you
Careful, you spill water on that and you might accidentally summon a Stormbond Fjall.
Uh, no.
Sorry, it's not magic.
It's memetics.
memetics.
That's a ten dollar word for a two dollar room kid.
The high ups think meme is a French maid.
You're trying to explain algebra to a room full of gorillas.
With respect sir, the data holds up that Anna Nairber wasn't just looking for relics, they were building a linguistic virus, a syntax if you look at it at the propagation curves in
1944.
believe you.
I believe you.
That's the problem.
I believe you.
But the guys upstairs, want satellite photos of T-72 tanks.
They don't care about syntax.
You're going to write a brilliant report.
It's going to get filed next to the UFO sightings.
And you're going to spend the next 20 years analyzing wheat fields in Ukraine.
So what am I supposed to do?
It's the truth.
Find a different audience.
There are people.
Private interests who pay a premium for men who can see the pattern in the noise.
and wildlife mercenaries.
uh Think bigger.
A quiet little think tank called the Arminage Group.
They handle the R &D, Subsidiary of March Tech.
Okay, and what does a defense contractor want with Nazi folklore?
We have a project out in the Painted Desert.
There's a team of biologists out there.
Absolutely visionary stuff, But they are difficult.
They deal with materials that don't follow the usual rules of biology.
We're looking for a case manager.
Sounds like you mean a babysitter.
A translator.
Someone who understands that sometimes a symbol isn't just a drawing.
It's a circuit.
You're wasting that brain here, Talk to them.
Hey, wait.
Who do I say sent me?
Gavin Ross.
you
You get a night's rest, the sun starts coming through the window around 6 a.m.
and before you know it, Barone, the door, softly nudges your leg as you're asleep and Karas comes in.
Oh, we have a new person here.
And he looks as rested as his jaundice Lee.
gross skin can look and he steps past you and walks into the middle and notices the papers are on his desk were moved around a little bit.
uh Kind of walks, does a quick like walk around and goes into the kitchen and pulls out a can of uh beans and puts it in a thing and turns on a butane stove and starts heating up a
can.
And he's like,
I'm sure um you're hungry.
And then he pulls out some more capsules and sets them next to like where he's cooking.
But it's nice to meet you.
I'm Julian Kross.
Dell will just see the beans and he'll say, I hate it here.
I'm like, did I just hear a can of beans opening?
What kind of beans are you making?
respect pins.
favorite.
uh But he holds out his hand to shake yours.
says, uh, Julian Cross.
Hi, uh I'm Ryan.
It's nice to meet you.
I've heard a lot about you from my fellow agents here.
I appreciate you giving us a place to stay tonight.
Of course.
up my friend.
I wouldn't leave him to die, so I'm sure you're hungry and you have questions, but please make yourselves comfortable.
Yeah sure, mean I have two questions.
um Do you have any of those liquid beans around?
um Some coffee?
Do you have coffee going?
Yeah, he reaches up and pulls out like those little sticks of instant coffee.
I'm sorry I don't drink them much, but this will have to do.
And he has another pan boiling some water.
that I am underwhelmed but still alive so that's fine.
That's fine.
uh Second question.
So with what you injected into me, how will I know if it worked or not?
Will I crave metal for a while?
Will I...
Will it fall off?
How do navigate that?
Well, bicarbonate should work pretty quickly, um, within a day, so...
I'm not...
Yes.
Well, I'm gonna go ahead and take one of those metal ground pills, because for some reason I still want it at the moment.
We're gonna hope that falls right off and I'll go ahead and take one of the pills, grab a glass of water and start to swallow it down.
Okay, we are welcome to it.
um Out of everybody here.
yeah, Ryan.
So we found our friend.
He's here.
He's alive.
He's good uh You guys just met obviously don't know why I'm saying that uh Ryan here is uh the the part of our party that probably knows the most he's uh he's the brains of all the
studies uh that That we've uh you know done up to date So if anybody can can help you out Ryan here is gonna be your guy
What manner of help could you provide me?
I'm not so sure.
just depends on what information you're looking for.
you know, I, along with Dell was the one that found Arthur Finch's writings and some drawings that I kind of remember as we thumbed through them.
Yeah, but I don't know.
guess it just depends on, you know, what kind of information you're after.
Well, I'm after...
I guess we would...
It's really scientific, but there's a...
It's a ritual of sorts, but...
The underpinnings are still scientific.
It's a...
dimensional...
calling, I suppose, through reverberations of voice mixed with some of these symbols that Finch had been...
sending me and I'd been collecting.
And I was trying to finish the...
the uh...
I guess the symbols to complete my work.
And what sort of work is that?
what, eh what are you wanting to do with this information?
My vessel, and he points to his body, is sufficiently prepared to move on from this world, and I believe I can do that with this song, for lack of a better term.
Okay, so you're saying uh something will happen when you put these things together and are you talking about like that?
And I point over to the brain in the jar.
I...
