Game 4: Into the Hadal Deep

Hello, and welcome to our traveling game, game four of

Sparks of the Past.

Last game, while there was two split-ups, one group went to go talk to the

Underworld and send some incriminating evidence to a

SolSec operative that might help out in the grand scheme of things, but they wanted

to be as separate as they possibly could.

To meet the Underworld people, they had to go to a A drug den where

while they were there, they began to have the pad of

Mercer be triggering with a fine location so they were able to run away and not get

caught by the police.

And that was Group 1.

Group 2 decided to go to TransStar and see what it would be like in the TransStar

exclusion zone. And when they got there, they realized that they could have a

TransStar day and become employees of TransStar.

While they went, they underwent a bunch of tests.

Different people got different positions, and many people became loaders.

One person, though, was able to actually get a full-on into the executive

group, where she is a now authorized manager of a department in a junior executive

team, and you have been told that the group that you are managing is you're managing

some aspect of naval control.

You are all staying in her sweet apartment, which gives you guys a little bit more

money, and the idea is that you are working five days on and two days off, so you

are able to still do some of your hijinks in town if you need to.

You no longer have identity veils, but because you're Transire employees, who the

hell cares?

And you have one month To be able to

solve the scenario of if you want to stay in Transtar or not, because after one

month, you have to sign multi-year contracts.

So, in this one month is the time you have to deal with that.

Is there anyone who would like to bring up something I did not note, just for

clarification

or eludication?

Okay, so...

You guys spend your night in the suite after your tests.

And the next morning at 630, all of your

badges begin to have a small green flash on them.

And if you touch the green flash, a prerecorded communicator says,

Welcome to your first day at Transtar.

Your new job and mission starts today.

With your next day of adventure at TransStar, please, in one hour and

15 minutes, please arrive at the Dock 6-2.

Thank you. Have a TransStar day.

I love your TransStar voice.

It cracks me up.

I'm going to TransStar all over this day.

What does that mean? Oh, my God.

And I pulled up

a map on one of our

terminals. Sorry, go ahead.

I was like, oh, Alan's on it. Then I said, oh, isn't he going to be late?

Then I said, never mind.

Could I pull up a map of the compound and just

identify where that

dock is?

Yeah, it's about ten minutes of a brisk walk.

Okay.

Anybody else?

Just because you wanted a little bit of clarity.

If we actually looked at the Capital page, let me pull everyone here.

Wrong one.

Capital of Jordan.

And pull everyone.

Okay. So you see how there is a little piece in between the Transtar and kind of

that Fort Raspir Naval Annex? It basically is a slit.

Between the down port, that is where it's asking you to me.

I am highlighting it with the highlighter.

So highlighted.

I mean, it seems out of character like we know this, but in character, I'll

ask if anybody got a different work assignment.

No, but it sounds like we probably all got the same.

I actually need clarification on this as well.

If I remember correctly, we all got varyingly different and hugely

different staggered assignments.

One of us as an executive assistant gets a crazy apartment suite that we can all

live in. I am a loader.

I believe Victor meant the same assignment in terms of the same ship and not

multiple locations.

Oh, Suka. But thank you for demonstrating why you're a loader.

I did think he meant different jobs, but sure.

I even need to get my curse words right. I did not mean to say this.

I meant blit.

Suka blot.

And yes, that did mean...

All to the same location, not that we were all doing the same task.

That is a good point of clarification.

Are we at the same location? He looks at his.

We compare.

Do we want to talk about the future and what we want to do before we go to work, or

not really? Oh, I so want to, so much!

Like, you know, the less time we spend here, the better.

The more time we spend getting innocence from random

inspector, the better.

I don't know who is taking lead on that.

I know it's not me.

I've been mostly thinking about escort missions

underwater.

Okay, then.

Well, I do think that we've certainly got...

Sorry, it sounded like someone else was talking.

No, no, no. I had just nonsense to say about how I, too, want to talk about how

we're going to get out of this situation.

I don't have the answers, unfortunately.

Yeah.

It does...

Come on.

You're highly robotic to me.

Same here as well. I thought I was the only one playing a robot tonight.

Such as the cruel fate of Discord, the moment you

started to clarify, he got better.

Discord always does that.

Discord was doing weird things to me the other day.

I could see messages on my phone that were not showing up on the desktop app.

I feel like I couldn't talk to my friends clearly.

So, shocking.

Discord doing something funky.

Who would have thought?

We've lost forever. I think it's moving from his phone to a computer.

I think he's moving from his phone to a computer.

I will say, as people are talking, there is a knock on the door,

and when you guys open it, there is boxes for each of you that have your

TransStar uniforms. There even is a uniform for the robot.

Robot uniform.

Robot gets clothes.

Really? They just give her a new decal?

You know what?

I mean, that's probably actually what

it is. It's probably like a very light shawl that has branding all over it.

Man, I was kind of hoping for a new paint job.

Is it? I think that's fine.

Is that fine? I don't know.

New paint job? No? Yes?

Cheat.

Look, either way, talking of, hey, how do we get out of this

situation, he makes sure the doors close, that we're back in a very private space,

as he sort of brings up, looking at Caspian, he's

like, you were kind of the one who, you know, Masterminded

the actions that we have going on outside of this place.

