2014.11.09 Red Alert III

Red Alert III
The team discerns the cause of the town's abandonment and hears of their true enemy.
IC Date	Stardate 27412.1
IC Time	Nightfall.
Players	Priest, Nagi, Monitor Y-91, Anne, Velok (NPC Issius)
Location	The Holy Roman Empire, Franconia.
Spheres	Technocracy

The cold October night sends a chill wind through the air, but the night itself is dry and clear. Despite being away from the hustle and noise of modern life, the night is far from quiet. Crickets chirp and frogs call. The relative still, peaceful quiet of the nearly abandoned town is flooded with the sounds of other animal life.

Except of course here. Disabled and bound is a man, barely slipping in and out of consciousness.

"Want me to wake him?" rumbled the low, reverberating, baritone of the massive Nacht. Of course for those who can see through the illusion, it's just Nagi, in her safety orange and block skinsuit standing nearby Priest. Granted the mental ilusion is so detailed, Nacht even has a bit of that manly musk to him which Nagi herself would never be caught smelling like. Priest takes the torch off to the side, setting it down he draws a blade and puts it into the fire "Sure, lets see if he is inclined to talk now."

Grounding the tip of the massive Zweihander right beside the half-conscious man, Nacht's blade has a gem on th ehilt that glitters with light. The man's eyes open slowly before squeezing shut again at the light. "Whawhyrmi?" Priest crouches down infront of the man as he wakes up "Ah! Good morning, we'll evening as it still happens. Shame you didn't just answer me the first time my friend, now I need to resort to some rather unpleasent business." He motions over to the knife sitting in the fire "I'll ask you some questions and you'll answer them. If you're lieing I cut off a finger and cauterize the wound."

Simply looming in th ebackground, blade grounded, Nacht presents an imposing presence. If a quiet one for the time being.

The man looks at Priest in confusion at first. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, obviously greatly regretting that action as his lips pull back into a grimace. Slowly he processes the words and his eyes open again locking onto Priest in complete terror. One pupil noticibly larger than the other. "Waiwaiwai I don pleesh donf..." says, as loudly as he can manage... which isn't much and certainly doesn't carry far in the peaceful music of the night playing around them.

Monitor Y-91 comes up over the comm... Maybe he has no idea what they're doing right now, but eh. "Forward scouting completed. I have an intel briefing awaiting you all at the bridge, shoreparty. Monitor out." and then the comm goes silent again, because boots on the ground, and blah blah blah.

Priest rocks back on his heels and gives a sorrowful nod "Well I really don't want to. So you'll just need to answer my questions alright?"

The man nods quickly in response ot the statement. His eyes roll into the back of his head for a moment and his body goes limp for half a second before adrenaline knocks him back into consciousness.

The man nods quickly in response ot the statement. His eyes roll into the back of his head for a moment and his body goes limp for half a second before adrenaline knocks him back into consciousness.

Ensign Issius, reporting for duty! Or more, he's been here the whole time, just pretty silent. He's taken up perch on guard duty, making sure that their capture of the lone guard is actually going unnoticed. He's keeping his eyes wide open, watching for alarms to suddenly go off and people to suddenly become very interested as to missing men.

Priest gives a nod of his head "Good, good. Lets start with something easy shall we? Tell me your name." he drums his fingers on his thigh as he stays crouched there.

The captive blinks for several seconds. A clear OH SHIT look on his face. Funny how that can show up without needing to understand any language. "Ba-Bashun!" he cries.

Priest scratches at his chin, watching the man with a cold detachment "Good. Well Alright Bashun, my name is James. We can be friends right Bashun? I don't hurt my friends."

"Frenz... riighrendz lesh be frendz pleesh donf cut finrs." the man wimpers, not even bothering to fight teh restraints at this point. He doesn't look to any of the others, the only one that exists for him is Priest.

Priest gives a creepy smile, his face completely devoid of any emotion "Correct, friends don't cut off friend's fingers. So Bashun, where are all the people in this town? It looks pretty empty, but big enough for far more."

Issius shifts off the rock he was resting on, his head tilting for a moment as he stares off towards the little village. He presses himself up and keeps staring off towards one of the houses. His eyes fall back to peer off at Priest and Nagi, but for the moment he just waits and watches.

