Survey Mission 6B Location: Elkmont, TN (United States) Images:: x, x, x General debriefing: In the rural outskirts of Elkmont, among the Smoky Mountains, there is a swath of land occupied by abandoned frontier cabins as well as some more modern abandoned homes. Local lover's lane legend of "The Goat Man" has recently spiked and been accompanied by some isolated substantial reports of suspicious activity after nightfall. This would ordinarily be deprioritized, but the recent decision of the National Park Service to catalog the abandoned cabins and decide which will be destroyed and which preserved necessitates expedited investigations.
Due to the distance between cabins and the wooded terrain, two civilian ATVs will be supplied. Although the area is abandoned, the possibility of the ATVs drawing attention necessitates civilian clothing. Interference is unlikely, but if you are caught by local authorities, have a cover story of being tourists exploring out of bounds due to the local ghost stories. * 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 6B. 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- 10: The dilapidated one-room cabin you investigate appears to be empty of anything of interest. You turn to go through the single door, and when you step back into the darkness outside--you find yourself in the room you just left, as though you'd just stepped through the door in the other direction. A second attempt to leave is uneventful, and puts you outside as expected. 11 - 20: A cabin is already occupied by a skinny stray dog. It is not vicious but it is cringing and terrified, and if you attempt to catch it it will run outside and disappear into the trees. The windows and doors of the cabin were all closed when you approached. 21 - 40: The cabin here is reduced to a chimney and some foundation stones, but a rickety barn still stands. Should you choose to investigate, see below.
The barn appears, despite the general disrepair, to have been used recently for something. You find the following things in a row: an empty plastic container of the kind used to transport small animals, a small plastic kennel, a large crate of the sort used to house a dog (there is a very worn leather collar hanging on the corner), a pen with a dirt floor covered in the hoofprints of a goat or sheep, a stall full of fresh hay and the droppings of either a cow or a horse, and finally, a stall with an old farmer's jacket hung from the corner and a coil of rope in the center, cut cleanly through. There is, in the back of the barn, an old, crumbling table tilted slightly upwards, scored with a deep groove that is stained a dark reddish-brown.
41 - 50: You pass through a clearing. The distant trees silhouetted against the sky toss gently back and forth. It's quite lovely, really, until you realize that there is no wind. 51 - 60: A cabin with broken-in windows yields a plethora of graffiti. Most of it is unremarkable, but you find a heart with an arrow through it carved onto a crumbling mantlepiece and realize that the names inside of it are yours and your mission partners'. 61 - 70: You see very distinctly, passing through a close cluster of trees, the white shape of what at first appears to be a dog. Drawing up closer, it appears to be a stray goat, walking in a purposeful straight line directly away from you. Should you attempt to follow it, you will find that it always somehow manages to remain approximately twenty feet ahead of you despite never changing its speed, before it enters a copse and disappears entirely. It leaves no footprints. 71 - 80: You find what appears to be the remains of some squatters' party: empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, a cluster of dusty blankets, and some blurry, badly-exposed polaroids of partying twenty-somethings in a loose stack. In the background of about a third of these is the face of a handsome, bearded, but inexplicably strange-looking man that is always perfectly in focus and always staring at the camera. The final photo at the bottom of the stack was taken from the front door of the cabin: it depicts you, examining the photos. 81- 100: BOSS ENCOUNTER: - You load up onto the ATV to set off to the next cabin, but its engine sputters and dies in classic horror movie fashion halfway to the next destination, near a small tree. The tree shifts in a wind that you do not feel, and you realize that it is no tree at all, but a writhing shape something like a tree and something like the thrashing legs of a dozen goats. It immediately attacks. Occasionally you see in your peripheral vision the stock-still shape of a handsome, bearded, but inexplicably odd-looking man dressed in jeans and flannel, his hands in his pockets. As soon as you attempt to focus on him you find that he is no longer there.
- BOSS MECHANICS: This boss has 100 HP. Every time you attack it (following the general battle rules), you TAKE 8 damage. It appears by turns to bite you with heavily-toothed mouths on the ends of branches and to assault you with thrashing hooves. If no team member is defending you, you may feel a blow to your FEAR shield from behind or off to the side--only to find nothing there. 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: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:29 pm
Harrison popped a wad of gum, looking over the mission summary. Why he'd been commissioned for this particular babysitting duty, he couldn't say. The two he was watching were flight risks, but it wasn't like they were being sent somewhere with working phones. Or reception. Or people.