How are we getting in contact with this inspector of yours?

Like, do we have to go back to Lucen? Do we have to find him again?

Do we have some...

Is that the first thing we kinda need to do?

Establish a better form of communication with InspectorGuy?

Feed him info?

That was the plan, right?

Feed evidence and info to Inspector to exonerate us and, you know, persecute

justice upon the sinners in the genetic archive?

That is plan? That is still plan?

Yeah, we did that.

We've got that ball rolling. Oh, that's not a past tense thing.

You know. That's still the plan.

Yeah, we just gotta...

Get more evidence with which to feed him.

Okay, where do we get more evidence?

Uh, we can work on that after our shift today.

That's not the...

Fine, fine! He seems...

He frustratedly starts to put on this uniform.

I can appreciate that you're not excited to be a loader, but it's the only thing

that's keeping us safe right now.

If we go out there with our faces, we're immediately going to be picked up and

thrown into the who's gal and never see the light of day.

Trust me on that.

He's just putting on the uniform.

You know, one thing you and I can keep an eye out for today is any kind of power

converters

or hookups that might allow us to recharge the veils.

So that's something we can keep an eye out for.

Yeah, absolutely.

I support that.

Well, speaking of our shift,

I have no idea if any of us are going to be working together.

I'm sure we should just kind of find that out in assignment.

This location, do we go?

Well, they told us yesterday we're going to be on the same team.

I wonder how.

I am, as begrudgingly as I must say it, I am interested to see how that

will work out.

I guess it's time to have a trans star day.

And he says that with all of the...

His facial expression is exactly what you think when he says it, so monotone.

Just glower it. That's great.

I imagine most of you get dressed

in your uniforms. People who have past combat training can bring their weapons,

but do remember you are going to be on a submarine, so a lot of big slug

weapons may not want to go through soft hulls.

Oh.

As the sergeant of security, I'm going to wear my armor.

Yeah, I mean, if we know that we are, if that's where we're going, like this isn't

like a first day we're doing an orientation. Hey, no, we're doing the submarine

mission. He's bringing everything. He's bringing the carapace.

He's bringing the shotgun.

It is a Navy shotgun. It is tailor-made to do just this.

He's bringing all of it. He's bringing all of his equipment for combat.

So that's what he's preparing for.

I just would like some clarity.

You're going to fight the submarine?

Like, what are you fighting?

Those who try to board submarine? Those who are outside submarine that we must go

fight? That is probably something that will be on the submarine, too.

EV suits. That will be good review.

Great fun.

I think what she's saying is, as our direct superior, like, 17 levels up, maybe it's

not a great idea.

I'm bringing all of my stuff. We were explicitly told that we are here to interact

with bandits. I am bringing all of the shit to kill bandits.

As the head of security, I concur.

Yeah, I mean, that's not my jurisdiction at that point.

I'm just saying the guy who pushes boxes around is going to show up loaded to the

teeth is maybe not the best look,

but... Well, that's not what we're doing today.

We're not loading boxes today.

Yes, you are.

I just want to be clear. The only people who are allowed to carry weapons are those

who actually have passed the military thing and did not fail.

See, you didn't clarify that.

I will admit to my misinterpretation, you said

combat training, he is combat trained.

Failing in the assessment that they had, okay, that makes sense.

No, he's wearing his loader equipment.

If that is all he is permitted to wear, he's wearing his loader equipment.

You easily can lock stuff up in the suite, but...

A random loader carrying big, big guns.

And you could give your gun to...

I was just about to say, if anybody has a specific gun that I really like, I can

throw it on. I can carry that with me with my shit.

Yes, you should.

Yes, Caspian.

I will be armed

for a thief. Yes, bring my Navy shotgun.

It is a great shotgun. Even the lethal shells,

they will bounce. They do not punch whole.

They do bounce. It's very fun.

I mean, sure, do whatever you want, but I'm really hoping we're not going to need to

get into it. Oh, it is going to be an interesting prospect to how we

interact with the bandits.

They are for sure employed by the Delphine fellow, especially because they are going

to be...

They're dolphin, eco-terrorist, not bandits.

That was in the briefing they gave us.

Motive, tactics, goals.

Yes, that leans them even closer to being goons of Delphine.

Delphine is an eco-terrorist who is a dolphin.

We are being potentially out on patrol trying to find eco-terrorists who are

dolphins. So it is most likely Delphine.

From criminal organization to...

So anyway, do I get a badge or a lanyard as a security guard?

I would say all of your badges extend in a lanyard fashion if you stretch

them. Quick rule question. Do lasers penetrate holes?

Or is it just slugs?

I would say a concentrated laser attack would penetrate a hole.

Okay.

But if you're just missing one or two shots, you should be fine.

All right.

I'll take both of our guns.

The big power, by the way, of you being able to use lasers and

other things

is you could theoretically shoot them in the water.

Okay.

A shotgun does not shoot very well under the sea.

Do you mean even in the submarine?

No, I mean with you guys in vac suits in the water.

Fair enough. Is the submarine going to have vac suits which I need to bring my own?

No. You will use the ones in the submarine because let me also explain the mechanic

thing. Normal vac suits actually can't survive fathom

depths.

Oh, okay.

Because their intention is to deal with the lack of pressure, not high

pressure. So in the book, there are vac suits that are considered

for dangerous environments, and those work.

