Session 25: Whispers in the Dark Report

General Summary

Introduction

"Harken now to the falling thought along the pilgrim's road. The dimming of the lantern's glow, the lightening of the load. A rising star, its sweet caress, carries you aloft. Once more shall we meet again in branches of Ein Sof."   Around you, lights along the consoles and walls flash and blink rapidly. Before your eyes, each light on the console, each light on the walls, every source of light around you blinks out and disappears entirely. Darkness surrounds each of you. There is a moment, that fleeting moment before your eyes can dilate, before you can reach for your datapads or can trigger any flashlights, where you are each completely and utterly surrounded in pitch black darkness. All of you, except Kyra and Li from their lovely, seated positions with seatbelts, were thrown and tossed around your various stations like ragdolls moments before. The pain starts to set in, the ache, and the loneliness that only being in true darkness can provide. No ambient lights kick on, no backup power generator whirs to life in the ship, no vaguely defined shapes of seats or systems or doorways...no distant light of stars peering in at you from the nearby viewports. You are blind, trapped for this moment in utter darkness.  
Your minds flick back to the moments where the permeating darkness never felt so complete. The panic of revealed enemies in a system supposed to be safe. Explosions and narrow misses all around you as you were tossed and thrown in a valiant escape. The jolt and explosions of a direct hit in your engines thrusting you forward into the safety of Z-Space. That briefest flash of light, the flicker of the safety of Zip-Space...then the silence. The darkness. The plunge. You can faintly make out the final whirring of the ship's powerless systems spinning down in the far distance before the silence completes the isolation. The symphony of whirs are concluded by the slow, gradual grinding cacophony of metal straining, bending, and aching around you.
Then, as quickly as it all began, the grinding stops. The darkness is complete, the silence envelops you, and you are each alone in the depths of your own mind.   We are going to start by taking 1 action each as you are trapped in this silence and darkness. Currently, only Dash and Li have the gift of companionship, that relief of another human, close at hand. (If Possible: But we won't start there...)

Rose

Introduction

We are going to start in the back of the ship, in a room that smells of smoke and faintly like a good ol' fashion barbeque. Rose is laying in the middle of a room she can't see the edges of starting down at hands she knows are there only because they are still radiating pain. You are able to breathe, but the air is heavy with the now-familiar smoke of an electrical burst. The gift of shock has yet to kick in.

Action

Rose managed to work her way back to the wall behind her. She eventually crawled to the door, found the panel drained of power, and fell sobbing while overwhelmed in pain from her injured hands.

Kyra

Introduction

Kyra was fortunate to have strapped herself into the turret as she is exactly where she started. The turret is completely dead and doesn't respond to any movements or controls. You look outside of the bubble surrounding your body and see nothing immediately around you. You don't see any stars and the ship doesn't seem to be moving.

Action

Kyra was unable to see anything as the ship broke through what eventually is believed to have been the dimensional pocket they found themselves in. Instead, she remained in the turret hatch and tested her own equipment trying to find anything that still had power and was functional.

Jason

Introduction

Jason, you were in your bunk when you felt the plunge and the lights fell dark. You heard the your door click and the whoosh of air pressurizing before slamming to a halt.

Action

Jason tests and finds a device that was not drained of power. He quickly finds that the door for his room is sealed and uses the power cell from the device to power the door and escape his confines.

Dash and Li

Introduction

Li is sitting in the pilots seat strapped in with his hands holding onto the piloting controls. Dash is beside him, one hand resting on the back of the copilot's chair he was aiming for and the other on the Z-Space Control. Neither can see the other now, but the same darkness that seemingly envelops the console in front of them is the same one that envelops whatever is beyond their open, windshield still shaded dark from the Z-Space jump.

Action

Dash immediately had sealed his helmet as they fell through and crashed. They found themselves both in the darkness of the cockpit. Li was fortunate enough to catch a brief glimpse of what they were falling into, which seemed almost like a vast cityscape of geometric shapes that could be the tops of buildings.

