Thursday Mar 28, 2024

After World 2155 – 1

Walking Shadows

Sven can hear his own breathing. The mask covering his face, and none of his skin is exposed. Khalinta is as colorful as poisonous. Every single plant, tree and emanated gas can be as lethal for an unprepared human as direct exposure to fire. But equipment and survival is what the Aether Scouts are trained for. Sven runs a quick diagnostic on himself using the Bio-scanner that comes with his suit. Radiation and Health seem to be in order, as he prepares to continue.

Sven left his Aether Bike hidden in the Jungle, half kilometer behind, and his next steps need to be taken by foot. His is to find an elevated position and get finally a better overview of the area, trace any leftover signals and learn anything useful about the zone.

As he walks through glossy green, thick tropical spaces, with slow steps, Sven raises his eyes to see an elevated hill, yet it begins with a rocky, grassy and ragged cliff, about 20 meters tall, he looks around for any alternative routes, none in the nearby to be found. As he prepares to climb, Sven looks to the sides as he tightens his gloves, planning to climb without any special equipment, since the vines and ravine roots serve as support. The moment he puts his hands on the first rocks, a strong rush of feelings cloud Sven’s mind, as if someone was just waiting and observing.

Sven immediately interrupts his plans, readies his hand-crossbow and turns around. Nothing. His breath is under control. Instants after, he spots a shadow, moving behind trees and the movement of leafs. Sven moves to an angle, slowly towards some bushes to the right, tries to get a better view of what’s around. Finally, he sees a man, or rather a young middle-aged boy, dark skins with tribal tattoos on his cheeks. Mouth and nose covered, with a dark-orange hood color, followed by gray robes. A short spear on one hand, the left hand with gray and brown gloves, leaning on a thick large tree trunk bend on his knees. In front of the young lad, two corpses, laying on the floor, humanoid looking.

Drop your spear”, says Sven in a calm but firm voice. The lad seems not to understand, with a mixture of curiosity and fear. Sven takes a leap by indicating, as obviously as he can, that the weapons should be out of the way, and puts his crossbow on the floor. Eventually, the native boy will follow and do the same. Sven proceeds: “Who are you? Why are you following me?” while approaching carefully, and proceeds, “I am not going to hurt you, it is all right.”. The lad picks up his spear and runs away, in a blink of an eye. “Wait! Damn it!”.

Sven decides not to follow on the run, as that would be too risky and might get himself lost. Sven prefers to stick to a plan. Yet, finding native population was completely expected. Were these people all along? Or could they be settlers from the previous ship, the Feinmann? Came here supposedly 9 years ago, which is quite some time, but still unlikely that they became these people.

Sven takes his hand crossbow back and proceeds to analyze the corpses. The bodies resemble to human figures, killed recently. By the shape of the injuries, these were no guns, but rather claws or primitive weapons. An animalistic attack of some sort. The bodies are definitely from the Feinmann Ship. These people wore high-technology equipment, they are for sure without them now. Did the kid’s people already scavenge them? Did he kill them?

Making notes on the map on his tablet, Sven traces and expands the route he has been exploring. Puts the tablet back again on his backpack and proceeds towards climbing. If he is to find either the Feinmann survivors or the primitive inhabitants, he is yet to grasp an overview of the area.


MYTHIC Writer Notes (click to expand)

This is where the game has started. I built up the plotlines list with two topics: “Find replacements for the Deuterium Vector” and “What happened to the Feinmann?”. Before I started writing this scene, I rolled a plotline, coming up with being Followed, Someone being Framed, a Fortuitous Find and Something to stop. I also needed new Character which turned to be a group of primitive inhabitants. There were lots of pauses and the development of ideas was quite slow, particularly as to when it comes to defining motivations of new factions. Plus what is indeed found in their corpses? Were they the Feinmann or who else? and in which state? and why are they there? Tricky questions. Having built Location Crafter lists, “Corpses” was part of Objects list, but I realized finding Corpses should be an encounter, as Objects is what is discovered, i.e. a clue. Anyways, I read it as much as nothing has been found, other than them being corpses of the Feinmann crew, which is still big. A Fate Check said the attack was recent, so maybe there are others around here. Finally, the Scene Alteration check rolled an interrupt scene, but I decided to use the same plotline as the interrupt itself, since this plotline was the first one in the game! (Actually the second, but the first one counted as a backstory or session zero). How will this continue? Let’s see!


JeansenVaars

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