Still, he guessed it was the kind of place that made for an okay test run.
"To be clear," Harrison said first off, handing over the folder to Roswell, "If you bolt, I'm not the one that'll be getting in trouble. You'll just get dead. And if you don't get dead soon enough, they'll send someone over to kill you. When it's treason, the weapons get broke too. It's not a place you want to be."
Harrison smiled.
"So, pleasantries out of the way, either of you even fought against anything yet?"
Roswell took the file, looking over the campsite, which he was familiar with. They hadn't been there before, but he'd reviewed the location for one of Lysander's getaways. Lysander usually preferred group activity all-expenses-covered spiritual expedition sort of trips.
After all, what would Lysander and Roswell do in a secluded cabin, alone, for...who knew how many weeks?
"Look, sir," Roswell said, handing over the pictures because it was the only portion Lysander would be interested in, "It's Elkmont. You remember, we'd considered one of the wilderness retreat packages. Judging from the potential dangers outlined in this report..." Roswell lifted an eyebrow.
"Forgive me. I'm still adjusting." He tried to say it, and managed to force out a terse, "Goat Man?"
Toshihiko Two
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Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:46 pm
Lysander was excited about a mission, he'd heard about them but he'd never really been on an organised one. As always he relied pretty much exclusively on Roswell to keep him informed.
The pictures were really lovely and he did remember looking them up before when they were hunting for group retreats. He even remembered they'd passed up on the ones in Elkmont simply because it didn't look as if there was enough to do compared to the other places.
There'd be stuff to do now though, he guessed.
Harrison was certainly a figure to behold, muscular, blonde and with not a scrap of shame or fashion sense anywhere in sight. He looked strong and capable though and reminded him of one of the bodyguards his family was often accompanied by.
"I fought Roswell." he said helpfully.
"I think if I can fight Ros I could fight a goat." and he laughed. "Says we need to dress civilian. Do we get denims and flannel as standard?"
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:59 pm
"Yeah, because that's all they wear in Tennessee. Flannel and no shoes. What you've got on is fine. You two been through a portal, even?" Harrison asked.
Roswell bristled, handing the report back to Harrison.
"We have," he said, "so long as this isn't an elaborate plan to leave us somewhere remote."
Harrison took the reports and tucked them away. "Nope. I'll be escorting you both, so don't worry about that any. And yes, goats. Just be grateful it's not ******** zombies."
The portal made a lot of swirly, magical, buzzy noises.
"Well," Harrison said, "If you're both done with the briefing. It's not getting any more transporty."
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Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 5:15 pm
Lysander looked a little sceptical at the idea of wearing what they had on to a mission but didn't argue. Normally he wore things that could be scuffed up when he went on trips. When he was on retreats he'd always dressed almost unrecognisably from usual, strung with his favourite gems and talismans and bordering scruffy. It was only Roswell's fashion efforts which kept him from being awkward."I went through a portal." Lysander said grimly. "In the Doctor's office. We almost got abandoned, if it wasn't for the spa we found."
He moved towards the portal with a sigh, before he hesitated and looked anxiously back at Harrison. "Wait, zombies?"
"We'll be all right, right?"
Toshihiko Two
Toshihiko Two rolled 1 100-sided dice:
64Total: 64 (1-100)
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 5:29 pm
"No promises, but that's my other job. I'm from Moon Division. So I'm not particularly expecting any contributions to your personal safety or my own well-being on your end, but I'll do what I can to get you back home."
Harrison moved to push Lysander on through, but Roswell intercepted him, looking a thousand times more bristly than before.
"Come on, sir," he said, and all three of them arrived to the cool beginnings of autumn weather, the leaves just starting to turn, and a cabin that looked empty and overgrown.
Quote:
61 - 70: You see very distinctly, passing through a close cluster of trees, the white shape of what at first appears to be a dog. Drawing up closer, it appears to be a stray goat, walking in a purposeful straight line directly away from you. Should you attempt to follow it, you will find that it always somehow manages to remain approximately twenty feet ahead of you despite never changing its speed, before it enters a copse and disappears entirely. It leaves no footprints.
Almost immediately, Harrison spotted a goat wandering down the trail.
"Welp," Harrison said, "Mystery solved. We can all pack it up."