Whispers in the Dark

Introduction

You each move through the darkness suffocating your ship. Faintly, each of you hears something like a whisper around you, above you, beneath you. I'll ask everyone to make me a Notice DC3 Check.
Succeeded: You believe that you are able to make out the words being whispered around you like echoes of an echo. You are certain that it is not in Galactic Common Tongue, but it is on the edge of Intelligibility. You may choose to force yourself to understand the words, but you immediately understand that you will strain your mind to do so. If you choose to allow your mind to understand, make a Will save to resist 3 incoming Mental Stress now.

Actions

They each, still trapped in their isolating darkness, begin to hear almost intelligible whispers at the edge of their minds. Almost everyone chose to risk the mental stress to understand the whispers within their minds, despite the language not being Common.
Leliel (Light Russian Female Whisper Voice) "Sathriel, returned at last. Have you been severed and twisted from us as well? What a tragically lesser cage they have trapped you in. Fear not, fallen one, Leliel shall bring you back into the fold."

The Darkness Moves

You each see that thick, inky darkness begin to peel away from the natural darkness around you. Your vision begins to clear and you see the familiar darkened shapes of doorways, consoles, chairs, and other silhouettes now common to your eyes. Thin emergency lights, separated from the ship's power systems intended as a final desperate guide for abandoning a dead ship, begin to brighten the edges of your vision as the inky darkness peels and oozes away from them.
As you each watch from your various points around the ship, the darkness begins to coalesce and flood down the hallway. You see edges of silhouettes and the running lights flickering and visible where the darkness peels down the interior of the ship. You could easily follow the thick, flowing patch of darkness, should you have the desire or intention.

Kyra

While sitting in the turret, you see that thick darkness outside of your window slide and ooze away to leave a clear line of sight beyond. What you can see ahead of you appears to be tinted red from twin blood moons hanging over you, but no other stars or celestial bodies can be seen. The red tint illuminates what appears to be geometric outlines stretching far into the distance, the edges barely visible. You would almost think they would be natural formations if not for the angled geometric shapes, but they appear to be the silhouettes of buildings of all sizes ranging far into the distance.

Dash and Li

Dash and Li immediately look at each other, shout "Kevin!", and run into that thick darkness. They stumble and navigate their way through the shifted interior of the crashed ship as they run for Kevin's room, racing the coalescing darkness. Kyra hears them after seeing the cityscape outside and descends to chase after them.

Jason and Rose

Meanwhile, Jason wanders through the lightened dark interiors of the ship until he hears sobbing on the other side of the door. He uses the same trick to drain another device and Rose, curled up against the sealed door, topples out into the hallway with him. He attempts to help her up and then they head towards the commotion caused by Dash and Li. Kyra, climbing down the ladder, joins them as they move.

