Survey Mission 6C Location: Centralia, PA (United States) Images:: x, x, x General debriefing: A mine fire has been burning underneath Centralia, PA since 1962. The town is now a ghost town, and FEAR monitoring at the site has spiked. You are being dispatched to investigate a possible source of the disturbance.
There are still five to ten living human residents of Centralia, but they have been deemed a non-issue. Civilian clothing recommended but not enforced. * C class difficulty level (must have a team of three, at least one of them must be an intermediate trainee)
MECHANICS
* MECHANICS: RP assembling a team, as necessary, before heading towards the Lighthouse portal to request a portal to Survey Mission 6C. Once there, roll a 100-sided dice and match the roleplay to the results below, as well as any reactions. Players can continue rolling until any of the players roll a BOSS ENCOUNTER, in which case the BATTLE PHASE begins. See below for battle phase mechanics. 1 - 20: While investigating a fissure in the concrete that is emitting a steady stream of smoke (although it has no smell, making it seem more like fog), you realize you are being watched by a skinny old woman on the sidewalk, in bare feet and wearing a bathrobe. She stares at you, retrieves mail from a mailbox, and then crosses the street to enter a ramshackle home you'd taken to be abandoned, all the while muttering something about "damn trespassing tourists." If you choose to pursue the matter:
The stretch of tarmac she walked across is scorching, blistering hot. If you knock on the door of the house you receive no answer. A quick glance through the windows reveals nothing but scattered debris.
21 - 40: You find one of the town's many enormous sinkholes, clouded with smoke and smelling noxious. From the corner of your eye you see a black shape scuttling across the rim, but by the time you turn to see what it is it has disappeared down into the hole. 41 - 60: The town is in a haze of mist or fog or perhaps low-lying smoke. A mangy feral dog half-lopes, half-limps down the street before disappearing into the rubble of an overgrown lot. If you follow it, you find that it has left charred pawprints that smoke where they pass through the brittle grass. 61 - 70: You find a smoking fissure in the earth, and inadvertently inhale a lungful. You are immediately beset by painful, terrifying hallucinations of twisted faces and the sensation that your skin or internal organs are on fire, burning abruptly and uncontrollably. The illusion is utterly realistic but fortunately short-lived: it passes within five or ten seconds. 71 - 80: Jokesters leave ominous graffiti all over Centralia--"HELP" and "I've Fallen In" next to deep crevices in old roadways--and so it is easy to ignore it. A particular neon green patch of it, however, is scored through again and again (straight through concrete) until it has been almost entirely defaced, and a shredded spray paint can lies nearby. A large streak of neon green paint runs from the ruined graffiti to the lip of a particularly dangerous-looking fissure. 81- 100: BOSS ENCOUNTER: - You spy what appears to be an explorer or perhaps a resident: a young man of perhaps twenty in hipster glasses, smoking a cigarette and gazing down into a sinkhole. He looks up at you and smiles as the earth crumbles beneath his feet, sending him plunging down. You see him take a calm drag before he's swallowed up. Barely a second passes before a great crawling shape heaves itself out of the sinkhole: a charred black being perhaps ten feet tall with a fiery gleam in the cracks of its joints, accompanied by little skittering, emberlike shapes that immediately launch themselves in your direction. It opens its glowing red mouth to roar at you, belching smoke and steam and the smell of sulfur.
- BOSS MECHANICS: This boss is a mob with a collective 100 HP. Every time you attack it (following the general battle rules), you TAKE 8 damage. You will need to deal with both the main monster and also the smaller living embers flanking it, although the latter can actually be stomped out as though they were cigarette butts, if they're in reach. Make sure to tally the boss's total HP (the damage you did to it) at the bottom of your post as well as your total HP and the damage you did that round. If the boss's HP hits 0, you have defeated it, and your team can now take the portal back.
* 2 mission reward points for completing this successfully
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 5:51 pm
Taym waited by the lighthouse portal with a cigarette in one hand and his cellphone in the other, distractedly texting. The beard was gone, replaced by rough stubble, but there was no foul mood radiating off him--not any more than usual, anyway--and so it was likely that this was a decision unrelated to any upheavals in his relationship with a beard-admiring girlfriend.
Dressed in his civilian clothes, a scarf tucked neatly into the collar of his shooting jacket, he looked practically normal: still sleep deprived, still thin, but not so corpselike and certainly not with the sunken cheek of a starving man. He'd checked the roster to see who his assigned partners were, and was pleased not just by the names--Peyton Creedy and Ever Ambrodiel--but by the ranks. With two full Hunters and one competent Intermediate in tow, this should go smoothly.
Peyton had ditched her hunter jacket in favor of a pair of fleece lined leggings in a galaxy print and a knit jumper that hit her at about mid thigh and hug loosely off one thin shoulder. She'd tied her hair back in a french braid that started behind her left ear and wrapped around to lay over her right shoulder. For a change, the long chain of her ever present necklace was visible, fish pendent and ring bouncing softly against her chest as she headed quickly towards the familiar figure standing outside the lighthouse.
