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Post by da professor on Apr 7, 2011 13:29:58 GMT
Chapter One:- And So It Begins Based on an idea by BadCatMan
1871. Friederich Lake awakes from a nightmare about metal men and a woman in red. He has yet another day at the Sir Percival Flint Memorial Museum, cataloguing spearheads and Roman coins, ahead of him and his nightmare has put him out of sorts. Perhaps this is why, when the nightwatchman tells him of the mysterious bell during the night, he tells him not to talk nonsense in rather blunt terms. His mood is not improved when he finds an extra cabinet in his office and, behind its doors, not the shelves and drawers he was expecting, but a curiously dressed corpse. Naturally, he sends for the police and is somewhat irritated when a constable arrives to confirm that it's not a wild goose chase before Inspector Mackenzie is called. He is even less amused when he is informed that he will have to work somewhere else for the hour it will take to do a cursory search of the room, secure the mystery cabinet and remove the deceased. Inspector Mackenzie and Constable Gregson don't much care whether he is amused; there is a mysterious death to deal with. 2010. Teenaged genius and otaku Kenta Takaheshi wakes from a strange dream about gaijin doing strange things, mechanical-sounding creatures he can't quite see and shifting shadows in an urban wasteland. He needs to buy some crystals for an art project and sets out to the best place from which to buy them. While at Yamata's, he hears a scream from the alley behind and, curiosity overwhelming common sense, goes to investigate. There is the corpse of a strangely dressed gaijin. After a quick check to confirm that the poor man is actually dead, from crushing and burning injuries to the chest, Kenta hangs around long enough to make a statement to the police and pay for the stuff he bought at Yamata's, then goes to buy some manga. Back at home, he unpacks his purchases and finds a rather odd crystal he does'nt remember buying. Transparent and hexagonal in cross-section, tapering to a point at one end, rather than bouncing or making a noise when dropped, it briefly emits an orange glow. Kenta decides to experiment and discovers that it absorbs almost any kind of energy, only emits light while absorbing energy and only in a very narrow range of wavelengths, that water does not stick to it and that, left to its own devices, it always turns to point in the same direction. When he stops to think about this for a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he sees an image on his computer screen, of a building he doesn't recognise. When he looks properly, the screen shows only his screensaver. 2180. For the last 2 years, Ace has been trying to recover her memory, with no success. Today, she's taking a break from that to do some much needed demolition work on the ruins of a 200 year old shopping centre in Harrogate, damaged during the dalek occupation, which ended in 2167. After planting the last charge of Nitro-9 and setting the timer, she hears a bell chiming and a massive crash as a large black cylinder, 4 storeys tall and 30m wide lands behind her, trapping her in the basement of a building about to go boom. She sees a door in the cylinder and, hoping it leads to a way out, goes through it. Ahead of her is a massive glasslike chamber filled with something glowing and stairs up. After climbing 2 levels, there are no more stairs, but a catwalk leads to a central platform where she finds lots of cables leading from the ceiling throigh a hole in the floor and the body of a strangely dressed old man, injuries consistent with a dalek attack. A ladder leads to a platform above her, where she finds a hexagonal console with lots of mauve lights and three evenly spaced walkways to the perimeter, one leading to a double door, the others leading to single doors. The charcoal and mauve colouring feels wrong, but otherwise this whole place feels a bit familiar. Why does she feel ike it would be a good idea to pull un that red lever? 2304. Casey Black, Oort cloud miner, is surprised when a radar alert from the Emma Watson tells him there's a cubic kilometer of something extremely dense close enough for him to land on. Hoping to find valuable minerals, he lands near a fissure on the surface and, suited and tooled up, clmbs inside. The artificial gravity, closure of the opening behind him, pinkish lighting and sudden influx of breathable air all surprise him. He begins to explore and finds, among other things, an olympic sized swimming pool, a library, an aircraft hangar, somehow containing the Emma Watson, a walk in wardrobe and two console rooms, one containing two strangely dressed corpses, the other blocked by a force field but in which he can see a woman in old fashioned clothing. While he can't penetrate the forcefield, he finds that the torchlike gadget he found with the two corpses can. He also finds tha while thw gadget looks like an over complicated torch, it gives of little light and seems to buzz when he presses what seems to be the activation control. 6012. Jenny left Messaline looking for adventure. It's beentwenty minutes and she's beginning to get bored. The boredom is alleviated by the sudden arrival of the timeshuttle Jimi Hendrix pilotted by rookie time agent Jim Hope. After a near collision, Jim invites Jenny aboard his larger, more comfortable vessel and, prompted by her questioning, tells her that he's a time agent and is hoping to use a nearby temporal rift to get to the 21st century on Earth without using too much fuel. The Agency has been wiped out and he hopes to find a timelord believed to have been fond of Earth in that era to help him out. Jenny volunteers that her dad is a timelord and, after scanning with his vortex manipulator, Jim believes her and begins to completely geek out. Then the rift hits. 2011. The Jimi Hendrix crashes in Cardiff Bay. Jenny has little difficulty swimming ashore, but Jim needs help. They are met at the beach by PC Andy Davidson who offers them a lift to the hospital to be checked out and, recognising Jim's vortex manipulator as looking like something Captain Harkness wears, asks if they've heard of Torchwood. Jim had mentioned them as being precursors of the time agency, so Jenny says "Yes!" without thinking about it. TO BE CONTINUED
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Post by da professor on Apr 7, 2011 13:32:15 GMT
In case you're wondering, the PCs are Freiderick, Kenta, Casey and Jenny. Ace's story is included because she was originally going to be a PC but the player ducked out at the last moment.
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Post by da professor on Apr 10, 2011 8:21:29 GMT
Okay, rushed through part 1, because i typed it up during my lunch hour, I'll do part 2 more slowly.
1871. At the Sir Percival Flint memorial museum, Constable Gregson informs Mr Freiderich Lake that the search of his office is complete and the deceased has been removed. The suspicious extra cabinet is still there, but arrangements will be made to remove it as soon as possible. Mr Lake returns to his office and, before resuming work, opens the cabinet once more to have a look at it now it no longer contains a cadaver. Internally, it is an empty box of the expected dimensions, giving the impression that the joiner had simply not yet installed the shelves and drawers found in the similar cabinets. A small scrap of paper lay in one corner of this shell and, when Freiderich retrieved it, he found it to be of similar quality to that used in newspapers with an uncommonly large 'H' printed on one side and a random scrap of some news item on the other, partial lines giving insufficient information to deduce what it was about with one lin comprising the letters 'elevisi' which may or may not have been only part of the word in question. While looking at this paper, Mr Lake pushed the doors to the cabinet closed and was somewhat taken aback that, rather than stopping in the closed position, they continued to swing inward. This time they revealed a large dark space across which a raised walkway ran from the doorway to a central platform on which a pillar grew out of the centre of some kind of circular or polyhedral desk. The translucent pillar and several small lights on the desk glowed a sort of pinkish colour which Lake thought might be mauve. There was also a figure present which appeared to be female, although dressed as a man, in trousers...shocking! "Excuse me! What are you doing in there? Who are you? Do you have anything to do with the dead body I found in there?" "Another one, bleeding 'eck. I found one just downst... 'Ang on. What are you doing there?" the woman asks, approaching the doorway. "Three floors up over a ruin isn't were the office of some steampunk reject oughta be." The woman was of a similar age to Lake, wearing trousers of some heavy blue material, a black singlet, short waisted jacket covered in badges and a bag over her shoulder. "I say, dear lady, where is your husband?" "You what? What year d'you think this is, mate?" "It is the year of Our Lord EighteenHundred and Seventy One, of course." "What? You got a screw loose? It's twentyone eighty!" "Nonsense. You have clearly become separated from your wits!" Interrupting Lake's rant, Ace took her PC out of her pocket and showed him the date display, which clearly supported her assertion. The odd man in Victorian dress, however, refused to accept the evidence of his eyes and demanded to know what she was doing in the basement of his museum. She was about to step out and give him a slap when Big Ben struck 9. Clock towers with bells having been out of fashion for some years before 2180, Ace was forced to admit to herself that, somehow, outside this probable spaceship, it was indeed no longer her home era. "Bloodt 'ell! Right. So you say it's 1871. Next you'll tell me this ain't the top floor of the Vic in Harrogate." "What? Don't be foolish woman! This is the basement of the Sir Percival Flint Memorial Museum in London." As he said this, Lake remembered the 'H' on the piece of newspaper. A connection? "Listen, this may be a bit much for your 19th century brain to process, but something's messing with time and as you an' me are the only two who know about it, it's down to us to fix it." In reflexive response to the mention of time, Lake looked at his pocket watch. It was runnung backwards. He returned it too his pocket and tried to deny to himself that he had seen anything untoward. "I have had quite enough of this idiocy," he said, striding towards the clearly insane woman in the box, only to be brought up short by some kind of barrier at the threshold. The barrier had no substance that he could see or feel,but nevertheless made forward movement quite impossible. "Come out of there at once!" "Keep yer hair on." Ace stepped out, without difficulty, took a quick look around Lake's office and said something under her breath which may have been foul language. An instant later, something shifted in the recesses of her lost memory. " Hang on a mo, there's something I wanna try." She walked back into the cabinet at which point Lake asks how she did it and demonstrates his meaning by pushing against the barrier. Ace reached through from the other side and fet nothing. " Maybe it's cos I started on the side with the controls." "If you say so," Lake replied skeptically. "Why are they gloeing that colour anyway?" "Don't know, but I don't think it's good." With that, she walked back to the console, nudged the red lever and watched as the doors closed. Two days later, the doors opened by themselves, as far as Lake could tell, and the woman stepped out again, this time dressed in respectable lady's attire. "One of the other doors in there led to a wardrobe. So, did I miss anything?" "Given the passage of days, I had begun to suspect you a dream." "Days! I've only been gone a few min... time ain't lining up it's going faster here than there." "I assure you, time is behaving quite normally," Lake replied, trying to ignore the hourglass with sand flowing upwards an the corner of his desk. "Yeah, right. Listen. Time's screwy, this box links to different times, I see a connection. We need to work out what this thing is and it might be easier if we get the bits closer together. My end ain't too portable, but I can tell you where it is and you can ship the box. It's the Victoria Shopping Centre in Harrogate. Its a centuries old wreck with holes made by daleks in my day, I'm here with demolition charges to take it down, but it might be quite new in your time" "Demolition charges? Explosives?" "Yeah. Don't worry, there quite safe till I arm 'em. Now focus. Get this box to Harrogate and you get me out of your hair, okay?" "Very well." With a nod, Ace went back into the cabinet and the doors closed. Lake then called a porter and instructed that the cabinet was to be shipped to Harrogate the next morning and that he (Lake) would be travelling to ensure its safe delivery. He also instructed his assistant to send a message to Mackenzie of Scotland Yard to inform him, as the cabinet might still be relevant to the murder inquiry, but the message was not actually sent. Next morning, Lake and the cabinet are on the train as scheduled, blissfully unaware that the Victoria Shopping Centre will not be opened for over a century.
At this point, Friederich's player left for a 2 week holiday in Thailand... some people clearly have no sense of priorities, so he'll be an npc mostly on a train until he's really needed, or his player returns. I'll post more of what the other PCs are doing later.
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Post by da professor on Apr 10, 2011 11:02:05 GMT
1947. Audrey and mummy were shopping. They stopped at a shop that sold sweeties, because it was that day when the sweetie ration was due. Audrey looked at the sweeties and picked the ones she wanted, discussing her choices with her dolly, Dorothy, then mummy paid and they left. At the last second Audrey glanced back into the shop at the sweeties, wishing the ration was bigger, then stepped out into the street. Only it wasn't a street. It was a long dark corridor with pink lights and there was no sign of mummy.
2010 After several hours of experiments, Kenta Takaheshi decided to call his childhood friend, Ayumi, to show her this cool crystal and tell her what he had learned. He had worked out that it was pointing along a bearing which could lead to China, any of several countries in Europe, including the United Kingdom, or somewhere in the North Atlantic before it got so far West it would make more sense for it to be pointing East. The down angle was explainable only if it was pointing through the Earth rather than along its surface. After much chatting and general geeking out, and some consumption of illicitly acquired alcohol, naughty 17 year olds, they decided to go to Okinawa to see if there was enough difference in the direction the crystal pointed to triangulate the location it was pointing to. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Ayumi's interest had more to do with Kenta than the crystal, but that's another matter. That night, Kenta dreamed of a building made of yellowish stone with pillars, glass doors and something written above the doors in gaijin script; he got the impression it was English, but couldn't puzzle out what it said before the dream ended. Ayumi's dreams are not a matter of record. Next morning, Kenta booked the tickets and phoned the shop where he got the crystal to learn what he could about its origins. He was referred to the suppliers and sent them an e-mail saying that he had a problem with one of their crystals. He got the automated 'Thankyou for contacting us we will respond to your message as soon as possible.' With nothing else to do, he completed the build he'd bought crystals for in the first place then began to prepare for his trip.
