I'm going to take some liberties on this wrap-up turn. If I have your character doing something that you absolutely wouldn't do, let me know and I will make the necessary changes.
On phase 12, Deth does a move through attack on the wall of the house, easily breaking through. While Jack and Midnight work on stopping their bleeding, Omen curses and, with a quick "sorry" to Jack and Midnight, begins another wormhole to the Ricket's house. However, he will not arrive until phase 3. He does not appear to be as badly hurt as Jack or Midnight.
As Omen looks into the house, he sees Deth tearing through it looking for the Rickets. He is in a hurry and does not let walls or other intervening barriers slow him down. He rips the house apart looking for the Rickets but does not find them. Then he takes a few lunging steps through the east wall of the house and hurls himself into the air heading east towards the town. As he is in the air, the looks around in all directions. He lands over half a kilometer away, takes a few more steps and continues his progress towards town.
You see no further sign of Inchworm. He has apparently bugged out.
By this time, Jack and Midnight have managed to stop their bleeding and bandage their wounds.
At about this time, Kyle arrives and announces that the Rickets are safe with Dalag and Brendan and suggests that we quickly get out of here. Noting some injuries among the group, Kyle says that he can teleport everyone, one at a time, to the camp. Kyle notices some slightly negative reactions to this, but quickly assures everyone that his teleportation is completely safe. He has memorized the location of Dalag's camp and spends a little memorizing this location as well. Then he proceeds to ferry people back and forth. After each trip, he is out of breath and spends a little time recovering before transporting the next person. Even so, it does not take more than a couple of minutes before the entire team is reassembled at Dalag's camp. Professor and Mrs. Ricket are both there. Both look a bit bewildered by this latest turn of events.
GM: You are about 10 km from the Ricket's house. You have an unconscious Focus that you can either leave behind at the Ricket's house or bring with you to Dalag's camp. Let me know what you want to do next.
JACK: I like option #3, none of the above. Let's bring him to one of our previously established rendezvoux points, where he cannot be a threat to Dalag or easily found by the enemy, for some interrogations and/or scans.
GM: Let me know where you are going to take him and how your are going to get him there.
KYLE: Of course Kyle can only go between the Rickets house and the rendezvous point where the Rickets are right now. Those are the places that he has memorized.
SURGE: I'm not sure I understand what you are going after. We've already moved once to a new spot, 10 km from the Rickets' house. I guess I'm a bit fuzzy on our other locations. We have Dalag's camp, our base camp and PEBBLE. It seems that our current location is fine for our intentions with Focus. It seems that here is the place to do the mind scan while he's out.
SURGE: How far can Kyle teleport them? Can he reach Dalag's camp from here? If so we may want to have a few of us move on with the Rickets while a couple of us stay behind to finish with Focus. Since it sounds like a few turns would go by before he could take more of us that would be the way to go. If he can't then we'd want to move in stages. Surge is happy to fly, carrying someone. He can move fairly quickly (68" NCM x 4 SPD per turn or 163kph).
KYLE: Yes, he can. And he has both locations memorized. It takes about a minute between trips for him to properly recharge. And actually, he doesn't look particularly tired after the trips. His personal END stays high; it's the END Reserve that needs recharging. :-) I can take one person easily, three with a little effort.
SURGE: So have these people go: Surge, Midnight, Kyle, Vamperina, Rickets. Stay behind: Jack, Omen, Mek
SURGE: I would envision that the second group would only be delayed a few minutes at most. I would also suggest we just leave Focus as is once we're done with some scans. He'll wake up soon enough and undoubtedly hook up with his teammates shortly thereafter.
JACK: No, actually the spot 10km from the Rickets' house _IS_ Dalag's camp. I was looking for another spot some distance (not necessarily a full 10km from the Rickets' house, but at least 1km) away, under cover, that we could do our scans of Focus, without bringing him anywhere near Dalag's camp. Right now AFAIK we basically are talking outside the Rickets' house briefly, which is one of the anchor points of Kyle's long range teleportation. The other anchor is Dalag's camp, it would seem.
JACK: If Mek wants to fly cover overhead, I will carry Focus away with Omen (either carrying him or letting him teleport himself, I won't risk another long
distance wormhole again this soon after the last one). Vamperina would be a good addition for her danger sense, but I will leave that up to her, she may think keeping the Rickets safe is more important right now. We can move off about 1km under the trees and Omen can conduct his mental scans, either en route if possible or once we've arrived, keeping a low profile from further detection, and once done we'll rejoin you at Dalag's camp. If Kyle can make that easier by coming with us and establishing a new anchor point, so much the better.
