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Escape the Dark Sector - Team Beta

You have no idea how long you’ve been out of it, but it feels like forever.

Last thing you remember was performing your routine duties aboard your ship and then suddenly another ship decloaked and you were fired upon. 

There was a red alert and several armored beings materialized before you and everything went black.

Right now you don’t even know where you are due to a tight blindfold around your eyes covering your sight completely. You can’t speak due to something binding your mouth. Your hands are also tied behind your back and no amount of effort will get them loose. You can’t move very far anyway since something is around your neck and presumably chained to a wall.

The only sense you do have that can help determine your location is your hearing, but other than the faint rumble of an engine about the best you can assume is that you might be on a ship. Whether it’s yours or a different one you aren’t sure.

You also hear the occasional movement wherever you are. Someone or possibly someones are in here with you, but so far you don’t hear anyone speak and the movement is more of a struggling sound rather than walking about.

You then hear the sound of a door opening and several boots marching closer.

“Is this all that survived?” someone asks.
“Yes.” another voice answers.
“Damn it man, I told you lot to be careful! We’re supposed to be bringing people back alive from these raids.”
“I know sir, but the mutants…”
“Yeah, yeah, always the fucking mutants and their bloodthirsty ways. Oh well, it is what it is. At least we got their ship intact. Always need more of those. Wait, the mutants aren’t flying that thing are they?”
“Oh no sir! Got normal crew to fly it back to the station.”
“Good. Well get these fuckers up and march them over to the observation deck to take their blindfolds off.”
“What for sir?”
“I like the new captives to see where they’re going to be spending the rest of their short existence. Really gives them a sense of hopelessness!”

You are suddenly grabbed roughly and after your neck is unchained, you are forcibly moved in the direction of wherever the observation deck is.

Eventually you are stopped and someone removes your blindfold.

Well it certainly looks imposing.

Besides several armored guards, you look around and see at least five of your fellow crew members with you. You’re all going to the same fate and whatever it is, it won’t be good.

“Hahaha! You see that? THAT’S where you’re going to be FOREVER! Don’t worry though, most of you probably won’t live nowhere near that long.” one of the guards mocks (presumably the one who wanted you to see the station in the first place)

“Alright, I’ve had my giggles, let’s get this lot into the detention level. You know how the master likes everyone to be punctual.”

And with that the blindfolds are put back on to cover your eyes and you’re eventually marched off the ship and into the station. You don’t know how many turns and corridors you walk down, but you couldn’t memorize it if you tried.

At some point you hear your captors talking about diving you up and taking you to different cellblocks. You also hear someone mention where your ship was taken.

Eventually the blindfold comes off again, you’re untied and thrown into a cell with another one of your fellow crew members. 

The cell itself is spartan with only the bare minimal necessities available typical of a prison.

Time passes and you expect SOMEONE to come for you, if only for sinister purposes, but nobody ever does. You wonder if you’ve been forgotten about though every once in awhile nourishment is beamed into the room, but then perhaps that’s on some sort of automatic timer.

Things seem grim, but you and your fellow crew member eventually figure a way to escape your cell!

You really got lucky finding a basic map of this place. It’s still a confusing maze, but at least you know the general area to go to find your ship. It will certainly make things easier. (One encounter card has been removed from your journey)

You also find some basic firearms which you grab.

A Ray Gun: (One clip) (Energy damage) (One handed)

A Slug Pistol: (One clip) (Ballistic damage) (One handed)

Decide who gets which weapon and who is going to take point before moving on to the next encounter because an alarm has just gone off and your escape has been detected!

Lt. Tailor shakes off the stinging pain in his head and turns to look at his companion, the Miller. Seeing how he's still unconscious, he takes a quick scan of the firearms laying outside of the cell, and promptly grabs the Slug Pistol.

He shifts it around in his hands, familiarizing himself with the grip and balance of the weapon, and mimics a few shots down the hallway.

"That'll punch their goddamn alien guts out," he mumbles, pleased with his selection.

Seeing nothing else to do, Lt. Tailor sits beside his drooling companion and looks over the map. Perfect time for the alarm bell to go off.