2011. PC Andy Davidson sent Gwen Cooper a text to meet him at Cardiff General while Jenny told Agent Hope what was going on; a rookie whose only mission to date had been to Renaissance Italy, Jim didn't speak contemporary English...how Jenny did was a mystery. At the hospital, Jim was examined by Dr Julia Swales, who was able to confirm that there had been no noteworthy damage then offerred to examine Jenny, who declined on the basis that she was fine. Dr Swales shrugged and walked off moments before Gwen arrived to conduct an interview. Jenny relayed her whole life story...still less than a day...and Gwen decided that she and the gawky looking foreign kid she was with were harmless enough to take home, Tolrchwood not having a new base as yet. At the Cooper/ Williams residence, Jim and Jenny met Rhys and saw photos of Captain Harkness (good looking bloke, but looks full of himself) and the wedding of Mickey Smith and Martha Jones, who she recognised at once. "That's Martha! How do you know Martha?" "I could ask you the same question." Gwen used her PC to set up a video call to Martha. Mickey answered, but called Martha from wherever she was in the room when she was asked for. Then it was " Hi, Gwen what can I do for y... JENNY! OH MY GOD! IT'S JENNY!" "So, you'ld be Jenny then. Hi Jenny. Hun, whose Jenny?" After several minutes of excitement, during which Mickey explained about Timelord bodyparts regrowing if cut off in the first few hours of a lifecycle... he'd heard it fro Rose, it was arranged that Gwen would put Jenny and Jim on the train to London in the morning so that Smith and Jones could handle the case and let Torchwood get back to defending the Earth. With several hours till morning, the sun just setting, Gwen decided to go on Weevil patrol and Jenny asked if she could come to as it had been minutes since she had done anything exciting. After a couple of hours of driving round and girly natter about hostile aliens, time travellers and shopping..."Trust me, Jenny, you're going to love shopping"... they spotted a weevil going after someone. As Gwen grabbed the Weevil spray and a stun baton, Jenny charged into the situation, catching up with the creature to try to talk it out of doing anything nasty. It didn't listen and she got a scratch on her arm for her pains, so she switched to judo, or its 61st century equivalent, and threw the weevil at a pile of boxes. It leapt up, lunged again and this time found itself thrown face first into a brick wall. Thinking the weevil equivalent of "Sod this, I'm outta here," it ran...straight into gwen with a readied stun-rod. A little first aid and Jenny was all "That was fun! Can we do it again?" "You're worse than Jack."
Report from the 24th century coming shortly.
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Post by da professor on Apr 10, 2011 14:26:45 GMT
2304. Casey was still exploring. When he found a room full of drawers, he began to open them randomly. The first contained clay tokens, wedge shaped, with markings made by somekind of sharpish implement before they were put in the kiln. The second held ancient looking coins made of actual precious metals, according to his scanner. Kaching! The third held actual, Bank of Mimas notes and coins, money from his own era, in every denomination in common use. Ka-CHING!!. This stuff was worth way more than gold at current rates. After pocketting a thoroughly unreasonable amount of money, he returned to exploring, finding another room with a hexagonal console. Instead of two dead humanoids, he found the bottom half of a dalek, the top half, and the occupant, destroyed by some kind of powerful energy weapon. Casey never really paid much attention to history, but he knew daleks were universally regarded as bad guys. As he left that room, he saw movement and followed. It was the woman he'd seen in the console room he couldn't enter. "What are you doing here? Tis is my claim zone, this ship is mine by right of salvage." "Ship? So this bit's where? At sea?" "What? Oort Cloud Mining Zone 876a4b3 as if you didn't know." "What year?" she asked, and on his reply told him that the control room she'd come in through was in 2180, to which his response was "Of course it is." The irony did not go unnoticed. "Yeah, hard to believe, but I've already seen the Victorian era out the front door." "Yeah, right. Prove it." "Okay, the control room's this way." Casey still couldn't enter the room, though Ace had no problem, as with the other door. They even tried with Casey holding her arm, but were stopped at the point where Casey would cross. Still a no go,they decided that they would do some more exploring and keep in touch by comm, Ace had one to talk to her demolition team colleagues while Casey's was built into his scanner. Ace, however, had something to do first (see 1871, above) which necessitated a quick trip to the wardrobe room. Five minutes, and a bowling alley, later, Casey opened a door to see some kind of bird, about a metre tall with stubby wings and a vicious looking beak. He backed out quickly after taking a picture with the data-record function of his scanner, but this, like most doors on this crazy alien ship, was one which could be opened simply by pushing from either side and the bird followed him out, went "Pok!" a couple of times then headed off down the corridor. Moments later, Ace called to say she was back aboard and ask if anything interesting had shown up. Casey sent her the bird picture and she was able to identify it as a dodo. "The beaks for cracking nuts, not bones, but noone's even claimed to have seen a live one in five hundred years, or six hundred twenty five to you." "Your time travel assertion is becoming more beli..." "MUMMY!" "That's my end," Casey observed. "About twenty metres." He went to investigate, hoping his dishevelled appearance would not alarm the child too much. It was a three year old girl with a rag doll whose first words on seeing an unshaven middle-aged man in a dirty spacesuit with a 24th century scanner in one hand and a bag full of money over the other shoulder were "You're not my mummy." "No surprise there. I'm Casey, who are you?" "I'm Audwey,"(note obligatory cute mispronunciation)"And this is Dorofy." Casey asked how Audrey got where she was and she told him her story (see 1947,above), by the end of which, Ace had arrived, somewhat differently dressed than last time. "What? I was in 1871. Had to dress appropriately." Ace then asked where Audrey lived ("At home"), then rephrased to ask for the address. After a moment's thought, the three year old remembered that she was supposed to show something mummy had sewn in her jacket if she got lost. It was an embroidered patch reading ' Audrey Dudman, 17 Old Terrace,Streatham'. Ace promised they would try to get her home as soon as possible, but in the meantime, would she like some ice cream? Audrey didn't know what that was, so Ace told her it was nice and would she like to try it? An affirmative response resulted in her being led to a room which looked like a restaurant apart from what Casey recognised as food replicators on the wall. These replicators, however, did not contain a reservoir of nutrient paste and bottles of flavoring and did not produce a beige goo which was supposed to taste like what one ordered but actually tasted like beige goo. From apparently nothing they actully made, after Ace touched a few buttons, something which looked and smelled like actual ice cream. When offerred some himself, he accepted and found that the flavour and texture were also right. As he sat there, eating the best ice cream he'd tasted in something like 3 decades, he pondered three questions. How had Ace walked through the forcefield over the control room door? How had she known there was a wardrobe room? He'd only found it by accident, but she couldn't have spent much time looking. And how had she known which buttons to press on this ice cream making marvel? The only markings on the unit were not from any alphabet Casey had seen, and trading at Eris Station he had seen most of them, even if he could only actually use one. She also found time travel easy to accept. As they chatted over ice cream, well, she had tea, Ace told him that she had amnesia after a head injury two years ago but there was no way that growing up in dalek dominated South East England had exposed her to any of the strangeness she'd encountered since the cylinder had almost landed on her. Casey listened and began to formulate a theory, but was distracted from it when Audrey said something and, looking from Ace to her, realised they looked a lot alike. Was Audrey a young Ace? No, not if Audrey was, as Ace estimated from her clothes and talk of rationing, from sometime in the late 1940s. Ace was 30ish, not over 200, but they could be related, at six or seven generations remove. This is where session 2 ended. Session 3 will be played later this week and I'll post it next time I've got access to a computer for most of a day. My players say their enjoying it so far, what do you guys think?
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Post by da professor on Apr 17, 2011 7:43:05 GMT
1871. After seeing to it that the cabinet was properly loaded, Mr Freiderick Lake boarded the train to Leeds, where he would change for Harrogate. The journey was mostly uneventful, although he did see a curiously dressed young woman running along the corridor. Given that he was already dealing with quite enough wierdness for one year, he decided to ignore her.
2010. After making appropriate arrangements, Kenta and Ayumi head off for Okinawa. After a check-in procedure which takes far longer than necessary, as usual, the flight starts out quite uneventfully. Shortly before they land, however, a gaijin woman, a warty, old, European woman, runs down the aisle screaming hysterically. Her clothes are crudely made, simple and dirty and her language indecipherable, even to the experienced senior flight attendant who used to do international flights until family commitments made internal flights more practical. Kenta tries to calm her down with friendly images on his smartphone screen, but if anything this has the reverse effect and the woman becomes catatonic when he switches to playing music. When the flight lands, she is taken away in an ambulance. Checking later on the internet, he learns that she vanished on her way to the hospital, when the paramedic tending to her took his eyes off her for a few seconds to talk to the driver. While on the net, he also looks for information on the body he'd seen a few days earlier. The official report spoke of death by electrocution and severe thoracic injury; the rumour mill referred to certain physiological anomalies, but gave no specifics. On Okinawa beach, Kenta and Ayumi spent half their time generally messing about, as teens do, and the other half trying to determine whether the crystal still pointed in a fixed direction. It did, though a slightly different direction from that indicated in Sapporo. While discussing the relevance of these findings, they were momentarily distracted by a glimpse of a strange looking bird, about 80cm tall, running down the beach. Kenta tried to get a picture, but it was gone. Instead, he got a picture of the prints and posted them on the net with a request for identification, with no useful responses to session end. Finally, he compared the trajectories given by the pointing crystal in Sapporo and Okinawa and triangulated an approximate location in Northern England. "Hey, Ayumi, how about a trip to England? We could spend another two days here, then fly over there. I could book the tickets now, while I'm online." "Okay."
More later.
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Post by da professor on Apr 17, 2011 11:27:30 GMT
2011. After a successful patrol, Gwen and Jenny return to the former's home, where a small amount of Italian Rhys had learned on holiday and a phrasebook had led to the successful ordering of six large pizzas. Rhys ate one, Gwen and Jim ate one and a half between them and Jenny ate the remainder, to the surprise of her hosts and the amusement of Jim, whose patchy research on the subject of Timelords had revealed their larger than human appetites. It being almost midnight, Rhys, Gwen and Jim went to bed while Jenny stayed up watching television for a few hours, trying to disentangle which broadcasts were fictional from the factual programming before retiring at 4am. She woke at 7am, completely rested and decided to go for a run (10km in 35 minutes) and got back in time for a large fry-up before going to the station for the London train. After five minutes of sitting still on the train, Jenny was bored, so she started pacing the length of the train, looking at the people, the various styles of dress, including a few someone more familiar with the 21st century would have recognised as anachronistic, the lone catkind in anotherwise empty compartment, 5 billion years early, but Jenny didn't know that, and the eighty year old man who rejuvinated to the age of five in a split second. She ran to get Jim, her preternatural agility keeping her from stumbling, and showed him the boy. Jim accessed his Vortex Manipulator's scan function and picked up an anomaly. Something, with a variable location, was destabilising the time stream. From somewhere East, somewhere North, a moving location and somewhere out in space, something was trying to short circuit a time differential of over four centuries and a limited intelliigence behind it seemed to be trying to get Jenny's attention. 2304. Ace and Casey discussed the former's ability to use the replicator despite a lack of English language instructions. Ace could only conclude that she had somehow encountered one before, during the large part of her life(all but the last 2 years) of which she had no memory. Whatever the circumstances of that encounter, it had not left her with the wherewithal to fly the ship. She did, however, recognise a sonic screwdriver as something 'the Professor' used to have. While discussing this vaguely recollected figure from her past, she called him 'the Doctor' at least twice, but neither she or Casey registered that this was a distinction worth noting.
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Post by da professor on Apr 17, 2011 13:29:26 GMT
2304 continued. Having determined that Ace probably wasn't the pilot, Casey decided to have another look at the library, hoping to find a) books in English and b) a translation dictionary between English and whatever language those squiggles on the controls were in. Translation dictionaries were, he discovered after several hours of searching, the one type of book missing from the library, but he had seen what looked like a vidscreen, so, in the hope it was a computer, he walked over to it and spent a good minute figuring out how to turn it on. The screen instantly displayed an image of a pile of wooden boxes. Experimenting to determine whether this was a touch screen, Casey discovered that he could scroll the image left or right through 360 degrees, showing the interior of a train's luggage car for part of the arc and the scenery outside, passing at about 100 km/h, for the rest. He then checked for a voice interface. "Er... do you have a translation program?" "Yes." "Can you download it to my scanner?" "Insufficient memory capacity." "How about a partial program... from whatever language your controls are in to English." "Gallifreyan to English translation program uploading...Upload complete." "Thank you. Can you give me information on who built you?" The screen filled with page after page of rapidly scrolling text, with animated images, giving a substantially complete history of the Timelords from the dawn of their civilisation to the 300th year of the Time War. This was far too much data to process, so he left it and went to try out the replicator. By pointing his scanner's video input at the symbols and checking the viewer, he saw the synbols in English and was able to work out how to make himself a coffee. Success acheived, he then went to one of the auxilliary control rooms, the one with the dead dalek, and tried the same procedure with the controls there. A lot of it was still gobbledegook, but he could identify tilt, yaw, roll and thrust and, after some experimenting, managed to get the ship moving in the direction of Earth. If he hadn't misread the display, the trip would take a mere three hours. Only then did he think to ask for a summary of the ship's condition. "Condition Critical. Plasmic Shell Not Found. Primary Control Room Not Found. Temporal Circuits Not Functional. Three Crew Confirmed Deceased. Three Crew Not Found." "What do we need to repair the temporal circuits?" "Vortex Stabilisation Crystal." "Where would we find one of those." "Gallifrey." "And Gallifrey is...?2 "Not Found." Next he asked for a scan of lifeforms aboard. The ship identified 3 humans (Ace, Audrey and Casey), one dodo, one Judoon and a variable number of signals which were to unstable to lock on to. Casey asked to see the Judoon and, on seeing a humanoid rhinoceros with a big gun, asked for it to be locked into one of the rooms. "Cannot comply. That request must come from a Timelord." "Show me the crew. " A still image of six figures, each identified with a name of at least eleven characters, appeared. Casey recognised two, and Ace a third, as being the dead. Only three others, they must be the 'not found'. "What if no crew are available?" "In that circumstance any Timelord will suffice." "Where are there other Timelords?" "Not found." "Great. Is there any way someone who isn't a Timelord can give the order." "Subject must be recognised as crew by a Timelord." "And the Timelords are..." "Not Found."
