[IC]TotMG:LF The Lost City of Pandtlantis

[Yours Truly]

"Aaaah! Wwwwhy me?," Hirata asked, as she continued to spray a torrent of leaden(?) death onto the psychos charging her.
First move: Fire her Hyperion Transmurdera at the remaining Marauder, dealing 1d4+9+12 damage.

Second move: Fire her Hyperion Transmurdera at the Midget Psycho if he is still alive for 1d4+9+16 damage.

[StormLord]

Zoe peppers the midget with bullets, drawing multiple large red patches on its torso.
 

With a loud brrrrrt of gunfire Hirata gibs the Marauder, sending bits and pieces flying off down the cave.

 

The midget slams its axe into Vepr-12, leaving itself wide open to a blast of shotgun fire that tears a hole in its shoulder.

 

Another blast of lightning from Zoe and a few more shotgun blasts from Vepr-12 clean up what remains of the psychos.

 

 

As the sound of battle lapses and the bloodrush subsides the bandit camp is open to plunder.  A small fire, several ramshackle scrap metal hovels, and an odd plethora of barrels litter the area.  Beyond the camp the cave yawns open with a slick snowy gravel path, a number of large strange stone blocks can be seen partially or totally covered by the permafrost.

Spoiler

Battle over, everyone gets 1 merit for effort, and another 1 for patience.

 

[IntSys]

Wonderful. With a swing, fleshy remains fell from the shotgun and to the floor. "If our honorable hosts would still like to greet us, try not to keep us waiting. We haven't got all day!" Vepr-12 shouted into the newly-revealed path. Then, she began to plunder the camp, opening the barrels one by one by force.
 

[StormLord]

[15]
The first barrel was completely empty, just sitting upside down and appearing full.  Vepr-12 tears open the second and some kind of liquid that smells like petroleum based fuel starts pouring onto the ground.  The third barrel however, as Vepr-12 strikes it a spray of pressurized purple ooze hits her right in the face burning and tingling and soaking into her clothes and synthetic skin.


Harmony finds herself in a stinking shack, light seeping in through the holes in a filthy rag of a curtain being used as a door.  Thinking back on how she got here, she had come across a man in green armor who shouted at her about his complete capabilities and offered to show her a history more interesting than anything she'd ever seen.  A deal she took.  That lead her here, wherever here was.  The air wafting in was almost as cold as the air inside stunk, and the smell of fresh death and cooking flesh lingered on this cold air.

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Harmony

 

She had been given a deal. One that she had no real reason to take, but one she had taken anyway. A promise to find something new to observe, now that her original purpose had been met. Something to give her meaning. Had she known about where that man would have dropped her though, she might've denied the offer outright. Already her opinion on the place was quite low, and she couldn't even see outside of the stinking lavatory. The cold air was hardly a factor, but if she wasn't built upon centuries of experience, she would've physically gagged at the smell. Gods, did no one clean up after themselves here? That didn't even count the decaying bodies that seeped into the shack.

 

... She needed to get out of this wretched place.

 

Without anymore hesitation, Harmony burst out of the lavatory, taking in a deep breath of the somewhat cleaner air as she looked at her surroundings. Mostly what seemed like a camp made out of metal scraps rather than anything that could be useful for the cold. However, her attention is quickly drawn to the mass of bodies dotting the area, both on the ground (having clearly been shot to death, more or less), and others hung up on poles, frozen from exposure. Not only that, but there were several beings that she could already see walking around, no doubt related to the sights. A child, a goddess, a... Thing, and a doll. The latter of which was currently getting sprayed by the contents of a barrel.

 

Great, these were the locals of this world. 

 

"So, am I to presume that you ladies are the ones responsible for these corpses?" Harmony called out, folding an arm on her stomach as she stepped into the middle of the camp, gaze shifting from one individual to the next as she spoke.

[IntSys]

Stepping back away from the ooze-spraying barrel quickly, she turned a slightly singed face towards the new voice. "Finally, someone who can speak properly and isn't batshit insane!" Her hands slid down to her shotgun for a reload, as her eyes crossed with Harmony's. "That would be correct. What about it? Do you run the place? Because I can reassure you that I'm very much ready for a second round."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Harmony

 

Despite the doll's clear readiness for another fight, Harmony barely even registered it, only glancing back at her for a moment before moving on to the rest of the camp, "Nothing at all, just a curiosity. And no, I don't run this place. If I did, it would hardly look like..." Harmony replied, waving her hand at the 'camp' in clear disgust, "... This. I'm simply passing through, you'll have to go elsewhere for your next bout". With her look around now complete, Harmony focused her own gaze on the doll's, "Now, if I may continue my own questions, what brings you to this frozen dump?"

[IntSys]

"Mm, point taken." Vepr-12 nodded, touching her own chin with a finger. "We're on a paycheck here. Hopefully there really is some kind of 'ancient alien technology' at the end of this dump, according to the tip our client got." She rolled her eyes.