"Oh f***," he growls, shaking Lt.Miller violently, hoping to wake him up.

Wait, were you taking point or shoving Corgi in front of you?

Oh no, I'm waiting for him. I could take point if needed.

Miller stirs awake after being violently shaken. 

His hand darting up and reflexively slapping Tailor. A pause.

"Oh, sorry friend. I must have been dreaming of the annual slap competition back home.

Seeing the cool ray gun Miller picks it up and haphazardly swings it around a bit. Then inspects the weapon and is satisfied.

Miller wipes some excess drool from his chin, hears the alarms, and tells Tailor to lead the way. 

Miller will check the rear evey now and then as they go.

What is behind them, not the Tailors rear.

To freedom! Um no wait

Feeling slightly optimistic about your chances having an idea of which direction to do, you proceed to your destination in an almost carefree manner.

While it’s good to keep your morale up in situations like these, you probably still should take care of your surroundings…

“Stop right there criminal scum!”

The guards get off some shots of even before anything else starts.

You can either run or fight. Running of course results in potentially getting hit some more but you avoid combat.

If you’re fighting, decide if anyone is going to be flanking or not and the style of combat. (Ranged or close)

These guards are more susceptible to ballistic damage than energy damage. Of course you can always try beating their faces in.

If you fight and win, you’ll get some loot to divide up.

After you've resolved this mess decide on who will take point for the next encounter.

"Eep!"

Tailor dives behind whatever is in sight, and immediately fires back(ranged combat, no flanking), seeing as the guards are weak to his newfound weapon.

"Maybe we should've paid more attention to the map..."

Lmao stop right there criminal scum.

Miller dives behind cover saying as he does not want to end up as swiss cheese. 

Then shoot at their unprotected faces. All while battle yodeling in the way of his ancestors.

His father was a crackhead, and his father before him...

I had meant to make a crackhead reference.

Discount weapons

Before the battle even began, Tailor was shot twice by the guards and crawled into cover.

Miller and Tailor both immediately returned fire only to sadly learn why the weapons they grabbed were just laying around. Apparently they were both supposed to be repaired.

Miller’s ray gun overheated causing severe burns to his hand before he could get it working properly.

Tailor’s pistol on the other hand jammed. Making it completely useless for the remainder of the fight. She engaged in close combat with one guard while Miller continued to fire from cover at the other.

The battle soon swung towards victory for Miller and Tailor, but Tailor was very wounded after it was all said and done.

Miller: 10 HP

Tailor: 6 HP

They quickly searched the bodies and found some items.

A Med-Pack (Heals everyone 1 HP once)

A Force Field (Can protect against any number of HP loss once)

Decide who gets what and who takes point for the next encounter.

Tailor grimaced at her injuries and forced herself to walk over to a corpse, giving it a hearty kick, mumbling curses in her mouth.

She looks at the med-pack, then at their injuries. She grabs it and tries to use it.

Remembering something, she digs out the map from her pocket and scans it for where to go next.

"How about you take point from here?"

F

>:( I'm still alive

I take the force field pack.

Then look to tailor.

"Well I have the only usable ranged weapon. And you seem to be doing well enough bashing faces in. So maybe you can take point while I cover you."

"Fine.", Tailor nods.

Your gun is actually fine now, it just wasn't usable for that combat.

No disintegrations

Somehow despite being from a long line of crackhead ancestors, Miller managed to convince the very wounded Tailor to take point, along with taking the forcefield. Tailor healed what little she could before pressing on, hoping not to run into anymore guards or anything else dangerous for that matter.

Unfortunately her hopes were soon dashed...

"UNGH!"

(Tailor loses 2 HP)

Tailor once again crawling to cover with Miller following suit, the noise of gunfire soon dies down and footsteps in the darkness can be heard followed by the same footsteps quickly running off.

You both cautiously move forward and find a dead man with one of his ears cut off. Must have had a bounty on him and you just happened to be unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire.

Seeing as the hunter was more interested in the money that he could collect from the bounty, he didn't search the man so you decide to do that in the hopes of getting something out of this mess.