But theoretically, there are also just naval, like,

submersible suits that exist.

At this tech level, it is very similar to a vac suit, and we're going to roll vac

suits for them. But if you try to take this wetsuit with

a helmet in space, the lack of pressure would begin to make it expand greatly and

eventually pop.

But in the pressure of water, it holds everything together.

Okay. Yep, thank you.

Check, check. Okay.

Now that everyone has handed a weapon that they want to hand to Cole, and you

are getting—

Well, I did want to clarify that.

As the cool guy executive, do I get to keep my gun, or do I have to give that away

as well?

You have just a handgun, right?

Yeah, I have an officer's revolver from the Navy as well.

Yeah, that one's going to stop you as well.

And, like, they're not going to rip off the guns off of the robot.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, it is much more, like, if Alan was

here, they're not going to be cool with him bringing his minigun.

Got it.

Okay. As you all, as a looking fancy in your

new fancy Transtar uniforms...

You are walking across the courtyard.

You go through these areas, eventually to the naval dock, and

you come up to the dock that has been represented by the number, and there

is a man standing outside of there.

You can tell that he is definitely looking for...

Someone coming along we have not yet found.

So not us? He's looking for someone who's not us?

No, no. Or you say he's looking for us?

He's looking. He doesn't know it's you. He's looking for a large part.

Okay, I got it. I thought you meant, like, he saw us and was like, you're not, these

are not the droids I'm looking for.

Got it.

I guess I will walk up and

introduce myself. I'll just kind of put out my hand.

I think what you're looking for is us.

Oh, that guy.

I don't know if I have a—do I have a ring?

You are Junior Executive Manager of Naval Operations.

I am. That's exactly what I am.

I am Junior Executive Emma Colbert.

I think it's a pleasure to meet you.

I am Annette Valencourt.

It is a pleasure to meet you. You are all the new TransStar employees, correct?

That is correct, yes.

So the submarine that we are going to be on is we have lost a

majority of our crew, not through any negative activity, but a new ship was

built and they decided to separate the experienced crew that we had here.

Allow you to come and learn what is going on while they are then preparing another

ship with the experiences that they have.

I was just going to say, are you the executive

officer? How should I address you?

I am the captain of the ship.

Oh, well then it is for sure a pleasure to meet you then and we would ask permission

to come aboard.

Absolutely. It is the TSS Profondeur.

It is an old archaic word for depths under the sea.

I'm sure it'll serve us well, whatever it's called.

I'm happy to also introduce you to the rest of the crew.

So you can hold your introductions until we are all together, if you'd be so kind.

Oh, of course.

So he walks you guys into the submarine.

For characters that have a large amount of

physical traits, I would say if you are plus

three in endurance and or strength, it's a little difficult

to walk through these areas because it's small.

There are small openings and small hatches.

It's not going to physically stop you, but you're not going to be racing through

this until you have a few weeks under your belt of getting

used to hitting your head and the like.

Man, there are people out here with bloods.

Three stats.

Well, I mean, I technically have a three stat, but it is not to my body.

I can walk through doors.

Yeah.

Only endurance and strength. So...

I am going to pull everyone to the ship.

And he is walking you through the access hatch, and he is taking you into the

control room, and I am going to

show the four members of the crew.

Okay. So, Anita Valancourt, is it happening?

Is he single?

Hey robot, you keep roboting.

I got a fancy outfit, man. I know what's up,

man.

The robot's AI is just going, I will woo him with my new outfit.

So, now that everyone's eager, he says, I'm Captain Valancourt.

I was a member of the Jardinian Navy for 20 years.

I had done sub-operations for them and helped build particular platforms that were

necessary. And TransStar gave me a financial opportunity that I could do

in between a promotion cycle, and I moved over to TransStar.

Then the first woman comes up, Malay-Fronteux,

She is an engineer.

She is carrying a sensor in one hand and a

welding tool in the other.

She says, I've been in this ship for quite a while.

I have fixed broken pipes.

I have stopped, what is the word, terrorist

actions against us. If you need something repaired or fixed, I'm happy to show you

how it is done.

And then the next guy stands up, Remy Bouchon.

He says, I deal with the electrics, the sonar and sensors, and the

communications that we have here.

A lot of the work I'm going to be doing is to get those of you who are capable

prepared on different consoles.

And I'm going to sit at the one that you're less skilled at until we can get you at

a level where we can start doing cycling training.

And then the last woman is there.

She has a sawed-off shotguns strapped to each of her legs.

She is like, I am Sabine Cardone.

I am security and also diving operations.

I imagine many of you have not felt the deep pressures that we're going to be

dealing with, let alone fighting in Underwater suits,

it's my job to get you up to speed to both be able to defend what we need to and to

be able to start doing engineering repairs on the problems that we have outside of

the ship.

And if anyone wants to introduce themselves to the people, please.

I will introduce myself once again since now they're all assembled as junior

executives.

Emma Colbert, it is a pleasure to meet all of you, and I look forward to serving

with you.

I say that much happier than it came across right now.

I realize that my intonation was not the best.

Sorry.

You can also put a quick reference sheet in the chat if people want to look it up.

Oh,

that is a great reference sheet.

I'll say hello warmly.

