Aeon Campaign S3E12 – Lost in Spaaaace (and time)
Dramatis Personae
- The Commander (Doug) – telekinetic super-soldier with a really angry dog (Yukio). The dog is a powerful ally (250-300 points) and very intelligent and very, very aggressive.
The Rat Queen (Emily) – brick with super-perception; made of actual rats- Zephyr (Merlin) – Real name Murui; Shaolin Kung Fu expert and super-speedster.
- Eamon Finnegan (Kyle) – smooth talking gravity-master; Ultimate Fighting Lawyer, to borrow a phrase.
- Ezekiel (Christian) – Techno Master, Genius, Esper, Super Archer
- Katana (NPC) – Will be The Commander’s wife one day. She knows it to be true.
Four Navy SEALSGalatea – our newly-made Ultron; first name Natalie.
Waking up is hard to do
When last we left our heroes, we’d blacked out and crash landed somewhere. Or vice versa.
We roll for HT to see who wakes up first, and start the crits. The Commander wakes up first. He’s in free fall. The front of the plane – all of it – is missing. He wakes up Eamon lickety split, so we can try a telekinetic parachute.
Eamon does gravity sense to try and figure out where we are relative to the ground. We’re at 5,990 feet above ground level. He kicks on Control Gravity, and can affect 10yds.
The Commander tries to stunt by projecting his Catfall ability on the plane. This makes it easier for Eamon to do his thing. In fact, he’s not needed at all, and Eamon pulls Katana, who was dangling by a strap, back into the plane. He notes that her arm and leg looks terrible, a bruises mess.
He TK’s her into the seat and buckles it.
About 4,000 feet later, we start falling. Very fast. My effect is still there, but it seems to be being negated. Eamon can’t summon his powers either. The Commander moves around and is jumpmaster – he crits the roll to use the 4,000 feet of fall time to stuff people into parachutes, rigs a static line, and has folks jumps out of a (really no longer) perfectly good airplane. Actually, more like a back half of a broken fuselage, but that’s not nearly as funny.
We are basically parachuting (and we have parafoils) into a power-free zone, though. We strap the KO’d people onto ourselves (The Commander reluctantly straps Katana to himself) and land in a cold, mountainous valley with an Alpine forest close by.
Yukio is nowhere to be seen.
We’re in the middle of a basin. Zephyr hits the plane wreckage for survival gear, food, potential weapons, signaling devices. We do a bit of recall, and no one remembers seeing any huts, fires, or any sign of civilization. It’s cold, and getting colder, but we have our super environmental suits on, so we’re protected for now. They’re battery operated so we’re still good.
We find a survival kit, a flare gun, some food, and about $1,000 worth of gear. We check GPS (no signal) and we’re definitely out of area. Zephyr checks to see if he can Detect Life (a magic ability) to find the rest of us. Chi sense works, but it being interfered with.
Eamon crits (again already) on Katana to see the extent and type of her injuries. She’s looking pretty feral when she wakes up, grabs Eamon by the throat. She has a severe concussion, possibly a subdural brain bleed, and (to borrow a Harry Potter-ism), she’s been Splinched.
Zephyr tries to help with the bleed, and pulls a Gilderoy Lockhart until he spends karma to control the bleed.
Looking around, we pretty clearly are in the Arctic, and very likely were forcibly teleported elsewhere. We think we might be in Canada . . . but the stars are not where we’re supposed to be. They’re not chronologically where they should be either.
Zephyr, though, has Chronolocation . . . so he knows exactly WHEN we are. Or can figure it out. We’re exactly 46 years into the future. Powers are reduced. GPS constellation is no longer functioning.
Ooo. We’re post-apoc, likely.
We check back on Katana. We decide no one attacked her, she sorta did it to herself.
We are in an area with either messed up Kyberian energy, or something.
Oh, and we finally realize Galatea and my SEALs were in the front half of the plane. We send Zephyr out at super-speed for firewood, and establish that our first goal is to set up a survival situation. We start a fire. We melt and boil snow. We turn the broken fuselage of the aircraft into an igloo. Our food situation is basically 12 MREs at 1,250 kcal per MRE. Five of us. Maybe 2.5 days worth.
