Adventure Log 002: Crash on Volturnus

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn draws his laser pistol, tiptoes over to the entrance and tries to peek through cracks between the stones.

trained skills - combat proficiency ( laser pistol ) piloting stealth technology

stealth, ( perception/notice ) : :

[shaidar]

Bertie tries to keep the baby lopers distracted and out of the way while the others move forward.

[Rex]

Kallina

"Something or someone is coming, fast."

She finishes moving to the door taking the side opposite of Skur.

[Pulpatoon]

Kallina draws her stunner and Skur Vonn his laser pistol, and they position themselves on either side of the blocked entranceway, while Bertie quiets the baby lopers.

Peering through the cracks in the stones, Skur Vonn sees an extraordinary sight:

Along a ridge, about 500 meters west of the covered well, stand about twenty adult lopers. They are mounted by other creatures that look like plum-colored octopoids. The octopoids are highly decorated with feather-like plumes, tattoos, and roughly-crafted jewelry. They carry objects that look like spears and war-clubs in four of their tentacles, with the rest of their tentacles gripping their loper mounts.

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Five more of the mounted octopoids are approaching the covered well. Several are gesturing at what you discern must be your tracks leading up to the dome and conversing in squeaks and burbles. As they come close, they ready their weapons. One of them yells a high-pitched command at the dome, as they stop about ten meters away from the entrance.

The baby lopers wiggle excitedly, smelling their kin on the dry desert air.

Goran hurriedly pulls out his adaptive polyvox. “Intelligent life! If we can register a first contact, we’re gonna be rich!”

The polyvox pings :: Language acquisition engaged. Expose this unit to frequent and varied examples of conversation in the desired language. Estimated time to functional language model: pending. ::

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PCs
Kallina: 4 of 5 Hits.
Bertie: 4 of 4 Hits.
Skur Vonn: 4 of 4 Hits.

NPCs
Jeeves: 2 of 2 Hits.
Goran: 3 of 4 Hits.

What do you do?
Next Update: Wednesday!

[shaidar]

Bertie

"I can use my telepathy to send feelings of friendship and safety. That might help calm them down, they don't sound very happy."

[Rex]

Kallina

"Anything to help would be good I think. We need to make some friends here if we are going to survive."

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn holds his position, waiting for the polyvox to sample more of the conversation.

[Pulpatoon]

Bertie

"I can use my telepathy to send feelings of friendship and safety. That might help calm them down, they don't sound very happy."

What message does Bertie send?

[shaidar]

Bertie sends

"Hello, we mean no harm." overlaying it with the feelings of safety and friendship.

[Pulpatoon]

The foremost octopoid’s eyes widen and it reaches a tentacle up to touch the back of its head. There is some more alarmed chattering among the creatures.

Bertie receives a telepathic response that is too confused and alien for her to be able to precisely verbalize its contents, but she recognizing surprise and alarm as the primary components. There is also wariness and a sense of proprietorship, and of guardedness against potential hostility. But at the core of these impressions is an inquiry: who or what are you?

The lead octopoid and two others slip off their lopers and perambulate forward on roiling tentacles. They approach the dome, weapons held ready. The lead octopoid lets out a brief, chirruping whistle.

In Kallina’s arms, the baby lopers are wiggling hard, trying to escape. One of the mount-lopers sniffs the air, its nostrils expanding into big ovals as it pulls in the air, and then it lets out a low call. The octopoids take notice of this response, and look at the dome again with yet another shade of surprise.

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What do you do?
Next Update: Friday!

[Rex]

Kallina

Kallina will let the lopers go so they can go to the mounts. "Run free little ones!"

To the octopoids, talking slow for the translator, "We mean no harm, our ship crashed here from the sky." She points up

[shaidar]

Bertie gasps

"They are psionic, but it's a little confusing. I think this well belongs to them."

She sends to following to octopod:

"We are friends from the sky" she tries to send safe feelings plus an image of the night sky.

She follows up with:

"We were thirsty, needed water." she underlies the message with a feeling of thirst.

[Pulpatoon]

The baby lopers scrabble at the rocks that are still blocking the entrance.

The lead octopoid sends an impression back to Bertie, also of the sky, and then a vaguely defined shape that strikes her as representing a bilaterally symmetrical anthropoid. The message has the character of inquiry.

Vague Form.png (318.21 KiB) Viewed 539 times

[shaidar]

Bertie replies telepathically

"Yes, that's us! We are friends." she tries to send an impression of affirmation and a similar anthropoid image imposed over an image of the structure we are in.

[Pulpatoon]

Two of the octopoids move forward and begin cautiously removing stones from the entrance to the domed well. As soon as they have a sufficient gap, the baby lopers dart forward and out into the blistering sun. The octopoids stop and watch them carefully.

The baby lopers run to the nearest adult loper, which lowers its head and sniffs them each from nose to tail tip, letting out a low rumbling. Two other lopers come over and repeat the process. The babies preen and bask under the attention at first, but soon become antsy and start running around the lopers feet. After a couple days traveling with them, you can tell the little creatures are showing off for the adults, leaping over each other and kicking up sand. After a minute or two of this, the babies run back to check in with the party in the structure, before running back out again to play in the sun.

While this is going one, the octopoids whistle and chirp to one another, and one of them sends a trilling call back to the twenty or so mounted octopoids still on the ridge. Five more octopoids prompt their mounts to make their way down the ridge and are headed to join their comrades at the well.