End of Session Three.
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Post by da professor on Apr 24, 2011 11:37:15 GMT
Session 4. Just two players this week as Casey's player naffed off to France for the week...Honestly, some people.
2010. Kenta Takahashi and Ayumi spend a couple of days on the beach at Okinawa. During this time, he receives more automated replies from the mineral supply company which seemed to be the source of the crystal and a post from an alleged expert claiming the bird footprint he photographed is quite clearly the fossilised print of a compsognathus and could he please stop wasting the forum's time. Kenta cast aspersions on the 'expert' and his credentials and increased the rate and volume of spam sent to the mineral company then booked a flight from Sapporo to Manchester and a car rental... he wanted an Aston Martin DB9, but all they had was Volkswagen Golfs. Stopping off at Sapporo to pick up passports, he checked again on the dead gaijin but got nothing more concrete. Check-in at the airport was a long and tedious process, but Kenta walked through the metal detector with no problem despite not remembering until later that he had three quarters of his tool kit, the crystal and who knows what other bits and pieces in his many, many pockets... it was almost as if something was helping him bypass all the procedures. Once aboard, he scanned the passengers for anyone interesting. Apart from a higher proportion of gaijin than he was used to the most interesting was the man in what looked like American military uniform with a UN patch on his shoulder...UNIT, who was on his phone telling someone that the findings were consistent with "one of his people", but they would have to wait for the test results to confirm identity and, no, no blue box had been located. Kenta briefly wondered what that was all about, then decided that Ayumi was still the most interesting person on the plane and spent most of the rest of the flight chatting with her about whatever came to mind, including the manga he had brought along for them to read on the journey. They nodded off part way through the flight, but Kenta woke during a refuelling stop and both were awake when they reached Manchester, rather late in the evening. Clearing customs was once again a long, boring process which Kenta moved through with almost suspicious facility before popping into the gents and using a cubicle so he could check out the crystal. It was glowing more brightly than before, a yellowish glow, and, when allowed to move, pointed North-Eastish, possibly towards the Pennines or something on the other side. Once the two japanese teens got out of the airport and into their rental car they sought out a Travellodge to stay in for the night (seperate rooms, Kenta makes a lot of money selling customised 'toys'). Kenta dreamed of a building called the Victoria Shopping Centre and a worried looking woman in old-fashioned clothes against a bombed-out backdrop collapsing as if in a faint. Next morning, he googled 'Victoria Shopping Centre', selected images and found the one he had dreamed in the first picture. It was in Harrogate, the route to which was his next search.
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Post by da professor on Apr 24, 2011 13:26:55 GMT
2011 Jenny was having difficulty understanding Jim's explanation, replete as it was with such terminology as v-type q-dimensional destabilsing metastates across a varichronotopic matrix, so he tried again, in what he hoped were clearer terms. Some piece of time-travel technology was malfunctioning. It was also in four seperate locations in space-time. 1- a moving location to the north-eastish, heading north, about 140 years ago 2- a more distant location to the east, heading west, about a year ago 3- a static location slightly east of north about 170 years hence and 4- a moving location off-planet, but still in the Sol system, heading towards the sun, roughly 3 centuries hence. He couldn't be sure whether the seperation was causing the malfunction or vice versa, but it seemed likely there was an AI of sorts involved, because something was causing further anomalies as if in an attempt to attract the attention of a Timelord and someone using a Vortex Manipulator, as if in the belief that such individuals might be able to resolve the problem. If the problem was not resolved, it seemed likely that a major rift would open, making the Cardiff Rift look inconsequential, and catastrophic damage to the timestream, and the universe, would occur. Jenny suggested that maybe Mickey and Martha, who had both travelled with Jenny's dad, could help. As if favouring that suggestion, the train chose that moment to arrive at London, where the aforementioned were waiting. After a stop off at Pizza Hut, where Jenny once again ate more than everyone else put together, they went to yhe home/headquarters of Smith and Jones, were Jenny began to explain what Jim had told her about the anomaly. Moments after their story was over, Martha received a call from a former colleague at UNIT. They had finally disentangled enough DNA from the corpse found in Japan a year ago to confirm that it was not her friend the Doctor. As she relayed these facts, and the background, it occurred to her that it might be connected with the east-a-year-ago branch of the anomaly and Mickey did a search for other oddness at that time. Late April 2010 had seen the discovery of a timelord corpse in Sapporo, reports of a hysterical woman on a flight from Sapporo to Okinawa who had disappeared en route to hospital (airport video footage showed her to be wearing medieval peasant attire, recognised as authentic by Jim) and the posting of a purportedly current image of a supposedly fresh print identified by palaeontologists as being consistent with that of a compsognathus. A search for commonalities revealed the name Kenta Takahashi. His phone was not responding to call attempts and Mickey was still looking for signs of him after he rented a car from a Hertz office near Manchester airport. When Jenny gave Jim this information, he suggested that, if Mr Takahashi were near the 2010 focus of the anomaly, it might be posible to use the Vortex Manipulator to phone him a year ago. He didn't want to risk the jump circiut on a year long jump if it wasn't going to bear fruit. While they were deciding to try that, Martha decided to check out anything Torchwood knew about in 1871 which didn't seem connected to the Cardiff rift.
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Post by da professor on May 1, 2011 14:10:13 GMT
Session Five: All players present.
1871. Mr Lake's train journey had been mostly uneventful, but at the last stop before Leeds a woman in a red dress boarded and passed his compartment. She had the face of the woman from his recurring nightmare of the last twenty years... Miss Mercy Hartigan, conconspirator of the metal-clad monsters who had murdered his mother. She had not been seen since the night the abducted children, including Lake himself, had been rescued by Lake's own father, Rosita (who became Lake's childhood nurse) and the mysterious 'Doctor' about whom the elder Lake was so fond of telling wildly improbable tales. Twenty years and she had not aged or, so far as Lake could tell, changed her dress since the last time he'd seen her. Leaping to his feet, he sought to follow her, but lost sight of her when she moved into another carriage and could not find her again despite searching the entire train and questioning a number of passengers and one of the guards. When he disembarked at Leeds, to get the Harrogate train, he kept his eye out for her and even went so far as to pay an urchin to search the station for her, without success. The ride to Harrogate took less time than he had anticipated, so he delivered the cabinet to his room at the Swan Hotel and sought out the one person he knew in Harrogate. As a child, Jessop had been one of those kidnapped from an orphanage by the cyber men at the same time as Lake's own abduction. A wealthy man, lake's father had seen to it that those children were given better opportunities than there lowly start in life might have otherwise afforded them; Jessop had been apprenticed to a cabinet maker and was now a moderately successful craftsman. The two old acquaintances chatted and conversation eventually turned to the events of Christmas 1851. Lake told Jessop of his sighting of the Hartigan woman and asked if he recalled any of the particulars of her disappearance. "No, sir. All I know is she vanished." "Vanished? Into thin air?" the experiences of the last few days had primed Lake to expect the unusual and while this was not what Jessop had intended it unearthed a forgotten memory, a metal giant, a hot air ballon and a man with some kind of weapon who had made the giant, and Miss Hartigan who was inside it, disappear. As Jessop told of his recollection, Lake remembered it too, and that the man in his father's balloon was the Doctor. Thanking jessop, he returned to his hotel room to find Ace waiting with a map to the future location of the 'shopping centre'. Impatient at the delay, she tried to explain that time was being ripped apart, but her teminology was over Lake's head. In her diatribe, she also mentioned Casey and Audrey and was irritated by Lake's interruption to ask who they were. When he learned that Audrey was a small child, separated from her mother, the problem suddenly became one he could relate to. "We have to resolve the situation at once. What do I have to do?"
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Post by da professor on May 1, 2011 15:35:46 GMT
2010. Kenta Takahashi rose promptly when the alarm on his smartphone went off. From the neighbouring room, he could here Ayumi struggling to disactivate her own alarm... her finer qualities, of which Kenta considered her to have many, did not include an aptitude with technology. After breakfast, they checked which way the crystal was pointing, sonewhere between North and East, and started driving towards, then across, the Pennines. By lunchtime, they were in Yorkshire and stopped at a country pub for a meal. While there, they checked the crystal again, this time it was pointing almost due North. Kenta's phone rang. He didn't recognise the number, but curiosity got the better of him and he answered anyway. The woman on the other end of the line spoke japanese, with a Saporro accent, and identified herself as Jenny. She then began to chat with him about all the strange stuff he'd seen in the last few days as if she had been a witness too and quizzed him about his current location. Not knowing who she was, he revealed only that he was in the north of England and resisted attempts to arrange a meeting, but was left with the impression that she knew more about what was going on than she revealed.
2011. Jenny completed her call to Mr Takahashi and translated the main points for Jim, Martha and Mickey, while trying to decide just how strange it was that he had been speaking to her from a year ago through Jim's vortex manipulator. With Takahashi and the unmoving focus of the anomaly both being north of their current location, it was decided that it would be a good move if they arranged to be somewhere to the north and chose Leeds on the basis that it was as good a place as any.
2304. Casey was struggling with his attempts to work out how the sonic whatsit worked, so he took a break to find out what he could about the fate of the previous crew. With appropriate prompting, the library computer began to show him on its monitor. A silver capsule of indeterminate size flying through a vortex of some kind of energy. A saucer shaped craft of similar size ramming the capsule. A view of a console room, Ace recognised it as the one Casey couldn't access, with six people in robes standing round the console, all thrown to the ground, and the console emitting sparks, as the saucer rams the capsule. The figures leap to their feet and one, in white, scans the console and reports that it is out of commission. He orders the female and the youngest looking, the two Casey has seen dead, to go to the secondary control room and stabilise the ship and a man in black robes to get 'the weapon' in case of a breach. The apparent commander and the other two would work on repairing the damaged temporal circuit, which involved, among other things, replacing a blackened crystal rod of hexagonal cross section. The two sent to the auxilliary control room arrived where Casey would later find them and were killed instantly by a dalek which had entered by a nearby breach. It moved out into the corridor to join others of its species heading towards the main console room. They were intercepted part way by the black-robed figure holding a very large weapon looking, to Casey, like a cross between a mining laser, an anti-tank weapon and the sonic thingy. A single blast destroyed one dalek, then black-robes pulled back to another corner and fired again. On his fifth shot, he only caught his target a glancing blow. The top half was destroyed and the rmainder was pushed through a door into the third control room, where Casey would later find it. Eventually, the man in black was pushed back to the main console room, where one of the timelords was climbing out of a trapdoor to a lower level while another was on the point of inserting a transparent crystal glowing with an internal golden light into the same place the blackened rod had been removed from, while the white robed leader supervised. A burst of Dalek fire hit all four timelords. Three fell where they stood while the one half way out of the trapdoor fell to the floor below, where Ace would find him. A stray blast hit the console and apparently activated the controls for the main double doors, which opened, exposing the interior to the vortex. The timelords on the main floor, the golden crystal, the weapon and all the daleks were sucked outside as the cloister bell began to ring and the console room began totear away from the remainder of the tardis.
Casey checked the sight of the breach he had been shown; it had healed. He then started back to the third console room, to try to relate what he had seen the timelords doing to controls there, but encountered the judoon he had seen earlier. After it used its translator, it introduced itself as Sargeant Sto and tried to get information from Casey on how it had come to be on this unknown vessel. The Oort Cloud miner feigned even greater ignorance than was actually the case, but directed Sto to the exit, through the room he couldn't enter. He did, however, indicate the other single door, which Ace said lead to 2180, rather than the double doors to 1871. Sto, having arrived via temporal disruption from 2316, was able to enter the main console room and took the indicated exit.
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Post by da professor on May 1, 2011 15:39:54 GMT
Well two of the PCs are talking to each other at last, and two of them are motivated to resolve the situation, albeit for different reasons, but we finally appear to be getting somewhere. The unplanned inclusions of Ayumi and Jessop and the diversion of Sto to the 22nd century will need to be resolved one way or the other, but everyone seems to be having fun. I know I am.