We hit survival mode pretty hard. The Commander’s natural non-super ST is 15 (half his usual value). He’s tired – very tired – but we have a good three days worth of firewood.
The wind picks up at night, and it gets very, very cold at night. When we wake up at night, we’re down 1FP and take one point of Long Term Fatigue. We’re sitting at just under -60F. Cold cold cold. Only about -20F during the day.
We keep watch, but we’ve got a huge storm coming in. We’ve got may be 14 hours until major snowpocalypse. Like even Minnesotans might think “wow, that’s a bunch of snow.”
Ezekiel makes snowshoes, and does it well enough that they don’t count as improvised equipment.
And Katana starts having a seizure. Between the Commander’s physician and spending Karma on a magic spell, we heal her up. She’s still unconscious, but it’s a natural unconsciousness, rather than coma or seizure. So progress.
Zephyr and The Commander go on recon to see if we can find the best direction to find a shelter that won’t kill us when the giant storm hits. Ezekiel is making us a kite with one of the parachutes. Eamon keeps watch over Katana, and also digs deep to see if he can use his powers at all. He can’t.
There’s a ton of electromagnetic interference, though – but Ezekiel gets radios to work. And as we go on recon, The Commander finds an old bomb shelter. And Zephyr finds a skeleton, clothed in buckskins. The bones have been gnawed on, and the head is missing. There’s a necklace on the guy, a flint and steel, and a few knives. The necklace is in the shape of a stylized heart, with a name, birthdate, and a few other numbers. The knife is a good knife, but clearly made from improv material.
We shift our base camp, making a trio of slings and logs and pine needles as skis. One for Katana, one for the firewood, one for the stuff we took from the wreckage. The Commander manages to pick the lock of the bunker, then we all beat feet to get the stuff to the bomb shelter.
Zephyr and The Commander search the shelter. We have night vision, so the -9 penalty is mitigated a bit. We climb down into a 10×10 staging area, and pause to sense Chi. Naturally Zephyr crit fails. He tries something again, and fails again.
We see something move, fast, that doesn’t register on thermals. The Commander orders everyone into the hole. Naturally we can’t just act, we have to talk about it for ever.
We finally get inside, and close the hatch. We hear something that sounds like talons scraping across the metal.
We hear a woman from outside say “There’s something out here! Please! Help!”
Yeah, right. Chiquita didn’t show up on thermals, but is now calling for help?
We hear the sound of someone being eviscerated above us. The Commander isn’t buyin’ it.
Ezekiel tries to re-lock the door. He burns karma like it’s survival fuel to ensure it happens.
Something pulls on the hatch; we see the hinges strain, but hold.
We sick ‘Zeke on the lower door. We need to get down through the second hatch, but we’re also concerned about what’s down “in the dungeon.”
We “check for traps,” between Zeke and Zephyr. We bypass a keycard lock, and in a few minutes, we finally open up the door. The air inside is stale, but not rank. Excellent.
There’s a staircase going down. We ask if the hallway is exactly 10′ wide. It’s not. We’re disappointed.
And at the bottom of the doorway, there’s another door. There’s a cleanroom-style, or decontamination style, room. The same bypass works for this room too.
We’re in a hallway. There are no more hatches, but this is a military-style bunker. Some debris in the hallway. This is clearly some sort of military installation. We find a body wearing a lab coat over a US military uniform, with a gun in one hand and a note in the other. It looks like the guy committed suicide. There’s a patch on his shoulder that says “Project Crucible.”
The note says “I’m sorry.”
We find two more bodies as we search, and we deduce that the suicide guy killed the two bodies, by surprise, and leaned them gently against the wall. We also find a keycard, and deduce that there’s some sort of power, because the door locks still work. We suspect an RTG or solar power.
*********
We end there.
If you are literally falling out of the sky in half a plane? I'm pretty sure that you aren't allowed to use the "jumping out of a perfectly good airplane" line any more.
I think that's in incredibly fair point
[Tony Stark voice] …Agreed. [/Tony Stark voice]