Arc II - Fill the Land With Smoke

[Doctor Who]

"I'm no Jedi, I'm not paid enough to even think about those things," he chuckles.

[ShadoWarrior]

Arca appreciates the newfound respect from Orcam, but remains silent. He slings the rifle back onto his shoulder and stoically keeps watch for further danger.

[Doctor Who]

You travel through the cave is mostly uneventful for around a kilometer, nearly 15 minutes of walking. The cave is quite large, at least twice as tall as the tallest member of the group. Despite your lack of training in cave excursions, you all are able to start picking up tells of slope, how slippery the floor is, etc.

The walls, despite the slickness of the ground in places, are generally dry, and there are few stalactites. The ones that do exist are quite small.

You all come to a place where the path branches into three directions.

"Thoughts?" Jarkyc whispers, using the comm rather than speakers on his suit.

[ThreeBFour]

Waz'aru glances at Arca as Orcam compliments them. As he figured, his companion said nothing, but he felt the need to answer. " Thanks for the offer. But as it stands I will stay with the order for now. As for being good shots I will say that most Jedi you meet in the field are naturally above average in certain areas like strength and dexterity, whereas the ones you might find in the libraries and medical facilities are more than likely above average in intellect. Being able to touch and use the Force gives us a great advantage, but like you being an excellent soldier it takes a lot of training and practice."

[Doctor Who]

Not really wanting to look into the future again so soon after the last time and the brush with the Dark Side, Zyla instead suggests, "Furthest right?"

[Vergence]

Pondering how the first infected Re-Sith was able to bypass the guardians by themselves, Zyla suggested a new course action. Hoping the Force is guiding her, "Very well, we got to begin somewhere" ST-3R states, while nodding.

[Doctor Who]

Jarkyc and Varc, nearest the front, then Waz close behind, push forward. The passageway is becoming rougher, but there are evidences of some kind of modification to the tunnel, rocks that are too smooth, pebbles in the walkway that don't match the surrounding rocks, etc. The tunnel also smells much less musty than the rest of the walk, there isn't anywhere near as much water slicking up the floor as there was in earlier parts of the cave.

Spoiler:

Just using the earlier marching order

After only a few minutes of walking, everyone except ST-3R feels what can only be described as yelling, but it feels like it's coming from the base of their skulls, in their own heads. They start to feel a knot forming in the pits of their stomachs, as a sense of dread that seems new to them but somehow ancient at the same time.

Spoiler:

Can I have discipline checks from everyone, average difficulty, 1 setback for Zyla and Waz, thanks to them using dark side pips recently

While walking, at almost the same time. Arca briefly thinks he sees some small, floating object brush past Zyla's leg, but in the shadows, he couldn't be sure what he saw specifically.

[Doctor Who]

Everyone but Arca and Orcam seem able to refocus themselves after whatever it was that just happened.

All are left with the feeling that something is watching them, though. Something hungry.

[Doctor Who]

As the group continues on, the ground and walls change. The structure is becoming noticeably less homogenous, the walls less evenly worn, the passageway starting to twist at weird angles.

[Doctor Who]

The tunnel abruptly turns, opening into a massive cavern.

The light from the glowrods doesn't penetrate far enough to make out many details, but everyone can tell the chamber must be massive, easily several hundred meters if not more in all directions. Varc, Jarkyc, and Waz nearly stumble on pieces of metal, large jagged chunks, as they are the first to enter the room.

Jarkyc waves the group to stop, and he starts fiddling with his suit controls on his wrist.

[DeepSpacer]

Trixie pulls out the General Purpose Scanner. She attempts to scan for life signs, first.

[Doctor Who]

There is a lifeform at long range from you, elevated a few dozen meters off of the ground. It does not appear to be moving. It takes half a minute for the scanner to locate it.

[ThreeBFour]

While Jarkyc is adjusting his controls, Waz'aru bends down to examine some of the metal chunks.

Spoiler:

If he feels it warranted, Waz'aru will used his Farsight Force power to see in fine detail or through it (Transparent).