For her part, Nagi is standing silent sentinel. Massive blade at ready, tip grounded... well, you see a massive norse warrior in dully glaming war torn armor standing there instead of her. But it's her. She doesn't want any surprises. The captive blinks a few times trying to keep his focus. "Wh-where everyone?" he slurrs. "I don... where ish here?"

Priest tsks a bit and shakes his head "Do you not know the name of the town you're a guard for. Shame Bashun I thought we were friends."

The bound man squeezes his eyes shut. "Guard? I..." he shakes his head again trying to push some cobwebs out of his head. "Hammelshburg? Ish Hammelshburg righ?"

Priest rolls his shoulders up in a shrug "I do not know, thats why I'm asking you. So where is everyone then?"

He closes his eyes for a minute. "Souf... go souf. Safer."

Monitor Y-91 comes up over the radio again. "So, while you guys play beat around the bush with the comatose patient... I got some intel that a coven of 'witches' at Karlstadt to the south have taken over the city. Call themselves the 'Seven' or whatever. Bridge looks clear, shouldn't be too hard to blow up with the right material."

Priest nods a bit at the sound in his head "Ah perfect! Well Bashun. You continue to do a good job. By the by, does this town have a supply of gunpowder?"

"I would suggest we move, then," comes Nagi's soft alto over the com. "But I am awaiting orders." Her voice remains calm, for th emost part devoid of emotion. She's in her 'sone'.

The man shakes his head. "No. Jush wine?" he almost seems to ask that, looking around he notices that yes, there are vinyards. Yes there should be wine. He pauses and nods eagerly, the grimace from the pain returnign to his face. "Oil! We have oil. For lampsh. On a wagon. Ca-can... can that work?"

Priest nods a bit "It may indeed." he rises up and dusts off his hands. He turns over to Nacht, completely ignoring Bashun now "Right then, to the south, we'll see of these "witches"

The massive hulk of a nordic warrior rumbles in that deep baritone, "You want me to speed up our progress, or are we just going to force march it at normal foot speeds?"

Issius stands up and walks back towards the main group, reaching up to listen to Monitor in his ear and nodding. The man pats his outfit, making sure his weapon is still there as he steps up next to Gigantor. "I'm ready for orders." He says without a hint of nervousness, to both Nagi and Priest.

The man just stays silent staring hopefully at Priest as the others talk.

Priest brushes at his chin in thought "Speed our progess." He glances down over to Bashun "Oh, I quite forgot you were there. You're dismissed, and you never saw us, Remember we're still friends."

The man nods slowly before just laying over on his side. "If... if you don mind jush gon to lay here..." he says closing his eyes away from teh torch.

Monitor Y-91 comes back over the comms. "Standing by at the bridge." Because morally questionable AI on the ground is a GOOD thing. "Prepared for orders." Since he's on the ground, order of precedence with orders... Shore party is in charge.

A middle aged man stands before you at around 5'11". His hair is short and brown, worn in a bit of a scattered manner above a pair of dark brown eyes. He looks to be in his early thirties, although he appears to be more fit than the usual of his age. On his face are a set of thin clear glasses, and a bit of stubble scatters his face. He seems unusually calm in most situations.

On his body he wears a black T-shirt tucked into a pair of thick light tan cargo pants. On his shoulders he wears a fatigue jacket of the same color of the pants, and his feet are capped in black combat boots. He seems fairly quiet and reserved, mostly focused on examining things around him for the most part.

What you see on the monitors? Nagi's Nano-mesh is glowing with golden information pathways, capillaries of light that pick out circuitboards of luminous photons pulsing through her body. Even her skinsuit does not diminish the glow. Th eprimal energy welling up within her would monitor to have a 98 percent chance of incurring the Paradox Effect dirtside. But she is a deep space combat unit, she seems comfortable enough in alien environments. The blade she holds has kanji flowing down its entire flat, Matrix-like, base encoding for a differential equation for time itself.

And then after a moment of just standing there with the jewel on his sword glittering Nacht walks over to each of the other two members of the Away team and touches them on the shoulder with a massiv, meatyy, armored hand. Suddenly... thee world seems VERY slow. Even sounds around you seem to come to a near halt. Except for those within the effect.

Issius follows along, albeit behind everyone else. "There's...sir?" The man says, scooting up closer towards Priest. "There's a noise, like a cricket? Is that supposed to happen?" Issius asks, looking back towards Nagi as well. Priest lifts his brow a bit, his head cocked to the side as he listens "Well...that's new to me. Your proceedure didn't affect the local wildlife did it?"

