Dramatis Personae

• Hannah “Hot Lips” Hayes (NPC): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.”
• Li “Cookie” Xuan (NPC): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.”

Previously . . .

Heading upstream into Chile in a rented boat that Hux has already modified. They’re already optimistic about how things are going to go and that they’ll be able to get it back to the man in good condition when they had leave it to hike upland with some ease, getting to the camp from the map. It’s made up from a few buildings made of wood with quite a few tents but also completely empty. Nero starts tracking by growing some extra nostrils along with Apex using her superior senses detecting that there hasn’t been anyone there for at least a few hours. Nero notices traces of conflict and that there’s weapons, clothes, food, and even a computer or two left behind in the rain and ruined. Apex, meantime, stumbles into a dog in one of the tents that just starts growling at the felineoid, calling out to the rest of the group. Boombox moves to soothe the beast.

Missing People

Apex, Boombox, Electro, Hux, and Nero
-54.66181792566183, -68.82308665101738
Tuesday, April 21st, 2020, 1400 hours (GMT-3) 
Chile

As Boombox starts soothing the savage beast, it stops growling and whines slightly and tilts its head before jumping up on Boombox and licking his face. While Boombox does that, Apex starts sampling the food they’ve left behind as Hux and Electro start looking at the computers. Nero finds blood from a few days ago and traces of people being dragged off a few days ago and then an exodus occurred more shortly ago. There’s some evidence that the oldest blood was spilled almost five days ago while the soonest was barely twenty-four hours ago. Nero hypothesizes that someone came for the hostages and dragged them off all in the same direction which means it’s easier for them to follow.

Hux takes some time to fix up the computer with Electro’s help and it fires right up and he gets information, a lot of stuff on archaeology data which Hux immediately copies over. Nero is confused about archaeology in general which Hux explains as he goes through the rest of the electronic devices. Electro doesn’t detect major electrofields, but he does feel something similar working on a similar frequency that feels like he’s almost smothering them with Boombox feeling the same thing. There’s a lot of Kyberic energy in the air coming from the mountains competing with the electromagnetic spectrum causing chaos. Electro tries some experimentation, pushing against the chaotic energy to recharge the batteries of a nearby cellphone, though he’s not able to do much for now. Boombox keeps folks informed that there’s something in the air while Electro explains what’s going on in the locale in physics.

The blood that they’ve discerned is heading towards the mountain that the kyberic energy is coming from. There’s some discussion about Hux staying behind with the dog since he doesn’t have as many powers as the rest of the group before finally agreeing to accompany them. Nero scouts ahead and finds more blood, a shoe, and a foot confusing them and asks how often people lose body parts. There’s some discussion about what information the archaeologists may have released to the public as they head up the trail, Boombox is rather disheartened that there’s people that have been hurt. The information they find is that there’s some pre-Incan civilizations detected and they were going to be going into the cave it was detected at.

The Rock Cried out

Apex, Boombox, Electro, Hux, and Nero
-54.650576066425295, -68.82356660407592
Tuesday, April 21st, 2020, 1600 hours (GMT-3) 
Chile

Up at the mountain, they notice a minor crevice where two peaks meet they can squeeze into. Boombox can hear, or feel, a soft thrumming from the cave like a beating heart while Electro determines that the field gets thicker. There’s some discussion about who may be going into the cave first when Nero spits out his tongue into a spider-like thing to scout ahead, sending back information in the cave alongside Apex who squeezed in the opening. Once inside, there’s a tunnel that they can stand up for a moment before crawling into.

The tunnel terminates into a huge torus shaped room with a large ball of energy is floating on a platform in the center of the room with a woman standing by it holding a knife and chewing off the fingers from her hand, she seems to have started with all five this morning but now she’s down to just the thumb and pinky on her hand. Apex immediately goes to tackle the woman to stop her self-mutilation, however it instead causes the woman to attack Apex instead who parries the blow and the orb of energy emits sparks hitting Apex and the woman knocking them out.