My assumption is yes.
So, I'm not, again, new territory, but...
Is that how that brain ended up in that jar?
That brain is ancient, I'm not sure, but I'm trying to find the architect of the jar and the one who puts the brains in it.
That's what this song, I assume, brings to us.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well, I'm totally sure I'll be able to help you out with that, um if you want to show me, you know, what you have, maybe something will ring a bell.
And I kind of look at them and give them like a a wink.
Like I don't, you know, trying to communicate to him, like, I don't want to talk about this in front of these people, but maybe I can help you.
with a private combo.
Later.
Well, I can show you what I have.
It's over here.
And he goes to the desk to find his paper with symbols on it.
So you did mention the architect and the reason why we exist is to keep humanity from exploring the horrors that are out there or experiencing them rather.
em Is this architect dangerous?
We know they created the verdant path.
Gonna have to clean that up a little bit.
uh But is this a danger to humanity as a whole or is this like a you give it what it wants and it goes away type thing?
I assume their motivations are beyond us grasping and our tiny intellects, but um they have posed no danger to me.
The verdant path were left to imbibe and take on the swamp and be changed, and they called upon it multiple times, unsuccessfully, but it was not an affront or anything.
So I- uh
I don't sense any danger in this, I just sense liberation.
Interesting.
So actually you just reminded me and Ryan you may be able to expand on this a little bit but you said that they called unsuccessfully but they called something somehow.
Something flew over um Ryan here and into the swamp and they pulled it off into a I don't know further down into the swamp.
Do you know what that was?
I've never seen anything like that, but...
um It sounds like they've called, like you said, something, but it wasn't.
The same...
Yes.
But let me show you what I have.
um Please.
em If you can, join me.
He offers you to come outside.
Okay, so I get off the couch and I like start crawling towards that door.
You do one hit point?
Yeah.
Your one hit point would have, your one hit point would have like.
limping towards the front door, hopping on one leg.
If Ryan started to kind of like fib like that, uh I think I would get up and then just like give a swift kick to that limb.
Like whatever one you were feigning dragging like, sorry.
Roll your unarmed and then Ryan roll your dodge.
Like we're not going for injury, but I do want it to hurt.
Um, that was a 28.
So what's up with all these people slapping me around?
um I'm looking for 30 and I got 14.
Yeah, so you are able to kick Ryan and it does hurt Ryan right in the leg, but it doesn't damage you.
It's not trying to do damage.
What do you do after being kicked by Del?
I just look at him and I'm like, what?
Why?
Why would you do that?
Yeah, I mean, I think I was trying to make it look as though I was, you know, fumbling and stumbling.
But it's really like, uh we got enough things to pay attention to on the outside of us.
I ain't got patience or mental capacity for whatever shit you're pulling right now.
Yeah, Khorras is like, okay.
And he just continues to walk out past you.
Um, he, you're staying inside a little bit, I'm guessing as you're talking, you've seen him go sit down cross-legged and start scrawling symbols into the mud around him.
But go, what are you guys doing as you're having this conversation inside?
I mean, I'm just getting mad and I'm like, Dell, if you want to get up and follow us, you're welcome to join us.
Okay.
How about that?
You able to do that?
Yeah, we're moving.
Yeah, I'll grab the beans and I'll spoon some beans into a bowl, grab my coffee and kind of be the last one out the door type thing with my hands full like going through the
doorway.
Always the peacekeeper.
Yeah
Hey man, don't fight on an empty stomach, that's what I say.
You get onto the porch and you're standing there on the porch all together.
Jordan is still really hard for you to walk, but you do feel you're able to push through it and step out there.
And he starts singing this song, like the song you know, and he has scrawled these symbols all around him.
Ryan, go ahead and roll either a natural or just roll a natural.
Okay, I only have 16.
I rolled a double of seven again!
Ryan, you feel the unnatural tug of this ritual and there's something off.
Like you sense that he is doing this exactly the way he should.
Like you are seeing this almost as a mirror of what you did last night.
He's not missing anything.
same symbols.
Same symbols, you look around and there's just a...
like a resonance to his chant that is compelling you.
If you want to give into the...
like this compelling feeling, just roll me a d6.
you mean by give into it?
What does thought entail?
You feel the ritual pulling you in because you've done it before.
This is morning, yes?
it's daylight.
So giving in to this means like taking over and doing this for him.
sing along
I don't think I will join.
I will fight against it.
What do I need to rule to do that?
All right, looking for 80 or under 80, I guess.
Yeah, you don't join in.
You see him continuing to sing.
I have to roll for him for a second.
It is crescendoing.
He's trying.
He looks completely insane and is singing at the top of his lungs and there is a chord that he starts to strike as this is happening and
Or can somebody roll me a D12 and just tell me the number?
Yeah, definitely.
uh
Five.
He falls over and collapses and you see him go into a seizure and starts shaking.
I'm jo-
I'm dropping the beans or sitting on the banister and rushing down the stairs like that we need more out of this guy.
