Rbz7: The Nest
General Summary
Returning from the excursion into the alien amphitheatre, the crew pile back into the fire engine and journey onwards as they fill Echo in on the details. They drive for several hours through the expansive bowels of the space station, following the signs of the marauding Parasect before coming across a passage that seemed eeriely dark. The interior of the space station, as far as they could tell, was passively, if dimly, lit from virtually every surface. This entryway, however, stood utterly dark in stark contrast to its surroundings, looking like a terrestrial cavern into the unknown.
Intrigued, Echo drives the fire engine into the room, using the vehicle's headlights to see the way. Reinhard stood guard from the "gunner station" in the rescue bucket while the others peered out through the glass of the cab. The engine rocked over bumpy ground -- a first since the descent along the makeshift ramp -- and the cones of the headlights played erratically over a transformed terrain.
The ground, rather than the smooth ceramic of the concourse, was covered in lumps of a coral like substance that crunched and crackled underneath the wheels. Clusters of hand-sized fragments littered the ground.
"Those look like Parasect eggs!" Benesh exclaimed, "Or they were..."
Just then, Echo completes the vehicle's turn. The headlights bob upward as the wheels crest a bump, and the light settles on the glowing orange form in the distance. A still-intact Parasect egg. The only survive one in the entire room, it seemed.
The crew paused as they took in this peculiar sight. Then Benesh went and grabbed his weapon, "Well, let's take a closer look. Shall we?"
The others agree and split into two groups. Benesh approaches one of the clusters of broken eggs while Saskia keeps watch in the shadows. Reinhard and Quinn, on the other hand, were drawn to the still-whole egg in the distance.
It was clear from a distance that the eggs these eggs were nonviable. Their shells were cracked and several pieces of shell laid strewn about. As Benesh got closer, he could see that the eggs were not merely cracked, but that precise incisions were made into the shells, and their contents carefully extracted with not a drop left. Curious, he stepped closer and then saw exactly what had caused the incisions -- a severed right arm, drabbed the sleeve of medical garb, still clenching a scalpel. It would seem someone had been stealing the eggs, and something much larger found out.
Even as Benesh relayed his findings over the radio (with hardly anyone paying attention to his monologue), Reinhard and Quinn drew up around the intact egg. The orange and roughly cabbage-sized egg seemed to radiate an enchanting warm glow from within. Reinhard seemed almost in a trance as he stepped up to it, touching one of the pulsing veins with his hands. As he tried to pick the egg up, a brilliant bluish flash burst forth. It briefly engulfs the two figures before condensing into a bright pulsing figure which danced through the air above the crew before disappearing just as suddenly as it appeared.
The four were spellbound. Quinn's lips quivered in prayer. Reinhard's eyes teared up. And Benesh had dropped to a knee in reverence. Only Saskia seemed to retain control of her faculties, though the haunting beauty of the display could not be denied.
"Did you see that?" Reinhard was the first to break the silence, "It was a beautiful naked woman!"
"It was a strange bird. I was pretty sure of it was some sort of vulture..." Saskia said uncertainly.
"I was pretty sure it was some kind of seahorse," Benesh said.
There was a pause as the others waited for Quinn to disagree. "It was a Seedbaler. It is written about in the Gardener's scriptures. It is suppose to show that which you wish most." After another pause, he added, "I saw a butterfly."
There was excited chatter about what this meant. They confirmed with Echo, who also saw the figure from the driver's cab. But the recordings were too blurry to make out any distinct shapes. Content to disagree on the particulars of the 'vision', they turn to the nature of the egg. With the apparition departed, the remaining egg looked the same as the others -- cracked and soulless. Perhaps the egg was always this way, and merely appeared whole to draw the eye of the reverent. Perhaps the creature was a sort of cuckoo bird, and laid its 'egg' disguised as another's. Regardless, Reinhard scooped out a bit of goop from the egg into a jar and held it reverently, and he and Quinn worked to free the egg as a sort of artefact. Saskia remained skeptical about the whole thing, but Benesh helped empty out a glass equipment cabinet as a sort of altar to display the egg and its fragments.
As the excitement of the Seedbaler settled down, attention turned to the mission at hand -- how to track down and kill the giant Parasect. Presumably, it still roamed these parts, as evident by the torn arm. Had the egg been intact, perhaps it could be used as a trap. After some rummaging, they found some vials of goop from the tiny crab specimens. The Parasect had seemed quite interest in them before, so perhaps a fresh dose of pheremones will draw it out. They took some time to lay out the trap -- the last of Saskia's explosives rigged around a cluster of eggs smeared with the pheremones. Then they parked the fire engine to the side, turned off the lights and settled in to wait. They would wait a long time. For an entire day and some, they waited without any signs of change. The crew grew restless, finding various distractions while not "on watch". Saskia was the first to notice something was amiss. A distant murmur and then a quiet echo of a rumble. Then the unmistakable distant flash of headlights as a vehicle drove slowly over the bumpy coral ground at the entrance of the area. Saskia quickly roused Reinhard, who found Quinn. Then she circled around to the tap on the window behind where Benesh was discretely watching compromising vids of attractive nobility partaking in mild indiscretions of imperial ettiquette. Benesh yelped and quickly hid the vid from view and the crew gathered their gear as they waited for the mysterious vehicle to come into view.
As the excitement of the Seedbaler settled down, attention turned to the mission at hand -- how to track down and kill the giant Parasect. Presumably, it still roamed these parts, as evident by the torn arm. Had the egg been intact, perhaps it could be used as a trap. After some rummaging, they found some vials of goop from the tiny crab specimens. The Parasect had seemed quite interest in them before, so perhaps a fresh dose of pheremones will draw it out. They took some time to lay out the trap -- the last of Saskia's explosives rigged around a cluster of eggs smeared with the pheremones. Then they parked the fire engine to the side, turned off the lights and settled in to wait. They would wait a long time. For an entire day and some, they waited without any signs of change. The crew grew restless, finding various distractions while not "on watch". Saskia was the first to notice something was amiss. A distant murmur and then a quiet echo of a rumble. Then the unmistakable distant flash of headlights as a vehicle drove slowly over the bumpy coral ground at the entrance of the area. Saskia quickly roused Reinhard, who found Quinn. Then she circled around to the tap on the window behind where Benesh was discretely watching compromising vids of attractive nobility partaking in mild indiscretions of imperial ettiquette. Benesh yelped and quickly hid the vid from view and the crew gathered their gear as they waited for the mysterious vehicle to come into view.
Report Date
07 Aug 2021
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