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Post by da professor on May 8, 2011 17:58:02 GMT
1871. The following morning, Mr Lake sends for a driver and porter to deliver the cabinet to the building indicated on the map Ace provided. Unfortunately, to be in the same physical location as the centre of the console room, which Ace clearly considers important, it has to be placed on the roof of the building. Fortunately there is roof access, though this does not stop the porter from giving him a funny look. The porter's supervisor, being a man who knows his, and his underling's, place in the world, chastises the young man for giving any response but a respectful 'Yes, sir' and a rush to comply with the request. Once on the roof, they place it precisely as per Mr Lake's instructions, exactly in the centre of the roof with the doors pointing north, when a strange glow appears, putting all of them on there guard.
2010. By following the direction the crystal seemed to point on his map, Kenta was able to determine that the next likely place to check was somewhere in the middle of Harrogate. The simple country drive was transformed into the confusing process of negotiating the town's one way system and he rapidly decided to give up, park in a multistorey and walk the rest of the way. This led him through a couple of pedestrianised streets to the shopping centre he had seen in his dreams recently. The crystal seemed to be pointing to either the near side of the middle floor or the middle of the top floor. Kenta and Ayumi walked into the shopping centre and took an escalator to the middle floor where they were briefly distracted by a shop selling models and figures... he bought a 28mm scale Aston Martin DB9, then checked the crystal and confirmed that it was still pointing upwards. The next escalator led to a clothes store and Ayumi immediately through her self into enthusiastic shopping while Kenta took advantage of the crowded floor space and lack of attention he was getting to monitor the crystal. At the exact centre of the main sales floor, the crystal began to spin rapidly and glow with ever increasing brightness. He looked around for something to explain its behaviour, but saw nothing. It was clearly time to push that 'Jenny' person who had called him for an explanation. Pulling out his smartphone, he looked up the last call he'd answered and called back.
2011. Jenny heard the phone ring and didn't realise what it was at first, until Jim told her. She answered and Kenta Takahashi proceeded to tell her about the crystal and its odd behaviour. She asked where he was and he told her, then she translated his answer for Jim, who started doing something with his Vortex Manipulator. "Now I've got physical coordinates to go with the signal I can lock in and jump us there." "Hold on, Mr Takahashi, were coming." She hung up before Kenta could ask how she planned to get there so quickly and Jim pressed the button to activate the jump.
2010. Kenta was still staring at his phone when he heard Ayumi giggle. As he glanced at her, she pointed out the man who had just come up the escalator, dressed like an escapee from a Renaissance fair. Kenta recognised him and the blonde woman just in front of him, both also having appeared in recent dreams. He wasn't going to say anything about that, but the woman called his name and he responded instinctively. " Hi, Mr Takahashi, I'm Jenny and this is Jim. We've come to see the crystal." As the 17 year old Japanese boy genius tried to figure out why a gaijin woman who looked slightly older than he was, and almost as pretty as Ayumi, was calling him 'Mister', he heard her oddly dressed companion say something in some language that definitely wasn't either Japanese or English. Puzzled, he asked what was going on and Jenny immediately launched into an explanation about broken time machines, temporal rifts and anomaly foci, half remembered from Jim's attempt to explain to her, and Kenta's knee-jerk response was scepticism, until Jenny remembered the whole bit were she had one more heart than most humans and told Kenta to test her pulse. The rhythm of four convinced him that he was dealing with either an alien or some strange foreign inbred freak. Whatever 'Jim' was saying, however, clearly had him excited. Jim's Vortex Manipulator was telling him that the foci of his anomaly were lining up and three of them were in the same place, just different times. If he hadn't just drained the capacitor jumping to 2010, he would be able to jump to either 1871 or 2180 based purely on this data. "What does he want?" "Energy to fuel that thing on his wrist so he can jump through time to were another part of the time machine is." "The crystal seems to have a lot of energy." Kenta held up the glowing rod and a spark leapt towards Jim's wrist. There was a flash, a moment of giddiness, the impression of a vortex of energy and...
1871...Ayumi screamed with shock. Kenta almost screamed too. They were on the roof of a building standing next to a cabinet and three men in Victorian dress. Kenta recognised one from his dreams, but the other two were unknown and, judging by the alacrity with which they departed the vicinity, had no particular desire to change that fact. Friederich Lake founded himself sharing the roof with some chap from the continent, judging by his attire, a pretty blonde girl wearing trousers and a short sleeved singlet and a young couple who appeared to be from the Far East. "Who are you people and what do you mean by popping out of thin air and scaring people half to death?" "Hi, I'm Jenny, and these are Jim, kenta and Ayumi. Who are you?" The continental type said something foreign and Jenny asked "What do you know about this cabinet?" "What do you know about it?" "It's a bit complicated.You might not believe it." Mr Lake pushed the cabinet doors inward revealing the, what did Miss Ace call it, the console room. "So, what year are you from?"
2304. Having previously avoided him, Casey sought out the rhino guy. Said Rhino pointed something at him while he said "Hello, who are you?" then said "Language identified. English." Casey repeated his question and got the reply "Sargeant Sto, Judoon Peacekeeping Force, Shadow Proclamation. Who are you and where are we?" Casey answered both questions and followed up with some of his own, the exchange continuing until each Casey knew that Sto had been on a rotine patrol in 2316 when something had transported him aboard and Sto believed that Casey had a good claim for salvage of this clearly derelict timeship. The Judoon volunteered to check the theory that only time-travellers could cross the console room threshold by attempting to enter and, if successful, exiting by the door leading to 2180, then returning. He did, indeed, get outside and, while there, contacted the Shadow Proclamation to give 136 years advance notice of his unavoidable absence from his post. He then returned to Casey to report his findings.
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Post by da professor on May 8, 2011 18:50:24 GMT
1871. As the four people who had time travelled to the period gaped at the enormous space contained within such a modestly proportioned cabinet, a huge anthropomorphic rhinoceros in some kind of armour walked across the back, from one single door to another. "What the..." "Judoon." Jim hadn't understood the words, but he'd guessed the question. "Are they hostile?" Lake asked and, after translating his question and listening to Jim's answer, Jenny replied that they were like policemen and usually ok if noone was breaking the law. Another statement from Jim, and translation from Jenny, indicated that the crystal needed to be somewhere in there. While impressed with the speed and ease with which Jenny translated between three languages, Lake remembered that he couldn't cross the threshold, possibly, if Miss Ace was right, because he had never time-travelled. Jenny suggested that Jim might be able to rectify that with a small jump using his vortex manipulator and Jim agreed to try. He programmed a ten second hop and grabbed Lake's arm during the half second delay. They were inside the console room and Jenny stepped over the threshold as soon as she saw them in there. "It worked!" Lake wanted to test the assumption by stepping out and back in... both were successful. "Great!" said Jim."Now we need to get the crystal in here and attatch it too..." he glanced at the screen of his vortex manipulator," something inside the top of the console." "Very well, Kenta, isn't it? Bring the crystal, there's a good chap." "Ok. Be careful of the step her Ayumi." "Er, guys! I'm not translating here." "Must be something a tardis does. Crystal." Kenta examined the console and found a panel which came away. Under it was a space clearly intended to hold something the size and shape of the crystal. nervous, he began to dither, at which point Jenny grabbed the crystal out of his hand and slotted it in place. Half the mauve lights went out, to be replaced by white, blue or green, and Jim started running round the console looking for something which resembled time circuit controls. While he looked, Kenta idly jabbed a couple of random buttons, leading to everyone else shouting at him to be careful. Fortunately all he'd managed to do was close the outer doors and disable controls in the tertiary console room. Eventually, Jim found what he wanted and began to work. A loud groaning, wheezing noise filled the air and Jim grinned. He had last heard that sound as a small child when watching a timelord and friend, who had just had a picnic on his home planet, Asgard, leaving in a tardis disguised as a blue box. First he took the console room from 2180 to 1871 to pick up the plasmic shell, then without stopping, on to 2304 to pick up the rest of the ship.
2304 Having just listened to a judoon telling him what he already knew, Casey went back to the tertiary console room to see if he could figure out anymore controls. The first thing he noticed was the lighting change, less purple, the second was that the controls were now labelled in English and the third was that someone had overridden the controls. "Whoever you are," he said into the intercom," try not to fly into the planet." "That," Jim replied,"is the whole point of my intervention." Moments later, he announced that all the pieces were back together, but the unit probably had to be run in or something. "So, where shoul we go?" A three tear old girl, who had wandered in unobserved during all the fuss decided to answer that question. "I WANNA GO HOOOME!"
The End of So It Begins based on an idea by BadCatMan
starring a geek with glasses as Friederich Lake a geek with a beard as Kenta Takahashi a female geek as Jenny, the Doctor's Daughter a geek with an accent as Casey Black and da professor as everybody else.
Dedicated to Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney
Next time: Family
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Post by da professor on May 15, 2011 14:25:22 GMT
Chapter Two-Family
Jenny, Jim, Kenta, Ayumi, Friederich and Audrey are in the main console room. Audrey,3, has declared, in no uncertain terms that she wants to go home. Casey has just left the tertiary control room to try to find out who has usurped the controls of 'his' ship. Sto, Ace and a rather confused dodo are exploring the corridors, which have suddenly started to shift about again.
Mr Friederich Lake begins to question Audrey about her home: Where is it? At home. What's the address? Home doesn't wear a dress silly, it's a house. How can we get ypou home if we don't know where it is? I get Ace. She's clever. Ace can help. Audrey rushes off down one of the corridors. Jenny and Friederich follow. On the way, they turn several corners and pass the restaurant (Can I have more ice cream?) before finding Ace, changed back to her 22nd century attire. After introductions and a quick explanation, they all turn to head to the console room, which is now 100m down a straight corridor. Jenny and Ace set off at a run, the former covering the distance in under 9 seconds, the latter slower, but still too fast for Friederich or Audrey, who walk. Having seen the label inside Audrey's coat, Ace can tell the others that the address is 17 Old Terrace, Streatham, but the best she can guess at the date is 1940-something. When Audrey arrives, Jim asks her the date, but she only knows it's Monday, because she gets the sweetie ration on Monday. Jenny asks if there was something special about this particular Monday, like her birthday or something. An expression of dawning recollection crosses the child's face as she says, "Not my birfday, Pwincess Lizbuf's. Mummy says she's twenty-one." Jim checks the database on his vortex manipulator. Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, later Queen Elizabeth II, born April 21, 1926...other data being irrelevant, he stops reading and tries to figure out how to get the tardis to go to her 21st birthday at the required address. Jenny and Kenta take other stations at the console and try to make themselves useful while everyone else tries to stay out of the way. It is only as they are about to land that Jenny, looking at Friederich's Victorian suit and Jim's renaissance Italian disguise, thinks to ask if they might be dressed a bit oddly for the period. Jim recovers appropriate sartorial guidance from his database and Ace guides them to the wardrobe, where each recovers the appropriate garb then, on Kenta and Friedrich's insistence, the men find a different room to change in. Casey, Sto and the dodo become thoroughly lost as the tardis corridors dance around trying to find a layout which would make sense to the only Gallifreyan on board.
Mrs Joan Newman, retired nurse, widow and occassional babysitter, hears a noise in her kitchen that she last heard in 1913 when she was Joan Redfern, schol nurse at the Farringham School for Boys. She steps in to see a cabinet appear, one which a stranger would assume belonged. A few moments later, several strangers step out, in the company of little Audrey Dudman. "Who are you people, why have you got Audrey and what have you done with Kathleen?" "Who's Kathleen?" After a little confusion and efforts by the time-travellers to convince Mrs Newman of their innocence, aided by the fact that Jenny was particularly convincing as someone who doesn't know what's going on, the information is revealed that both Audrey and Kathleen disappeared three days ago...Jim had missed his target slightly, he was also in no. 28 rather than 17. Three other local women had also vanished over the last 3 weeks, but the others, Mrs Chesterton, Mrs Porter and young Sadie Thorpe, only 15, had reappeared 2 hours later, disoriented and with no memory of the time they were gone. They decide to go to the sweet shop where Kathleen was last seen and question the owner, though Mrs Newman advises that Kenta and Ayumi avoid drawing attention to themselves as it's only 2 years since Japan was the enemy and some people might hold grudges. Friederich actually asks the questions, and is lucky to find the man not adverse to a little gossip. He explains that Audrey left the shop a few seconds after her mother, pausing to look at candy, but he was too busy serving to notice what happenned to either after they left the shop. He's relieved to learn that Audrey's back safe, but worried about Kathleen, and lets slip that the disappearances haven't been restricted to Streatham. Through a shopkeepers' grapevine, he has heard that they're happenning all over London. When he tells the others this, and Jim confirms that there is no anomalous temporal activity to explain it, they decide to check the newspaper archive at the library. Kenta gets directions from the shopkeeper, who is too distracted by the task of refilling his shelves to notice that the polite young man with the Oxbridge accent (thanks to the Tardis translator) was foreign looking. Searching the newspapers, they discover that there have been multiple abductions each day from the Greater London area: a total in 17 days of 102 women, of whom 85 were returned as had been the case for 3 of the 4 victims from Old Terrace. The abductions had no apparent pattern, but all victims were female, aged 14 to 45...of age to bear children, as Kenta observed to Jim...and alone outdoors at the time of their disappearance. Jenny immediately suggested that she could act as bait, to lure the abductors into a trap, but Friederich objected, even when she said they might have gone somewhere cool, though he couldn't understand what the temperature might have to do with it. The plan thay decided on was to talk to Mrs Porter, hoping to find some clue in what she did remember to help there investigation. On the way home from the library, Kenta and Friederich spotted someone following them, so they told the others and the party stopped round a corner to ambush what turned out to be an 11 year old boy, Ian. His mum had been one of those to disappear, though she came back, and he'd been hoping that the group of strangers coming out of Mrs Newman's that morning were investigators looking into it, so he'd bunked off school to follow them. While the rest of the party were trying to get some useful information out of the boy, none noticed Jenny taking advantage of their distraction to sneak off.
