The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
letsgolegion) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
letsgolegion) wrote in legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
Entry tags:
SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]
Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
Agent Conneticut
But she's not going to find her team mates or any answers by sticking around. For all that she's wearing her power armour, Connie's able to slip quietly through the dark and sparking hallways of the ship with a double or two stalking silently by her side. Every now and again there's the sharp crackle of electricity accompanied by a moan so low it's almost a whimper, and the deeper she gets the more unnervingly familiar the hallways- and the voices are.
Don't think about them. Regroup, find whoever else is alive, and try to get out. This is your last chance, Connie.
Survive.
no subject
And a UNSC IFF signature to kill it with, apparently. They're just everywhere lately.
She opens a comms channel with all the proper protocols, providing her own IFF signature. Being alone with her thoughts has not proven healthy on this mission, and it's probably the same for everyone else.
"Agent Connecticut?"
no subject
When her comm sparks to life she tenses, surprised by the unfamiliar signature but she'll gladly make contact.
"I hear you, Cortana. What's your status?"
no subject
no subject
"Yeah, things aren't looking too good for us are they? Got any idea on how we can get out of here?"
no subject
no subject
And that's what's really eating away at her, that the longer they take to solve this the more they risk their friends falling to such a terrible fate.
"Do you know if anyone else is up for it?"
no subject
no subject
"I don't have a lot to hit with but I'm a good decoy and distraction. Most of the big hitters I know are...not themselves."
no subject
"Speaking of, let me into your armor." Cortana is on her best behavior, trying to make friends by asking first. Or at least announcing her intentions, since that's really more of a demand she just made. "It looks like your firmware is a few years out of date. Easy fix."
no subject
Connie quirks a brow at the request, her surprise evident in her voice as she asks, "You-...how long would it take? Will your partner be safe?"
no subject
What Cortana actually plans to do is dub off and then reintegrate a copy of herself, but she keeps that ability on the down-low as a rule. The implications tend to make people nervous.
"I can slap a patch over your existing systems if you don't want to do a full reboot. Not as good, but no downtime." She can see advantages to either, so what follows is the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "Up to you."
no subject
Any advantage would be better at this point, and she'd only regret it later.
"So long as it doesn't lock down my armour...full reboot. Thank you, Cortana."
no subject
There is no 'her' to the copy yet as the code flies through the space between here and there at the speed of light. Only when Connie's armor recognizes it as friendly and lets it run does a second Cortana exist, spreading from the chip in the helmet through the armor in a familiar diagnostic routine.
"...Okay, this is weird." The design is clearly based on Mjolnir, but it's like someone took the Mark IV and ran in an entirely different direction with it than Dr. Halsey did for the Mark V.
no subject
It doesn't take long at all before Connie receives the notification of her suit's storage in use and Cortana's voice speaks through her comms again. And...ah, right she should have remembered that earlier.
"Yeah, sorry. Our suits are a bit different than industry standard."
Might be a bad time to mention how they're also pretty experimental too. At least Connie was lucky to get one of the more solid enhancements.
no subject
"Who's this Church idiot whose comments are all over the code, anyway?" She folds her arms while she works, most of her attention on rewriting the systems in Connie's armor to bring them up to what Cortana considers an acceptable standard. Who designs armor that can't function properly without an AI? Even the Mark V works flawlessly without her; it just works transcendently with her.
Cortana's not short on confidence. In fact, some might call it arrogance.
no subject
Her lips twitch in a bit of a smile at her face and her comment, "Director Leonard Church of Project Freelancer. Used to be my boss."
no subject
no subject
"There was a lot he didn't report back to Command about. He was very fond of the ends justifying the means. I strongly disagreed, which is why I left."
no subject
Note to self: Do not mention own distinct lack of moral scruples about methods to Agent Connecticut.
"Okay, that should do it." Cortana nods decisively as she does the virtual equivalent of cleaning up the workspace inside Connie's armor and gets the new code ready to run. "You'll see an increase in responsiveness across the board, and I updated the threat assessment package to the latest version. It's now tied into the hologram emitter, so you shouldn't have to micromanage the decoys unless you want specific nonstandard behavior."
There's a reason people put up with smart AIs and their idiosyncrasies, and it's the fact they can do things like recode a set of power armor in under a minute.
"Pull my chip before you reboot," she says as her hologram flicks out of existence. "I hate being stuck in inactive armor."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
She wasn't going to.
Gwen makes it through a hall, hearing footsteps as they become louder and louder.
Could be a friend, and she really hopes for that. But Gwen can't really take a chance, so she ducks behind a pile of rubble, waiting and wanting for a good solid look of who or what was approaching her.
no subject
A quick blip lights up in her visor at a faint movement down the corridor and she pauses, her hand resting tentatively on the grip of her pistol. It's a risk, but Connie's more than capable of being hard to catch.
"Hello?"
no subject
The voice was pretty ordinary, too. Sure did sound human!
Wait a second. Didn't she talk to her before?
"Hey." She said back. "I know we're meeting like this, but I hope you don't actually plan to shoot me."
no subject
That voice certainly does sound familiar. When her head pokes out from behind her cover Connie lifts her hands in a peace making gesture.
"Are you alright?"
no subject
Did she get the picture? Gwen wasn't quite sure yet.
"God, why this. Why all of this."