 

"That said, seeing that you're somehow passing by in this god-forsaken corner of the universe, maybe you could tell us what's up ahead?"

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Harmony

 

At the doll's request, Harmony brought a finger to her chin, as if thinking about how to respond, "Hm... I could, but where's the fun in that? Spoiling things ruins the potential surprise, no?" she eventually said. Granted, she wasn't entirely lying, she could easily see what was ahead. Natural walls weren't nearly enough when it came to blocking her sight. But at the same time, it was still more fun to leave the girls guessing. She did have to keep partially neutral in these sorts of affairs.

 

Nonetheless, the phrase 'ancient alien technology' had sparked her interest. Perhaps the man wasn't entirely full of it as she had initially thought.

[DragonRage]

"No sense standing around then.  Let's goooo already," Zoe whines obnoxiously.  "We're wasting my valuable time here!  But not anyone else's, because only my time is valuable."

[Yours Truly]

Dr. Ishi meanwhile, was already hard at work at assembling her newest creation, having left the small corner Hirata hid in to drag one of the marauders away behind the barrels to do...unspeakable things to them, judging by the odd squelching and metal scraping sound the two produced. Before the man's remains were unceremoniously shoved out of the way as several sleek metal claws and lasers tear the empty barrel into little pieces, and assemble a surprisingly functional gas engine and various stubby metal limbs out of it...somehow.

 

The woman lets out a slight yawn behind her white mask as the Howaitonaito splices all of the assembled parts together, until with an acrimonious belch of smoke, the barrel now 'Freezatron' shuddered into life, got onto its recently formed legs, and started to bump against the only remaining barrel repeatedly, seemingly trying and failing to damage itself meaningfully.

"Hah, well that's never going to happen," Dr. Ishi said to no one in particular, just before she quietly turned off the robot's higher brain functions to save on power, and rose up from the bloody mess she left on the floor a lot cleaner than she really should be. "I'm done here, let's goooo," she said to the rest of the group, casually ignoring the fact that most of them 'hadn't seen her before', and the fact that she didn't know who the new person was even.

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Harmony

 

"Well, aren't you a lively bunch" Harmony commented in a completely neutral tone to both the child's and the thing's insistence to move along, while completely ignoring herself. It was fairly annoying, especially the thing's comment on how only her time was important, but somehow it was a bit surprising to see people who were more interested in seeing what was ahead, rather than questioning what was in front of them, "Since your partners are so insistent on going ahead, I think I'll tag along myself. I'd love to see how all of you react to what lies at the end."

[StormLord]

Moving along, the party spends some time wandering down a carved out pathway under the glacier before finally seeing sunlight again.  A cavernous room with a large crack in the glacier far above allowing light in.  Hewn stone pillars and arches fitted with modern scaffolds litter the walkway leading up to the cavern.  Central to the cavern is a large collapsed structure and a plethora of various modern boxes and torn tents.  From the looks of things there was once some kind of excavation or archaeological dig here that was abandoned in a hurry.

A round indent in the floor and a pedestal dais rests in the center of the collapsed building while strange and alien faces are carved all along the bricks and aches here.

The wind blows, howling through the cracks above, signalling a storm approaching.

[IntSys]

"When you put it like that, it really puts people off..." Vepr grumbled at Harmony's enthusiasm, but continued on regardless.

 

The doll raised her head to the harsh screeches of the weather above, and briefly considered the possibilities of something coming down from there. The thought was quickly dismissed, as seeing the state of things down here, it was clear that whatever kicked the last pack of adventurers out came from the inside.

 

"I suppose the only way forward is to pick up from their progress," she turned back to Harmony, "isn't that so?"

 

In any case, she decided to poke around the tents carefully, looking for notes or anything that would give them some kind of information.

[StormLord]

Searching through the tent Vepr-12 finds obvious evidence of some kind of wild animal attacks, a few tuffs of fur, claw marks on tents and contents, and at least three frozen corpses that were mauled to death.

 

In one of the slightly larger nicer tents she finds a vaguely rectangle box, picking it up her ECHO device chimes and the box lights up, automatically activating the playback feature of the record.

 

Spoiler

A somewhat bored sounding woman sounds through the speakers, there is some general background noise of a busy camp.

 

"My name is Abigail Fletcher, I'm the leader of ATLAS expedition 314, far southern Pandora.

This is day eight of the expedition and corporate wants em to send semi-frequent audio logs of the situation.  So here I am.  Not much has happened so far, it's cold and the ice and snow is difficult to travel through.  We've been using the heat cannons to melt caves and pathways under the iceburgs, judging by samples the things have been in permafrost for at least a few hundred years.

One of the laborers...Jacob Smith I think?  Well whoever he is he dropped a crate of powercells on his foot, in the struggle three of the cells and most of the bones in his foot broke.  His pay has already been docked."
*Distant shouting muffled shouting* 
"Well I have to go now."