Death of a Guru

When Li arrives, he sees the following: You follow the inky, oozing darkness seeing no forms or life inside to justify it moving and writhing forward down the hallway. You see it sliding into the hallway where Guru Kevin resides. The hallway, completely dark, slowly lightens at the edges as the thick darkness seems to flow into where you know his room is. You see the outlined frame of Guru Kevin's closed door revealed in the hallway.
The whispered voice is spoken stronger "Sathriel...you've been tainted. Have no fear, you are welcome home my brother." You hear a muffled burst like electricity and a muffled voice cry out unintelligibly through the closed door. All falls silent once more.   Dash runs down the the hallway, throwing his body into a kick that shattered the locking mechanism on the door. He throws it open as Li runs inside. In the center of the room stands a tall, dark silhouette that seems like the vaguest shadowed outline of a too tall, too gangly human. It's left hand extends towards the back wall where the edges of Kevin's struggling form can be seen. Its left hand is clamped around his mouth and holding his against the wall as his eyes look towards you in panic. Its right arm holds what seems to be a long, broad blade of that same thick, oozing, dripping darkness surrounding it. The blade is pressed through Kevin's body and seems to be pinning him to the wall as the form gracefully twists its head, followed by its slightly too long neck, towards you. Kevin's bathrobe hangs open, revealing the blood pouring down his stomach and legs, staining his iconic tighty-whiteys to a deep, dark crimson. Kevin's hand desperately reaches out for the Seed of Ydrissil, still resting on the pillow beneath the cameras set up to observe it. As Li enters and watches the shadowed form turning towards him, everyone feels a sudden lurch beneath their feet. The figure takes the opportunity to lunge forward towards the Orb as the blade vanishes and Kevin starts to collapse to the floor.   The Ship shifts heavily backwards towards the cargo bay. The 3 running through the hallways are left to try and catch themselves, but Rose (being unable to grasp anything), tumbles through the doorway of the Cargo Bay into some crates beyond. Dash manages to catch himself while Li dives for the Orb and rolls. The figure in darkness flies past him through the doorway, but Dash jumps blindly into the darkness and manages to grasp and grapple the form within.   They come tumbling out of the darkness to reveal her inhuman features. Dash slams her to the ground and punches while Li narrow misses severing one of her wings with his Tanto. After several moments of struggle, in which it is revealed that she has not attacked them once, Li manages to tackle Dash off of the figure (before being thrown off by Dash moments after). The group reconvenes soon, Jason having used his hands to slam handholds across the slanted floor for the girls to use to follow him. As they do, Dash goes to Guru Kevin's dying form as Li begins questioning the figure (now cloaked in darkness once again) floating up into the corner of the room.    It is revealed that she is Leliel, a Host who has maintained her consciousness and form since before the fall of "Ein Sof", the once "golden city" they find themselves in. She reveals the corruption of Orgeneous having destroyed Ein Sof and many of her kind. She tells them of the "Universe That Was". She reveals that she has aided other humans in the past that have slipped and crashed into this "city" by shrouding them in darkness (as she did for them) to mask the light and heat of their crash from the corrupted Seraphim stalking the streets. Finally, she bids them travel to Ydrissil to talk with her again should they survive as she may know of one path that remains for humans to escape from this place. Upon their leave, she flees them. She seems to grow more and more nervous and stay far away from Dash (especially as he uses Fateweaving) as the conversation continued on.

Consequences

With her gone, the group is left to deal with her "freed brother" in the form of Kevin's corpse. Dash, the last to hold Kevin during his final moments, wraps him up and carries him to the cargo hold. The rest end up assessing damage to the ship, finding Alicia and Botley's unconscious bodies in the life support room, unsealing the doors, and lowering a wench through the damaged and opened cargo bay ramp to what appears to be a street below. They discovered that one internal ship's systems, the generators, are fully destroyed and need to be replaced. The rest are repairable or already were repaired as they assessed them.   They find a handful of gravboots from the mix of their ship's suits, demon's boots, and by using personal devices to power one when they couldn't find enough. Chiara and William Blake remained inside with Kyra as the rest exited to view the damage to the ship. Dash, Li, and Rose exit to the top of the ship to assess the Engines exterior. The engines were completely shredded by the Utopia rounds and while parts can be salvaged, it will need to be replaced. The ship's hull is scarred with deep, black, charred gouges in the metal that seem like lightning struck all over it.   Jason, meanwhile, descended into the streets. He wandered over to one of the buildings with an open doorway and entered, finding nothing inside (not even furniture) of the massive building. Li and Dash jumped over to the roof to see a better angle of the ship and city, including the massive city walls to one side and the tower arching up out of eyesight in the center of the city. As they watch, Li catches a glimpse of a gangly, humanoid figure moving towards Jason that seems very close to him. The figure shifts and morphs into an odd birdlike form as Li whips out his rifle and takes a shot that narrowly misses. Everyone's attention is drawn to the creature as it twists its eyeless head up towards them all.

Rewards Granted

[Minor Milestone]

Character(s) interacted with

• Leliel 

Allies

• Chiara Mekiee
• William Blake