You find:

A pulse rifle: (2 clips) (Energy damage) (Two handed)

A power stim: After rolling your crew die, you can use this once to change it to a MIGHT result instead.

Decide who gets what and then pick who is going to take point for the next encounter.

“Oh f***”

Tailor growls, and makes a note to be more careful traveling with a …less sane Miller.

See as Miller hasn’t caught up yet, she promptly grabs the energy rifle and stows her pistol away.

“You’re taking point this time, no way I’m going in this state.”

Who is this?

Tailor, getting sick of taking the brunt of the damage by taking point all the time, shoved Miller in front who didn’t even seem bothered doing so.

Miller wandered the series of corridors, often backtracking and saying that it wasn’t the way on the map they looked at earlier. Tailor at this point started to wonder if Miller taking point was a good idea.

Eventually Miller saw a room with pretty blinking lights so he thought it was a good idea to enter it…

“D Sec here, why isn’t your video feed working?”

One of you has to make a CUNNING test to fast talk the systems operator.

Success will allow the doors to open again and you can move on.

Failure will result in the room filling with toxic gas and then you’ll have to make two successful WISDOM tests in three rolls to hack the doors. (You'll manage it automatically even after three failed attempts, but you'll have taken the maximum damage by that point.)

Make your choices and pick who will take point for the next encounter

That’s me, I assume.

Tailor can’t help but be proud of her skill at fast talk, especially from the time she fatally wounded a customer…

Ignoring her injuries, she shoves the disoriented Miller aside, and calmly approaches the panel.

Containment breach

“Um, yeah I dunno. It was working earlier. Maybe call engineering to fix it?” Tailor answered.
“Ugh, that stupid bitch was supposed to fix that shit yesterday. I swear, I dunno why they hire these dumb fuckers from the fembot factories. Anyway, is everything okay there? Heard some prisoners escaped. Upper management wants to know what the fuck is going on.” the systems op asks.
“Uh, yeah no. Um. Don’t believe the hype. Everything is fine here.”
“Hm, well it better be because I just got my ass chewed out and if I find out it isn’t, everyone working in the detention level is going to be doing double shifts for the next fifteen rotations!”
“Understood.”
“Good. Anyway, you can go.”

The door opened up allowing Tailor and Miller to pass through. The pair of them were soon on their way again, and it seemed like they were getting closer to leaving the detention level, but there was at least one more surprise for them...

"Hmmmm..."

You can't tell if this is a guard, another prisoner, or just some dangerous fucker that got lost. Either way, he isn't immediately hostile, but that could change soon.

He seems to be looking you over, but more at your equipment than anything else, so he may want something of yours.

You can give him one object to pass by freely, or you can go directly into combat. This being is most susceptible to explosive damage and least affected by ballistic weapons.

Make your choices.

“…oh, hello.”

Tailor turns to the Miller, but seeing how he’s just standing there staring off into space, she’ll have to make the decisions here.

“Here, I guess.” she hands over her rifle reluctantly.

As Tailor attempts to hand the rifle over, Miller grabs it. "Thanks, Tailor."

Miller then hands the Terminator the power stim.

Then asks the cyborg if he is looking for any help to get the fuck out of here. 

Bait and switch

As Tailor begins to hand over her rifle to the metallic being, Miller suddenly breaks out of his haze and grabs the rifle out of Tailor's hands and tosses stims to it instead.

The being catches and inspects them, not even acknowledging Miller's follow up question.

Eventually the being looks at Miller.

"Fuck you, asshole." it says, shoving Miller aside and walking off.

Pick who will take point for the next encounter.

Miller shoulders the rifle and takes point. He smirks at Tailor, "You'll probably get this rifle back sooner than you think."

And continues cautiously, with the intent to give the rifle back soon assuming he won't immediately need it to pop some fools.

An explosive discovery

Feeling full of beans with his newly acquired pulse rifle, Miller proceeded on ahead which Tailor was more than willing to let him do at this point because she still was in no condition to risk any more potential injury.

Miller excitedly picked up the pace exclaiming that they should be out of the detention area and now entering the heart of the station. With his usual reckless abandon, he ran into the darkness up ahead telling Tailor to hurry up.

