Requiem: VN Ysadora
General Summary
Welcome to Tar Sona, where apparently we were expected....
And why not? It's a pretty cosmopolitan point, albeit we mostly pass through headed from some other Point A toward some other Point B. Usually I'm wingman for one of the Masters, and my job is to keep up while not getting mugged.
Once again, the Mismatch has been transporting goods. This time around, Cap'n B just emptied her hold of bags of quickcrete, prefabricated building parts, parts for particle accelerators ... and puzzleflowers. What's with the sudden popularity of puzzleflowers? Somebody (not me!) should check up whether this is some super mathy way to transmit Mentat sacred missives, or something.
So Danar, Eleni, and I are eating at the Dawn Treader Pub, on Danar's dime. VERY nice place. Very "historical", which is apparently a plus. Dr. Simon Tam joins us unexpectedly, and Danar and I step away for a few minutes to admire the dessert display when Sir Tam and Capt. Razak come in bloody and looking like they lost a fight. Turns out they're infested with worms!
Tor Ceti is one of the inhabited planets in the Estaph System. Davish and Razak apparently were following up on a clue for the aging problem, wound up there, and now they're full of worms. Two other inhabited planets in the same system are Varel and Miti; Tor Ceti is a "tomb world", ravaged by a plague and ruined so badly that it was unable to recover for over a thousand years, and therefore used as a gigantic graveyard. Rather unusual, it was heavily bombarded during Palpatine's Final Solution.
Rumor claims it is infested now with alien soul-sucking face-eating ghosts.
Davish thinks Ko Sai's notes are there.
Davish's Tor Ceti files:
- Personal (holographic message) from 3 years ago of an elderly man, completely bald, very dark skin, lots of wrinkles from age AND hard life, very stern look, looks like a much older Junior. Says, "Boy, I finally found it" and then I hit "stop".
- notes about Ko Sai: he's been tracking where she went, he suspects she's dead, he can't understand why her data is on a tomb world when he's almost positive she died on Mandalore. Davish had been betting on the data to go to Pelagia instead of Tor Ceti, because Vorpadaran family has a lot of specialization in medical data
Jania Vorrossek is a young lady in Javis System, Mecetti Province, who could theoretically be on Danar's short list for excellent marriage prospects. Danar got a no-delay emergency flight cleared to the Javis System, with a hint that he's thinking about proposing, to disguise the fact that we're hurrying to a system two hypserspace segments earlier.
Based on several observations, Dr. Tam develops an anti-worm spray and sets up seven or eight canisters of it. We have to get to Tor Ceti, get samples of the original DNA of the artificial life form that seems to have taken over bone worms and be trying to mutate into something else entirely, swipe whatever Ko Sai left in the lab, shut DOWN the damn lab, and get back as fast as possible to save Sir Tam and Captain Razak.
For this job, I lean on my "Commander" status a little bit: I drop a message to Rico, when no one is looking, to update him on Razak's status and what I'm preparing to do about it. I know he's going to want to send Beskar Aran on this, so rather than wait for him to offer (ha, he'll just do it, and he might come himself!) I request some Venn folks, volunteers who understand the worm thing before they volunteer if you please, who have not yet opted for the "restore organics" process. Let's have fighters who are not eligible for a bed next to Razak and Davish.
Just outside Lastelle System, we rendezvous with the Millennium Falcon and pick up 4 from Clan Venn: Lt. Acer, Sgt Striker, and Troopers (heavy) Burner and (demolitions) Deuce. They're all commando trained -- Acer's an ARC -- and none of them have yet been restored from cyberification back to mostly meat.
And just behind them is Yeager Lexics, in full drop armor.
And just behind HIM is KHUN! YA BIG STUD! Hugs were given out. Yeager paid off his gambling debt to Chewbacca. Danar hired Han Solo to deliver Lord Solicitor Londo Mollari's boxes. I gave the mission briefing to the guys.
Chandra Station trying to contact Corvin Station, are you there? Reply PLEASE.
A Twi'lek (female) of House Vormecetti is in charge at Chandra station, apparently " Bel'ibin". Harrin is the mechanic, and may be lacking pants. "Cal" is the older human who's quietly packing things up. The project sponsor is Kel Vormecetti, who is apparently kind of a flake.