[Doctor Who]

Examining the piece of metal up close, Waz notes that is appears to have been blasted off of the ship, the edges show signs of stress. Beyond that, he'd have to examine it for a bit longer to get anymore information

[DeepSpacer]

Trixie adjusts the controls of her G.P.S. and scans for electronic signatures.

[Doctor Who]

There are two mostly inert signatures to the group's left, and one to the group's right. The machine can't quite tell, whatever they are seems to be in powersave mode or else are just very low-powered objects, to begin with. These are found much faster, and they are only a short distance from the group, although still far enough that the light has trouble penetrating.

Jarkyc stops fiddling with his gauntlet, then looks around in front of the group. He fiddles with it again, and turns back.

Whispering over the internal coms, "It seems there's something ahead, some mahssive structure, but my suit cahn't tell anything else." He readies his gun, seemingly instinctually.

In the back, Zyla glances over Trixie's shoulder as she works, following along with the scanner's results. She tries to scratch her leg through the suit, but gives up and whacks it a little.

[DeepSpacer]

"Sounds like a crashed starship in front of us!" quips Trixie. "Virtually no running power. A near-dead power reading a few meters both to the right and left. Probably just age-old power cells on shut-down."

"One unidentified lifeform at long range, straight ahead. Probably another toccat."
Trixie lights her glow rod (basically a flashlight according to the CRB) and points to the right and then to the left.

[Doctor Who]

Focusing the glow rod beam to give a more concentrated beam shows that the power signs to the left and right appear to be large droids, slumped as if off or, as Trixie knows, in some kind of power save or low power mode. Still having some power, but negligible amounts.

[ThreeBFour]

"I can confirm the ship part," Waz'aru says from where he was crouching studying the various chunks of metal they had tripped over. "These metal pieces are from a spaceship of some kind. They look like they have been blasted off and long ago. Which makes me wonder if the ravine is actually from the ship's crash, but from what we learned earlier we now know why the area was subjected to orbital bombardment."

[Vergence]

Taking in the information, ST-3R begins to stare up at the large droids as Trixie illuminates them more clearly. "Now, that's a chassis!" the droid processes, almost bit jealous. As concern develops for its companions, "Near-dead power? Lets be sure to carefully not activate any directives from a low power-mode" it warns, slinging the model 77 onto its bulky shoulders and drawing out slowly an cortosis staff uningited.

[Doctor Who]

Still rubbing at the back of her leg, Zyla sneaks over towards the lone droid on the right. She stops rubbing at her leg, and pulls out her lightsaber, leaving it off though.

She stays several feet, more than its arms length, away from it. "It looks really old, anyone know anything about this model of droid?" she whispers through the internal comms of the suits.

Orcam, still looking a little shaken from whatever happened earlier, works to keep his weapon steady. He directs Ka'ran up to Jarkyc, while he and the other two keep their weapons trained on the two robots to the left.

[ShadoWarrior]

Arca replies, "They appear to be Republic war droids, used near the end of the Hundred Years Darkness roughly 3000 years past. These have Jedi paint schemes."

[Vergence]

While listening with it's head tilted back to stare at the enormous droids, ST-3R responses "Wow" to the description. Quickly pausing to turn towards Arca, "Do we have a theory of the disease source yet? Or should we just attempt to collect samples throughout the cave?".

[ShadoWarrior]

"We have not seen any biologicals thus far in this cavern. A disease needs a carrier. It would be a waste of time to sample rocks, which is all I see. I do have a possible 'theory' of the disease. The droids fought something, likely Dark Jedi-related, in this cave. That something was found by the villager. We need to find what the droids fought."

[Vergence]

As ST-3R further grasps the mission objective, it quickly nods and begins to scan the area for any biologicals within the perimeter through thermal imaging. "Carrier, carrier... the disease needs a host" it processes. In mist of the search, ST-3R asks "Where was this unidentified lifeform detected again, Trixie?".