Fortunately Tailor was wise enough to take her time following Miller...

BOOM!

As Miller recovered from burning metal hitting him (Lost 2 HP), Tailor couldn't help but smile that Miller's idiocy had FINALLY caused more harm to him rather than her this time.

The repair bot was probably on its way to the detention area to fix that machine where the video feed wasn't working. It would appear though a lot of stuff here is in need of routine maintenance.

Despite the wreckage, the repair bot was apparently carrying some items that remained intact during the explosion.

Speed Stims: After rolling your crew die, you can use this once to change the result to CUNNING.

Alien Sludge: It's green. (And potentially edible?)

Divide up the loot how you want and decide who is taking point again.

Tailor grabs the speed stim, and then looks at Miller.

“Well, this …sludge,” she asks cautiously, “should we eat it? It looks somewhat edible…”

“Oh, and also,” Tailor says to Miller, “since you have 2 energy weapons, why don’t you hand me that ray gun?”

"It's probably alien shit."

Miller takes a small dab on his finger and licks it.

Miller mindlessly licked the alien sludge which tasted awful.

"Tastes like shit." Miller said and then started eating more of it just to be sure.

Tailor was about to ask him if it tasted bad then why the hell was he continuing to eat it, but since she secretly hoped whatever it was would disolve his intestines to his asshole, she simply took his ray gun while he was preoccupied.

Eventually Miller finished off the sludge, still complaining how bad it tasted the whole time, but whether he realized it or not (Probably not) the sludge had medical properties and a few of his more recent wounds had healed (Gain 1 HP)

“Lucky him, I guess.”

Seeing how Miller is still in better shape than her, Tailor pushes him forward to take point.

Miller pushes Tailor and tells her to fuck off with the pushing or he is gonna projectile shit some alien sludge onto her.

 Then takes point, wishing he had the ingredients for his grandmother's crack recipe handy.

Pusher Man

Miller took the lead and the pair continued on in this more populated area of the station. They saw a lot of merchants, mercs and the like passing through or plying their trade. Fortunately none of these folks seemed to be the station's security.

Perhaps due to Miller's long family history of various subtance addictions, it didn't take long before they found themselves in a less reputable area of this bazarr with drug dealers. It also didn't take long before one of these dealers came up to them.

"Wanna get high?"

This form of potential high was different than what Miller was used to, but he was intrigued enough to hear the dealer out.

For one item, you can get a Bliss Vision stimware to jack into your head.

However, the dealer is also working on something new and he needs someone to test it. You can try this experimental stimware for free, but you'll have to test your WISDOM to see what the effects are.

Of course, you have a right to say no to drugs and just move on.

Make your choice.

Tailor was secretly intrigued about what the hell Miller was on that made him this way…

She hands over the speed stim cautiously…

“Oh, more drugs? Hook me up for that experimental one too.”

By the way, are the stats in the sign up page up to date?

I mean they were. You currently got 5 HP and a slug pistol and a ray gun though.

Seeing how Miller has taken to another one of his 'staring into the void unconscious' fits, Tailor urges the man to continue.

"Come on now, stick it into me. I've already given you the stim, right?"

Winners don't use drugs

Maybe it was due to all the stress of the situation, but Tailor immediately jumped at the chance to test the dealer's experimental wares.

And in a very unusual moment in Miller's life, he did not partake at all in the drugfest. It might have only been due to him having a mild flashback from his already drug addled mind. He obviously was literally high on life.

After trading the speed stim to the dealer, she immediately took the experimental stimware and jacked it into her cyber implant.

At first nothing happened, then she felt it kick in. She was somewhere else. Some place better. She was at peace.

And then suddenly this trip turned into the worst nightmare she ever had. She saw horrors, both from her past and those imagined all rolled up into one terrible trip.

Her screaming caused the dealer to run off before she attracted any attention to him. Miller was of no help as he was still in his daze. Only Tailor herself was able to stop the nightmare by ripping the trodes out of her head. The damage to her mind had been done though. (Lose 1 HP)

Pick who will take point next.

"Ow."

Shaking off the buzzing in her head, Tailor shoves the Miller to the front once again. She had to stay back and nurse her head!