And because she lacked normal pockets, she had her hip pack as well, straps adjusted so the longest one slung across her chest.
"Hey," she'd greet, a light hand touching his elbow as she moved up beside him. One look up towards that stubble kissed face, and the Sun grinned, relieved, by the clear lack of scowl. She adored the Moon, always had, always would, but she definitely enjoyed his company more when he was in decent spirits.
"So who's our third?"
rejam
and be blue
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 6:32 pm
Peyton's answer came in the form of being lifted off her feet: a strong arm around her waist so that Ever could turn her in one easy spin and then set her down, a flash of a grin on his face. He fought down the temptation to toss her over a shoulder, at least, to tease by spinning her around more than that. She could, after all, still kick his a**.
"I'm here." For Taym, he just offered a hand to shake, hair starting to go shaggy again, tucked carefully up under a soft cap. He'd been tempted to wear his bright new coat, but instead he'd dressed down as well, layered shirts and sweatshirt. He'd probably still be cold, but he didn't own a proper winter coat. But Ever looked obnoxiously cheerful enough that he probably wouldn't complain.
Ever received an amiable (and steady) handshake in turn and Peyton a toothy, half-hidden grin, and then he handed them off copies of the very brief abstract they'd gotten on the mission, letting them glance them over.
"I take it you two've met. Centralia, Pennsylvania," he said. "I've read about this place. Big mine fire a few decades back and there's enough coal there to keep it going for a couple hundred years more under the town. Apparently a few people still living there, which is ******** insane. Some odd things going on--maybe nothing, but I guess they're sending out regular patrols to check it out."
As he spoke he gave his shoulder bag a last-second pass through, checking contents--bandages, trapping gun--and then gesturing towards the portal. "Ladies first," he said, and he didn't specify who he meant. "We flippin' a coin over who gets to boss the other two around?" he added to Peyton, sounding entirely unconcerned.
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 7:29 pm
A very girlish squeal was issued as she was lifted off her feet, but she was laughing by the time Ever set her back down, one hand lingering on his arm for a second as she regained her balance. "Someone's in a really good mood." Which was, again, preferred. If they were all more or less cheerful as they headed into this mission, it'd make it all just a little more enjoyable.
Or that was the theory.
"Yeah, we've met." She took the mission specs handed over, scanning the page as Taym filled them in on what he knew of the location. Then, as the details sank in, she lifted her head, brows drawn in, to glance up at the both of them, looking for some flicker of recognition. When she saw none she sighed, rolled her eyes(did neither of them play video games?), and folded the mission info up to tuck into her hip bag, taking a moment to sift through the contents. Bandages, first and foremost, runic torch, a couple runes, her phone, her wallet.
A smirk tugged at her lips at Taym's question, and her shoulder rolled in a small shrug before she headed into the light house. "You can call the shots." Honestly, even if she had been in charge, Taym could had wrested control from her with very little effort. She'd always listened to him, despite having crawled out of her pod a good month before him.
"What if I want to be in charge?" He grinned as he said it, though, shrugging and turning in place -- and, sadly, Ever had none of these trappings. No bandages, no relics, no artifacts, just a battered bag with a couple books, a change of clothing, and a toothbrush. Just in case.
It was obviously a joke. He'd wait his turn, letting Peyton go first, before he trailed along after her. Hands in his pockets, maybe still a bit sunburned across the nose and still much too excited for a potentially-dangerous EM in a vaguely distopian hellscape --
21 - 40: You find one of the town's many enormous sinkholes, clouded with smoke and smelling noxious. From the corner of your eye you see a black shape scuttling across the rim, but by the time you turn to see what it is it has disappeared down into the hole.
Taym was the third person through, and he didn't see fit to humor Ever's complaint, especially since there were no uniform coats handy for him to silently and witheringly gesture at.
"Ideally," he said, "there won't be any need for bossing around. Poke around, take some notes, get out."
The weather was pleasant but cloudy, a stark contrast to the general dismal desolation all around them: houses supported by brick columns where the neighboring buildings had been torn down, empty blocks, and, nearby, a gaping sinkhole with wisps of smoke rising out of it.
"We'll probably--" he said, but that was as far as he got, as a movement in the corner of his eye had him wheeling back around again.
"Shadowling?" he guessed, brow furrowing. "Or something close?" He assayed a tentative approach to the lip of the sinkhole to peer down it before deciding that this was decidedly unwise. The brief had glibly mentioned a teenage boy nearly falling to his death when an enormous sinkhole opened up and swallowed his backyard. Standing on the precipice of another was likely inviting danger and it reminded him, all too starkly, of the chasm in the desert where he'd earned his scar. He was stretching his neck distractedly when he returned to the group.
21 - 40: You find one of the town's many enormous sinkholes, clouded with smoke and smelling noxious. From the corner of your eye you see a black shape scuttling across the rim, but by the time you turn to see what it is it has disappeared down into the hole.