 

Objectives:
Find the rest of the audio logs(optional)
Enter the Alien structure before the storm arrives

[DragonRage]

Zoe checks the engravings on the walls to see if she speaks the language they're in.  It worked with the Mooglish, after all, so she might recognize this one.

[Yours Truly]

Dr. Ishi presumably wastes her time searching the boxes for one those 'heat cannons' the recording mentioned, she wasn't much of an archeologist, but melting through the ice sounded like a good idea.

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Harmony

 

"It would appear so, yes" Harmony responded to the doll, following the group as they delved deeper into the caverns, barely paying attention to the carved out passageway they were walking in. It was only when they entered the main area that Harmony's interest spiked, due to the various text sketched into the walls and bricks, not to mention the recording that the doll quickly finds and plays. It was rather boring, aside from some shouting that she could hear in the background, but nothing that really caught her attention. Perhaps this Abigail had recorded some extra audio-logs, as per her company's request? Possibly, but she'd leave figuring that out to the doll... Or anyone else who happened to come across them.

 

As for Harmony, her attention returned to the center pedestal, just begging to be inspected. Since the child and thing seemed preoccupied with other matters, the Observer figured she had some time to herself, choosing to spend it by approaching the pedestal dais, beginning to see exactly what its deal was.

[StormLord]

[29]
Zoe has a vague recognition of the script used in some places, but no real idea whats being said.

[50]
Hirata finds an unsealed crate and within a bunch of what are basically oversized hair driers.  Most of them have degraded beyond function and into spare parts, but she finds one working, even has a batterypack.
Oddly enough she even finds another record stashed in the crate as well.

Spoiler

Abigail's voice cracks over the recording again, this time more irritated than bored.

 

"Expedition day eleven.  We're approximately a day and a half from the intended research site.  As it turns out at least half of the heat guns had ruptured or damaged powercells on arrival, so progress through the ice banks has been slow at best.  One of the scientists tried to "adapt" a heat gun to work off of a personal heater battery and it exploded in his face."

She lets out an audible sigh before continuing.

"And lastly some dumbass keeps leaving things stacked on the scaffolds around, I've had four complaints from laborers getting hammers and ECHO devices dropped on their heads."

 

 

As Harmony approaches the dais she notices a smooth channel carved in a ring around it, leaving a "platform" about eight foot across.  The dais itself is made from a stone different than the surrounding construction, a darker blue-grey piece that looks more like it was melted into shape than carved.  There is a small spike in the center of the dais, it has an odd discoloration from the rest of the stone.

[DragonRage]

Zoe looks for a stick or other long, thin object.  If she finds one, she uses it to poke the spike at the center of the dias from a safe distance.

[StormLord]

Poking the dais yields no change or reaction, save scraping some of the discoloring residue off the inside of the dish.  Sticky brownish flecks.

[DragonRage]

"Welp, this lock is impenetrable," Zoe concludes, "No way around it.  We'll have to blast our way in.  But where are we going to find FIFTY TONS OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES at this hour?"

[IntSys]

Vepr-12 was clearly set on letting those who have seen much more than she had solve the lock, until Zoe decided to opt for the brute force option. And honestly? It was winning her a lot of points. "There was definitely fuel back there. I'd assume that the little scientist over there would know something about explosives as well?" She said to Zoe aloud, glancing at Hirata. "If it's settled, I'll carry the barrels down here for the magic."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Harmony

 

Well, the dias certainly was an interesting specimen. Quite clearly an integral part of the structure, but without much of a visible purpose. She somewhat doubted that it would've been so simple as to remove the spike, if the previous inhabitants here were unable to open the structure. But perhaps it was, she could hardly know at this stage. However, that train of thought was quickly distracted when Harmony noticed the Thing approach with a "stick" of sorts, poking around the dias that she was standing on to spot for any changes. It found nothing... Except for scraping off brown residue from the dias that Harmony hadn't noticed before, causing the Observer's face to scrunch up in disgust.

 

Absolutely barbaric.

 

But then, tossing aside the stick, the Thing proceeded to loudly exclaim that the lock was impenetrable, and that the only way forward was to blow a hole in the structure with as much explosives as possible.

 

Somehow even more barbaric.

 

"... Perhaps there's a more natural solution than blowing this entire place to ash" Harmony commented as the Doll began to agree with the Thing, summoning her Ars Magus to scrape the surface of the dias' spike, making sure that there wasn't anymore residue on it before the grabbed it, "There were others here before us. They may have even figured out how to open this structure on their own. I recall that you had found a recording left by the one who, presumably, led the expedition here that was detailing a report, Doll."

[IntSys]

"They clearly haven't," Vepr-12 objected plainly, eyeing the corpses she had found. "Because, if they had, they wouldn't be dead now. And besides, they didn't sound very competent at all from the recordings."

 

Slinging her shotgun over her back, she paced casually towards the way back, slowing her steps while passing the pedestal. "There's definitely a natural solution out there, but things are definitely not looking good for that solution at this rate~"