He can't be going now.
So I'm running straight for him.
While he's seizing, he's speaking.
He's saying, flesh, you think the flesh matters?
The sack of what noise?
The constant sloshing of blood, the shit, the pointless thoughts, prison of bone.
I've spent my entire life listening to this goddamn rattle in my head.
The chains, it's a fucking chain.
But I found the key.
And he's just going on and on as he's shaking on the ground.
As this is happening, there is a frequency.
almost a dismantled thought, a buzzing hymn that is sung in a language that is only the static of dying stars, a noise that is incomprehensible, that starts to nag at the back of
your frontal lobe.
And far above in the sky, you see first two and then a third shape of purple light start to descend.
from the heavens and they get right next to where the cabin is.
And you see some plates come out of all three of these lights now.
Their limbs, a chaotic mess of claws and delicate weird filaments twitching and pointed random.
They look completely different from each other yet very similar.
And veins of sickly purple light bleed as their
ripping through and you look up, all of you roll sand as this starts happening.
Yep, absolutely.
Guess I thought we were gonna Nick you're throwing us into chaos, man.
I thought we were gonna get some time to prepare and it's gonna go so smoothly
What mean?
We got one hit point back.
I got a 12.
Yeah, I got, I was aiming for...
Go for it.
I was aiming for 55, I got a 30 success.
CF43 success.
Okay, all of you still lose one San for just seeing this and he starts to mutter and looks up at you, Barone.
As you're shaking from seeing this, you hear him say, you think this is murder, you're a tithe, this is a gift.
The gardeners have come, they've cutting from the vine and I'm gonna give you to them.
You have to pay the butcher, you see.
You have to get a look in the back room.
Double-crossing son of a bitch you absolutely and then I'll draw my gun and stand up Leaving him to lay on the ground you double cross us didn't you?
You just hear him scream, take them they are the offering find it worthy.
I have prepared them all.
Okay, I'm gonna cock the gun and I'm gonna shoot him right in the chest.
Yeah, you're a point blank range.
You can roll firearms just to see if it jams or not, but-
sure.
Looking for 56 I got 82.
eh It's still your it's a hundred percent the only way to fail is if you critically fail So yeah, so you shoot him in the chest roll a d6 for a pistol, I believe
D12, my GP100 is a D12.
Yeah man, I know.
And an 8.
Let's get that 8 in there.
Pop.
He starts to wriggle.
You see him actually starting to shudder from the gunshot and these three things come through and sit there in this grim tapestry of madness and broad daylight.
You have a dying man below you.
Del, you have the highest decks.
What are you doing?
Still, my rifle is right next to the door.
When walking out, you would have seen it propped up there, but I don't have it on me.
That's where that would have been.
I would not have taken it outside to talk to him about nature or whatever.
So I just have my pistol on me right now.
Hey.
uh Yeah, I imagine all of our uh firearms are stashed on the porch where you had uh collected them.
Can I get a bead on the posture of these beings coming through the portal?
Does it look like they are ready to make good on Karas's words, or is there perhaps a different motive?
It's really hard to tell.
There's just no...
nothing about them is human.
So you have no bead on anything.
Go ahead.
Uh-uh.
Yeah, there are only so many precautions that I know how to take and I will run to uh my rifle in the crook of the door and I will grab it and I will uh posture safety off, full
auto engaged and at the first sign of hostility I will not cease to unload on the one nearest to me.
Okay.
What's your decks again, Barone?
Dexterity is seventy-
What's the raw number, sorry.
So it's high, yeah.
the O, the raw number 14.
14.
Okay, great.
You have a turn.
Okay.
great.
I have another turn.
So that that shh.
God, I wish I just had five minutes to ask him about the weapons for for majestic you son of a B.
Okay.
So that shot in is just as a withering.
Waif of a human left that probably did him in pretty good.
Oh, the ATVs are probably pretty close.
uh They would be like kind of near the bottom of the stairs.
I'm going to Starsky and Hutch over the ATV to the far side for some cover, turn around and take a shot at whatever one is most of whatever one's furthest out of the portal and
the most danger.
That's what I'm going for first.
And I'd like to take a shot at it.
You jump behind the four wheeler and shoot at the one that is right above where you and Karas were the one closest.
Go ahead and roll your firearms.
Gah, come on.
91 failure.
Okay, goes wide, just pop, right?
Del, does that mean you're just shooting your shots or are you just waiting still?
No, I understand that Barone considers them hostile, but I want to consider them hostile first.
And the one that you shot at Barone phases out of existence quickly and then is right next to you um in a purple flash.
Go ahead and roll your dodge.
Oh no, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah All right dodge.
We are looking for whoo pretty low.
We're looking for 30.
I got 23 did good success
The shocking sensation just enters your body as one of the tentacles from around it wraps around you quickly and you feel um just an electricity power through you.