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Post by da professor on May 22, 2011 14:02:30 GMT
Freiderich, Kenta, Ayumi, Ace and Jim, not noticing Jenny's absence, decided to go to talk to Ian's mother, her abduction having occurred two days before that of Kathleen Dudman. Anne Chesterton wasn't able to tell them much that they didn't know. She'd been on her way to her shift at the hospital when she was taken and woke up 100 metres away and two hours later with a slight pain on her shoulder which, when she looked at it, looked like an insect bite or something similar. By the time the 'professional investigators' came round, the swelling had gone down. As the others conducted the interview, Kenta excused himself on pretense of needing to use the outhouse, but instead made his way upstairs and retrieved some hair from Mrs Chesterton's hairbrush, hoping chemical traces in it could be found by a scanner either in Jim's Vortex Manipulator or on board the TARDIS. By the time he returned, the interview was winding down and nothing useful had been learned. Her only response to the question of whether anything unusual had happenned was the appearance of an unusually tall woman, well over 6 feet tall, at the hospital with symptoms the doctors couldn't identify... to Anne it was obviously nothing more arcane than morning sickness, but doctors these days were always running tests rather than using their common sense. Mrs Potter had only been taken two days ago, so might still have the bite, so they decided to go talk to her, but got distracted when Kenta suggested taking the haur sample to the TARDIS and they then noticed that Jenny, who had the key, was missing. A few seconds of panic later, they rushed back to where they had last seen her and, using the scan Jim took when they first met, tracked her dna round a corner, where she had an encounter with an alien which had apparently, by its dna trace, crawled down a 25 ft brick wall to grab her and load her in a small van,which had driven off towards the river. They lost the trace when the van entered a road which had regular traffic and had to think of a new course of action, distracted by Kenta's talk of giant spiders or four armed humanoid lizards. Maybe the most recent abductee would be able to help. Mrs Potter lived next door to the post office and, thanks to Mrs Newman, was expecting a team of investigators. While Jim used his psychic paper to masquerade as a doctor, with Ayumi as his nurse, so he could examine Mrs Potter's 'bite', the others examined the shoes and coat she had been wearing on the day in question and collected some trace evidence for Jim to analyze after he was done playing physician. The 'bite' turned out to be the site of an injection of some kind of protein to which Mrs P had had a mild allergic reaction, but the protein had begun to break down so it couldn't be clearly identified without access to a database. The trace on the coat was dust from a brick wall and a slow growing mold typically found on damp surfaces in the vicinity of bodies of nominally fresh but polluted water, such as the Thames. Friederich remembered a number of brick tunnels close to the river and that the cellar of his father's old London address, the one he'd moved out of in 1852, had been adjacent to those tunnels. They made their way to the address, but on the way were distracted by the sight of a blonde haired woman no less than 6ft 9 tall (that's 206cm for those who prefer metric) walking towards the part of town where most of the open pubs could be found. Freiderich and Kenta ran towards her, but she spotted them and fled. Pursuing, they rounded a corner, Kenta first, straight into a swinging handbag which knocked him on his butt, broke his glasses and came close to knocking him out. She demanded to know why they were following her and they explained that with the abductions lately, it was unwise for a woman to walk around alone, particularly in the evening. Kato then put his foot in it by saying "particularly in your condition," assuming this giantess was the woman Mrs Chesterton had told them about. She wanted to know what he meant, but when he mentioned her assumed pregnancy, she lost her temper, swung her bag again, this time knocking Freiderich over, but doing no real damage, and ran off while Ace, Jim and Ayumi arrived to help the two gentlemen to their feet. Though they remained concerned, they decided that rather than forcing the woman to accept an escort she clearly didn't want, they should return to their previous objective of entering the tunnels in search of Jenny.
Incase you're wondering, neither Jenny's or Casey's player made the session, hence their doing nothing.
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Post by da professor on May 29, 2011 17:55:40 GMT
Jenny woke up in a small, dark room, lying on a simple cot with the only light leaking through a crack under the door. Outside the door, two female voices are arguing, one called Branna insisting that the other, Draisa, is ill every morning because she keeps eating "those foul-smelling pickle things" and Draisa replying that her illness is due to some Earthly disease which Doctor Utyna can't yet identify, but it has nothing to do with the pickles. "Hello! Could you tell me where I am, please?" "What the... She's awake! Already! Get Utyna!" As one woman ran off, the other opened the door and pointed a large energy weapon at Jenny. She was 6 ft 7(c2m) tall, dressed in a black one piece uniform with a silver helmet and despite all Jenny's attempts at conversation, seemed disinclined to say anything but "Don't move," or the occassional "Uh?" when something complicated came up. The 6ft9 (206cm) Draisa and the relatively tiny Dr Utyna (6ft 1, 185cm) arrived after only moments and the latter declared that something must be wrong as no human should come round from that size dose of sedatives, on top of the stunner blast, for another hour. "That's your first mistake, I'm not human. No actually it's your second; your first was kidnapping me. Now where are the other women you've taken? And why have you been taking them?" "We need women able to bear children on our homeworld. No child has been born there for twenty years." "Do you need instructional pamphlets or something? An explanation of how it all works?" "We know the process, it just stopped working. If we don't get fertile women added to our genepool, our species will die out within a century." "There's no other solution?" "The finest minds of our world have looked into it. It's the only way." "The finest minds of your world... so, no Timelords then." "What?" "There's got to be medical facilities on the Tardis, maybe they can find an answer." "What?" "Didn't I mention? My dad's a Timelord and I have a Tardis." "WHAT?" "Which bit didn't you understand?" "Draisa, get the Commander." Commander Hemtag, the only man on this particular mission, was the same height as Draissa and, like the women, dressed in black. Unlike the women, he wore no helmet, so Jenny could see that he was completely bald. As he approached, Branna snapped to attention with such vigour she was at risk of straining something and Utyna removed her helmet, revealing that she too was hairless. The mission medic explained the situation to her superior, who authorised an investigation. Utyna would accompany Jenny to her ship, look into the possibility of a cure using Timelord technology and report back. Both members of his crew climbed the nearest wall in a manner not unlike a spider then lowered a rope to pull Jenny up. She climbed the rope so quickly, they barely had a chance to brace themselves. Exit was via a manhole to the street above.
Freiderich, Kenta, Ace and Jim found the remains of the old Lake property, victim of a random bomb in the recent war and searched the basement for entrances to the tunnels. They found none, but were able to identify brickwork less ancient than th rest of the house which marked where Mr Jackson Lake had sealed the hole his son's kidnappers and wife's murderers had used. Over protests from others, Kenta stunned to find himself not the most foolhardy in the party, Ace drew a Nitro-9 flask from her bag and BOOM. the hole reopened, they entered the tunnels and took the route towards the river; Freiderich knew there was room to hold people there. After a fair amount of walking, they found another breach in the wall, on the river side, through which they saw an enclosed walkway, such as might be used to connect two spacecraft, or one spacecraft and a network of secret subterranean tunnels. In the tunnel itself, there was a significant amount of light spilling round a corner just ahead. They choise the covered walkway and, as expected, entered the ship, through an open airlock. They entered a corridor, curving left and right and split up, Kenta and Jim heading left, Freiderich and Ace right. Each shortly found stairs up and down. Kenta went up, Freiderich down, each accompanied by their partner. Upstairs, Kenta found the bridge, unoccupied, and snuck in. Picking the chair with the most computer gear around it, he climbed in and began trying to hack into the system. Success was limited, but he did manage to find an internal schematic and something which plotted lifesigns on the ship. Other than Jim and himself, everyone was on the lowest deck; two in the corridor, one in the engine room, ten in 'hold 1' and seven in 'hold 2'. Down to the lower deck it was then. Freiderich and Ace had just ascertained that there were onl three rooms on this level and were debating which one to open first ("We need a plan!""No, we need to open a door!") when the others arrived and indicated which room was which. Step one of their brilliant stratagem was to lock the Engine room door, incase the one person inside was the engineer, then to unlock the holds. Step forward, Kenta Takahashi, boy genius. Despite having to deal with electronics a century ahead of anything he'd seen before, he successfully operated all three locks, releasing several abducted women, including Kathleen Dudman. Not finding Jenny (see above), Kenta reopened the engine room to find the engineer, all 6 ft 5(196cm) of her with a gun in one hand pointing at a space slightly above his head. He reclosed the door before she could fire and yelled to everybody to run while the engineer got on her comm and raised the alarm. Once out of the ship, Ace began to lead the rescuees back to the place they had entered from while the men went the other way to confront the abductors. Hemtag and Branna were waiting for them. Impressed by their height, Kenta asked if they were related to the pregnant blonde they'd seen earlier. "None of our crew is pregnant," Hemtag assured him. "If they were they would have a rash on their throats. Now, WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Psychic paper ready, Jim replied, "Human pregnancies typically include morning sickness, odd food cravings, swollen ankles... Oh, and we're Shadow proclamation." As Kenta and Freiderich embellished with threats of rhinomen (Jim: They prefer to be called Judoon) and descriptions of just how deep they were in the manure, Hemtag broke down and, under questioning revealed the story of his mission. He was just trying to save his people from extinction and know all their hopes rested on the shoulders of a possible madwoman who said she was something called a timelord. "On that note, where is Jenny?"
Back at the tardis, a little trial and error led to the sickbay, which included something Utyna recognised as a mediscanner. Using it revealed the presence of something called zeiton-7. "What's zeiton-7?" At this point, Casey Black arrived and answered her question... a rare radioactive mineral used as fuel. The half-life was short, but the other toxic effects played merry hell with mammalian reproducive cycles at low doses and several other vital systems at high, which is why the antidote was a standard part of a 24th century Oort-cloud miners medkit. The body could purge low doses if exposure wasn't continuous, like on the planet Zehk after the meteor strike of 1925... "It was a meteor?" the Zehkan physician gasped; the homeworld was hit by meteors so often, nobody paid any more attention than was needed to get out of the way any more. Then something else hit her. "You have an antidote!" "Yeah, not that difficult to make either."
A bit slow, Branna suddenly recognised Draisa's symptoms and told the commander. "She must have been fraternising with the natives on her intelligence gathering missions," he said, "but what overcame the infertility?" "Maybe humans just have more lead in their pencils." Utyna got back to them with the real answer moments later. Several months away from home had allowed the poison levels in their system to drop, and Draisa had, indeed, been fraternising. "If you leave now, you can get the cure home before the Judoon catch you."
Back at Mrs Newman's, Audrey practically knocked her mummy over with the enthusiasm of her greeting and Kenta tried to figure out why, when he looked at Ace, watching the reunion, he was getting mental pictures of vampires, Russian soldiers and an oddly dressed man with an umbrella standing outside a police box.
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Post by da professor on May 29, 2011 17:56:57 GMT
Next Time:- Secret of the Daleks
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Post by da professor on Jun 4, 2011 7:19:21 GMT
Chapter 3:- Secret of the Daleks
Kenta Takahashi had a strange dream, again, with two images sticking in his mind; a white pepperpot shaped creature saying “Temporal incursion detected. Initiating defensive protocols,” and a group of rats moving a rifle as if it were a field artillery piece.