We say what we do. Kiernan does the same.

Do I load chips?

Is that what I do? You say, I've been registered as a loader.

Exactly.

No, I don't say that.

I just introduced myself. And I'm like, I'm glad to be here.

I can help out with whatever you need.

Well, if he doesn't say what he is...

Fontera says, so are you security?

Are you equipment?

I'm sorry. Everyone needs to know what they can do on this ship.

We can't have anyone that is literally just breathing the air.

Ah, so what I can do and what I'm hired to do are two different things.

But if you need help fixing something, or I can take a gander, but I'm here for

loading.

He kind of smiles and, like, a few of them look at each other.

And if you're on turn, Bouchard said, we both failed our tests and we're loaders,

too.

One could say that we might have you start loading programs.

Or we might have another scenario where we're going to have you load bullets in

guns.

And then load those cartridges into opposing enemies' bodies.

Yes.

I'm Sergeant Caspian,

by the way. Hi, Caspian.

Sabine gives you the nod.

But Fiontura says, we understand a lot of you are not going to be paid at the

quality that you were because of the TransStar tests.

Our goal is to make sure that you are useful to the ship and that you're then able

to show the experience that you've done in a month.

And we can then get you either retested

or just automatically reassigned to a better scenario.

That's pretty sexy.

It's the famous Trendstars pitch that brought us all to this fine career.

Yep.

Right. Kynan, hello there.

Sabine says, I thought it's because you're all criminals of

the state.

Yes, that too. We are all criminals of the state and currently are in...

What briefing did you get on us?

That was fun.

Hi. That was it.

Stay here and not get arrested.

That was the great opportunity.

This was a great opportunity. I did not think you would know.

Hi there.

Also, where's the mess hall?

I think we'd like to say alleged criminals.

Okay, Dan still is in denial.

I'm sorry for Dan.

I didn't shoot anyone, did you?

Not anyone who's actually leveled against any of us?

I mean... Why are we telling anyone?

Why are we even implying we shot anyone? We didn't shoot anyone.

We didn't assassinate a high-level government employee.

We shot a lot of people who were trying to kill us to cover it up.

Okay, wait, are we just telling the whole thing?

If so, I shot someone.

Sabine's like, I think you guys should be a little less worried.

I killed my husband because he was abusive.

And when I was going to be registered to go to my trial, I knew that his

uncle who worked for the judiciary would make sure that I would go to prison for the

next 40 years. So I decided to have a train star day.

They're all still in the bargaining stage of grief of losing their old lives.

Okay, come on. I think I've progressed pretty well, all right?

I'm already chumming up with Sabine.

Sabine, I totally get it. I also have been shot multiple times by my ex.

It's... I think, actually, we're probably on the other end.

I'm sure we'll get along just fine.

Relationships in the military are hard.

Captain Valancourt says, the fact that you're here at TransStar and you've passed

the test mean that you want to stay alive and keep things moving in your life.

You're not self-destructive individuals who merely want to destroy all your

opportunities. You're looking for solutions, and Transtar has a place to get that.

As long as you're able to be a value to the ship, you're going to be respected

by everyone.

Fantastic.

One thing, though, that goes to Maru.

So... While you are a particularly combative robot,

I do notice that you have

gecko model feet.

I attest to the first part. Most people find me quite amicable.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, is your robotic body able to handle Under

sea pressures.

Yes, I should be fine. You can challenge me on those tasks.

Are you saying you may have need for me outside of the ship?

There are certain situations that have occurred where if we have a problem, by the

time someone gets a suit on, gets pressurized and gets out, the problem gets worse.

If you can magnetically lock onto the hull, get over there and minimize the

problems, We can then do a final fix with everyone by the time they're in suits.

Yes. I was designed for outer space, so I can handle atmospheric pressures between

zero and one.

No. But yes, I should be able to adhere to the hull and

do most standard work, considering we do not go to abyssal depth.

In the reactor room, there are three plug-ins if you do need to have an energy

charge.

Oh, that sounds delightful.

It should not be difficult for us to make sure that everyone here is on point.

On the wall, he points to a map that is standing there.

This is the layout of our ship.

The ship of the Profondeur.

Make sure that you understand it. There's going to be a lot of times where you'll be

called to do something, and if you can't realize where that location is, you're

going to be there too late.

We are going to be running in shifts, but nothing that should be overwhelmingly

difficult once you've had a day or two.

We will be 12 hours on and 12 hours off.

Um, that should be fine. The food is automatically processed, uh, food cubes

with spice packets.

Um, it's something you get used to. Um, Bouchamp says, I'm a big fan of the chicken

cacciatore spice.

Yeah.

Kiernan wipes the back of his hand on a suddenly very sweaty forehead.

Do they have the Sichuan sauce?

Uh... Sabine says they do have the Setch websites.

Fuck yes! He fucking pumps the air.

He is much more hyped to be on this submarine.

Oh.

Now, the first issue that we have to deal with is the

Hadal research site has been abandoned now for about two months

after an attack by undersea terrorists.

We believe that there may be some valuable resources still inside of it.

We are going to be taking about a 10-hour drive to the site.

Once we get there, we are going to prep people to have their first diving

experience. I do recommend everyone take an opportunity to learn the suits.

We are going to investigate the site.