KYLE: He can come along if you want. He'll also suggest that a dimensional hop would actually be the quickest (and safest) way to move to a new location. And he'll assure you that it's perfectly safe, even if he has to do it blind. It's really just a matter of seeing the dimensional shadows while you're transporting, figuring out how those shadows correspond to the real world, and adjusting your target on the fly if the shadow represents solid matter. It's usually no more than a fifth or sixth order differential equation that you have to solve in real time. And he's been doing that since he was twelve.
JACK: I would be tempted to leave a note tacked on Focus's chest for him to find when he wakes up, but I'm not even sure what I would say, we don't even know any of their names, let alone why they thought we owed them our ship.
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SURGE: Surge discusses privately with the group away from the Rickets. "I would like to know more about these three by interrogating this guy. But we'd need to work quickly as I'm sure Mr. Jumper will be back and with reinforcements. I would be opposed to taking him to Dalag's camp as they might be able to hone in on it and follow. I can scan him for any electronic devices but I suspect that mutant abilities of tracking would be more likely than electronic. Given how important this part of the mission is we don't want to risk it by wasting time or the element of surprise."
JACK: It's easily possible that his teammates can track him somehow, and that risk multiplies if we allow him to regain consciousness. I say we bring him to a dump site, do whatever mental scanning we can do while unconscious, and if we haven't gotten enough answers to be willing to leave him there, then we can discuss waking him up. I definitely do not want him to be at our base camp, or Dalag's camp, or bring any risk to anyone not in the main group, especially the Rickets.
SURGE: "Vareq, can you quickly scan his mind to see what he knows? Or should we just get the heck out of here?"
JACK: "Let's move him first, then do some scans. I want Vareq to have whatever time he thinks he needs, but he knows that we're in a rush, so I'll trust his judgement about how long to take, and how deep to dig.
SURGE (OOC): Does Focus have any electronics that my EM sense picks up?
GM: You do not detect any EM emissions from Focus.
MEK: Mek says loudly, over the talk, "I'm going up to keep watch and get away from this chatter. Decide what you want to do and I'll cover your move. I don't want to be surprised again. Oh, and hi there Ricketts. Name's Cpl. Meday. Bye." He'll zip down to full shrink and zip up in the air.
MEK: He's wearing his goggles, comm, and carrying his service rifle. Since he's in uniform, there's not much sense in doing the intro any other way. The rifle is not in the equipment pool.
MIDNIGHT: No changes to his actions...not bleeding is top priority. He'll wave off any further medical help (not wanting to be a burden to the group), and he agrees with Surge that bringing Focus isn't worth the hassle. Getting off planet ASAP should be our top priority.
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GM: I think there is some confusion about where your group currently is. If you do not want to take Focus to Dalag's Camp, which is where Kyle took the Rickets, then this whole discussion his happening at the Ricket's house. If that's the case, then I need to know that. I had assumed that you would want to depart there quickly before Deth could return with any reinforcements. We are no longer in combat so conversations do actually take time now.
GM: If you accepted Kyle's teleportation, then you are at Dalag's Camp with the Rickets and you either left Focus behind or brought him with you. Another option is that you took Focus some other place and, if so, I need to know where you took him and how you got there. Kyle has indicated that he has Dalag's Camp and the Ricket's House memorized and can safely teleport between the two. Jack has indicated a preference to take Focus about a km away and do any additional scans/questioning there. Surge has indicated that Jack, Omen and Mek stay with Focus to question him while the rest go on the Dalag's Camp.
GM: If I had to put this all together, then Kyle teleported Vamperina, Midnight, Surge and himself to Dalag's Camp while Omen, Jack and Mek carried Focus to a location about a km away into the woods but at least half a kilometer away from the original battle site where Deth attacked you. Is this where I should assume you are currently at?
GM: BTW, Surge did not detect any EM emissions from Focus.
MEK: While I wasn't exactly sure where we were on the map, or where all these camps and caches are, I was under the impression that we had moved away from the Rickett's house. Or what was left of it. As long as teleporting isn't in Mek's travel plans, he'll go and scout wherever we are. His job, as he sees it, is to prevent another surprise attack from Deth and his friends. |