scattering the ritualists on one side of the chamber - one spun and fell, one dropped to the cement floor, narrowly avoiding an inadvertant tumble into the rat pit, and two just stood in shock.

And then Maus's spell hit.

[adamu]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

As the shooting started and the towering swarm of rats covered his face in an spatter of noxious blood, Steamer looked up to see Cam and s flicker of hope shone in his exhausted eyes. Only a flicker, though, because he was then - along with all seven of the ritual chanters - caught up in Maus' confusion whammy. On the side where Silkie had fired on four of the cultists, the two that had been left standing both grabbed at their eyes and ears, clearly impacted by the magic - and one staggered into the rat pit.

On the other side, another ritualist dropped to his knees from the sensory overload. Another, however, not only kept his wits, but placed a protective hand on the shoulder of the man next to him. The first man leveled his free hand and the three intruding gangers, while the man he'd protected pulled a Steyr TMP from his robe, laser sight fingering its way up Silkie's slender form.

[Aria]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie put all of her Gift into the next burst of Voice...the weird overtones of multiple voices speaking to the part of the brain that wants to obey...

"Jump into the pit"

Cam racked the shotgun again and sent another spray of shot into the writhing mess of rats below him...

[adamu]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The shooter took a half-step toward the rat pit before coming to his senses and pulling the trigger, spitting a stream of bullets at Silkie's slender form. The rounds thudded into her armor in rapid succession, the tight grouping knocking the wind out of her and sending her flying backwards. She landed on her back, skidding a good meter until the staircase stopped her.

In the meantime, Cam's shotgun blasts were tearing into dozens of devil rats with each cartridge spent, though the boom of his weapon was nearly drowned out by the screams of the cultist that had fallen in as he was devoured alive.

Then he felt something unseen smack him across the face, the shock made all the more disorienting by the distinct sensation that something was somehow unsmacking him, pushing back against the blow, and he realized that little Maus was countering the magical cultist's wizardry. And then her own spell went flying....

[adamu]

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Even knocked on her ass, Silkie barely took her finger off the trigger and Cam shifted his hips as they both directed their weapons at the two men who had clearly made themselves the ones to deal with. Both dropped instantly to the cement floor, though Cam was almost certain he saw a spray of blood somewhere in the barrage.

In the pit, the man that had fallen in screamed hysterically as the devil rats swarmed over him devouring his soft tissue, giving Steamer a moment's reprieve.

[adamu]

[0110, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The Steyr chattered again, this time from the floor, and then there was a small flash in the rat pit, quickly followed by a billowing cloud of red smoke laced with red hot particulates that rendered most of the team’s vision enhancements useless. Silkie’s AK clicked empty, but Cam continued firing, if only to give their foes something to think about. The Steyr did the same for a while, and then it fell silent. And so, after a short while, did the screams of the man that had fallen into the pit.

And that left the sound of the mechanism in the roof, relentlessly continuing Steamer’s inch-by-inch descent.

Maus summoned a small air spirit, which quickly flushed away the hot smoke. Now they could see the far door again, and the two men that had fought back were gone. Some others still lay on the floor, but all still seemed overwhelmed by the chaos enchantment that Maus sustained. None offered any resistance as Cam raced to the machine room door, shot the lock, and went in.

The first few bold rats were now leaping up, nipping at Steamer’s inviting flesh, but there in the room were what appeared to be the controls. Trying a red button first, the mechanism stopped. But still too close - the rats were rebuilding their tower of bodies, and would soon reach the suspended ork en force. Quickly scanning the controls, Cam made one more guess, and the hooks tore at muscle and sinew as they painfully reversed, lifting Steamer out of harm’s way.

The question remained as to how they would get him down, but the outside team was reporting that return fire had become sporadic at best. Sending her spirit to scout, Maus reported that all above was in chaos, with most fleeing or cowering. It seemed that the retreat of their leaders had left this odd colony altogether headless.

Cam took a chance and called the outside team in. They were short on combat training, but could have started an engineering school with the combined mechanical know-how between them. No one opposed them after that - most of the people that didn’t flee were women with children. Lots of children. Some apparently were fives, with a six here and there - about the only information anyone seemed interested in sharing.

Maus remembered the locket she’d found. The picture of seven children, an ork that she now recognized as the adult Steamer apparently the youngest.

Soon they had Steamer down, and although the hooks had left hideous wounds, none were life-threatening.

They got started patching him up during the long drive home.