Symbiotic Fission – 1 – Jeansen Vaars' Fiction House

Deep in Candia Forest, after fleeing the battle

Sarah: “So much for Candia City… how long did we last? Three weeks? Lost in 48 hours.”
Emil: “Reinforcements from Fortmire never arrived…”
Vittoria: “They might be as well overrun. We didn’t get any answers in the comms.”
Emil: “Perhaps we should go there, it’s the next large outpost, about 300 miles north-west”

The PCs are setting camp, to spend the night. They are extremely exhausted, and need the time to clear their heads, they intend to look for other survivors, and consider their options.

Vittoria: “We’ll need transport and supplies to get there. And we don’t know what happens there either”
Emil: “Perhaps we can spend a day in gathering some supplies, fetch what we can, look for survivors.”
Sarah: “Others made it out for sure, they scattered right after the tunnel, there must be someone.”

Looking for survivors or supplies

The idea would be to spend a few hours looking for others near the forest, without taking any extra risks. If there are opportunities to find and scavenge for supplies, the better.

🎲 Proposal check → 1d20: [7] = 7 → So far so good.
🎲 Exploration scene → 3d20: [9, 20, 1] →
– Location (9): Damaged
– Skills involved (20): PCs strengths → Which PC? 1d3: [1] = 1 → Emil’s (he’s good at people)
– Circumstance (1): Someone making guard

After setting a rudimentary camp, the PCs left their heavy stuff hidden there, and arranged that this would be the spot shall anything happen. They started looking south, walking inside the forest.

A few minutes later, they hear burning fire. Looks to be (🎲 Location by purpose 1d20: [6] = 6 → Storage, warehouse, supplies) a burning warehouse. They notice a guarding squad of enemies (🎲 Enemy composition 1d20: [2] = 2 → Immunity to typical damage), Ghost soldier and some regular footmen. They are moving around what seems to be prisoners, militia and civilian, but can’t tell for sure, as it’s dark and PCs are keeping distance.

Vittoria: “They are too many… and they have a Ghost with them. Can’t shoot it down”
Emil: “Fortunately, we have you, Vittoria. Do they have any weak spot, Sarah?”

Quick world building here, for the Ghosts – from Sarah point of view. She is the Alien expert, if that means something so far in this point of the history.

Are Ghosts vulnerable to flash grenades, or other visual stimuli, some grenades?
🎲 1d20: [6] = 6 → No.
Is there any specific kind of ammo that could hurt them?
🎲 1d20: [4] = 4 → No.

Sarah: “We don’t know much about Ghosts. They seem to be quite of an elite force, though, as we haven’t seen many of them. These things are essentially blind, respond to other kind of stimuli, such as heat, magnetism, and lower frequencies, but we can’t tell for sure. Give me a sec, I need to take a picture of it (she takes off her mobile device), low light isn’t great, but could yield something.”

Does the camera picture show any peculiarities when taking photos from Ghosts?
🎲 1d20: [9] = 9 → Weak yes

Sarah: “Look, the digital picture seems to be distorting its surroundings. Perhaps that is some sort of their radial presence, but can’t tell for sure”
Emil: “How does that help us?”
Sarah: “Perhaps we can research, in the future, some way to better spot them, even in the dark”
Emil: “Like thermal or night vision? Augmented vision?”
Sarah: “Yes, but we need to fine tune it to their emanated frequencies”
Vittoria: “Stop doing science you two, they’re hurting people!” (whispering)
Emil: “Is it coming right towards us?”

Storming the front in Cadia Forest

Vittoria will focus her psionic powers and fire a telekinetic burst at it, using her telekinetic burst stunt.
🎲 Shoot (-) ( ) (+) ( ) + (4) = 4
🎲 Will (-) (+) ( ) ( ) + (2) = 2
Vittoria pushes a FATE Point with “Self-trained Telepathic psyker” and adds +2 to the stress. Fills in all Ghost’s stress boxes.

A fierce burst of invisible power shakes the coming ghost, which twists its body to look like of a giant biped.

🎲 Are other alien footmen alerted? → 1d20: [2] = 2 → Extreme no

Vittoria: “Go, go, go! Take care of the others, and rescue those people, I’ll distract the Ghost”
Emil: “You sure?”
Vittoria: “Go!” (makes gestures of hurting mental effort)

Emil and Sarah quickly take their right flank through the forest, before the clearing that leads to the burning warehouse. They pay attention to look for weak spots to conduct a swift attack with an advantage.

Emil seeks to place an advantage “Flanking position” with his tactical abilities
🎲 Notice (2) → (+) (-) (-) (+) + (4) = 4 → Success
Sarah will set an advantage too, “an escape route to take the survivors away safely”
🎲 Notice (2) → (-) ( ) (-) (-) + (2) = -1 → Fail

Sarah: “There’s too much fire, where are they taking them? I can’t spot a way to take them out safely”
Emil: “Then, we have to take them down, from this side we have an advantage. Are you with me?”
Sarah: “I am”

Both unlock their weapons. Emil has an Assault Rifle with 2x scope enhancement and night vision contrast adjuster. Sarah’s got a lightweight SMG with a silencer. On the other side of the picture, Vittoria begins a struggle with the Ghost…

The dark forest opens up in a fireworks show of firing guns, as blasting weapons start hitting footmen soldiers, Sarah’s focus will be to rescue the captive people, and free them from restraints, before they get all caught in fire, or worse.