Your whole body stunts and you are being held there.
um It doesn't feel like you can move as this like weird current is going through your body.
Okay.
Agent Ryan, it is your turn.
Do they seem to recognize me at all?
Like, from my interaction with them last night?
can't tell they're flying above you about 25 feet
Okay, and is Cross dead at this point or is he like still alive?
It's hard to tell.
Everything's moving too fast.
You have one thing you can do.
Okay, I am going to, I'm gonna start chanting again.
um The same chant that I did the night before to bring them here.
Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead and roll just power.
Power 80 13
Yeah, you pull their attention as they're chanting.
The one holding Agent Barone shifts slightly and Barone, you come with it.
You're being held up in the air and pulled towards and now you're facing Ryan.
Your eyes are wide open as this current is running through you and your muscles aren't working.
Ryan, what are you doing as you're chanting and they've all basically honed in on you.
I will start talking.
I can start talking to them and say, I owe you payment and you can take him.
And I point to Kuros on the ground.
Yeah, um, you hear the record player setup that was in the cabin start to buzz and sizzle and zzzz uh
No.
If they're talking about Barone, no, no, that's not my pact.
Your pact is this.
And I'm like pointing at cross.
kind of regals and wriggles out sloshes down towards Del
So the pact that Khoroth had made was for two people and they're trying to take Del and Barone.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Sorry, I'm a little confused.
You have alleviated the pressure on yourself.
You would have been Karas's third donation, but you're trading yourself for Karas.
Is that what I'm understanding?
Yeah, do you want to ask them a question?
How many brains do you require?
Julian Cross' deal with us was Fabrious for him.
Brian's deal is one-
I wish I could talk right now.
Go ahead and roll a power, Brian.
Me?
Or, Barone.
Power times five.
Yeah, Pow times five, looking for 55.
I got 57 fail.
Okay, yeah, still unable to talk,
Make sense?
Delph, anything you're trying to say in this moment?
Is Ryan's communication in English?
Yeah, he's speaking to the record player voice that's coming out of the cabin.
Okay, but there's not some sort of extra-tractual translator happening there.
um This thing is wriggling towards me intending on collecting payment, is that right?
It hasn't stayed its hand just because this conversation has been happening?
standing by you.
I mean, the fuck it is.
I'm going to fire on...
I will start to strafe across the porch as it is moving towards me and I will fire on the one that is holding uh Barone.
This is like maybe the culmination of all my trainings at once, In a...
you imagine starting your career as a firearms, uh like a shooting range attendant and they have those...
uh cardboard cutouts of the man with the hostage gun, you know, held in front of him and you got to shoot the outline around the hostage.
And then I did that for real, taking people out in houses.
And now I have like the biggest, fattest, juiciest target and I am just going to try and milk an upside down horseshoe around Barone's profile.
Yeah, roll that firearms fully auto and then give me a lethal.
77 for a critical success.
Yeah.
Right under it.
All right, go ahead and let me see.
Let me see what lethality.
Does lethality matter on a critical success?
Actually, you know what?
Roll lethality twice.
You get two shots.
Okay.
And then we'll take both that as damage.
All right, that's a five and a one, so six points on the first, and that is a six and a one, so seven points on the second.
Okay, so five and six.
Eleven, sorry.
No, sorry, six and seven, 13 points.
Six and seven, 13 points.
Yeah, you open up fire.
It starts hitting this thing in random spots.
Some of it you see like it phases out of existence as the bullet hits a spot and then goes through it.
And other parts you see it hit it and take purchase and start.
There's some weird viscous liquid that shoots out.
It drops you Agent Barone with being struck by Dell's gunfire.
um It is your turn, Agent Barone.
Okay, so having seen that, could we see that it actually took damage?
So some phased through some did take purchase.
Are bullets effective?
Seems like sometimes, yes.
seems like sometimes yes.
How long would it take me to get up to the stairs and get to the brain in the jar on the table?
You could do that in a turn, but you would be in the cabin at the end of the turn.
Yeah.
Okay, so 13 points of damage is a lot of damage and it didn't seem to do a ton like this thing isn't falling over dead from 13 points of damage.
It was a questionably effective.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I'm running for that brain.
I think I'm running up the stairs gun in hand and sprinting straight for the brain.
Del I have an idea cover me.
I'm so sorry and I'm gonna disappear into the house.
You get into the house, you grab it, and you have the brain, and you're almost like a shuttle run.
You're about to turn around and head back.
Del, can you roll a unarm?
Or sorry, roll a dodge.
Yes, indeedy.
Oh!
Triple zeros!
Is that a time for that to happen?
Is that a good thing?
That is a critical failure, so...
uh
that's the wrong thing.
Yeah.
That is, yep, yep.
Del, as you shoot this other one, it reaches out with a tentacle and grabs you.
This one has a claw to it and it almost looks like a laser, but it's solid.
It is so thin and this black scalpel thing just comes out and strikes the top of your skull and starts to slice downward.
but only does one damage to you right now, ah but it is starting to potentially split your entire skull open and you feel it humming throughout your whole body.