We are going to mark key places that we are going to try to get inside to

salvage materials.

And we are going to return to our next mission after we've been there for two days.

Any questions or concerns?

I've spent time as a belter and a salvager in space.

That's where my VAC suits

skills come from.

The biggest difference you're going to notice in a belter environment is you are

very much used to falling into

the pressure. You do a slight push off of a wall and you expect there to be a lot

going forward that you're now trying to react to.

The difference of an undersea scenario at something that is as low as Hadal is

Every pressure point you do, you're going to gradually lose momentum.

You're going to have a push directly off of the wall, and then you're going to get

slower and slower and slower until you're eventually just stagnant in the

point.

Never let yourself be off of a wall or a pole or some direction you can push

off to. Even if it is just pulling on a cable, you want to make sure that you always

have some constant momentum or it could take a job that would take you 15 minutes

might take you an hour to get back if you're just in the middle of a float session.

We will be dealing with depths of a point where it will be absolute darkness.

So those of you who don't have back suit experience or belter experience, it is a

psychological hop that you're going to need to be into.

Are there safety lines?

You mentioned a table, but are there safety lines?

So we have safety lines up to 200 feet.

There are many times that you will go in excess of that 200 feet.

When you begin to start learning your skills, definitely stay in the lines.

As you begin to have more and more experience, you will be able to disconnect from

them and do the work you need to do.

Emma's probably fine with that. Laura is not.

Laura's having, like, the idea of being surrounded by

complete darkness is freaking me out.

They explicitly tell you it in the briefing, your mind immediately is going, what's

that gonna be like?

Yeah.

I mean, Emma has a lot of experience being in space.

It turns out Laura does not.

Now, one of the key things that you should understand while we have a falling sea

floor directly from the city of Jardin for about four miles, it then falls

into a deep chasm.

This chasm will take specialized gear.

The profunder can get to the bottom of the chasm with minor damage.

There are certain aspects that we will maybe have to go in there as it is a key

place where the terrorists hide.

Hadal is one of the lighter location bases.

And undersea base, Elyon, if we do get to stop there, is a domed

micro city base where there's about 250 active personnel.

You will be able to walk around there, be able to breathe air, be able to have a

meal that isn't a food cube.

Relay station 932 is the main communication hub in this area.

It is able to transmit to all the different ships here, and through that relay we

are able to still maintain communications all the way up to orbit.

Those are the key kind of things on the map as it kind of points out on the naval

map.

Anyone have any questions or concerns?

I did want to know if you could potentially clarify, you've mentioned these

terrorists multiple times now, why are they terrorizing?

Do we understand what their message is other than just violence, for violence sake?

They are definitely a scourge of society that is

removed from Okay.

Okay. Okay.

I didn't want to necessarily put names on it because one person's pirate is another

person's freedom fighter.

Very true.

They do have supplied aspects of very powerful

undersea suits and a majority of them are already pressure locked at a point

where they can operate under most sea conditions but not the surface.

Because if we went to that deep and everyone adapted to that, it could take us a

week to readapt

to surface air.

Okay.

Okay.

I mean, you always want to know your enemy and what can happen.

The primary weapons that they use is they have micro-propelled

harpoons with explosive tips.

All right.

It is normally enough to compromise a vac suit or to

damage a ship that you eventually have to flee with in those strikes.

Sure.

Yeah, Kiernan will raise his hand slightly and just ask, is there

a... Preferred weapon for retaliation?

Are there some armory or gunlockers that can become standard

issue in case of a fight or something?

You make it sound like there is a very high likelihood that we will get attacked

while in VAC suits or while out and about.

Are there operations that we will be very vulnerable to attack?

So we've had problems in Handing out weapons to those who are

not registered militants by TransStar.

In the vigor of some people responding, we've had damaged equipment

and we've had injuries amongst the crew.

Totally understandable.

To the latter half of my question, are there going to be operations where we are

notably vulnerable?

Are they gunning and going for people in VAC suits that they find outside of the

ship?

Quite likely. That is why almost every scenario you will have, you will have a

member of Sabine's team with you that is armed.

Okay.

You will normally have some aspect of separation if they cannot Babysit every single

one of you, but you will normally have some defensive team with you

during some work.

They will sit and be watching point while the loaders

and the engineers are doing the work.

Okay.

Now, for those of you who have also not had incredible

space experience, there is going to be a Aspect of claustrophobia

that you will gradually get within your first week or

two.

The air is going to have a taste to it that you're not used to.

The ship's movement is going to be a little weird for you.

The ringing in your ears of the pressure is going to be a little weird to you.

If you're finding that occurring, You need to communicate

to your executive officer as soon as possible.

There are methodologies that we can do to put you on limited duties

until you can acclimate. We can make sure that you are signed off for

a three-day to get your sea legs back.

What we need to know is that you're not just suffering alone trying to push your way

through a scenario and you're

Lack of being 100% gets someone else killed.

They're not very meaningfully at that.

Understood.

Kiernan's got a knowing look on his face, not just looks around, kind of makes sure

everyone else is

hearing that.

Sabine is going to show you to the crew quarters.

Oh.

And you guys can get settled while me and Fortier are

going to get the ship gradually moving.

Once you get all of your gear away, feel free to come to any station where one of us

is at and we will begin to walk you through some basic observations.

