Hotaru Sakura wrote: .
Kitsune Kiyoshi wrote: .
Utaku Yesugen wrote: .
Susumu Sumiko wrote: .
(OOC: Oof! Took me longer than I had expected, but back! Sorry for the delay, hoping to prod things along more steadily tomorrow!)Dai wrote: .
The Soshi GeneBioTech building
After you cross the now barren, dust-covered garden and walk through an area where part of the building's façade has caved in and a first lobby completely filled with debris and rubble, making even moving about burdensome, you find the entrance to the laboratory proper in a surprisingly good state... comparatively. Stepping inside, you see pieces of plasteel, metal and bricks scattered through the floor alongside charred pieces of what must have been paperwork, electronics and other of the usual things one might expect in an inside reception of a corporate office.
Spooky Surroundings
Before you can take a better look at the precincts, however, you hear low, grim moans and whispers. Some of the lights, off a moment ago, flicker before turning on, and, at the corner of your eyes, you think you see some sort of shadow move across parts of the fallen ceiling and books near the wall opposite where you're standing before disappearing, apparently into a wall.
It might be enough to send shivers down your spines. But, given where you are, you feel in your guts it may not be the weirdest thing you’ll see today…
As you try to keep your calm, roll vs Fear 1 (Raw Willpower + Honour vs TN 10).
After that inauspicious welcome, you can finally take a better look at...General rules for the scene
Tic, Tac, Tot
As your first uncanny encounters quickly reminds you, staying put for too long in the Desolation may prove dangerous, as you start to attract the attention of unnatural beings in the area. While it does look like the inside of the building should keep you safer relatively to the outside, this is still not an area where you'd probably like to spend a long time.
As you search through the ruins of the laboratory, you will spend Time Steps representing the time spent doing each activity. As you accumulate Time Steps from your activities, you may end up attracting the attention of one of spirits or other things roaming the area.
As you will have heard from others who have visited the area, some of the spirits around are relatively harmless, while others may be quite dangerous.
Fear outside combat
Some of the situations you may encounter as you explore (like the one described above) will call for a Fear roll (Raw Willpower + Honour vs a TN of 5 + (5 x Fear Rank)). Many of these situations (like this first one) will happen outside combat, so the rules for when Fear wears off are a bit different here.
If you are affected by a Fear effect, you suffer a -Xk0 penalty to all your dice rolls, where X is the Fear Rank, as normal. This penalty decreases by -1k0 for each 10 Time Steps the group spends performing activities.
If you are affected by another Fear effect while still under the effect of one, you only suffer the highest penalty (i.e. the effects do not stack), and each effect has its own duration reduced separately.
Keeping things moving
To keep things organised, for most of this scene, each PC should declare his or her action, then wait for all other PCs to act before going again.
I'll usually react to what you have done and say if you attract anything weird after each round ends. Please feel free to ping me when the last PC in a round acts so I prod things along!
If at any point one of the PCs does not act for over 2-4 hours, even after I ping you, I will use the instructions you left (taking into consideration what the others PCs in the team suggest, but within what your instructions say) and ghost your PC accordingly. Again, as things come up, I encourage you to update your ghosting instructions to do specific things if you feel that will help!
Part 1 - The Reception
As would be expected, most of what must have been the lab’s Reception is in shambles. Parts of the ceiling, bricks and other rubble lie all over, and over a desk you see broken glass and twisted black plastic pieces of what must have been a computer. What must have been doors to side rooms or corridors, or maybe restrooms, is now completely blocked by the rubble. Two parts of the room, however, draw your eyes.
At the left side, where rocks, debris and a variety of other items cover most of the ground, you see, behind a desk crumbled to the ground, some bookshelves and a cabinet still standing.
At the rightmost part of the opposite wall, you see a corridor that, while partially blocked by fallen plasteel, plaster and other materials as parts of the ceiling and walls caved in, seems to be the easiest way to proceed further inside the building.
Each PC may choose to take one of the following actions on their turn.
- Searching bookshelves and cabinets - This requires 2 Time Steps per attempt and an Investigation (Search)/Perception roll (TN unknown!). Calling Raises may allow you to find more valuable information. The same PC may try again in a later round, but this uses 4 Time Slots instead (unless they have Investigation 3, in which case they can reroll once in a later round using only 2 Time Slots again).
- Proceed through caved-in corridor - Roll Athletics/Agility vs TN 20. If you succeed, you make your way through the tunnel in 1 Time Step. Each Raise called in this roll allows you to grant a +5 bonus to the Athletics roll of another character of your choice. If you fail this roll, roll Athletics/Agility vs TN 15 again. If you succeed the second time, you go through in 2 Time Steps instead. If you fail again, you force your way through carelessly, suffering 3k1 damage and arriving at the other side in 3 Time Steps instead. Small characters gain 1 Free Raise for their rolls here, while the TNs for Large characters are increased by 5. To clarify - if you fail the Athletics roll, you can go ahead and roll again in the same post. If you want to, you can give up (i.e. come back), but then you must start the process again in the next round.
- Help another character - If you have gone through the tunnel, in a following round you can spend 2 Time Steps to help another character of your choice who still hasn't gone through. This provides a +5 bonus to the Athletics roll of the character you choose.
- Wait - If you decide to just wait while others do their thing, you spend 1 Time Step.
- Do something else - If you have some other idea here that I haven't covered, explain what you are doing in your post and ping me. I'll react to it at the end of the round!
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