Verge Crawl
Whiteboard Alt:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LlatCJ0j7nD5Kjr0_LCyoVQ4KsfdUkC9Ir0qC34Tnoc/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Month: 35
Complete: 38%
TL: 4 (T1 dis on all checks)
Boons:
Banes:
- Air supply lost Dis Survival
Discoveries:
- Some locals are nomadic
- Some locals are interested in technology
- Some locals are not tribal and rather civilized
E3 - Quarry Outpost
I3 - Abandoned Air Supply Craft
F2-F1 - Verdant Ageis
The Verge Survey Squad’s initial deployment proved slow and unglamorous, defined more by weather, terrain, and logistics than by discovery. Electrical storms cut off air support early, forcing the team into cautious, methodical exploration through wet cliff faces and unbroken jungle that yielded no sign of established Floran tribes. Progress was steady but repetitive—survey, camp, mark, move—until a supply crisis forced the squad to clear an emergency landing zone under severe time pressure. The landing succeeded, but at cost: the transport craft became irretrievably stuck, and the pilot had to be escorted back to the quarry, ending aerial resupply altogether. First contact finally came not as a tribe, but as a lone Floran nomad—first a failed theft, then a wary daylight barter that cost the squad a radio unit and gained little of strategic value. After eight months, the squad returned to base exhausted, undersupplied, and largely empty-handed: no tribes mapped, no alliances formed, but no casualties either—an outcome officially logged as “acceptable progress,” if privately regarded as a frustratingly quiet start.
With air support permanently lost and the supply vessel presumed destroyed, the Verge Survey Squad pivoted to a tightening loop of charting around the quarry itself, prioritizing proximity and survivability over bold expansion. Early in the sweep they made unexpected first contact with the Verdant Aegis, a mountain-dwelling classical Floran polity whose infrastructure and regional maps now drastically simplify southern transit under a fragile diplomatic accord brokered by Adanna. The following months were defined less by discovery than by endurance: marsh surveys strained morale under dwindling supplies, forcing a reset and renewed discipline; mountain foraging improved as the squad adapted Verdant techniques; and a massive fungal overgrowth west of the quarry signaled environmental limits to their current logistics model. A strange, persistent marsh beetle shadowed them for weeks—an almost-ally—before vanishing at the exclusion zone boundary. After nearly a year without air support, the squad is more self-sufficient but increasingly constrained, having nearly exhausted all territory within safe ground resupply range and facing a decisive push deeper into truly uncontrolled jungle.
The Verge Survey Squad resumed circumnavigation over the poles, leveraging Verdant Aegis infrastructure—only to have events at home undercut their progress. A spreading northern fungal bloom, poorly contained by an incomplete application of local remedies, ultimately overtook the quarry, stripping it of biological productivity and reducing it to inert stone while forcing Tatu to divert scarce technological support to placate the Verdant Aegis and prevent further spread into their territory. Pressing on through mountain spines that arc pole to pole, the squad endured dwindling supplies, skirted a massive cliff-bound wasp hive, and pushed into increasingly hostile terrain where fungal growth thickened unnaturally. There they discovered something far worse: a vast, calcified fungoid hive inhabited by hyper-intelligent worker drones shaping stone and hardened mycelium with primitive tools. Attempting to bypass it, the squad was subtly funneled through ravines and trapped in a coordinated landslide. They awoke bound in dried, paper-like fungal membranes within the hive itself—alive, captured, and very much no longer observers.
Captured within the fungoid hive, the Verge Survey Squad awoke bound beside tribal Florans overtaken by a virulent red growth—victims of conversion rather than allies. Attempts to calm or treat them failed, and the squad soon discovered early signs of infection in themselves; Ekaterina expended nearly all restorative supplies stabilizing the others while leaving their own treatment uncertain. When one infected Floran broke free, it absorbed extraordinary punishment before falling, confirming the fungus alters both mind and resilience. Pushing deeper, the squad entered a dignified, palace-like fungal chamber overseen by a towering beetle-like intelligence wielding a ceremonial blade. In a blackout ambush, the creature nearly wiped them out—Adanna gravely wounded, Ekaterina depleted, and Kuro cleanly beheaded before the overseer finally fell. At the chamber’s center they found something worse: a partially grown, possibly sentient fungal starship frame suspended above a moon-door shaft. With no time and no way to descend safely together, Patli closed their eyes and leapt into the freedom below—ending the session with the squad fractured, infected, and one member dead in the depths of an alien hive.
The arc closes in catastrophe and defiance. Patli flees the hive alone, choosing the most direct path through fungal territory, only to be relentlessly shadowed by silent insectoid sentinels that never strike—only deny rest. She reaches the mountains on sheer will, collapses from exhaustion, and dies quietly beneath the cliffs, never recaptured, never returning. Inside the hive, Adanna and Ekaterina seize a final moment of agency: Adanna destroys a corrupted pixel printer converting fungal mass into red pixels, destabilizing the chamber and announcing their rebellion. They survive a brutal encounter with a towering war-bred grub through precision and nerve, then discover a propulsion laboratory hinting at the hive’s technological ambitions. But escape proves impossible. Worker drones overwhelm Adanna in a calculated shove off a high catwalk into the depths of the central hive, while Ekaterina is contained—neither executed nor freed—systematically deprived of sleep and autonomy until infection overtakes her. The squad’s expedition ends not in triumph or rescue, but in isolation, sacrifice, and the chilling revelation that the hive builds, plans, and learns.