Thank you. Yes, sir.

Now, If anyone wants to now give me a naval tactics, because I know a lot

of you bought naval tactics.

Indeed. I have

a good naval tactics. I'm almost home. I'm out on the doggy walk of the evening.

If anyone wants to roll for me.

Josh, it says you privately rolled some dice.

Whoa.

What is the default to that?

I got a 14.

Looking to roll him? Oh god, I have naval tactics.

I checked my sheet as a lark, but I totally do.

Where is that located?

Yeah, it's under tactics.

Lower right.

Oh, there it is. I apologize. Okay.

Yes, you've got quite a bit of naval tactics.

And if you want it, I bet with all of our Navy backgrounds, most of us have it.

Do you roll streak decks? Like, what are we rolling on this?

That's an average failure.

I didn't really have any. I mean, I rolled dice.

People told me to roll dice, so I rolled.

But, you know, average failure.

Is it education or intellect?

It would be intellect, primarily.

Okay.

Nice.

Has it average success?

And Cole had

a failure.

Did you see what I sent?

I did not see anything you sent after Joth probably rolled some dice.

Because Joth privately rolled some dice.

I need you to make sure that it's on public.

Yeah, I don't know why, but I never change it back.

It automatically goes there.

Did you make it public?

Yes, last time.

Now, enroll.

I just screenshotted you and sent you my thing.

I'll roll it again. Whatever.

I just need to make sure that we can see your stuff.

That's it.

Okay, so we're going to take Josh's...

Well, you actually got a... It's okay.

I still got a 12, which is not as good as the 14 that I got before.

Well, one said exceptional, I guess.

I can barely read it. One was a 6.

One's a 4. It's fine. You're not going to get more data past a 4.

Okay. So Josh is the top one.

Oh, no. Josh is the top one.

So at Josh's level, you realize there's way more space for more

crew here.

This is probably a section of crew that could be up to 30 people.

Yep. This is already a pirated ship.

Now, the people who had...

One person had a two, and that was... That was me, yep.

So one of the things that you notice is in the missile room, all

of the missiles have been replaced.

With almost like escape pods.

So people can get into basically the missile thing from some control panel inside of

there. It will shoot them out in a pressurized tube that will hold them in that

pressure until they're rescued by TransStar.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

Steinbach, one of the things that you

realize is that there are

things broken or things left behind that

seem odd. Like, you find a guy's pictures of his family on

one of the crew deck areas.

Yeah.

But his face doesn't match up with any of the crew that I've met.

You also find, and by the way, everyone knows from bottom up.

So the person who had the four knows what Annette got, and the person who had the

one in the four knows what Steinbach got.

So there also was a mini-sub that has a

huge part of it ripped off.

And it looks like it was dumped basically back where it was, and it is completely

destroyed.

Completely destroyed beyond any ability to mechanic to repair, without massive

investment.

Yeah, basically imagine like a quarter of it was just rent off.

Okay.

Um...

Yeah. So that's all what you guys know is you're all kind of prepping.

You guys get your stuff all organized.

You get everything kind of prepared.

Next to your group quarters, as you like lay down, there is a clock that

appears next to your bed as a digital readout to show which part of the 12-hour term

you're on.

Everyone's 12-hour term is set Staggered, so you will normally

see someone during your entire 12-hour time, because one of you might see each other

for two hours, and they're just getting off shift, kind of thing.

Oh my god. On rotation.

Yeah, who's on rotation with me? Who's my battle buddy?

What I'm trying to imply is, you'll be able to interact with all the characters, but

imagine that they are sleeping when you are not.

Okay. Do they have me on a rotation as well, or am I just on duty?

Do they have you on a rotation because they don't know you're charging shit?

Oh, I tell them that once I'm charged, I can operate for days.

So I ask them to use me to their full requirement.

What is your non-combat skills that you want to sell them?

I have electronics,

Recon and Naval Tactics.

Your electronics is a generic, right? You don't have a specialty, right?

Right. I've got the green asterisk next to Remote Ops.

Okay. So, expert software.

Yeah.

They say that there is a drone that they have.

That they'll have you at the drone station basically flying around to make sure that

they're not being followed in places they can't hear with the sonar.

Sure. Happy to use my talents there.

Perfect.

Does anyone else would like to ask for a very particular job or be trained under a

particular person?

I think...

I mean, I'll volunteer to load up any...

Non-crew member materials into crates to be

offloaded at a future time.

So they're going to prepare you for Vax suit training.

Do you have any Vax suit?

I do have Vax suit, yes. Okay, so they're going to have you in the first dive.

Can you all hear me?

We can now. Yeah, we can now.

I do not want to speak anymore.

If you are, we now know why.

I wouldn't mind being trained in anything that you have an opening for, but

otherwise, I'm pretty open to doing tough-filling stuff.

I'm kind of a jack-of-all-trades.

Pick what you would like.

They put me in what? Pick what you would like.

Pick what I would like.

Because they're like, a person who doesn't say what job they want cleans latrines.

Fair enough.

Then, what are the options again?

There are four people who basically you can work under.

You pick one of those four people, and then they're going to assign you work.

The engineering tactician, I guess.

Okay, so the engineer person?

The male fournier.

Yeah. She is going to be showing you guys

engineering power. If you guys have an engineering power, great.

