Symbiotic Fission – 0

Hello and welcome to this new AP series. I’ve been thinking for a while, and wanted to play a FATE Condensed game, set in a homebrew setting I’ll be making up as I go, but heavily inspired from the XCOM series. I’ll try to target a mix between Survival, Action, and Strategy elements, with a serious theme, horror and tension elements.
Mechanics wise, I’ll be using the just released Game unfolding machine V2

Emil Stolar: The siege of Candia (A self-reflection)

What the hell was that?

“The first explosion didn’t come from without. It came from within.

Despite days of repelling attacks in the western front of Candia City, the explosion in the city center called all fronts to attention. Our outpost was quite far from there, but still Sergeant Harris came just 30 minutes later after we heard the explosion or so, seeking for reinforcements to accompany him to the city center. Marin, Joshua and Lisa join him. While me, Vittoria, and Sarah, stayed to keep the invaders out. By then, we had been defending the front for two weeks since the first wave struck. We were about 50 militia men, plus 200 civilian, which were operating supply, logistics, and other auxiliary tasks to set defenses. With us, there were two psions, Joshua and Vittoria. Their task was usually to project radio-kinetic waves to our headquarters radius to prevent from mind-control, spot enemy communication, and defend from other manipulative, alien psy-attacks. They were exhausted.

I’d imagine in the city center they would have at least a dozen of psions, given the proportion we had. So, how could Candia City’s core center explode like that. A breach? An infiltrator? Treason?. I could overhear Sergeant Harris say that the enemy was targeting psions first. Still, he took Joshua with him.”

Rooted out to Candia Forest

After the sabotage of Candia City, many fronts, just like Emil’s, were attacked from various flanks. They were overrun, and leadership scattered. Emil, Vittoria, and Sarah, from the front defense militia, could flee in time.

Not everyone was so lucky, as others perished. It must not have been everyone, though, as there could be other smaller squads like Emil’s out there.

The attacking forces were made of armored vehicles, light armored flight alien-shooters, and heavy-armored foot-soldiers. From the inner flanks, though, it was Candia’s own military and paramilitary forces. Vittoria could have promised she saw Sergeant Harris leading the attack, and no, she could not detect obvious signs of mind-control, although the time was too short to be sure. Joshua, the other Psion, was not with them when they attacked the western front again.

They knew the western front defenses right from insiders intel, so they evaded all the setup traps and had all codes to disable some defense mechanisms, sensors, and turrets.

There was no way out. As you could seize the opportunity, a pre-planned escape route in the northern side of the forest was taken to leave.

Vittoria Crosse: What now? (A self-reflection)

As we were walking down the forest… fleeing, catching our breath –

“That was no mind-control. I can assure you. I am crazy, but not (yet) mad. However, that was indeed Sergeant Harris. I’ve been thinking about it. Starting to believe that was not exactly Sergeant Harris. Could they be cloning bodies? I might be mad now… if it was no mind-control perhaps there was indeed treason, and Emil is right. But why? I mean, the Aliens are indeed smart, and they can’t take this planet if they don’t project symbiosis with us. That is what mind-control is for. Perhaps they don’t need mind-control, they just need to make a sweet offer to our corrupted, survival instinct minds and we accept. We didn’t require mind-control back in the day when the word treason was invented. I think this is all just stupid. Isn’t it?”

Vittoria came from a humble background. She was sick, didn’t have much time left. Her sickness would make her drop her gymnastics career, and then switched to spend most of her time in the hospital. But, when the aliens came, 4 years ago, she almost out of the sudden, healed. Not only healed, she could perceive the inner emotions of people around her, and conduct impulsive bursts of projected anger into telekinesis power. Not all psyker-spawns begin that smooth, though, it is heard other spawns can even lead to spontaneous self-combustion, others cause a psychotic rage. For Vittoria though, her base sickness seemed to weaken her body, and thus the transition was more progressive, as it both healed her and enabled her over time.

Sarah Dalton: Let them burn (A self-reflection)

As she was trying to find other survivors inside the escape route tunnel.

“Dark forest theory, my ass. Is that John? Hey John! Over here! (John is hit by a cannon blast as he spotted Sarah in the tunnel entrance. He managed to smile before that moment). Oh, F*CK YOU AS*HOLES. Lucas! This way, over here! Lucas! (Lucas is overrun by three jumpers and is taken captive). I PROMISE I’LL LEARN YOUR IDIOTIC PSYKER LANGUAGE AND KICK YOUR *** IN YOUR LANGUAGE (Vittoria calls for Sarah – live another day, Sarah! -)”

Sarah was a science teacher. Definitely not one of the nicest out there, as you can see, but you could learn a lot with her. Once you got on her good side, she was one of the finest people on earth. She joined the army officially right after the first invasion began, and took part of the research department of Alien biology. And while not in rage, she spends most of the time in the laboratory. Cursing is part of her nature, though, but she would carefully choose her words.

Her being allocated to a battle front was strange for others, but in reality, she is part of a secret section of the Alien Research military department, and must continue to provide confidential samples, extractions, intel, and genetic sequences to her headquarters, from living specimen, since apparently after death, Alien would decompose so rapidly in this planet, that they become almost unusable for science. Perhaps one day someone will find a way to preserve their corpses, but today, it pays off to keep them alive for a while. That’s her parallel assignment.

Sarah decided to follow Emil and Vittoria for both survival reasons, but also to have a chance for a restart. She is way over her head.

To be continued…

JeansenVaars