With the door now clear, the lead octopoid sets its weapon in the sand and shuffles forward. It raises one tentacle towards Bertie. Her scientific eye notices that the anatomy of this tentacle is different from its other limbs. It has a flat pad on the end that looks like it is specialized for some manner of task—she surmises that the pad is rich with capillaries and nerve tissue, close to the surface. It gestures inquiringly with the appendage while softly chirping.

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What do you do?
Next Update: Monday!

[shaidar]

Bertie

"This could be a bad idea, but in for a penny..."

She nods at the octopoid, kneels down and gestures to her forehead while sending a feeling of affirmation to it.

[Rex]

Kallina

Kallina tucks the stunner away in its holster and watches to see what happens.

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn holsters his laser pistol, but rests his hand on it while he watches the proceedings, occasionally glancing outside to see what the rest do.

[Pulpatoon]

When Bertie signals that she is open to the octopoid’s approach, it scoots closer, warily eying Kallina, Skur Vonn, Goran, and Jeeves. After a period of tense consideration, it extends its tentacle to Bertie’s forehead, exactly on the spot indicated. Bertie feels an immediate increase in psychic connection, but the creature does not appear satisfied, and feels around Bertie’s head, contorting her facial features in an entirely undignified way with its exploratory palpations.

While this is happening, Bertie has a chance to observe the creature’s structure up close. She sees that it has six long tentacles (each about 1.5 times the height of its head) that it uses for locomotion and gross motor tasks. At the front are two smaller tentacles (about half as long as the head’s height) that seem to be used for finer manipulation. And then there is the ninth specialized tentacle currently mussing her hair. Nine! It’s a nonopoid!

This sparks a thought for Bertie: nearly all lifeforms develop along some form of symmetry, and most planetary biomes have a dominant form of symmetry in their evolutionary trees. Bilateral symmetry is the most common. Trilateral, quadrilateral, and quintilateral have all been recorded, each dominant in the development of its biome—once cellular organisms start down a given structural road, all its descendants follow.

But this planet has so far shown examples of both bilateral fauna (the lopers) and trilateral (the sand sharks), and now, looking at the nonpoid up close, it doesn’t just have nine limbs, it appears to be nonolaterally structured! That is a highly unusual level of structural complexity (perhaps unprecedented!), but it existing in parallel with bilateral and trilateral lifeforms in a single biome is wholly outside of anything Bertie has ever heard of. Evolution on this planet must have been under some extremely unusual pressures. What a discovery! What a paper one could write on this!

Her reverie is broken as the nonopoid makes its way to the back of her head, and settles the flat pad on its tentacle at the base of Bertie’s skull, where the connection snaps into easy clarity.

“Hello, One-Who-Shares-Without-Touching. Gratitude for allowing us to share like this. I am Athru Sea People’s Bane. With me are Kahai Long Rider and Thurad Sandy Back. We are of the Ul-Mor, the People Who Share. We know you are friends, for you have protected these sacred Loper young, even though you do not need them to cross the sands.

“You are new and strange to our eyes, but a tribes-member has shared with me an encounter with a similar being. You say you came from the sky, like the air whales. But now you walk the sands. Can you no longer fly? Can you return to the sky no longer?”

Assuming the party enters into an open conversation about your plight via Bertie, Athru tells you that it is contrary to the laws of the tribe to take water and food away from the tribe to give to non-tribe members. This includes not allowing you to take from their well. However, seeing as you have bonded with lopers and have the ability to share, you might, technically, fulfill the definition of an Ul-Mor. As such, you could request to become members of the tribe, and they could share resources with you on a provisional basis, until such time as they can take you back to the full tribe-meet and determine your status.

If the others are willing, the other Ul-Mor will approach and use their tentacles to communicate with them as well. Goran, focused on the adaptive polyvox, stage-whispers to the others “This is no good! We need them talking, not… doing whatever this is! We’ll never get enough data to translate their language if they don’t bother talking!”

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What do you do?
Next Update: Wednesday! (probably later Wednesday)

BTW, I'd like to try using something like Blades In The Dark's clocks to model certain risks and tensions. Some of these will be secret, and some will be shared. Three that seems relevant at the moment are:
Offend the Ul-Mor: OOOOO
Succumb to the Desert: OOOO
Discovered by the Pirates: OOO

To explain these:
Offend the Ul-Mor. You've made a good first impression with them, but they're an alien culture, and it's hard to know what they'll consider profane. I've put five ticks on the clock, meaning that if you get bad results on five rolls that could conceivably result in the Ul-More being offended, you will have insulted them so deeply that your relationship with them will end.
Succumb to the Desert. I think instead of tracking rations and water and what not, we'll try a clock. If four bad roll results that apply to keeping yourselves alive and healthy, and characters will start suffering Hits or Disadvantages or something from environmental stress.
Discovered by the Pirates. You know they're out there, and that they're actively looking for you, so this is a pretty short clock. However, you're less likely to trip this clock than the previous two.

This is an experiment, so please provide feedback on how you think its going!

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn takes his hand away from his pistol. He'll allow the link, provided not everyone is linked at the same time. [ i.e. someone is lookout ]

in the link he'll tell them
- some like us are not friendly and are actively hunting us
- to return to the sky we need a ship, something to ride, not quite like a loper
- your water is harmful to us, but we need some because of the desert heat
- ask if they venture into the mountains
- tell them we have tools that can find things at a distance, and we're following a trail