In fact, your tear ducts are uncontrollable now and you're starting to uh cry as this thing is doing some impromptu brain surgery on you.
Yeah, you know those little saws that they use in the surgical field where they don't whir all the way around, they're just bone saws and they vibrate back and forth?
I imagine that is kind of like the paralyzing uh reverberation that I feel, right?
Where it is capable of cutting only as deep as it wants, only the material that it wants, and like the execution of that is...
like truly terrible to behold.
Yeah.
We will see how much it can do.
The third one floating right above Karasa's body unceremoniously goes down to him.
You see a cylinder come out from this strange pocket that's floating around with it in purple light and it...
uses that same scalpel to split the front of his face open.
You see his eyeballs like fall out of his head and blood just starts to gush everywhere.
And it reaches in with a ginger claw and pulls out his brain with some of the brain stem attached.
And another scalpel from another appendage cuts it at the spine and it goes into a jar.
And this is happening lightning quick.
And it fills with this viscous liquid that comes out of
One of these things mouths as it spits it into it and it locks the jar in front of you.
Agent Ryan, it is your turn.
insane.
Fuck, okay, I am not wanting to try to reason with these beings anymore because they clearly are gonna take their payment no matter what.
So I also will pull out my gun because I'm such a firearms expert and try to take a shot at the thing that's got, that has been attacking Del.
Absolutely.
Nice.
Yeah, go ahead and roll the firearms.
It's a large target, so you can add 20 % to it.
Okay, thank you.
I'm for 40 here.
Oh God, 91.
You fire, you miss.
Dell, is your turn.
do I have full agency?
Okay, is there anything that is holding me in place?
um The only thing that's holding you in place is one of its tentacles as it's trying to lift you up.
Um, do the floorboards in Karas's porch look sturdy or as though they could be broken through?
uh
Roll a lot.
They look like they could be broken through.
Okay, I am hoping that perhaps the tentacle is like doing more of like a grasping maneuver and is not prepared to hold my full weight.
And just like that uh carnival game where you're meant to shoot the entire star out with the with 100 BBs, I'm going to do a 360 on full auto and then try to uh punch a hole
through the floorboards under my feet and just thump down uh underneath into the crawl.
80 firearms and point blank you're able to do that and drop through everyone you hear a crack as he falls through the porch.
He's only about three feet down from this thing where the ground level was but you are down there now Dell.
Yeah, my intent, sorry, my intent is to like fall prone on my back with the gun pointed up through the hole so that next turn I could just continue pumping lead.
Agent Barona,
God, so I'm trying to think like, what can I possibly do?
What can I do?
Okay, great.
I am completing the shuttle run.
have grabbed the jar and I'm running back towards the door.
I think when I get to the door, so my backpack is probably right next to the door and I have taken everybody's guns and the grenades.
Del, you have grenades, correct?
I don't know what I would sleep with.
you mean on my person or just in my, in my possessions?
Around period.
Would I?
Around period and there would have been uh two bricks of c4 on the on the ATVs as well
Yeah.
There are both grenades and C4 in the ATVs.
Yep.
Shit.
Okay.
Um, all right.
I think as I run and I get to the door, I'm going to throw the jar out there and say, I think you forgot this.
And then swap out my GP 100 for the AR 15 that would be by the door.
And when I throw that,
Do they track it?
Do the attention turn to it or do they ignore it?
And it doesn't really matter.
uh It's hard to tell in the heat of things, so...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair.
Okay, great.
I think I throw it and then the one that had dealt is it next to like just outside the front door?
Is it super close to me?
Yeah, they're both right next to you, right next to the porch, the one that got you and the one that had Dell.
Okay, so I'm not going to be able to scrape by and get down to the ATV in one turn.
I think after I throw that, I'm going to pull the rifle up and fire at whatever's closest.
Let's start there.
at whatever's closest.
Plus 20%.
Firearms are looking for 76.
We got a 55 crit success, finally.
Amazing.
Give me two lethalities and then we'll add them together for the damage.
What timing?
sure.
Define lethality.
I haven't had to roll that yet.
just under 10 % for the AR-15, I believe.
So you roll twice and then if it's under 10%, you kill it.
And if it's not, then we add the two numbers together.
Okay, so am I rolling a D12 or 100?
to a D100.
100 got it so and I'm rolling twice I got a 55 again and then I got a 79
Okay.
Okay, so you open up fire with air, you throw this thing as you're running, you grab your thing from the hip fire on the one that attacked you.
And it hits it in few spots, but then other spots like the bullets disappear.
um But you see it lurch in the sky.
and half of it falls out of this purple pocket that it's coming out of this dimensional thing and sloshes right onto the ground with a thud and falls over and splashes everywhere
and it is...
a mess of gore.
Okay.
All right, we're down to two.
uh How many shots would that, just so I'm tracking my ammo correctly, how many shots would that have been?