Who goes there?

Miller made no objection to taking point, in fact he made no objection to anything. He was still in one of his flashback drug hazes and working on automatic pilot.

As usual though the Miller started going in what looked to be the most suspect of all possible directions to go towards.

This time was no different...

"GEEEEEEEETCH!"

Unsurprisingly Miller was still in his daze when the alien swooped down to attack. Miller took a claw to the side of the head which left a wound, but at least knocked him back to his senses. (Lose 2 HP)

It's too close and too fast to shoot it, the only option is close combat, but you can decide if you're going to try to fight defensively or rush at it and try to drive it into a wall.

Make your choice.

Miller is gonna push Tailor into the thing and high tail it the fuck out of there.

Of course the Miller would push her ahead.

she scrambles away, trying to drag Miller behind her, whatever it takes.

Miller pushes Tailor at it harderer, summoning crackhead strength 

Confident in her recent drug usage, Tailor tugs at Miller hardererer.

Miller is just going to push Tailor back forcefully and shoot her in the face. Then run and hope the creature eats her corpse.

Tailor grabs her ray gun and fires it at Miller’s leg, hoping to disable him enough that he’ll get eaten as well.

Wait, that wasn’t in the script

The blow to Miller’s head might have knocked him out of his stupor, but now he must have been having an episode of another sort because instead of attacking the creature, he started attacking Tailor or at least trying to shove her into danger.

Tailor however wasn’t having it and fought back. The pair of them were then both hit by the creature who was just hungry and didn’t give a shit about what this was about.

The two of them were now on the floor and bleeding while the creature backed up a bit to get ready for a lunging attack.

The pair of them both pulled their weapons, but instead of facing their enemy, they shot at each other!

At this range neither one missed and suffered from this baffling time to be infighting. The creature then lunged at them both, kicking Miller in the head and ripping Tailor’s stomach open and devouring her innards. She went into shock and then death soon followed.

The creature was temporarily distracted with eating part of Tailor and Miller might have managed to stagger away, but since he now had a bullet in his leg, he only managed to stand up long enough to then wobble and fall right back into the creature who turned its attention back to him.

Miller put up a better fight than expected, but even using his forcefield only prolonged the inevitable. The creature eventually got past his defenses and decapitated him.

As the Miller’s head rolled away from his body, his last dying thoughts were of how this was one crazy trip he was on and hoped he’d remember what he’d taken so he could take it again when he woke up.

Lt. Tailor

Eviscerated by a hungry alien

Survival Time: 7 Encounters

Lt. Miller

Decapitated by a hungry alien

Survival Time: 7 Encounters

Team Beta’s attempts to ESCAPE THE DARK SECTOR have ended here.

Ha, I still got that crackhead in the leg.

F for teamwork though, idk where that went.

At least we both died epicly though.

Fuck yeah. That was epic.

I told you to stop shoving me smh lol

What a bizarre ending. Don't do drugs, kids.

I actually didn't just write up a death scene for you two, I did make dice rolls to see how things played out.

Basically I had you two take an automatic hit by the alien when you two started pushing each other, then I rolled ammo dice for both of you to see who hit who.

You both succeeded so that was another loss of HP for both, plus it resulted in neither of you able to run from the encounter. This would also result in the alien getting yet another free hit on both of you. This is where Peng died since he only had about four HP to begin with on this encounter.

So now began "regular" combat which would have been grim for Corgi to solo even if he had all his HP. He only survived two rounds of combat due to a successful block and using his forcefield. Then the alien got him.

Well, I always knew my luck sucked...

That' still epic though lol

Always good when luck makes things turn out cool

So long, betas.

At least we went out in a novel and entertaining fashion, I would hope.

:D

Holy shit, they were killed by that thing from the Hyperion books, I think

 

They're gonna be forever impaled on a simulated chrome tree or something

The art on that one was pretty cool, I guess if it took inspiration from something specific it explains being so different from the other enemies.

End has said the expansions let you play as aliens, but it's already been proven that aliens are hideous monsters and cis gendered Alpha Chad Humans are the only light in the galaxy.