2 wks and a bit ago: apparently Corvin Station crew had been sending out a droid to do some geologic sweeps north of base, because they picked up an unusually large amount of metal outcroppings which scans could not penetrate. They lost contact with the droid at the end of one day, so they sent out a 2nd droid -- same results. Last communication indicates base was going to armor up in a vehicle and head up there to recover droids.
That was the last communication of any kind received from Corvin Station. Automated telemetry links shut down within same day, specifically within 6 hours to the second.
The general target area is for burial of members of the Vorkoslov family, starting five generations ago and still current. They're House Vormecetti, of course. Also in the area are Vordashkov ( Melantha Province ) and Vorrutyer (bum bum BUM!)
The obsidian was laced with some sort of metal, which is a bit odd. So one of the north camp people was convinced they could mine it to cover for the lack of supplies. The second droid, we find out when accessing Corvin Station records directly, actually DID come back. Archives show very sketchy droid images of a very old ruin that probably predates the more local ruins previously studied. It's among the low set of hills to the north of the base.
Two of the researchers went to get the one missing bot and never came back. Meanwhile the two that were still here went paranoid: they heard voices, they'd put things down and the things would suddenly be across the room, they had very strange happenings. One thinks he's losing his mind because he looked at the other doctor and swore he saw a canister float across the room by itself.
And then they shot each other.
Weird crap involving thermal detonators leads to our discovery of an invisible guy with The Voice. Hey, another Man-e-Gesserit! After much piling-on and the kind of teamwork we'd just as soon NEVER appear in a training video -- including of Warrant Officer Lexics getting all ready to shoot the clones' Jedi -- we finally managed to subdue and capture this guy. We're going to take him back for more professional questioning.
This planet looks REALLY depressing. Spires are made of stone, durasteel, and obsidian, all pitted from weathering. The sands are purple and grey, and we have some grounds for suspecting that they aren't really sand.
Looks like the area got hit by a meteor (or missile) storm about 200,000 years ago.
As we cross up and over the ridgeline, going into a forest of obsidian spires, the ground slopes down and spreads out. The obsidian shards bend outward and away from a cluster of one-story buildings in the bowl of the depression. The tractor is down there. The four buildings are square and box-shaped, and might be connected by enclosed corridors. They don't look like tombs.
Going left first, we find a sextet of Adepta Sororitas. They hint at having problems with concealed opponents before the usual greeting of "CLEANSE THE UNCLEAN!" and attempting to set fire to Yeager.
What the Sisters copied and sent out on mining bots was:
- something about a series of communications between a set of scientists or doctors here, and a Matres Preena
- tag identifiers on the files say "series 2" and "series 3"
- The last file/email/whatever says "contract cancellation"
On the other side there is a Kaminoan lab, with tubes and holding pens. There's a kath hound in one of the pens that has been altered pretty far. Another tube has a worm floating in stasis that's three feet long.
There were 3 Kaminoan scientists here: Lo Ren, Tan Sho, and Gel Lee. They were working off Dr. Ko Sai's notes, fulfilling a paid contract with Matres Preena. They also have a contract with someone within the Landsradt itself: House Vormecetti. It is a breeding program for genetically altered kath hounds, with increased strength and a natural chameleon pigment alteration within their fur. Apparently the idiot Kaminoans thought it'd be good to use the kath hounds already here and use it as base stock. The other projects, specifically the one Preena was very interested in, was to alter the genetics of the ysalamiri, aka cute little anti-Force ferrets. The genetic samples of the ysalamiri were to be used with the human cloning project to do crap knows what called a "stabilization matrix". Apparently they had donor data, some of which is Mandalorian in origin, and they had made it to Series 3 (which they considered a "final beta"). They delivered that final beta and then didn't get paid, which is when they cancelled the contract. A lot of this was based on Ko Sai's data.
Three "anomaly" trails are paralleling the Sisters.
We get a distress call/email from Sister Commander Mera Dal. They're under assault. {video sweep of bigger version of hell-wombats} And there's something they can't see.
We're heading into combat. Yeager is going to throw me in the general direction of the middle of the fight.
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