With full auto, basically you have about three turns till you have to reload.
So after Dell's next turn, he will have to reload.
Okay, sounds good.
Okay, think I'll probably stop there.
That feels like it.
uh
That's a term.
And so the one that was attacking Del turns to you and you see its carapace open up and some tentacles come out and they create like almost like a round hole and you hear this
humming sound.
Okay, and just this massive, strange feeling hits you.
Your stomach drops, but you're lifted off of the ground.
Del, you're lifted up as well, and then dropped with the weight of...
an incomprehensible weight as something has happened to the gravity, and the cabin behind you, Barone, just explodes into splinters.
And it rolled above its lethality for that weapon, so it will do four points of damage to you, Barone.
Also four for you, Okay.
And Ryan, you're standing behind this thing.
You've seen this cabin just be obliterated and the bodies of your two friends are thrown up in the air and slammed to the ground and they're laying there.
There's dust everywhere as this thing starts to implode on itself.
Killing this other one seems to have pissed them off in a way that you don't understand.
The one above you tucks the brain away and then hovers down to you, Ryan.
I'm not going back on my bargain.
I don't want you to hurt my friends.
I will deliver my payment to you in the time that we agreed.
There is just a massive shake.
The earth shakes under you, Barone.
You're laying there in the rubble of this building, so are you, Del.
And you see two of these creatures go over to the third that's laying on the ground.
Looks like they cut open some strange hole in reality and it slips through, almost like it's slipping into a sewer out of reality and they disappear.
Damn.
What on earth?
uh he's okay, so they're gone.
They're gone?
Yes.
Okay, I get up.
m I guess I don't want to drop my gun per se.
I will sling my gun and I'm sprinting to where Del fell into that hole.
I'm headed to
Same, I'm running over there too.
As you reach over to the place where you saw Dell disappear into the hole, um you are greeted with a pin cushion of bloody splinters as the floorboards that had punched their
way into the ground are now impaling through his gut and his chest as he has been slammed down onto their
Yeah, I'm not gonna believe it.
uh Tears welling up in my eyes.
Barone's gonna be like, Del, Del, hang in there, hang in there.
Oh, fuck, fuck.
And she's gonna take the cloths from her backpack and start like, I got you, don't worry, Del, don't worry.
And then I'm gonna start um trying to plug his wounds and not accept that he is anything but alive.
When you run over, you see the strange beginning of a scar on Del's forehead where that scalpel first almost entered.
And you look down and you're working, right?
Like this, this can't be happening.
You are patching wounds.
You're putting things on there, but you, about 30 seconds into it, you look down and it's just such a mess that
There's just no way he could have survived.
There's organ failure, there's trauma all over his body.
He's not even moving.
There's no breath.
You look at his eyes and they don't have the life that they had in them before.
They seem vacant and empty.
Okay?
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
God damn it, Ryan, and I'm gonna take my rifle and I'm gonna spin on Ryan and aim at him.
What the fuck was that?
They did not come because of me.
This is not my doing.
No, they said a deal, Ryan.
You made a deal, Ryan.
I did.
I did make a deal.
um And I still have two days to pay it.
So they weren't coming from my payment.
Payment for what, Ryan?
They want a brain, so I have to deliver one to them within two days.
Clearly, Keras had done the same thing and tried to sacrifice you all for that.
That's what you were doing in the swab.
You weren't injured.
You weren't attacked.
You were making a deal.
ah
yeah.
Yeah, I was.
I didn't know that that's what I was doing, but that was the end result of my actions.
Yes.
um I'll let my gun drop to my side.
I don't know what to do with that information right now, but I'm alive and so are you and Dell is not any longer and this place needs to burn to the ground.
Agent Ryan, you look over at Del's lifeless body.
ah He was your confidant earlier.
What are you thinking now that you see him down there and his dead eyes looking up at nothingness in the sky?
I mean, obviously I feel horrible.
The last interaction really that I had with him was him kicking me in the leg on the way out.
So I had a lot of, you know, respect for him and it just hasn't fully hit me, I think, at this point.
I...
I a mixture of sadness and guilt and relief in a weird way that like I'm still alive um myself.
Yeah.
There's always that gnawing thought when somebody dies, right?
Like that grief hits you, but then there's that little voice that's always saying, better them than me.
And that's what you're left with.
Agent Ryan and Agent Barone, are presumably standing above the corpse of Del.
You see that he is a Swiss cheese display with splinters coming through his body all over.
His face is intact but scarred, but the rest of his body is a bloody pulp of a mess.
Can you both roll sanity for me?
Okay, I'm looking for a 46.
I got a 31, success.
Current sanity is at 60.
So...
I got a...
47.
So both of you succeeded your sanity rolls.
Please both still roll me a d6 for sand loss.
I lost the full six, which that that makes sense
Do you want to project?
Willpower 10 sanity.
um What's my threshold to go like my first big threshold?
