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.
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
Connie knew that smart AI could complete amazing things but she's still impressed that Cortana could update and upgrade her suit of armour so quickly and efficiently. If only the Director hadn't been so self centered and obsessed with a memory he could have made some actual progress instead of that toxic thing the Project became.
"Thank you, that'll make getting out of this mess a whole lot easier."
Connie nods as she reaches up to pull the storage chip from the reader of her suit and initiates the reboot, feeling the weight of it a little more keenly as it shuts down to complete the update.
Which of course, is when she hears the tell tale pitter-patter of feet, too many feet or something equally made of skin and bone come echoing down from the end of the hallway.
"Shit!" she whispers.
no subject
The sensors on her chip are limited, but she doesn't like those skittering sounds any more than Connie does.
"It's always something." Cortana's voice, more annoyed than frightened, emanates from the chip just loud enough for Connie to hear even with her helmet pickups inactive, but she doesn't project a hologram. Glowing bright blue would be tactically counterproductive just now.
"Are you armed?" Connie might be slowed by the weight of her armor, but it doesn't take much muscle to squeeze a trigger.
no subject
"It's a bit of a bumpy getaway but it'll do until the suit powers back on."
no subject
Above her chip where her avatar would normally project, a miniature map of the nearby corridors appears, just bright enough for Connie to make out, with a red dot moving along one of them.
"The position's going to be iffy until your motion tracker's back. It could be off by as much as a few meters."
no subject
Connie watches the dot move across the map, keeping an ear out on the sound of whatever it is advancing.
no subject
Anyone can stay alive for 60 seconds, right? Cortana runs a few hundred tactical simulations while she's talking, but she has so little data, it might as well be daydreaming. Which is probably a good thing, because Connie dies a lot when Cortana uses a Sangheili to model whatever it is in the corridor. She does well against a squad of Unggoy, though.
no subject
"S'alright. Just like the good old days then."
Taking a steadying breath she pulls herself out of her cover of the air vent, landing with a heavy thud on the metal ground as the sound of the approaching footsteps stumble to a halt. A small group of soldiers dressed in black and red- suits similar to hers but of a distinct style wait for her at the end of the hallway. Two have matching smiley faces on their chest plates, one has long blonde hair slipping out of her helmet, and the others...they move as one because they're forced to, sewn together by flesh and metal. All of their heads turn to Connie as soon as she appears, and with a roar that is part scream, part gurgling howl, they charge for her.
Even with the suit heavy around her, Connie spins on her heel and runs