If you do not, she is basically going to start training you guys in engineering

power.

Okay. Kiernan would work under Sabine for sure and definitely has a lot of Vaxu

training.

All right, so where you guys need the most help.

Above average with back suits, but that's been in space.

I know a little bit of Medic.

Kind of okay on mechanics.

I'm going to be in sneaky and scouting things, and I'm pretty good with

computers.

I just want to be clear.

Yeah,

so Caspian will go try to train under Etienne of Valcourt.

Yeah, that's what I would try to do too.

And

then...

Okay.

So is that about right? Victor and Saren are going to go out of the ship with

Sabine.

Emma and Cass are going to

work with the captain. And, Zoe, what are you going to try to do?

Well, I'm definitely going to go out of the ship some The gate

acclimated to using the backsuit in the water.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

Now, we're going to start with the people with Valancourt, and he is going to show

some basic aspects of piloting.

He's going to show some naval recon of how you know where you can see where you're

going. I'm going to pull everyone to the undersea map for a moment.

And the Proconder is going to be sailing to Hidal Research Site, and that is going

to take them six hours to get there.

While they're doing that, he's showing you how to physically move the ship.

He's showing you how to read the sonar arrays.

And you notice very quickly that because they don't have enough people, he is

sitting on a large...

He's not doing anything close. So he knows from the sonar data that the ground is,

let's say...

He's 600 yards away. He is not even getting close to it, so he doesn't have to keep

dealing with the sonars or the pings.

He can just keep sailing straight, and then he can deal with the problems as they

come along. You realize that they are doing good handoffs.

Who can do what? Because the activity of Working perfectly on

ProFunder would take a lot more people in communication.

So as you guys get better and you guys can start calling that data out, they can do

more. Like he could hide in the silt because you guys are going to be able to

constantly tell them the depths and things

like that.

Okay.

As he kind of gets a little closer, he's also going to talk to you guys a little bit

more about the terrorists. And he's like, while some of the terrorists are humanoid,

they also have a large amount of orcas with them.

That's not unsurprising.

The orcas allow them to go up and down to these areas that we cannot easily

deal with the pressure.

And be able to bring large volumes of stuff that they merely

swallow and then cough it up when they get to their underground rooms.

That's kind of gross.

Key leaders of the ORCA group also have cybernetic rigs that allow them to

rip metal Easily.

If one can construe it, it's almost a battle suit, but it's not meant for defense,

it's only meant for strength increasing.

That's a little terrifying when you're sitting inside a submarine, but it's

understandable as well.

The one other advantage we have is Profound dirt can go faster than they can swim.

Okay. How quick can we get to speed, though?

If we're willing to fully alert everyone around us, we can reach full speed

in about four minutes.

Okay. But the capsizing of the air behind us

as we move so quickly alerts anyone with sonic detectors in probably a three-mile

radius. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

Most of the time, we gradually move speed and not have...

The incredible amounts of sound that's being pushed through it.

Now, this particular ship Was a Jordanian

naval vessel that was attacked and damaged.

They were able to link it back to Jordanian naval base, but they did not feel it was

valuable enough to fully repair, so Transtar bought it, lifted it, and gave it a

retrofit. But this is about a 25, 30-year-old ship.

That old in the grand scheme?

Yes.

It's unlike spaceships that are decades old where they're constantly dealing with

interest pressures, space and the pressure of a jump.

But the profondeur has kept us well for a while.

We've had a few instances and accidents which have been rough on the crew where

we've had a Let's say some orcas hiding in the silt as we came by.

They jumped up and they ripped out parts of the hull.

We were able to lock off those particular locations until we were able to move

forward.

But as long as the crew trusts each other, we've been able to get through all the

different scrapes we've had.

That's impressive with such a small career to be able to accomplish so much.

Thank you. But do remember that we...

We had double the crew before you guys came on.

We separated the crew so they could start training another site.

At any point, will we be taking on more standard crew or just

us for now?

After the month of your observation time, I'm supposed to write a report if we feel

that you should stay in aquatics or if you should be

recommended to another crew.

Understood.

And it's not a demotion.

It is Transdar wants to find the place that everyone thrives.

I did not interpret it as a demotion. I interpreted it much more as a

lateral shift in skill set.

Exactly.

Some people can't handle the sound.

Those who are very much used to vac suits in the depths of space have

psychologically gotten to the nothingness.

There is a hum that you hear when you're in

a subsuit.

You feel your own heartbeat inside your ears and inside your skull

as everything is pushing in on you.

It is a psychological thing that not everyone does.

That's uncalculable tension.

Again, that's Laura. I'm like, there's a reason I don't go deep in the water.

Does anyone want to ask him any other questions regarding the next group?

I do have a question for the GM.

Since he's teaching us Essentially piloting, I guess, steering.

I don't know. Is there an applicable skill?

Because piloting and flyer don't seem to really be applicable, but if we had to

take...

It counts as pilot small craft.

Okay. Okay.

There we go, then.

That answers that question.

All right, thank you.

Just so everyone understands the mechanic, is every week of training on the ship,

Counts as an automatic week of you education prepping that skill.

Okay.

So after a month, you'll have a point.

Or a roll, rather.

A roll for a point.