Having successfully returned Audrey to her mother, it was decided that the party were going to return Judoon Sergeant Sto to his native era. The location of the Judoon homeworld being classified to prevent revenge attacks by criminal races, they chose a random planet in Mutter's Spiral, the planet Breka, home to the Brekallin, landing in 2316, Sto's home year, in the planet's capitol city, Kelron. As they stepped out of the Tardis, the beach was to their left, the city to the right, comprising tall, narrow buildings with conical rooves, those nearer the coast being raised on stillts. Behind the city, a range of mountains covered the horizon. The most notable feature,to everyone except Jim and Sto, who already knew, was that the natives were reptilloids with four arms each. Stepping out of the Tardis, Sto drew his communicator from his belt and attempted to raise his superiors. “Ah, Sto, excellent. Your report of 2180 was flagged up this morning. Stay where you are and await pick-up.” “Yes, sir.” Sto stepped over to a corner out of the way, adopted tha at-ease stance and waited. Kenta and Ayumi were presenting a case for going to the beach when attention was drawn by some kind of fuss at the far end of what appeared to be a main street. Deciding to investigate, they walked away from the Tardis, glancing back just long enough to observe that it had adopted the appearance of a small hut of local design. Friederich asked what had happenned to the cupboard, which noone answered, and Casey volunteered to stay behind, to keep an eye on things, but nobody thought to lock the door. The fuss turned out to be a demonstration, with dozens of Brekallin waving placards calling for the removal of the junta, the introduction of democracy and the general praising of someone called Bovatch. The demonstrators filled as large square and were surrounded by other Brekallin in red armoured uniforms armed with some form of gun. Kenta was the first to ask one of the uniformed chaps what was going on. “The democracy lot are holding another demo. They're u8sually well behaved, but we have to keep an eye incase they get rowdy, hence the stunners. Best you aliens don't get involved, it'll all be over soon.” “Fair enough. Beach.” Suddenly Kenta and Jenny both felt a disturbing chill. Freiderich noticed there reaction and was asking what was wrong when a distant metallic voice said something which could not be heard over the crowd's chants, then there was the unmistakable sound of a powerful energy weapon discharging and all hell broke loose. Amid the screams of pain and fear, and the chaos of hundreds trying to flee in all ditrections simultaneously, they saw a shape they had last seen on a video Casey had replayed for them of the death of the Tardis's previous crew, black and silver rather than bronze, but nevertheless definitely... “DALEKS! SHIT! RUN!” “Ex-ter-min-ate.” Everbody ran, the tide of the crowd pushing the timetravellers around until they were hopelessly lost in the maze of strrets of an unfamiliar city. They might have been crushed under the weight of the crowd had one of the natives not signalled to them to enter a building to which he had opened the door. “Hi, I'm Maylan. What the *@!& are those things.” “Daleks. Xenophobic cyborgs with technology centuries ahead of yours, including time travel. If they're here, this world is in serious trouble.” “Okay,” Jenny said, reverting to the military training the progenesis machine had programmed in to her barely a week ago, “Jim, you know something about these things...” “Ace should too, they invaded Earth in the twentysecond century, got kicked out in 2167.” “Good, okay, both of you. What are their tactics, strategies, strengths weaknesses, motivations, anything we can use to fight them. Also, contact Casey, he might be able to track what there up to, get a sense of their numbers using the Tardis sensors. Sto might be able to help to. I don't think the Shadow Proclamation will be too happy to learn there are daleks in this sector.”
Sto acknowledged the call from Jim and, on learning of the Dalek presence, responded that this was a disconcerting state of affairs. No, the ship coming to pick him up would not be equipped to oppose a Dalek invasion force, but he could pass the data up the chain of command so his superriors could take appropriate mesasures. Casey had beenstudying the Tardis controls, trying to learn how everything worked so he would be able to fly the craft if he needed to leave and the others weren't available. He still considered the Tardis to be his ship on the grounds that he had salvaged the biggest bit. He was in the library, reading a text on vortex mathematics and understanding about one word in 16, when Ace contacted him. He ran back to the control room and accessed the External Sensor Logs. “Okay, there were six daleks in the invasion force. They came down one of the main roads from the mountains, killed about a third of the people in the square as everyone else ran away, then headed back into the mountains.” Jenny was puzzled. Based on their reputation for blitzkrieg attacks, wiping out everybody and taking over, without mercy, compassion or concern for their individual welfare, this did not seem typical. Why would they do such a thing... unless. “Jim. Is there anything in the historical record that the Brekallin are about to do that the Daleks might have timetravelled in to interfere in?” Jim used his vortex manipulator vto tap into the history files on the Tardis. “Yes. There is currently a secret government defence project, Project Keth, which will produce an energy weapon far more advanced than anything they currently have. If these are early model daleks, like those that invaded Earth during Ace's time, it's not impossible that this weapon might penetrate their armour, or represent an advance they haven't made. Individual daleks are highly intelligent, but most of them aren't particularly creative.” “Or maybe the head of the junta has made a deal with the daleks to put down the democrats. More of them were killed than soldiers.” “There were more democrats than soldiers in the square, Kenta, and daleks aren't known for making deals,” Jim pointed out. “I wouldn't put anything past some of the generals, but King Chutsan wouldn't allow such a threat to his position.” “We need to talk to whoever's in charge, get them to bring out this project Keth to deal with the daleks...or maybe that's what they want, to draw it bout so they know where to attack. In that case we need to tell them to keep the weapon hidden so the daleks can't get to it.” “Maybe we should follow them into the mountains to find out where their base is and how many of them there are,” Kenta suggested, and Jenny agreed that this was a good idea, but maybe they should tell the King what they suspected first. “If they let us near him. Where is he likely to be anyway?” “The palace,” Maylan told them, showing them its location on a city map. “He's always there.” “Maybe you should come with us, a native spaking up for us could help.” “No it couldn't. I'm a known democrat and so are most of my friends.” “Maybe we should go as emmisaries of the Shadow Proclamation, offerring our help. We could take Sto with us...but we'd need a car...” “I could get one,” Maylan offerred, not revealing that he meant he could steal one. Had he owned up, the timetravellers would probably have accepted anyway. “We'll pick up Sto on the way, a Judoon presence will support our cover,” Jenny declared, hopping into the driver's seat. “Does anyone want to be dropped off at the Tardis?” Noone did. Perhaps not surprisingly, Jenny drove faster than was sensible for an urban environment but didn't even come close to having an accident and managed to slide the vehicle into a parking space barely longer than its chassis with a handbrake maneuver just metres from the palace gate. As the Gallifreyan, five humans and judoon disembarked and did the 'Reservoir Dogs' walk towards the palace, the guards raised there weapons, noticeably not stunners, and the officer bellowed “Halt and state your business!”
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Post by da professor on Jun 12, 2011 6:48:07 GMT
In answering the officer's challenge, Kenta said they wanted to see the king. “Nobody sees the king. Who are you to even make such a request?” “We are ambassadors of the Shadow Proclamation,” said Friederich, “as you should be able to tell by our Judoon companion.” “What's going on here?” a senior officer asked, and when told requested identification. Jim handed over his psychic paper. The officer examined what he thought he was seeing then gave a quiet but hurriede order, and the paper, to a soldier who entered the palace marching double time. A couple of minutes later, another officer, even more senior, came out of the palace and instructed them to follow him. He lead them to the office of General Tachik, the most senior military officer in the Brekallin military. As they entered, the general had his adjutant return Jim's papers and invited the party to sit. “What brings the Shadow Proclamation to my planet?” “You had an alien attack on your city earlier today.” Friederich chose to do the talking. “The attackers were daleks.” “We are aware of that. The only reason we haven't released the information to the public is a desire to avoid panic. Protecting the citizenry is going to be difficult enough without them getting in the way.” “Do you have a means to combat them? The stunners your men in the square had will not do the job.” “Stunners are not part of our plan. We have lethal weaponry and will use the best tools for the job.” “Anything to do with Project Keth?” “What do you know of Project Keth?” he was clearly displeased. “We are time-travellers...” “Aha! Hence the Class Ultra clearance. We have had timetravellers assist us against extraplanetary threats in the past. That information is strictly compartmentalised, however and so far as I am aware noone below the grade of Lieutenant Colonel is aware of that fact. You have come to help?” “Yes. According to our records, there isn't supposed to have been a dalek assault on this system in this timeperiod, so they are interfering with the timeline and need to be stopped. We have suspicions that the weapon you are developing under Project Keth is the cause of their interest. Either they fear it, or they want it, possibly both. What is the weapon?” “You understand this must remain strictly confidential,” the general began. As the party nodded their assent, he continued. “It is a high yield phased plasma cannon, which our research indicates shpuld be able to penetrate such forcefields as the daleks are believed to possess. Our best men theorise that the weapons of the daleks are based on a similar principle.” “Do you plan to use it?” “We are formulating our strategy at present, but it's certainly a possibility.” “What does King Chutsan have to say about it?” “His Majesty has given us permission to formulate whatever strategy his military deems most effective. Should that strategy involve the use of the prototype, it will be His Majesty's decision whether to proceed. As yet we are still gathering intelligence so any strike will not occur until at the earliest the day after tomorrow.” “How might we assist?” “Assuming you're not going to bring in weapons... Ithought not... any information or tactical advice you can provide would make our job easier.” “ You don't suppose,” Kenta asked, “that the democratic movement might have formed an alliance with the daleks?” “No. They are misguided in their beliefs, but they are neither evil or suicidal.” “Glad to hear you say that, general,” Kenta replied shaking his hand. {the general in his office, screaming 'you won't get away with this at someone Kenta couldn't see.} “How might we contact you if we learn anything you need to know?” “This is my card. The number will get me or my adjutant and if you give it to anyone in my army who gets in your way, one word from me will rectify the situation.” As the party left the palace, they contacted Casey and asked him to give them as much information as he could find on the daleks which had attacked the square; which model, where they had gone, how they had been defeated in the past...or the future. While he was researching they drove into the mountains as far as the car could go, then checked for signs of dalek passage, a distinctive scrape mark in the dirt, a tree blasted by an exterminator because it had blocked their path, and followed this trail as far as they could. Casey got back to them as they got above the treeline (far lower than on Earth) and the ground turned to barren rock. The daleks were second generation, the same as those which had invaded Earth over a century and a half earlier and the same as those which had first developed timetravel. While the first generation had been destroyed by a Thal rebellion, the second had been destroyed by the first dalek civil war. The attackers must be a vestigial remnant seeking, or awaiting, the developments which would herald the birth of the third generation. Compared to the daleks who had fought the timelords, these were primitive throwbacks, not even equipped to levitate, but they were still centuries ahead of the Brekallin and deadly dangerous. They had concealed their traces, but Caset had detected two possible sources of narrowcast radio signals in the mountains, roughly equidistant from the party in different directions. He gave them coordinates and they started discussing which option they would take. They decided to move north and Jenny offerred to scout ahead as she could move faster than the rest of them. Kenta found a small can of spray paint in one of his pockets, neon orange, and asked her to use it to mark the path so she didn't have to keep coming back. Being Jenny, she was soon miles ahead of the others. After overcoming numerous obstacles and covering twenty miles, mostly uphill, she came to a large lake, easily 10 miles across, surrounded by a ring of mountains. A high ledge on one of the nearby peaks offerred a vantage point so she climbed up to take a look. The others fell further and further behind as they struggled with obstacles Jenny had barely noticed, Kenta falling at one point and breaking a finger, which Ayumi tended to, taping it to to the fiunger next to it with some of Kenta's electrical tape and an improvised splint made of a broken lollipop stick. To busy scanning the view to check behind her, Jenny was hit from behind by a stunner beam. She woke lying on a cot, thought “What? Again?” and looked around her. The walls were plain metal and the room had another occupant. A large white sealed box to one side of the room apparently contained another patient, only his head visible. It was an alien head with an outsize brain, one eye, no visible nose and a pair of droopy ears like those of some kind of dog. “Who's there?” “I'm Jenny. Who are you?” “I'm Owez. Are you feeling better now?” “Huh?” “Tratton and Jaime brought you in. You were unconscious.” “I'm not know. What are you?” “I'm a patient. That's why we're in hospital. I'm sick.” “I meant your species. Are you a dalek?” “NO! I hate daleks!” “Okay, the reason I ask is, well, you're not human or brekallin, and there are daleks here.” “DALEKS! NO, PLEASE! NO DALEKS! I DON'T WANT DALEKS! PLEASE LET THER NOT BE DALEKS!” “I meant nearby...”she tried, but Owez was clearly hysterical. A monitor gauging some form of medical data went haywire until an automatic system cut in, flooding the patient's system with a large enough dose of some kind of sedative to put him to sleep. Outside, the others were just arriving at the lake and, Kenta having some difficulty, climbed to the same ledge Jenny had stood on a couple of hours earlier.