Do you remember what number that was?
The breaking point?
Yeah, because my willpower is 11.
So I would hit that at.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to project.
Okay.
Yeah, go ahead and roll a D4 for the projection and we'll see if you go temporarily insane.
Okay, one.
Okay, so what is the order for Barone?
Fight, flight, freeze.
Which one would you do first?
I think Freeze would probably be first because everything happening at once, learning of the betrayal from potentially Butterfield, knowing that we just got betrayed by somebody
that I just poured my trust into because, you know, my belief that, you know, all life is sacred and nothing, you know, should be taken lightly.
And then now losing Dell, I think I'm just gonna would completely lock up.
Okay, freeze and then behind that would be fight or flee.
I don't think there's anything to fight.
think it would be flee, even though I definitely don't want to leave here without information.
But fight, don't think would make sense.
Or I'd be fighting Ryan.
Exactly.
All right, Christina, what was your D6 roll?
I haven't done it yet, I'm gonna do it right now.
Four.
Okay, do you want to project?
So if I don't, then I take another four off of my sanity, correct?
And you go temporarily insane.
sounds kind of fun.
I will project onto...
yeah, I'll project.
Okay, roll your D4.
94
Three.
Okay.
So you're able to take three off of that sand loss and your willpower, which probably leaves you around one willpower and a bond of your choice, which bond?
Wait, sorry, I lose three off of my willpower.
Oh, okay.
Okay, so I have a one willpower and then I take three off of my bond.
Correct?
Okay, my grandmother, my grandma whose birthday I missed.
Yeah, are you feeling bitter about having missed that birthday or the fact that it-
I was, but I have bigger things to feel right now.
Okay, yeah.
All right, Baron, I'm gonna go ahead and roll your D6 to see how you react to this temp insanity.
Okay, great.
You said second was flee or fight?
was was flea
Okay.
Yeah, you're hit with an overwhelming sense of your own mortality and the fact that your entire worldview of feeling this optimism pointed towards humanity is being shaken to its
core in this moment.
You really just want to leave.
It's up to you what you do.
You can start packing up the four-wheeler.
You can walk into the swamp.
ah What do you think Barone would do?
Unpacking her things 100 % is gonna be her mindset You know kind of a panic like oh no, everything's wrong.
We need to get out of here We need to escape prepping to do so so Going in the house grabbing her While she had a rifle
house is completely destroyed, the only thing left is that tunnel.
Okay, great.
Yeah, just grabbing her belongings from around like her backpack that was probably in shambles somewhere in that huge mess of a house now, you know, some of the things and
starts tossing them on the on the ATV.
Agent Ryan, you see Barone frantically digging through rubble and trying to find stuff that she had in the house.
You're not even sure anything's left in there.
She doesn't seem in her right mind.
Are you doing anything to try to calm her down?
no.
I think I'm just kind of pacing and letting her feel however, you know, she needs to feel and do what she feels like she needs to do.
I think that I ask what she's, what she's looking for.
What am I looking for, Ryan?
uh Fuck me.
don't- I don't- My- My things, my stuff, my...
bag.
Gels bag.
We gotta- We gotta scram, man.
We gotta get outta here.
Yeah, I mean you think that that stuff needs to go with us?
I don't like not being prepared and not having my things.
Yeah, no, yes, yeah, and I'm just, you know, running around flipping over uh bricks trying to find my pieces of gear.
Okay, then I try to help her a little bit, ah you know, by lifting up, you know, some piles of wood and looking around for stuff.
Yeah, getting in there with her and showing her that she's not alone, can you roll me a persuade plus 20?
Yeah, so my persuade is 24.
and I rolled a 77.
not very persuasive.
from
Can you tell me what happens when you start getting aggravated with Ryan as Ryan's trying to help you?
I think you blame Ryan for what happened to Del.
Ryan is right next to you and your blood is starting to boil.
What do you do?
Okay, um I think I go to pick up my bag, instead of putting it at the ATV, I'm just gonna chuck it right at his chest pretty much as hard as I can.
Well, you know, Ryan, we wouldn't be fucking out here and obliterated in a thousand pieces if you didn't lie to us.
If we had any fucking time to prepare whatsoever, Ryan, this would have been different.
Del wouldn't be dead.
We'd have the information.
We would be leaving here without me in a fucking panic.
Hey, I don't remember dragging you out here, okay?
So...
No, you didn't.
You didn't drag me anywhere, Ryan.
You didn't drag me to the meeting in the middle of the swamp with your super secret aliens.
What the fuck was that about?
I joined you.
You were already out here.
If you Did you d-
You joined me.
Yeah.
Like on a team, because teammates, I don't know, tell each other things.
They don't keep secrets.
Like, I have no trust in Butterfield.
Like, in this fucking picture, and I pull out the picture, in this picture, are you with him?
Are you a traitor also?
Is it Barone by herself?
You tell me, Ryan.
