Session 40 (15 March 2024)

Location: Tolost Tertius, near Monados (Halcyon 2223)

Date: 312–5600

Travellers: Nogudnyk (steward), Dr Fomstep (medic), Griff Kodiak (gunner), and Jacobe Kyman (pilot)

You're on a small craft decelerating at 6-G toward Tolost Tertius, once a green and pleasant world but now an irradiated wasteland. Each of you has carefully selected the gear you'll be carrying, including weapons — there will be no customs or security checkpoint. There are three scientists aboard who generally avoid interacting with you: they've been bribed handsomely to pretend that you're part of their research team. Jacobe makes small talk with the pilot, who's been doing this run for a year or two now. He has some stories to share: his predecessor told him that she once saw a guy get swallowed up by the ground. He's also heard that over at the Drobco mine site the company built a 10m wall around the facility but still something got in and killed some workers. "You're in luck," he says, pointing at the instrument display. "Looks like you won't get any of those crazy storms today."

As you enter the atmosphere, the scientists remotely activate the dormant sentry bots at the research station; by the time the craft is descending over the landing site, the bots have confirmed that there are no immediate threats in the area. You're cleared to land.

Map showing bunker location

From the low hill where the facility is situated, you look westward over a blasted plain. The ruins of two urban areas rise from the ground about 15 klicks away; a range of mountains is visible beyond. According to Truax's information, the bunker should be about 6 klicks out. The geiger counters on your hostile environment suits shows radiation levels to be as expected. You have six hours of life support and no time to lose. Turning your backs on the scientists, you begin your march onto the plain. The small craft takes off and banks away: it's safer on the sky than on the ground. It'll return in six hours exactly.

View looking west from the research station

Your survival skills serve you well and you choose an efficient route over the landscape, which teems with new life even as the signs of ancient destruction remain. At one point, you spot a group of four toothy quadruped chasers loping over the plain, but they seem interested in something else and you successfully avoid them.

Quadruped chaser spotted on Tolost Tertius

The coordinates lead you to a collapsed concrete structure. After some digging, you uncover a metal door that opens onto a stairwell descending into the ground. You turn on your lights and descend cautiously. The place looks undisturbed. Eight stories deeper, you find yourselves before a thick metal door set in a concrete wall. A keypad is mounted to the side, a dim green light indicating that it's still powered. You enter the code provided by Truax and are rewarded with the sound of hidden machinery rolling the door aside. Low light emerges from within. You enter.

Almost immediately you spot skeletal human remains: first one, then another. The bones appear to have been gnawed on. Otherwise, there are few signs of violence. Through a great stroke of fortune, you stumble upon the security office almost immediately and, through its computers and records, are quickly able to access the layout and internal cameras of the sprawling bunker, which appears to have housed dozens of people at one time. Most of them seem to have been housed in a small, prison-like cells located near some kind of large medical laboratory; ten or twelve others lived more or less communally in far more spacious quarters. And one family seems to have enjoyed a separate suite with a private bathroom. The latter is the only room with no camera. 

You make a beeline for the commander's suite. On the way you pass the generator room where a fusion reactor continues to provide power. In the commander's office and in the adjoining living space, furniture is strewn about as if a struggle took place. After a quick search, you find a safe: Jacobe pulls out his tool kit and gets it open. Inside, you find a handwritten diary as well as a flat square cardboard envelope preserved inside a transparent case. The illustration on the front shows a yellow-haired man in some kind of blue jumpsuit standing in a dark street lined by primitive dwelling and low-tech vehicles. There's some text, but it's too archaic for you to easily read. Looking at the thin edge of the paper envelope, you can see that it holds what appears to be a circular disc of the dimensions you expect. This must be the artifact.

The diary's text is not as old and you quickly glean some key information from the latest entries. It seems that Shehbaz Raule designed the bunker as a refuge for his family and close associates and as a genetic research facility to develop a superhuman capable of surviving on the surface. About twenty of the bunker's inhabitants became, in effect, unwilling guinea pigs for this project. It didn't go well. The final entries speak of cruel experimentation on the inmates, minor rivalries spiralling out of control among the guards and Shehbaz's people, and desperate measures. The last passage records Shehbaz's decision to inject himself with an untested serum.

There's a lot more to read and other rooms to search, but time is running short. You have 100 minutes of life support left and you've got what you came for. If you leave now you'll have a comfortable window in which to get back to the evac point. But there's still that one room that you weren't able to see on the cameras....

The door leading to the bathroom is closed. Nogudnyk's untrained telempathy detects hunger, rage, and self-loathing: perhaps something still lives here. While Griff plants explosives near the reactor, the others yield to curiosity and decide to open the door. Your lights show that a gaping hole has been torn in the far, exterior, wall: a rough tunnel leads away into the darkness. Something has clawed its way out of, or into, this bunker. Suddenly, your suits' external mics pick up a distant wailing sound. Your geiger counters start to tick upwards. 

Something is coming.

Image credits: retrofuture map by the referee; apocalyptic panorama artist unknown; alien predator by tsmith3D.