Fading Memory

Lunar Dome 10

Absolute chaos of a week. I’ll get to my checklist tonight. Cheers!

Lunar Dome 10

Hey all!

Sorry for the few days of silence there from me, my wife and I are frantically trying to finalize our anniversary plans. For the week of April 20th-27th expect to hear nothing from me because I’ll be out on a trip.

I’ll get to reading our Sheriff submission and catching up on the IC in the next few days. :)

Lunar Dome 10

Oh neat. The guild is a small world of recycled parts. You’ll have to remind me what it was, I like to keep my old things in a folder so I probably still have notes or posts from whatever it was.

Lunar Dome 10

Happy Easter to those who adhere to christendom-based calendars.

Salve, Ostara upon ye to those of pagan origins.

Or simply, happy sunday I guess. I don't know. Felicitations for a day.

I'm so good at this. Just happy to have folks participating.

Lunar Dome 10

Congratulations. You all may be the first players in a science fiction game to have to deal with the ‘rats in the basement’ scenario. Concern will issue you all a badge to honor your sacrifice.

Lunar Dome 10

I was rereading character sheets and posted in the dang character tab, now I have to go and harass someone to fix that lmao

Lunar Dome 10

The Harvester

The harvester in question rolls into the Cauldron and awaits its care with all the gravitas befitting a massive agricultural machine. Its rows and rows of harvesting scythes and mowing blades would, in the wrong light, almost resemble an eldritch maw of all consuming hunger. But in the light of The Cauldron, it merely resembles an inert agricultural tool defying all software logic of diagnostic recognition. A queer smell hangs over the machine as it lingers in the garage. The smell only grows somewhat more intense over time, until at long last Arthur Eel begins his service of the machine. A new sensor, pristine, is housed. Screws tighten down. Still, oil drips. Drip. Drip. Drip.

The new sensor finally alerts. It reaches out with wireless fingers, and once again Holiday can process its datum.

"Your Majesty King George V, I believe that you have successfully restored my sense of touch. There is a physical blockage in the undercarriage, external in origin, that appears to have lodged itself into the hydraulic line. The oil leak you are noting is from that same line. Personal inspection is recommended."

Upon closer inspection, should one take such an action, it appears that some manner of creature has somehow wedged itself into the massive drone's undercarriage and died chewing on a hydraulic line. The creature in question was hairless, albino in skin tone, and resembled something between a rat, rabbit, and beaver. Massive hind legs, powerful jaws, hideous teeth, small eyes, but atrophied forearms that seemingly saw little use. Whatever the hell it is, it does not belong in LD-10.

The Grass, on site in the Grazing Range

Isaac Kaplan visually inspects the area. To his eternal and indefatigable dread, he would naturally discern with such a rigorous inspection that there appears to be loose grass and churned up soil. The blighted grass was undoubtedly soaked with oil from somewhere below, but his infinite wisdom and infallible memory would make the existence of such creatures as tunneling rodents to not be a part of the LD-10 experiment. And yet there's nothing but signs of such a thing in this very place.

Laboratories, inspecting the grass, oil, soil, and Cow

Mihail Chivu and Doctor Xi, mutually, inspect the samples of the grass, oil, and soil. As before, initial scans show that there is just soil damage, grass health decline, and standard machine oil involved in this chaotic mixture.

"Master Chivu, I believe that there is further cause for concern than initial scans made apparent. If I may, sir..."

Mihail would get indicators from Holiday that the grass in that area was chewed. This makes sense, of course, the cow was sick after all. But the teeth marks in the grass did not all correspond to the sick cow's dental records, and upon closer inspection of the grass contamination he would be able to direct Holiday to isolate and separate out saliva samples and dirt samples that contained foreign bacteria.

"Doctor Xi, the cow in question has been sedated and visually inspected by a drone. There are oil markings quite high on one of its legs, and upon direct physical inspection it appears the cow was bitten by some creature. I have added this new data to your work station. Let me know if I can be of further assistance."

Doctor Xi's additional findings are simple and direct; some creature bit the cow, and the illness, which seems to be a mundane fever and cold, certainly stems from this. The oil contamination merely corresponds to one of four upset stomachs in the bovine.

The Sub-Lunar Tunnels

"57104, Ms. Neilson, if you will follow the drones I will guide you to your destinations. The oil in question is dark, and based on other tests being run I believe it to be coming from a recycler line in sublevel one. The line that runs beneath the area of contaminated grass is a merging pipe junction, where the contaminated oil is being pumped below to be cleaned and reused."

They each receive a small, hand-sized, silent, drone that finds them, and with a gentle pulsing blue light emanating from the bottom of its disc-like shape, it turns its optical lens away from them and guides them into the lower levels. They would arrive at a scene of some mess;

A pipe in the ceiling as a hole in the side of it, spraying oil upwards into the concrete ceiling with some intensity; this pipe had great pressure within it, and only a minor hole to express its displeasure. A dangerous situation, but easy to rectify it by blocking flow and reducing pressure.

Of greater concern is that several meters of concrete seemingly had been drilled or tunneled through to allow the oil to be penetrating upwards into the bottom layer of soil. Perhaps somewhat more alarmingly, the concrete floor of sublevel 1 also had a hole in it that appeared to cleave clear through down into sublevel 2, and perhaps even deeper. Further inspection would reveal that this hole goes down each sublevel until it goes beneath even sublevel 5 and the most noisome, gross, or hot of all the machinery that kept the Dome in operation. Miraculously the only damage of note that was done so far by whatever was digging these holes was that one oil pipe, and equally miraculously the tunnel that descended deeper into the lunar surface below sublevel 5 was somehow not depressurizing or draining atmosphere; the tunnel was seemingly air-tight and secure from the void.

All in all, it appears that some external critter, perhaps more than one, have found their way into LD-10

Lunar Dome 10

-also a woopsie

Lunar Dome 10

Apologies all, I got busy helping my wife doing things in town this weekend, will have an update to the IC no later than tuesday.

My hallpass recipient has been in contact with me and has discussed their character idea, and we should see a sheet from them relatively soon.

Lunar Dome 10

Gwen - Gwen asks Holiday 'What are the results of the oil sample?' so she can locate the pipe she's looking for.

Mihail - Analyzing the Grass.

Yev - Also asking Holiday about the oil, same purpose as Gwen, but referencing color. (She and Gwen will end up in the sub-levels together)

Yingxue - Double checking the cow genetics, then looking into the physical grass sample genetically as well.

Arthur - Looking at the Harvester (Two Holiday quips about the intercom interference). He replaces a faulty diagnostic part and remarks upon an odd oil stain left by the machine. GM Note; the machine may have something else faulty with it, I will detail this in my response.

Kaplan - an exceedingly intense on-sight study of the grass itself.

Isaac - Awaiting his long-desired space walk litter event. This will come to fruition shortly.

Cross/Rossi are at the moment unmentioned, which is fine, take y'all's time folks.

---

This is what I've noted for myself upon a brief reread, I'll get something out this coming weekend. Let me know if there's anything more specific or additional that I need to address. The next few posts from me are going to be shorter and more direct, I'm back-burnering my big giant writing nonsense for a bit to give myself time to prep for a few other hobby projects that are starting in the near future at my real-life tables, but once those are up and moving it'll be back to writing up the 'part twos'