IC: Vein of Truth, An adventure into the wilds Options

[Misfit Toy]

"Right, that's what I was getting at. By 'camp' I meant 'place to hide the vehicles so they're safe.' I had no intention of staying by the river or leaving any of the portable equipment behind."

[Shadow]

"Alright, while you guys get the gear sorted out, I'll make sure were alone."

She unslings her rifle and quietly walks into the woods. It being the middle of the day she keeps her vision on normal, and her ears perked.

No fraggin breeders going to take me by surprise this time.

[Misfit Toy]

Seeing Raven heading off... again... Bel sighs inwardly then calls over his manitou friend. "I'd be eternally grateful if you could make sure my friend here remains hidden and out of harm's way. If you see anything unusual on the astral, let her know at once."

[Number 6]

Hellcow stands up from his pack, draging out a large swatch of camo netting. He tosses it over by the van and looks over at Raven.

"I'll go along as well. Just in case something comes up."

Hellcow hefts his Alpha, and walks over to Raven.

"By the way, who had the spare radios?"

[Shadow]

"I do," she takes a quick detour to her bag and unpacks the four hand helds, and sets them each to 137.5.

"I'm on one-thirty-seven point five if you need me. Come on 'Cow, let's check things out."

[Beast of Revolut...]

"I won't be needing that netting," Thor says as he takes it back off the van. "It will only get in the way of my sensor and the turret. That is what I have photovoltaic paint for." So saying, he adjusts the van's color to match it's surroundings much better than some flimsy netting ever could. "Now, we can't just leave the van and boat unguarded. I might as well stay with the van, since I can control my drones from a good distance."

[Misfit Toy]

"You have drones at your disposal," Bel replies while pulling out his notepad and then scribbling in a foot note. "I must have missed that at the meeting. Got any that can give us a quiet birds-eye view of the area? I can arrange for a bit of added stealth on two fronts if so."

[TinkerGnome]

Raven performs a quick recon with some cover from other members of the team. The area is quiet as can be, though she did spot a couple of squirrels in a most improper situation.

[Chance359]

Sedryk takes the camo netting from Cow and drapes it over the boat. Over hearing the radio frequency, he adjusts his earpiece transciever.

Entering Thor's van, Sedryk looks over at the dwarf. "I know you'll probably be busy with you drone group or whatever you call it, but could you keep an eye on the boat?"

Walking over to Belfast, "Listen I wanted to apologise about back there with the bear. I'm guessing you're some kind of non-hermetric. But for the record, I was gonna take a reminder then bury the thing anyway. Hows that old song go 'Bury your dead, but don't leave a trace..."

[Beast of Revolut...]

Thor nods. "I have four drones. The first is a miniature blimp with a rifle. It can stay in the air for hours, and its solar cells allow it to stay up for days at a time if the weather is good. It is also very hard to detect, and has great sensors. My second drone is a Strato-9 rotodrone, like Lone Star uses. It is the heavy firepower of the group. I will set it up here, ready to turn on and take off on short notice to defend you. The third is a microskimmer hover drone that can also go under water. It is small enough for you to carry with you, or it can stay here and patrol the river. The last is a tiny arachnoid, which will come in very handy in the mine. You can carry it in your pocket."

[JaronK]

Paris assembles his gear until it's all in the rucksack. "Test, one two" he subvocalizes into his radio. Then, to those still at the camp, he speaks without radio aid. "I'm going to do a little overwatch until we're ready to go. I'll be ready to move out whenever you folks need, so just say something into the radio to the effect of 'it's time to go' and I'll follow you. I don't have encryption though, so be careful what you say."

With that, he tosses his now empty duffle bag in the van, keeps his assault rifle out, and heads up into the woods, looking for a good sniping position.

[Shadow]

"Well," Raven says as she passes Paris on his way out. "There's a whole lotta woods out there, and not much else. Well some squirrels but that is it."

The team looked ready to move out to her eye. She quickly packed what she needed on her pilfered bike. She secured her nearly empty duffle the handle bars.

"Well, I am ready to go."

[Misfit Toy]

When Sedryk offers his apology, Bel's face clearly softens as he finishes up negotiating with a few of the local fey.

"No worries, man. It wasn't so much the death of the bear that upset me, I completely understand what likely happened there, it was seeing your friend mutilating its corpse in the fashion he was when I got here. I wouldn't care if it was the corpse of a bear or the corpse of a megacorporate CEO who deserved it that was being treated in that fashion. One should always respect the dead.

"But that's behind us now. Apology accepted and I hope you will consider taking mine as well. But either way, we really need to get cracking, though, so..." Bel turns to address the others as he plugs his earplug microphone into his ear "...is everyone ready? And Thor, go ahead and send that blimp of yours up. As soon as you get it out I'll throw a little invisibility number over it to try and aid its mission. If you spot anything unusual... anything at all... let us know pronto, savvy?"

[JaronK]

Paris, subvocalizing into his radio, murmers a simple "Ready" before turning the microphone off. As he does so from his position near the camp, he moniters the area for possible intruders.

[Beast of Revolut...]

Thor brings his four drones out of the van and assembles them. "Does the boat have rigger or remote control adaptation?" he asks.

[TinkerGnome]

After a little more planning, Thor hunkers down in his van to guard the camp site while the rest of the group walks off toward the mine, fully ladden with gear. The mining equipment is fairly heavy, though spread out over the team it is not as bad as it could be.

The trip up the island toward the mines is uphill most of the way over some of the most broken woodlands possible. However, the walking proves remarkably easy, and it begins to dawn on everyone that Belfast's faeries might have a lot to do with that.

