Mission 3 Part 1: Floodgate

General Summary

We were able to catch up with the actions of Jancer over the past downtime. He felt the need to help with the rebuilding efforts of Evergreen after the attack on the settlement. Unfortunately, due to the lack of resources and stress of the situation, he was only able to help with minor things like cleaning up rubble and clearing out destroyed buildings. He was able to garner good will among the people though, and next time will be able to assist them much more effectively.
While out talking to the people of Evergreen, he was approached by a old woman in orange and white vestments. She asked him if he was a part of a clergy, and he responded yes. The woman claimed that she was a part of the Catholic Union sect, a sect common among Union planets. Before she left as mysteriously as she came, she whispered into Jancer's ear, "My St. Tellus bless you." Jancer, confused by this "St. Tellus" decided to see if any of the locals had ever heard of this Saint. He had never come across this name before, and his Omninet search came up with nothing. The people he spoke with too didn't have any idea about St. Tellus either, only adding to his confusion.
Early one morning, Patience pinged the Lancers with an urgent meeting. Something strange was happening, and he needed to talk with them as soon as possible. When the Lancers gathered up and worked their way to the Govener's Farm, they noticed strange happenings. A lone drone made its way through the streets, followed by a man with a comp/con unit. He was yelling and swearing at it, it seems as if it wasn't responding to his commands as it drifted along. They saw a subaltern, repeatedly bumping into the wall of a building. The came across a subaltern, hands out like it was supposed to be carrying something, walking in circles around a box in the middle of the street. Maggie, who was in her mech, stopped the subaltern and hacked into it. She got the familiar "3002" message, and instead of a command prompt with actual code, all that came up was the message "I need to go home. I need to fight." They saw many more subalterns and drones making their way away from their handlers and out of the city, out east. 
When they met Patience in the council chambers, the room had projections on all the walls, ceiling and floor. They was looking at Hercynia from above. They began speaking to the Lancers about the singal they had been receiving, a loop of supercompressed data that originates from somewhere across the sea. They claim that it comes from something different, a "wonder." And has a small piece of relief that the hitch doesn't originate from within theirself. Patience had another moment where they lost theirself, snapping in rythm until Edena entered the room and broke him out. She had a couple of reports from the military stating that they recommend building up Evergreen's defenses at the time due to the odd behavior of the subalterns and drones. She also brought up Patience's cycling schedule and they reluctantly agreed to start it that night, after they ran the simulations in her reports and activated more subalterns. The cycling could take anywhere from 13 hours to 2 days. They then dismissed Edena from the room. Maggie then wanted to see if Patienece would react to hearing the message that they found at the Chau farm that came from The Broadcast. Patience immediately reacted and wanted to know where that came from. They explained that it was like remembering something from a dream he had forgotten. It gave them a headache, something not common for Patience. Patience, still had a task for the Lancers though. They wanted to know where all the subalterns from Evergreen where headed, and why. Patience needed them to follow the subaltern flow and find out what was happening. They suspected taht it had to do something with Tower 3. The Lancers were then dismissed, and Patience's hologram form faded from the room.
In preperation for their next mission, the Lancers discussed the possibility of destroying Tower 3 in hopes of stopping the signal all together or at least hindering it in some way. That does also mean that it would potentially cause issues with Evergreens Omninode tower, and might cause issues with outside communication, but it was a risk they were weighing as they left to follow the trail of subalterns. The trail was easy to follow, giant agriculteral drones churned up the earth and plowed a path for the subalterns and drones that followed behind. Some subalterns pulled themselves out of the ground around them, and some wandered in from the surrounding forest, adding ever increasing numbers to the tidal waves of synths. Most were old, rotting and rusting, remnets of an old and bygone era. None were hostile to the Lancers as they marched behind to tide. 
As they reached the valley wall, on which Tower 3 sat, they discovered a dissapointing truth. The area was swarmed with subalterns, even the tower and the cliff side. Like a termite nest that had been kicked. They followed the flow into a small canyon to discover hundreds of subalterns digging violently, fervently at the ground and canyon walls. It was a zeal that the Lancers had not seen before in these drones. As they watched, they saw a cave that the subalterns had dug into the canyon wall, and suddenly a giant robot, forced the earth out of its way and escaped the cavern. It towered into the sky over even the largest of the group's mechs. It was accompanied by smaller ones as well, bearing similar markings to The Broadcast and heavily armed, not with makeshift axes or swords or farming equipment, but actual arms of war. And these were hostile towards the Lancers. It soon became apparent that they needed to escape, and quickly, as over time, more and more of the Machine enemies birthed themselves from the ground around them. It seemed as if Tower 3 was built over the top of a military reserve of wartime machines, and now they were being set free.
With some quick thinking, Biggs used her new mech Cranky to block off an attack route using a digital construction of terrain. And Kaiju Cutie used his new Rodan's many drones to control the flow of the on coming enemy and halt and destroy their numbers to buy the Lancer's enough time to escape. Slow Poke and Judgement plowed their way forward and provided openings for the group to go through, and through teamwork, they were able to escape outside the canyon, but not before getting a glimpse of the perilous situation that was unfolding. After taking down one Goliath machine, another emerged from the cavern. This was not a fight they would win at this time, and they needed to retreat. And so they did, back outside where the machines were still passive to the Lancers.

Report Date

28 Aug 2021

Primary Location

Evergreen