Lysander couldn't imagine why anyone would choose to be in Moon Division and be responsible for helping people out, but he didn't say that to their new Best Friend because he did actually want to get back in one piece. Still, he found himself a little boggled by the whole concept. He was certainly not a Moon sort of hunter.
He gave Harrison an oblivious and trusting sort of look as he was guided to the portal and through it, immediately looking around them with wonder at the trees and the cabin. He took a deep breath.
"There are birds!" he said, as if finding some sound he'd long forgotten on the island, everything seeming louder, as if someone had taken off a muffler on the world itself.
When the goat came and went, he pointed at it. It went away though all too soon.
"Shouldn't we have killed that goat? Isn't that what we were looking for? I mean maybe it's a man under the full moon."
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 5:57 pm
"I thought you liked animals," Harrison said. "Suddenly we're out here and you want to stick a sword in everything that moves? They're birds. It's a goat. Don't bother the goats, unless they're weird goats."
Roswell did not seem enthusiastic at all.
"Goatman," he repeated. "So this is it. This is the whole reason we were signed into indentured servitude."
He went over himself to open the door of the cabin, which was locked.
Roswell checked the windows, too. It was almost too dusty to see, but he caught the flicker of movement.
Inside, there was a shaking, upset stray. Ribs poked through its chest. The cabin looked otherwise unoccupied.
"There's a dog in there. It looks hungry. Is this what people do? Just...leave their animals, in the mountains?"
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Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:06 pm
"How do you know it's not a weird goat? Didn't we come here to find weird things?" He was quite adamant they had solved the mystery only to let their target walk away, it was pretty distressing. "I'm just trying to do a good job here, how do we know if something is weird?"
If it was weird Deus probably would have already recruited it.
He joined Roswell in the cabin, moving carefully through the dust and mess. When he saw the dog his heart climbed up into his chest and any semblance of indifference melted away in the face of the crouching terrified animal.
"I guess they do." he said. "I don't think the goat thing is the monster here, whoever locked this guy up is."
He crouched to look at the dog and trying to get a look at it, it spooked, making a break for the door and running out into the forest. He felt terrible.
"s**t." he said, looking out after it, crestfallen. "That was my fault. I should have shut the door."
Toshihiko Two rolled 0-sided dice:
Total: 0 (-0)
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:11 pm
Harrison stood by as it bolted.
"You couldn't take it back, anyhow," he said. "Regular animals get made weird by the Fear, and then they don't make it. Same thing as babies."
Roswell, too, was upset by this turn of events, but more that Lysander was upset.
"It's not your fault, sir," he said.
Harrison squinted at them next.
"Did you two get the baby lecture, yet?"
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Toshihiko Two rolled 1 100-sided dice:
30Total: 30 (1-100)
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Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:12 pm
above
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:16 pm
Lysander looked absolutely horrified at this information. It was something he knew yes but it wasn't something he'd actually thought about in a practical sense. The idea that there was no way to save animals or bring them back to the island was a finality that was always hard to process for him. Horses were part of his life and the idea that they certainly couldn't be ever again was difficult to deal with.
He gave Ros a very sad look and nodded before raising a brow at Harrison.
"Well, yeah. I read the stuff, pamphlets and whatever. Have to say the island has a really weird sexual health program. I've heard about the sex is sinful angle but never the sex will give you a nightmare baby one."
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Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:18 pm
"Same principle," Harrison said, "The Fear gets into it and messes it up. What we've got going is a stabilized situation, but other creatures don't have the same kind of protection."
Harrison went over to the side of the cabin, pushing out some ATVs.
"You both know how to drive?"
Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2017 4:43 pm
Lysander's expression positively lit up at the idea of getting to drive, it was almost as good as being told he'd be getting to horseback. "I'm a really good driver." he said brightly. "Lets go find some more cabins."
He tried not to think too hard about the idea of mutated monstrous babies growing prompted by fear in their bodies. Some things were best not to dwell on.
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Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2017 5:30 pm
"You're an excellent driver, sir," Roswell said affectionately, tamping down on the urge to rev the engine. They were supposed to be discreet. Still, he preferred having the purr of an engine between his knees than the testy bulk of a horse.
"Not always testy," Gil protested, affronted.
Not you, you've been perfectly civil, Roswell thought back.
The vehicle mounted the dirt road satisfyingly.
"I know we're chasing ghosts, but it feels...very good to be outside and out of the rain."
Survey Mission 6B