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Post by da professor on Jun 19, 2011 7:29:45 GMT
Looking round themselves, Jim, Ace, Ayumi and Kenta saw a huge lake enclosed in a mountain valley and, on the ledge behind them, a cave mouth blocked by a rockfall. Sto didn't look round, he was waiting for orders. Freiderich saw everything his fellow humans saw and a small piece of stone with some blood on it. He asked Jim to analyse it with his manipulator and the result confirmed that it was Jenny's blood. “She could be in the tunnel on the other side of these rocks,” Jim pointed out. “Or buried under the rubble! Let's start digging!” Kenta practically screamed. “Okay, you guys do that, I'll check round the other side of the peak to see if there's another way in,” Freiderich said. With a damaged hand, Kenta was relegated to a supervisory role, occassionally dissuading Ace from breaking out the nitro-9, while also making sure Sto didn't just vaporize rocks with his blaster or throw them over the ledge, in case they hit some endangered lifeform or someone's property below. The others worked sensibly and at the best pace they were capable of, but had still barely made a dent when Freiderich returned to report that their was no other access. Report made, he joined in the labour. Her fellow patient being unconcious, Jenny got bored in approximately 0.3 seconds and went to the door, prepared to bang on it to attract the attention of whoever was on the other side. This proved unnecessary as th door whooshed open as soon as she got within a foot of it. Outside was a corridor with with metal walls, floor and ceiling. In both directions there were buckled panels, some with exposed wires showing from behind them. She was on a ship or spacestation, rather than in a normal building. Listening, she heard a faint buzz, not unlike her father's sonic screwdriver, of to her left and began to head in that direction when she had the distinct impression of movement behind her and turned to see something, she wasn't sure what, entering the room she'd left the unconcious Owez in. She slipped back to listen at the door. “You appear to have had another episode, something scared you and the sedative was triggerred. What can you remember?” “There was someone else here....I think. She said something about there being daleks here.” “Oh, dear. I do hope she's mistaken.” “So do I.” Jenny peaked round the door and saw Owez talking to a five foot tall pepperpot shaped creature with two limbs, one ending in a sucker, the other resembling a gun barrel, and a single eyestalk. Okay, confused now. Owez was terrified of daleks, and his friend sounded scared too, but looked like one...except... The newcomer was white, while the dalek she had seen was black. The newcomer was far more lightly armoured, talked with a less mechanical sounding voice, didn't have the hemispherical bumps all over the lower half of its chassis and bore, between its two 'limbs' an embossed shield bearing a symbol of a winged staff with two snakes wound round it, the caduceus used as symbol of some medical units even in the sixty-first century. “Er...hello.” “Oh, there you are, dear. How are you feeling?” “Fine. How did I get here?” “We brought you in, you were injured.” “How did that happen?” “Farser set off a charge to block the tunnel above. He didn't check the area was clear before he detonated and a piece of debris caught you on the back of the head. We repaired the damage with a tissue regenerator and let you rest.” “Who are you?” “I'm Tratton, the ship's doctor.” “What are you? I mean, you look a bit like a dalek, but you don't act like one...” “That's a long story.” “Can you give me the edited highlights?” So Tratton told her of a time, centuries hence, when the daleks would decide to investigate the cause of the unquenchable rebellious streak in humans and would travel back to the first time when humans had first attempted to master the secret of time-travel. They had performed experiments on the humans, most of them fatal, but discovered nothing until.. “...One day the Oncoming Storm came and he showed us why humans rebel. He made us understand, not just on an intellectual level, really understand; freedom, individuality, compassion, humour, everything the daleks could never understand. There are only six of us left now, scared, hiding because our ship is damaged and we can't run. We know we're going to die, but I would sooner this, even the worst of it, than go back to what I once was.” “How do the daleks feel about you?” “As much as they feel anything, they consider anything which isn't a dalek offensive by its very existence, us doubly so.” “This changes things. We assumed they were here after Project Keth, but they might be here after you.” “Th-they're here? Are you sure?” “ Six of them killed hundreds of natives in the city earlier today.” “Oh dear. This is bad. We have to tell Padurg.” Padurg was the commander. Tratton took Jenny to see him, passing Jaime, the technician on the way. Jaime's shield bore a symbol resembling a sonic screwdriver and he was using some kind of sonic device to repair some of the ship's damaged circuitry. Tratton was on the bridge with Farser, the former having three stars on his shield, the latter one star. They were arguing about the rights and wrongs of Farser having blown up the tunnel. Then they saw Jenny. “WHAT IS SHE DOING ON THE BRIDGE?” “Shutup, Farser, I'm the Commander. What brings you here?” Jenny told them about the daleks. “There was a temporal incursion earlier today. That's why I sealed the tunnel.” “But you didn't check it was clear first...” “That incursion could have been my friends and me arriving. We landed near the beach.” “That fits, actually, so where did the daleks come from?” “Remnants of the force which pursued us to this era fifty years ago?” “So where have they been?” “If their broadcast power system was disrupted, they might have had to improvise an alternative. That could take a while; daleks are smart, but frontline troops aren't particularly creative. It might explain why they broke off so soon too, depleted batteries.” “Someone's in the tunnel.” “Daleks?” “Humanoids, one big enough to be a Judoon and another wearing some kind of vortex technology.” “Oh, that's my friends. They might think I'm trapped in there.” “It could take them a long time to get here. The tunnel winds down through the mountain into the lake, that's where we are, hidden at the bottom. I'll teleport them straight in.” “That's a bit risky from a security standpoint.” “Shutup, Farser. Five more humans aboard won't bring the daleks down on us,” Padurg said activating the transmat. “Actually, there human, but I'm not. I'm Gallifreyan.” “A TIMELORD!” all three not-daleks gasped simultaneously. “She's not the Oncoming Storm, but a timelord on our side can only be a good thing.” Jenny's friends materialised at that point, having to quickly adjust their balance from the uneven tunnel floor to the smooth metal deck. Kenta failed and fell on his butt. Sto saw three pepperpots and went for his gun, but Farser fired fist. “WHAT?! I'm using a stunner, he's not! Even a timelord must agree that stunning an attacker is better than letting him kill someone!” While Farser was busy defending himself from an attack which wasn't coming, Jenny was busy telling her friends that these were, in fact, not daleks and therefore perfectly nice and not to be attacked and Tratton was offerring to use the tissue regenerator to heal Kenta's injuries. Kenta declined and Tratton respected his decision, but did say he should check in on his patient. “Oh, yeah, Owez. What's wrong with him anyway?” “Dementia, caused by anemia. His liver isn't putting enough iron into his blood and his kidneys are taking it out too quickly.” “Have you tried giving him a transfusion?” Freidrich asked. “Inside these shells, our bodies are small. We couldn't spare enough blood to make a difference.” “Could you use human blood? Because if so, you can have some of mine.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “Thank you. Follow me to the lab and we'll do it now.” In the lab, Freiderich met Wenid, the science officer, whose shield depicted a double helix for reasons Freiderich could not guess. As she took the blood sample, and gave him glucose and iron supplements, Freiderich asked about their experience with timelords. “Most never leave Gallifrey. Those that do are usually dangerous, one called Mortimus, dressed like a monk. Worked with the daleks once. Others, the Master, the Rani, the War Chief, out for what they could get...” “That's not my experience of the Doctor...” “You met him! Oh, he's a special case, one of a kind. |He breaks the Timelords rules too, they would call him a criminal, but what he does is good. I met him once, but didn't appreciate the honour, couldn't at the time. It was before he changed us. If you see him again, could you thank him from us.” On the bridge, the others discussed options. So far one radio source had led them to this valley. The daleks weren't here, so maybe they were near the other source. If Padurg could teleport the party to somewhere near that source, they could investigate and maybe break the broadcast power system totally so the daleks would be helpless against the native defensive action. The not-daleks could not go as the broadcast power they needed outside the ship would alert the daleks, but they could give Kenta a detailed explanation of how it worked so he could sabotage the dalek's system. Once Freiderich rejoined the group, the five humans and Jenny were teleported to a mile awat from the other signal and used their best sneakery to get close to what turned out to be a Brekallin military compound. Kent at once guessed that the government were using fake daleks to scare the populace. Jim pointed out that this was impossible as the tardis sensors would have flagged them as fake if the shells weren't dalekanium, and omly the daleks knew how to make dalekanium. Remembering General Tachik's card, they formulated a plan whereby some of the party would approach the gate and present the card, while Jim would be hidden ready to intercept the call and impersonate the general, abetted by the vortex manipulator, to get them inside if need be. As it turned out, the call to the general wasn't placed as he had already anticipated the party's visit to the Project Keth facility and contacted the officer in charge of the garrison, Major Utsoon, that they might be coming. He invited them in, explained that he didn't know the details of the project but did promise to get them to talk to the person who did, Professor Killit, as soon as he was available. Jenny ran off to get Jim 'from the car' and the party, sans Sto (still stunned in the not-daleks' sickbay) were guided to the officer's mess.
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Post by da professor on Jun 27, 2011 11:25:40 GMT
In the military compound which surrounded Project Keth, Jenny and her human friends were escorted to the mess by commanding officer Major Utsoon. As they walked, Freiderich loked round, memorising the layout and paid special attention to which buildings had armed guards. One of these would house the project itself. The mess was largely empty. The few occupants regarded the newcomers with curiosity, but not hostility; they were with the CO after all. They spoke to the major for a while, expressing their concerns for the safety of both the citizens of Breka and the Project, given the presence of the daleks. “Between us, the reason Project Keth has been given such urgency is that we've been aware of daleks hereabouts for some time. I found a number of damaged chassis while swimming in a lake about thirty miles from here. I passed the information to my superiors. They felt it best to keep the information compartmentalised while developing a reaponse in order to prevent a panic.” “What happenned to the chassis?” “Broken down for a variety of projects. I suspect Professor Killit has some of the armour to test the weapon on, they're probably looking into armour applications... I don't have clearance for any details, but I can make educated guesses.” “What about this project?” “I know it's a weapon. Other than that, I just command the security force. Only Professor Killit and his team know what goes on in that hangar. If you really have to discuss details, you'll need to wait for him. He does seem to be reasonably satisfied with progress.” The conversation continued on lighter subjects for a while, as Jenny availed herself of the food available and some of the party began to nod off, having been awake for something approaching eighteen hours. “EX-TER-MIN-ATE.” Alarms went off all over the compound and every soldier in the room, including Jenny, was on his or her feet before the noise had woken Ayumi. The major and his people ran out the doors, towards the armoury where they were kitted out with armour and assault weapons before heading to where the daleks were coming from. The party decided to head out the back way and make for the hangar with the armed guard; if the daleks were after Project Keth, they would make it as hard as possible for them. Jenny hurdled the counter, Ace and Jim vaulted it and the others climbed over with varying degrees of difficulty, then through the kitchen, along the alley and round the corner, the noise of Brekallin gunfire and dalek exterminators audible every step of the way. The guards at the hangar were still there and completely refused to allow the party to pass, or even to acknowledge the possibility that the Professor might have sent for them. “The only people who get in here are the Professor and his team. He did not invite a bunch of nosy aliens who just happenned to turn up right before we get attacked.” Seeing the intractability of the guard, Jenny sneaked over to the armoury, empty of personnel or lethal weapons since all were involved in the defence of the compound, and returned with a stunner. Two shots took the guards down. There was no opening mechanism on the outside of the door, so Ace got the party to drag the guards clear while she planted a charge of nitro-9. BOOM. One half of the double door folded like paper; the other flew clear off its hinges and crashed into the wall at the far end of the hangar having taken out the internal security station on the way. The guard at that station was reelling from shock and the concussive effects of the explosion until the stunner took him out too. There were offices to the right, but the party were more interested in the other half of the building, behind a specially added internal wall and security doors with a seven digit security code. Kenta hacked the code; after finding it wasn't pi he tried Euler's number (2.718281) and it worked. The rather angry looking civillian with the big gun on the other side of the door woul clearly have preferred if it hadn't. As he raised the gun, Kenta tried to dive past him, hoping to give Jenny an opening, but instead slammed straight into him. They ended up wrestling inexpertly on the floor for control of the weapon while the rest of the party looked at what else was in there...six Brekallin soldiers in VR chairs, each controlling something with a pair of joysticks. One pressed a trigger on one of his joysticks at exactly the same time as an exterminator discharged outside and Jenny made her mind up what was happenning. She snapped her stunner up and fired six more times. Of the six, one didn't even know she was shooting, three didn't get out of the chairs, one failed to reach his weapon and the last fell as he was bringing his to bear. Jenny listened. Brekallin guns were still firing, but there was no further sound of exterminators. Even though she knew what was happenning, Jenny put on one of the VR helmets and got a dalek's eye view of a native soldier firing at it. As she went to get the major, Ace helped Kenta knock his opponent out then checked his ID; this was Professor Killit. Major Utsoon was puzzled at first, particularly when he saw Killit wrapped like a mummy, though in Kenta's duct tape rather than bandages, but once he discovered that the Project Keth team had been eremote controlling the daleks who had been attacking his people, he ordered all of them arrested and a detailed report to be prepared and sent to General Tachik's main rival, General Kolrath, the report to include video footage, scans and every other kind of footage. He also inspected the chassis and confirmed that these were the ones he'd found in the lake. Kenta, Jim and Ace, under the pretence of helping,planted nitro-9 charges in each chassis and remote detonated them when everyone was clear to prevent military retention of such dangerous technology, afterwards claiming it must hav been a security measure installed by either Killit or the daleks.
After leaving, they returned to the lake and the former daleks, Kenta suggested 'daleens', hiding under it. They explained that the dalek attack had been faked by the military, possibly as an excuse to maintain their influence, using dalek chassis they had found in the lake. “Oh, dear.” “Was it an earlier force you defeated?” “No. They were our old chassis, we abandoned them in favour of the ones we now use because they were designed for waging war. It never occurred to us that anyone would be stupid enough to interfere with it in a sector where they know how dangerous daleks are.” “There was someone stupid enough,” Kenta replied, almost grinning. “Whatever it is, whatever the consequences might be, there is always someone stupid enough. Among humans particularly, but it seems to apply to Brekallin too.” “We should be getting Sto back to the beach for his pickup. Where is he?” “This way.” Tratton led them to the sickbay, Jenny recognised the route, and they found the judoon demanding the return of his weapon and communicator, which Farser was telling him he would not get till he was leaving. Also present was a humanoid figure in a simple jumpsuit whose face Jenny recognised... it was Owez, out of life support and seeming in good health. “Sorry,” Freiderich began,”but who, and what are you?” “Not long ago, I was what my crewmates still are, but the blood sample one of you gave provided enough information for Tratton and Wenid to grow me this new body. We're going to run tests, see if there are any issues, correct them if there are, then we'll make new bodies for the others.” “What about this world? If they come looking in the lake again...” “We can safely hide from any scans they've got for a while yet, and as soon as we get our vortex drive up and running again, we'll head for somewhere the daleks will never look and build a society there.”