– All footmen aliens are together +6 Shooting, +2 Athletics, 5 stress boxes, and an Aspect “Hive mind coordination”, begin with one Fate Point.
– The Ghost has +2 will, +6 Physique, 4 stress boxes, and three stunts “Remote choking” and “Phasing moves” and “Physical immunity”.

Round 1

Emil opens fire to the most civilian endangering aliens. Makes use of the flanking advantage.
🎲 Shoot (+) ( ) (+) (-) + (4) = 5 vs fixed difficulty (2) as they are not defending at the moment.
Success with style, sacrifices a shift to place a boost “we’re under attack! but where?”

Sarah follows by supporting fire against other aliens
🎲 Shoot ( ) (+) ( ) (+) + (0) = 2 → Ties, places a boost “distracted by two firing positions”

As the Aliens manage to recover their composure, they open fire back to both.
🎲 Shoot (-) (+) ( ) ( ) + (6) = 6, split their shifts in two for Emil (3) and Sarah (3)
Emil defence 🎲 Athletics (+) (+) (+) (+) + (1) = 5 – shrugs it off
Sarah defence 🎲 Athletics (-) (+) (+) (+) + (0) = 2 – takes one stress

The Ghost rushes towards Vittoria, who bursted it with power. As soon as he spots her, the Ghost will raise its hands and attempt to crush Vittoria against a tree. Uses stunt (Remote choking).

🎲 Will (+) (+) ( ) ( ) + (4) = 6
🎲 Will (-) (+) (-) ( ) + (4) = 3 (takes 3 physical stress as she gets slammed against a tree behind her)

Round 2

Vittoria stands up and decides to place an advantage “you won’t see mee” to phase out in the astral
🎲 Will (+) (-) (+) (-) + (4) = 4
🎲 Will ( ) (-) (+) (-) + (2) = 1

The Ghost seems to lose trace of the exact position of Vittoria, but he still seeks her, and for a moment can still guess her position, so he tries to blast an area with telekinetic force.
🎲 Will (-) (+) (-) (+) + (2) = 2
🎲 (-) (+) (-) ( ) + (4) = 3 (Vittoria shrugs off the blast taking cover among the trees)

Emil now seeks to place himself in a killing strike position and maximize the damage he can deal. He will utilize both boosts “We’re under attack!” and “Distracted”, plus spend a fate point on the previous advantage “Flanking Position” for a +6 bonus on top of his +2 shooing.
🎲 Shoot (+) (+) (-) (-) + (8) = 8
🎲 Athletics ( ) (+) (-) (-) + (2) = 1
Emil opens fire causing heavy losses, as they take whooping 7 shifts, a success with style reduces it to 6 shifts but gets a boost “chaos!”. As 5 shifts are consumed by stress, remaining point gives a mild consequence “Retreat, reposition, it hurts us!”

The footmen aliens strike back. Their shooting goes down by one as they lost a member.
🎲 Shoot (-) (+) (-) (-) + (5) = 3 – They focus on Emil
🎲 Athletics (-) (-) (+) (-) + (1) = -1
As this would hurt a lot, Emil spends the boost “Chaos!” which reduces their firing efficiency. 2 Stress marks for Emil, which forces him to take cover.

Round 3

Vittoria will use all of her power to squeeze this ghost’s brain, if such thing exists. She could prove the psionic bursts hurt him. She will gather all her forces and use her previous advantage “You won’t see mee” to make a Ghost step herself and squash him from behind.
🎲 Will ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) + (6) = 6
🎲 Will ( ) ( ) (-) (-) + (2) = 0
The Ghost turns around, in despair, launches a scream that can be heard from all over the place. The scream hurts everybody’s ears, as it finally implodes on itself.

🎲 (Yes-bias) With the Ghost gone, and casualties, would the Aliens retreat? → 1d20: [10] = 10 → Yes
The fight is over, as the aliens decide to lift up their position, and concede the fight.

As of the concede conditions, Emil does not let them go away alive and kills them all, except one, for request of Sarah for a quick investigation and scans. They tie up one of these aliens and disable him from communication.

10 in the yes/no question is an intervention!
🎲 Intervention 1d20: [9] = 9 → Imminent risk about to trigger

A fuel-tank has just been pierced and it is about to go boom!
Emil spots it in time? 🎲 Notice (-) ( ) (+) (+) + (4) = 5 vs (1d4: [4] = 4) – Success!
Emil places a boost “TAKE COVER!!!”

Blast (+4) 🎲 ( ) (+) (-) (-) + (4) = 3
Emil athletics 🎲 (-) (+) ( ) (-) + (1) + (2) = 2 (Takes one stress)
Sarah’s athletics 🎲 (-) ( ) (-) (+) + (0) + (2) = 1 (Takes two stress)

Fortunately, no consequences were taken.

Dealing with survivors

🎲 How many? → 1d10: [7] = 7
🎲 In which conditions (higher means better) → 1d6: [1] = 1 (Terrible)
🎲 Are there any salvageable supplies? → 1d20: [16] = 16 (Yes)

The blast didn’t help. About 7 survivors are still alive after the blast.