Any doubt about whether there is magic involved is quickly removed as, not more than an hour and a half after the team leaves the base camp, the rusting tops of mining equipment becomes visible over the treetops. There is still some sunlight left, amazingly enough, for a hike which should have stretched well past dark.

It is 4:45 pm.

[Shadow]

“Damn, a five hour trip in an hour and a half. No wonder Shamans aren’t allowed in the Olympics. Thanks Bel,” Raven tosses casually over her shoulder, and on the comms. She ditched her mining equipment when the top of the shaft became visible over the tops of the trees.

“Paris, why don’t you take ‘Cow and go around right, Evans and I can scout to the left. Swift Eagle can go up the middle. Once we have a better idea of what’s here the rest of you come up and join us.”

[FXcalibur]

Evans places down his load for a bit and stretches, wiping the sweat off his face. "I need to get into shape again..." He mutters. "Sounds good to me, Raven, but do all of the teams have radios or similar? I suppose we could just shout, but still. Getting seperated without comms is something I'd rather not risk."

[Shadow]

"Paris and Cow do, if you need one," she rummages around in her bag for a minute and pulls out a hand held unit, "you can use this."

[FXcalibur]

"Ah. Thanks, Miss." Evans drops it into an inner pocket of his overcoat, which he was almost beginning to regret wearing in this climate. At least it wasn't insulated.

[tisoz]

Skeeter sets down his load along with the load Hellcow talked him into carrying.

[Beast of Revolut...]

Thor is controlling the Condor mini-blimp directly from the command seat of his van. He keeps it more or less directly above the party, at an altitude of one hundred meters, confident that it is safe with the invisibility spell on it.

[TinkerGnome]

Thor's drone feeds him images of the site which tell him that this is the right place. There are four structures in immediate view, and a large limestone dump. The place is quiet on the EM and most other imaging systems.

Raven creeps up on the mine area and finds a seen of utter neglect. According to the data that the group originally recieved, shaft 4 had not been in operation very long before it was closed, which made it the most likely candidate for survey. Whatever was being looked for was obviously closer to the surface here than at the older shafts.

The area is surrounded by a 8ft chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire, though it proves little barrier since it has seen no maintenance in decades. There are many holes through the fence, and in places it has been taken over by vegitation.

Three buildings are immediately obvious. The first, closest to Raven as she creeps forward, is a squat metal-sided structure, now streaked red from the rain and its effects. Though they are currently closed, the entire back side of the building is given over to slats through which air would flow. Most likely, this was the building where the fans and pumps were housed that kept the miners below ground supplied with breathable air.

The other two buildings are situated inside a cracked ring of asphault. The one on the right is the structure that the team saw from below. A side ring of the asphault circle seemed to be set up to allow vehicles to load here, and a network of conveyors contained inside iron housings leads to the third and smallest building.

The third building is smaller than the others, and looks to house the elevator equipment which would allow miners to descend to the shaft itself.

The whole place appears deserted.

As Raven does a careful circuit of the place, only one oddity strikes her, and even that is not very odd. A little down the slope from the mine itself, a jumble of very large (2m square, 1m thick) stones has been piled. The stones themselves are covered in moss, and appear to have been tossed haphazardly from the road above and allowed to fall to where they now rest. They have been in their current positions for quite some time, from the looks of them.

Someone appears to have scraped the moss free from a few of the larger stones, but there is no indication of how long ago that might have happened. The area is devoid of tracks.

[Misfit Toy]

As Belfast and the others approach the mining site, the manitou's obligation to his master has come to an end and the two bid farewell to one another. When Raven refers to him as a shaman, he wrinkles his nose a bit but doesn't correct her. Instead, as the young elf steps up and splits the team into various recon cells, an almost relieved smile finds its way onto his face as he finds a nice boulder to sit on.

With a wave of the hand through the air, three small anthropomorphic mice wearing sunglasses and weilding walking sticks manifest in front of the Irishman. "All right boys," he says to his watcher spirits, "here's what we're gonna do. I want you three to split up and explore the mine. Hickory, you take the entrance over there, Dickory, you take the one over there, and Dock, you'll accompany me. Once inside, take note of anything unusual you find and then report back to me in one hour. Think you boys can handle that?"

While waiting for the answer, Bel sends a telepathic message out to his familiar. "Red Tom, quit playing around with the nymphs and get o'er here. I need you to get ready to watch over my body as I take a look around this joint."

"Fiddleflam!," the leprechaun caterwauled, "always trying t'cock block me, yae is! You go and summon a pair of nymphs, twins even, then expect me to just sit around watching your empty husk? Why, if I..."

"Blah blah blah, quit your fookin' bitchin' and get o'er here before I shove my boot up your ectoplasmic arse."

"Bah! Always bossin' me around, yae is..." A disgruntled sigh proceeded the materialization of the leprechaun sitting on a branch in a nearby tree. His face is clearly sour, but it doesn't seem to stop him from pulling out a pipe and lighting it up for a smoke.

With that, the mage switches over to the commlink. "Bel here. I'm going to check this place out on the astral and see if anything strange is afoot. If you need me, just let Red Tom know and he'll let me know. He's sitting in a tree near the rendevouz point."

[JaronK]

Paris reactivates his mic. "I'm gonna find a nice area over here to sit down and watch you folks work. Lemme know if you need me to do something useful." He then deactivates his mic and, hoping the others figured out what he meant, finds a nice overwatch position on higher ground, makes a small hiding place, and pulls out his sniper rifle, assembling it from his position. He then starts scanning the area for possible threats, or items of interest.