I I can't explain the Butterfield picture any more than you can.
Okay, so you're...
not...
in league with Butterfield, so...
There's three teams here.
You're on your team, I'm on my team in Butterfield's.
On his own, or...?
I didn't plan on this happening either, so I don't appreciate you blaming Del's death on me.
I didn't know that Cross had similar interests.
And if you do recall, I was alone when I decided.
to explore my interests.
I didn't drag you guys into anything and I don't appreciate being blamed, you know, for my friend's death.
um I'm just as upset as you are about it and yeah, there was some things that I didn't tell you but ah surely you've kept a liar too in your life.
And as she reels back just a little bit thinking like, she definitely didn't tell people when she was infected.
And she nods.
Right.
Yeah.
Maybe.
But I'll tell you what, Ryan.
uh You're not going anywhere without me for a very long time.
You're all I have.
But at the same time, I don't trust you, Ryan.
So...
There's that.
And then I will go back to packing my stuff.
But it's not entirely up to you either, so.
both of you were only in alertness.
Okay, I'm looking for 81 and I got a 21, success.
45 on my side and I got an 86.
You're explaining yourself and, Barone, out of the corner of your eye, you see just the faintest purple glow from the porch where Del's body is.
You would have to walk over from where you're at inside the rubble to see what it was, but it does catch your eye.
Yeah, absolutely.
think anything is a danger right now.
Do I have autonomy like back?
Am I still in flight mode?
So I rolled a secret roll that tells me how many rounds you're in that state and it was only three.
So I would assume that was about three rounds of action.
Okay.
Great.
This can wait, Ryan.
And I'll grab my pistol and grab his shoulder and spin him towards it and walk towards it, prepped for what's coming, know, gun in hand, low ready, walking towards the thing.
Yeah, you peer over some of the rubble into the hole in the ground where Dell had fell after blowing a hole in the porch.
And you peer down and you see that Dell's face is completely split open.
And there is a cavity where his mind and computer slash brain used to be.
And his skull is a jar.
in two halves and it's laying there slightly moving a little bit like it was just touched.
Wait, his brain is missing out of his head?
Del, can you roll me sanity?
I thought we were free from this horse yet.
Uh, 17.
Keeping it together.
Yeah, you only, you don't get a D20 of loss, you get a D12 of loss.
Can you roll me a D12?
Okay.
So, Del, the last thing that registered in your sensory experience on Earth was falling and then just this strange lifting feeling and your stomach dropping and then oblivion.
And you remember your automatic features still running.
There was some breathing happening, some...
sensory shock experienced.
But now there's just unfeeling.
You feel suspended, not in darkness, but in a thick insulated void that your human senses were never meant to process.
There's no sound, there's only the phantom memory of loud reports and the crunching of gravel and Barone's panic breath over your body.
The memory echoes, but your present is completely silent.
No light, you have no eyes to gather photons, only an internal perpetual grayness that swallows all of your sensory experience.
You're done.
You have no body.
This is at first a paralyzing terror.
Dell, you are a man of action, defined by your ability to hold a rifle, embrace against an impact, and feel solid ground beneath your boots.
That anchor's gone.
Your consciousness registers the catastrophic absence of a central nervous system and you feel yourself going insane in this state.
Yeah, I think, through the blackness that I cannot perceive, I imagine that there is a cold, smooth, cylindrical wall in front of me, some centimeters that I cannot perceive.
And as I am listening desperately for anything that might pierce this void between sensation and, and know, I begin to just imagine
my head tapping against that glass.
Tink.
A sound that I'm making for myself to fill the nothingness that would otherwise be there.
Um.
I think I can almost start to feel it on my frontal lobe, right?
Just like a slow phantom bashing to try and cut out the nothingness.
Yeah, that is all a subjective experience.
You feel a prisoner in your own mind, basically a biological hard drive, nothing to um control or reach out with.
I'm curious, what does Del's regret in this moment?
if you can speak.
you
Biggest regret.
I think, um...
leaving things so flat-footed, maybe, right?
Like, there wasn't a clear path forward that we had determined.
There wasn't, ah-ha, clearly when we finish this, we will move on to blah, blah, blah.
And so the idea that...
With all those loose ends that we knew that we had, I can't even really imagine what way my friends would turn in my absence, right?
It's like a mystery book that you'll never be able to finish and you just gotta hope that they, you know, that you're not yelling at your screen wishing that they wouldn't go into
that basement or whatever it is, you know?
You're left with that and at this point, time becomes meaningless.
There's no sun, no feeling, no sense of how long has passed.
Seconds might be hours, hours might be seconds.
The only markers are fleeting, agonizing clarity of these memories as they flash through your head, potentially Ryan's betrayal, the smell of the swamp, frustration at Barone for
not revealing her infection.
These memories loop in sharp and agonizing detail, because really it's the only reality you have left that and your own regrets.
Yeah, I mean...
That sounds like plenty to fill a 10 second loop from now until infinity.