Peyton had seen it too, that darkness creeping at the corner of her vision, gone by the time she'd turn to investigate. Frowning, she trailed after Taym, a few steps behind, and watched on a little anxiously as he neared the edge of the sink hole. Smoke and heat rose up from within, and she didn't even want to think about what would happen to a person if they fell in.
It was, quite literally, a hoe to hell. Blazing glow and everything.
As Taym backed away, she scooted back towards Ever, hands slipping into the pockets of her knit jumper. "I can't believe anyone still bothers to live here." She wasn't so naive as to assume everyone had the means to moving from one house to another whenever they needed, but this seemed a little extreme.
Surely there was an insurance claim they could take advantage of. Hello Geico? Yeah, the coal mine under my house caught fire.
rejam
and be blue
and be blue rolled 1 100-sided dice:
64Total: 64 (1-100)
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 8:34 pm
Quote:
61 - 70: You find a smoking fissure in the earth, and inadvertently inhale a lungful. You are immediately beset by painful, terrifying hallucinations of twisted faces and the sensation that your skin or internal organs are on fire, burning abruptly and uncontrollably. The illusion is utterly realistic but fortunately short-lived: it passes within five or ten seconds.
"Are we sure they're just civilians?" Ever eased away as he asked it, just a few steps -- and as good humored as he'd been, he was still wary, now, struggling to put himself well into focus. He, at least, hadn't seen the strange shadows, and that was probably why he leaned in carefully over a split in the earth to peer down, uneasily --
As a smoker, that shouldn't have hurt so much. A breath in that left him coughing and then blanked his expression out, eyes going somewhat blank. Focused on something only he could see.
Now he knew what had left them terrified, shadowy faces that pressed up against his and breathed on him. With their breath, he could feel his organs melting and blazing, staggered from standing to kneeling, still dangerously close to that fissure.
If it was only ten seconds, they could say that. To Ever, it felt much longer, and even as it passed, he was left coughing reflexively, ashen pale.
Taym, remembering the hallucinogenic fog of the carnival grounds with Jordan and Bix and of the restort with Gale and Heidi and Peyton, yanked his scarf over his mouth to drag Ever back from the fissure as soon as he saw that expression cross his face.
"Whatever it is," he told him, "it isn't real. It's--"
The words died in his mouth. His grip on Ever's arm loosened, and he waved Peyton over to look at the young man standing where there'd been no young man before, calmly smoking a cigarette and eyeing Ever dispassionately before he was swallowed up, still placidly taking a drag as the earth opened under his feet.
"Did you see that?" he demanded of Peyton, wondering if he'd caught a lungful of whatever had left Ever with that look on his face, but there wasn't time for an answer. The stillness broke, a few cherry-bright embers spilling out from the lip of the crevice and skittering towards them enthusiastically and then, as Taym summoned Fiona to hand and let Ever go, an enormous coal-black claw, striated with a plasma grow where the fingers flexed, talons biting into the pavement as the thing heaved itself free.
Rejam rolled 1 10-sided dice:
6Total: 6 (1-10)
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 8:54 pm
Gracefully and unthinkingly, Taym performed a bit of on-the-fly triage: Peyton was both Sun division and more experienced; Ever was fairly fresh and Life besides. A sweep of the knife knocked the swipe of a talon aside.
Ever came out of one vision and into another: blinking up at Taym, the shadow cast across him, and then beyond to the monstrosity clawing its way out of the earth. At least his reflexes were fairly quick, his weapon in hand in only a second, scrambling to his feet and back a few steps --
Of course, that took him somewhat out of Taym's reach, and while he swung blindly, a claw caught him across the side, driving him back another step. Heart hammering, Ever spun to his put his back to Taym, to make sure there wasn't more danger from behind.
Peyton's shirt came up, pressed over nose and mouth as she moved forward. Ready to grab Ever back, but Taym beat her too it. "Hey, are you okay?" He'd looked so vacant, and then suddenly not. Fixated on things that didn't seem to be there. "s**t. Snap out of it, Ever." She remembered the fog, too.
She hovered close, enough that Ever could lean against her legs while he gathered his wits, but he'd only get a handful of minutes between one hoodie and the next. Taym called for he attention, and she looked up, following his line of sight, and stared. "Hey don't stand so cl- s**t!" She was moving before even realizing it as the young man fell, but skidded to a stop before she reached the lip, quickly back peddling as an ember riddled claw dug into the pavement near her feet.
Belatedly, as she summoned Warrick, she called back over her shoulder to answer Ever's previous question. "No, I don't think they're all normal." At least not this one.
Taym moved to defend Ever, slashing with Fiona. It was a smart choice, and Peyton gave him a small nod before snapping into action herself.
One large claw came sweeping for her, and she jerked away from it, dodging most of the strike, but took a hit to the stomach before bringing both curved daggers down to drive hilt deep into that monsterous wrist.
Taym, dividing his attention evenly between watching Ever's back and getting a swipe in where he could, was not barking orders. He was not all taut nervous energy channeled into irrational anger. For once, he seemed calm, even as he took advantage of an opening and only managed a glancing strike.
Survey Mission 6C