As Nero relates what’s going on, the rest of the group tries to get into the cave with Electro going full brute to smash through the entrance to get to the entrance to the tunnel. When Apex comes to, she sees the woman unconscious and the energy orb starts to wobble before coalescing into a solid form of a crystalline skull that drops onto the platform. Apex can feel, hear, listen, touch a sense inside her mind, a curious mothering feeling coming from the skull, saying strange things with Boombox’s twinsense also feeling a similar thing. Apex, meanwhile, starts bandaging the woman while Nero investigates the cave where the wall is carved with pictograms and other things and raw orichalcum ore is scattered all over.

Apex, curious after giving the woman first aid, approaches the skull that floats towards her, forming a silvery cocoon around itself to aid in carrying. Apex attaches it to her belt before looking at the orichalcum and looking around for more trails to find nothing. A short moment later, Apex and Nero’s tonguerantula come crawling out of the cave with the woman in tow. There’s some discussion about getting the woman some better first aid and how or why she did it. Electro notices Apex’s new belt accessory before grabbing some orichalcum while Hux investigates the accessory.

Nero asks if they were sent there because the doctor knew about the cave, but the question is if there’s anything that the doctor knew about it and how he knew about the rebels taking the scientists hostage. There’s not much that they can answer so they move to gather the metal as Hux can’t detect any nearby electric fields. It’s definitely not cursed, just normal orichalcum that stores effective energy which Hux shows off his whacking stick. It’s almost a literal gold mine as each pound is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nero is still trying to find other people, eventually determining that several of the scratches and carvings in the walls are actually the missing people inside the walls with faces contorted in panic.

Electro isn’t really able to determine how they’re actually able to get into the walls and has broken off a finger to investigate it. Hux comments that it’s no longer a person at that point, just stone, petrified people much to their concern. There’s one carving that’s missing a hand and another missing a foot. Hux comments that they’re now hauling around something that’s likely to cause them to go insane and petrify them. Boombox attempts to communicate with the skull via his bond with his sister, feeling that it feels bad about what it has done, which some of the people call BS on. As they continue to look through the carvings, they find a camera also embedded into the wall that Hux slowly carves out of the wall.

He looks through the data, but as the screen itself is screwed up so he hooks up the camera to his phone so he can show the video to everyone. There’s a group of people discussing their finds and it’s an average first apocalyptic log before it slowly descends into madness as people are wandering out of camp during the nighttime and that people are being killed in the hills that they need to stop before finishing in a flash of light before someone screams a thousand times in a second. What they discover, going frame by frame, they see that as the people are being turned to stone and embedded into the wall gets turned into the orichalcum on the floor of the cave. The woman that they stopped was one of the people that went with them to stop things, she was the one holding the camera when things went wrong.

Aftermath

Electro, drawing on his scholarly background, attempts to think if anything similar to this has happened previously in Incan history, but cannot recall anything. The woman they’ve rescued is tied up and an experiment is performed by waving a piece of orichalcum in front of her. She immediately wakes up and starts screaming at them in a language that they cannot identify, and they have a lot of language knowledge split between them all. After documenting the people embedded in the walls, they start heading back to town with the tied up woman in tow.

After Action Report (GM)

Oh, man was this FUN. I got to show some of the campaign setting’s details, introduce a major element (the skull), and set myself up for some hijinks next session. Where am I going with introducing one of the crystal skulls? Well, I’ve been there before and it was fun. And I’m going there again because the skulls have their own agenda (or at least appear to, who knows with them). The game got a bit gruesome toward the end with Nero making a minor being out of his own flesh and the walls of the torus shaped cave being the petrified remains of the rebels from the camp and the missing archaeologists. Then of course there was the found footage and the skull itself.

And yes. Orichalcum can be people…but that’s not the only way it can be made. We’ll see some other methods eventually in one team or the other.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“All Along The Watchtower” by The Forest Rangers & Gabe Witcher
“Skulls” by Misfits