Later, on the beach, after a judoon ship had taken Sto on board, they overheard a news broadcast announcing the arrest of General Tachik and several of his staff for treason and a declaration by His Majesty King Chutsan that he was prepared to enter into talks with Speaker Bovatch of the Brekallin Democratic Movement with a view to instituting reforms appropriate to the fact that the planet was no longer at war. “We did good,” Jenny grinned. “Yes, we did,” Jim replied.“The timeline's changed locally, but the ripples seem to settle down before any damage is done.” “So, what now? Do we take everyone back to his or her native era so we can return to our former lives?” Freiderich asked. “Nah!” Kenta answered, “I'm sure there's a lot more trouble we could be getting into.”
End of Secret of the Daleks.
Strange Times will return next time I can wrangle my players.
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Post by da professor on Jan 5, 2013 9:18:55 GMT
Chapter Four:- The Town of Revelation
Revelation, Arizona lies on the bank of the Angel river, which flows for 12 miles out of the hills before disappearing into a sinkhole. The township was founded by travellers lost in the desert in 1853. In 1865, a shooting star hit north of the town, breaking through to an underground lake which is now called Shooting Star Lake. Other than a spike in the rat population a year later, nothing noteworthy happenned until things started to get weird around Thanksgiving 1872. On New Year's Day 1873, ratcatcher Hiram Cole and his dog, Jethro, were found dead.
The Tardis landed and Jim double checked the coordinates before confirming that they had landed on Earth in 1873. Freiderich immediately began to worry about how he was going to explain being over a year late for work, but the question proved irrelevant when Jenny wandered out into the Arizona sunshine. As the rest of the party followed, a tall man in cowboy clothes flew out of the saloon as if pushed with considerable force, followed by the apparent cause of that push, a John Wayne lookalike with a sheriff's badge and a german shepherd at his side. Struggling to his feet, the first man went for a gun. A voice screamed "Look Out!", but Jenny and the dog had both grabbed the gun arm already. The gunman dropped his weapon, which the sheriff retrieved before thanking Jenny and the dog, Rocky, who had a deputy's badge pinned to a bandana round his neck, and taking the prisoner, who he called Reece, into custody. Once Reece was safely locked in the jailhouse, the sheriff came baclk out again to speak to the newcomers, but was interrupted by an earsplitting scream. He and Rocky immediately started towards the noise, as did Jenny, with the others following after a moment's hesitation - at most. Jenny arrived first, even beating Rocky to the scene, where a woman in her thirties, primly dressed, was standing with her hands over her mouth staring in horror at something the other side of an open door and urgently signalling to a young boy that he should not come closer. When Jenny looked, she saw the body of a middle aged man in a nightshirt who had had his throat ripped out while he was asleep. Freiderich took it upon himself to lay claim to the crime scene and do some detailed analysis, while Jenny talked to the boy and the sheriff spoke to the woman, then all three compared notes. The young woman, Miss Walker, was the towns new schoolteacher and had decided to take advantage of a clear morning to introduce herself to the families with children, starting with the Detweillers, who were the only family this far north. On her way, she had spotted a door standing ajar, looked to see if anything was amiss and seen the body. The scream had been hers. The deceased was Jim Cavill, a local hunter and friend of the recently deceased Hiram Cole. He had been asleep when he had been attacked and, given that the door to his shack had been poorly hung, this indicated that the attacker had to have been uncommonly slight of build to have entered without making the sort of noise which should have woken Cavill. The young boy, Tommy Detweiller, had been, in his own words, on his way to the General Store for provisions when he had heard the scream from the Cavill residence. Until then he had seen or heard nothing to indicate that anything was amiss. Once the witnesses had moved on, Sheriff Macmillan gave the others some background. Things had been weird since Thanksgiving, or at least that's when it started being noticed. Small items had been going missing, livestock had been killed and phantom voices had been reported. The old schoolteacher, Miss Cameron, had quit in hysterics just before Christmas. Then on New Year's Day, Hiram Cole was found dead and his dog ripped to pieces. According to the local medical man, Doc Gibson, Cole had drunk whisky laced with rat poison. This could have been suicide, but Jim Cavill wouldn't accept that notion; now he was dead too. The time travellers decided to investigate the lake, because it had been formed by something from outer space and what was happenning didn't seem natural, but other than dirty water and the remnants of something so rusted Jenny could break a piece off with one hand, they found nothing. Freiderich decided that it might be useful to set a trap and volunteered himself as bait. Explaining his plan to Macmillan earned him grudging agreement, accompanied by a funny look from Rocky and another from a nearby cat, both of which he noticed and commented on to the others.
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Post by da professor on Jan 5, 2013 9:46:19 GMT
Back after a long hiatus. Same player for Jenny, new Freiderich, no other players yet, but should have two others next week, including one playing Jim Hope.
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Post by da professor on Jan 13, 2013 9:27:32 GMT
After talking to the others, and acknowledging his own impression that Rocky had seemed bright for a dog, Jim Hope presented the hypothesis that something had boosted the intelligence of some of the local animals. This led to him wondering if this might include the local rat population; the first person to be killed was the local ratcatcher, after all. A visit to the home of the late Hiram Cole led to the discovery of some damaged rat traps, an open, empty safe and a blood stain on the porch,probably from the violent death of Cole's dog, Jethro. A ring on the table indicated a recent spillage of blood which Jim scanned; the list of chemicals identified included some not in the database, but Ace was able to confirm that they were components of rat poison. With no other evidence inside, and nothing conclusive outside, they decided to go see the local doctor, Doc Gibson, who had performed the autopsy on Cole and was to do the same for Cavill later. At the Doc's place, the door was answered by Tommy Detweiller, who did odd jobs for Doc to earn some pocket money. He let them in and went to make coffee for the guests while they spoke to Gibson. He confirmed that Cole had died from ingestion of whisky adulterated with rat poison and that Jethro had been torn apart as if by an unusually large number of rats. He had yet to examine Mr Cavill properly, but a cursory inspection told him that a sharp implement had pierced the carotid artery and then been dragged across the throat to give a larger wound. As the deceased had probably been asleep at the time of the attack, he may well have died without knowing anything about it. Asked if anyone had heard anything on the night Cole and Jethro were killed, the doctor told them no, but pointed out that it was New Year's Eve, so the noise might have been covered by the celebrations or missed by people sleeping it off early the next morning. When Tommy returned with the coffee, Jim, who had noticed that Tommy spoke like an excessively polite adult rather than a typical 8 year-old, surreptitiously ran a scan for poisons. The coffee was unadulterated, but there were poisons in a safe behind a painting in the doctor's study. As he covered his vortex manipulator again, he spotted a reaction from Tommy which told him that the boy had seen the device. After speaking to Doc Gibson, the party decided to talk to the third member of Cole and Cavill's regular drinking circle, Tommy Detweiller's father, Charley, a man who had virtually lived in a bottle since the death of his wife a couple of years earlier. Bribing him with alcohol, they quizzed him about the recent activities of his two dead friends, but he was unable to provide any useful information the party didn't already have. Temporarily stymied, they decided to look into another local mystery; phantom voices which had been heard around town since at least Thanksgiving. The sheriff had mentioned that they seemed most common around the schoolhouse, so they went there first. After looking round and finding nothing immediately suspicious, though Freiderich was appalled by the anti-British bias in the history books, they were about to leave when Ace heard a voice. Up in the rafters, someone was telling someone else to be quiet. Shining a pocket torch up there, they saw three ravens, which Kenta mentally dubbed as Hekyll and Jekyll and Hyde. One of the ravens swore and another told him to mind his language as there were ladies present. 'Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?' Freiderich asked, reasoning that talking ravens were actually less strange than some of the things he'd seen lately. Initially reluctant, the ravens decided to cooperate on the understanding that the fact that they could talk would not be shared with the more superstitious townsfolk. They vaguely remembered the lake being formed by 'a ball of fire from the sky' which had broken through to and diverted a pre-existing underground river which had previously drained through some caves; caves which had since been taken over by the rats. Old enough to remember, they were able to tell the party that it was only animals which drank the lake water which showed elevated intelligence, leading Jim to theorise that a mutagen was present. After further discussion, and confirming that the ravens were responsible only for the phantom voices and the disappearance of a few shiny objects, the party asked if they could keep an eye on the local rats, still thinking they were behind the other local weirdness and the deaths. Jim also asked that they watch Tommy, having apparently decided that a child that intelligent had to be evil and therefore either in league with or in control of the rats. Ace suggested that it might be possible to negotiate with the rats. The people they had killed were those responsible for most of the rat deaths in the community and they might have been acting in self defence. On the strength of the fact that the stolen items included books, they decided that the rats could read and that, therefore they could invite the rats to a parley by attaching a written invitation to a piece of cheese. This they did, creating two copies and using two pieces of cheese, placed in the windows of the two rooms they took n the saloon. When the rats took the cheese overnight, and the invitation notes with them, they decided that the meeting, at the western end of the lake, was on. Now they just had to decide how they were going to have a conversation with rats and what they were going to say.
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Post by da professor on Jan 20, 2013 9:43:15 GMT
Next morning, after much debate, it was decided that the party should buy a typewriter, so the rats could type replies to whatever the party said to them. The meeting scheduled for noon, they had the morning to fill. First, they decided to interview Tommy. At the Detweiller residence, Charles could be heard snoring quite loudly, but Tommy was awake and willing to answer questions. He had noticed that the ravens talked to each other when they thought no humans were listening, that animals who visited the lake were smarter than those who didn't and that the horses at the livery stable had become smarter since the livery started taking water from the lake rather than the river. He knew relatively little about the two dead men, except that they were drinking buddies of his fathers. No other children lived among the small group of houses which took water from the lake and every adult who lived there either boiled the water before drinking it or drank more whisky than water. Tommy had been looking after himself since the age of six and freely admitted that he didn't boil the water the first few times he drank it because, at the time, he hadn't known to do so. This supported the party's general theory that the lake was responsible for the elevated intelligence of some of the animals and led Ace to the idea that some bacterial or chemical agent might be involved. At the lake, Jim performed a scan of the water and detected an array of mundane minerals and a few bacteria, not all of which his vortex manipulator's database recognised; he transferred the data to the TARDIS for analysis and went to meet the rats. The rats did show up. Lots of rats. Possibly hundreds. Most were large, some more than twice the size a rat normally grows to, and many had distorted hip and shoulder joints. Some were clearly more comfortable walking erect than on all fours. When they saw the typewriter, one of the largest stepped up as if to type. Friederich greeted them, nervously and the big rat did, indeed, type a response. Thus the conversation began. The rats had killed Cole, Jethro and Cavill because they had killed large numbers of rats. They had taken some of the missing items because some of the latest generation had developed sufficient dexterity to use small tools. They had not killed the livestock. They agreed that they would kill no more humans if the humans killed no more of them and to create the illusion that they were gone by leaving those which had died naturally in traps and not allowing humans to see evidence of them thereafter. Friederich was concerned that the deaths would remain unsolved mysteries, which might lead to investigation and subsequent exposure. The rats, before they dispersed, advised them to check out the big cat to the west. Freiderich was not entirely convinced. A big cat could have killed Jethro, and Cole's poisoning could be explained as an accidental spillage, but Cavill had been killed with a weapon. Still, they went west to look. The big cat wasn't a puma or cougar. It was a natural stone formation in roughly the shape of a cat lying down. The party looked around, a process which included Jenny climbing up to the top of the rock while Friedrich was still trying to argue that it was more appropriate for one of the men to do so. They discovered a number of small caves being used as lairs by a pack of coyotes, one of which had been shot and killed recently. Not far of was the body of a man who had been attacked by a pack of coyotes, with tracks indicating that his horse had fled into the desert. They took the dead man back to town and, in the process of reporting the discovery to the sheriff, recognised the man's face on a wanted poster; he was an escaped murderer called Logan with a $200 price on his head-an obvious scapegoat for the Cavill murder, while Jethro and the dead livestock could be blamed on the coyotes and Cole's death classed as an accident. The party asked that the reward be put in a bank account to help pay for Tommy to go to university when he was old enough, then returned to the TARDIS. Results if the analysis of the lake water revealed that a contaminant of extraterrestrial origin, which would have come with the meteor which formed the lake, had altered a couple of bacteria. One was producing an enzyme which improved nerve conduction rates and enhanced the formation of new dendrites, axons and synapses, boosting the intelligence and other brain functions of those exposed. The other was a mutagen, no doubt responsible for the strangeness of the rats who had lived through over 50 generations since initial exposure. Both bacteria were killed by boiling or alcohol and would be destroyed by water puification methods common in the 20th century. All loose ends tied up. The party decided it was time to leave.
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