"No... " says Nacht, "It would mean that the cricket... and that buzzing is moving at the same frequency and speed that we are... be wary." He looks to where the body was, "Remember. The Alien life form was larval... it might be insectoid. And it might be as fast as we are." Priest checks and rechecks his revolver before giving a nod "Right, well lets get moving then. See if we can get some answers from these "witches" " He scoffed a bit and would move off as indicted

Ensign Issius seems a bit more nervous but shrugs, nodding at Nacht and heading off with the rest of them. "What else is joining us.." he mumbles, keeping his eyes open.

"It means," says Nacht, "That since it freshly fed and laid eggs, its nest might be right nearby here. Another corpse with larvae we didn't collect, or the original itself. Sir." Still, as instructed, Nacht moves forwards. The effects on the others will sustain themselves. They've got a temporary investation of her nanites that will simply die away and shed like microscopic skin cells by the time they reach the 'witches'.

The sound of the cricket fades as the party moves away from the town. Bastion (who wasn't about to correct the man with a glowing hot sword about his name) lies still. A candle can be seen in a doorway in town. Maybe he'll be fine. Maybe he won't. Meh. As the party moves along the road they pass most anything that might be a problem. Anyone sleeping along the road, any animals. All a blur. Thanks to the speed they are traveling at the party is even fairly silent. Because of this along the road they come across a small campfire not more than fifteen feet from the road that is still going, a small figure huddled near it, obviously thinking this is either far enough from the road to not be seen... or that they would have more warning to put out their fire.

The small figure huddled by the fire only manages to get as far as reaching the bucket before he realizes anything has happened and the party has already moved on. As far as the part is concerned their trip would have taken about two hours, though thanks to the... questionable properties of time in this place it has taken much less as far as the Swedish army advnacing on this location is concerned.

Fomr the road the party can see Gossenheim is a small, sleepy farming community. The craps have recently been gathered, each house is less a home and more a homestead sitting in a quiet plot of farmland. It is peaceful, serene (except for the slow thrum of the insects existing on a different temporal plane) and smells of rotting flesh.

The river runs deep, wide and fast here, sped up by the fact that two rivers seem to meet not a hundred feet from where the first building is, obviously a watermill. The only easy means for one to carry anything across would be the bridges here, one for each river, both of them are connected to a well maintained stone road that could possibly have been here for centuries at this point, marking this to be an important point of trade.

The entire city is dark, except for one long house on the south side of the town, across the river. Light can be seen through the unshuttered windows, and smoke seems to be billowing from the chimney. Priest glances over the town and gives a faint nod of his head "Witch hunting and me without my wide brimmed hat...Well maybe next time. Do we have a fix on the last known location of this coven?"

Issius starts to slow with the rest of the group, staring towards the city. He stays quiet and glances back at the people he's with, nodding his head. His nose flares as he sniffs the air, not preventing the 'ew' look on his face at the smell.

"About six miles south." Comes the voice of a man who looks mysteriously like Daniel Jackson from Stargate, because Monitor thought it was funny as hell. Must be a hard light projection. The man points to the bridge nearby, and coughs a little bit. "About time you guys got here!" he starts, that part likely supposed to go at the front of the statement. "Permission to fall in!" he says happily. "You know, for a few hours, anyway."

"Seriously?" sats Nacht, "Stargate?" Well, someone's been catching up on American television shows. "You guys figure I still need to disguise?"

Priest snickers faintly "Fall on in, so we blow the bridge here and make our way south to consult these witches." By witch consult he means torture and execute possible deviants

Anne pipes in over the radio. "There is a large encapment around the city six miles south... a lot of movmeent, but I estimate maybe... two thousand? Twenty five hundred? The population density makes it difficult to read." there's a pause as she hears the Stargate reference and snickering can be heard over the comms she hasn't turned off. "Uhmm... yes. Sorry about the errr... reference. He gets bored and err I'm not very entertaining."

Monitor Y-91 snickers and nods, then makes a few motions with his mouth as he points up to the sky for a moment. 'She's Vala' is what he mouths, then tiptoes around the group to take up the rear, reaching to check the revolver at his hip. "Hey, not my fault I'm overclocked!" he says over comm, then reaches up to adjust the tunic a bit. "Gah, shit's itchy... Okay, okay. Sorry. All set. Sooo... Who brought the oil?"