Exactly. At the end of your month, you guys will get a roll for whatever group you

were in, and to permanently get the skill is going to be the test of the roll.

Sweet. It's an education test, I believe.

Yes, it's an education test for everything except the vac suit and physical

activities.

The vac suits can be done on an endurance roll.

So the idea is whatever

trait you would have done on it, primarily it's education, you can basically try to

learn it.

Physical things that you learn by road or activity, you can try to do with another

stat.

Okay.

So let's go now to Sabine's group.

So Sabine takes all of you guys to the kind of

airlock area. She pulls you into the first piece of the airlock.

You do see some emergency suits outside the airlock, but inside the airlock are much

higher quality active suits.

She does the classic, have all of you used a back suit before?

Please raise your hand.

Kiernan will raise his hand, but he's looking at these suits very much with a dogged

curiosity. He's coming into this space very open to learn a new thing.

He is very happy to experience these novel suits.

While you're used to very much in a backseat scenario that if you have a little bit

of failure, you're going to be gradually spilling air for a while, that

particular part of undersea environmental suits are a lot easier as the

water pressure is going to sink in a lot of your valves and your setups.

So even a valve that's 70-80% correct will hold as long as you're not being overly

active.

The second thing I want everyone to realize is you are not going to be breathing

oxygen most of the time we're going to be doing our deep sea work.

Oxygen at these levels and pressures will cause conflicts with your body chemistry

if you have not been genetically modified.

So we have the pink tanks here and we have the blue tanks here.

You're going to see a light on the wall. If that light turns to red, you have to use

the pink tanks. If it's on green, you use the other tanks.

The tanks for when we are deep have certain aspects of helium to be able to push the

oxygen through your body and not just get crushed to not be useful.

You'll notice that these suits all have neck mics.

As you begin to speak, it'll automatically transmit you to your local team.

If you need to have a private communication on the side control panel, You're going

to be able to see the buttons to be able to control individual pieces of

communication. Now, your lights turn on automatically the moment that you're in the

water. But that first moment of darkness while they turn on is an alarming thing.

They are tap sensitive.

So if you do need to turn off your lights for some reason, all you have to do is hit

it with your hand and they will turn off.

You can hit it again and they will turn back on.

Does everyone want to try to get suit around themselves, or do you want

to do partners?

What do we want to do what?

What did you say? Partners.

As Josh has emotional damage.

Trauma. I think partnering up is the smart way to go.

She's going to work with Zoe, because Zoe is trying to fit

into a full-size human.

Environmental suit.

And so, everyone, roll your suit.

You said roll our vac suit? It kind of went funny there.

With a boon. With a boon.

Okay.

I mean, freaking Christmas. Ross, you are privately again.

What?

So that means that every single one automatically, if I don't change it, is on...

I rolled it, though. Did you see I made a public one?

Jesus Christ.

Again, my private one was better, but

the public one was still pretty good. You had better than a seven?

What? Yeah, I think it was like an eight.

Let me check.

Okay. Yeah, it was an eight.

Okay. Everyone has been very successful in getting their back suits on.

As I mentioned in the other group, you do notice, though, that it is a little weird

that you still have audible hearing.

Even though you're hearing through your mics and your communicators, you're also

hearing the person in the room talk.

When normally you're in a vac suit scenario, that doesn't occur.

Once everyone's there and she's checked everyone's work, she gives a thumbs up that

all of your guys' work has been correct.

And those of you who are more engineer-y, she takes you to a toolbox

that you can strap to your back.

And those of you who are more combat-y, she has harpoon guns for

you guys to fire.

Oh, shit. I've got a base level mechanic.

People who are primarily loaders should take the gear.

Yeah, Josh, you're still on private.

What do you mean?

You didn't get either of them?

No, I'm seeing on the screenshot you just sent me, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The first one was on private. I think every role is automatically set to private for

some reason on my thing.

Okay, right now, does it currently have private highlighted?

I would have to check a new role, I guess.

No, no, no. There's an indicator right there where there's a globe and there is an

incognito guy and there's an eye with a scratch.

There's a globe and an incognito guy?

On the picture you just sent, Underneath the back suit.

Blind to Game Master. It is self-only public as character.

Maybe I clicked that once by accident. I don't know.

The one you want is public as user.

Yeah, that's what I did. Okay.

And that one's now highlighted, right?

Yes. Okay. Can you roll anything once just to make sure it doesn't hop over?

Sure.

And that worked perfectly. Okay.

Okay. As long as that one stays highlighted with the globe, it should be fine.

Okay.

She takes all of you to the location.

Now, do all of you also have a base electronics?

Yes.

Yes, I have electronic sensors.

I have electronic remote pumps.

As long as you have base electronics is all I'm worried about.

Got a base.

Okay. We live in the future.

How could we not know a little electronics?

Well, you could be a techno-barbarian shooting big minigens.

Now, if you have base electronics, you are able to use the onboard computer, which

basically will show the distance of everyone who has gone out with

you at the same time.

Your communicators will communicate with everyone there, and it will also say

your distance from the ship, but it doesn't say what direction.

The same as all the individual people.

It'll say Sabine is 600 yards away, but you don't know if that's the left or the

right.

You could start going one direction and keep looking at it and see like...

If she's standing still, go the other way.

But just so you have a concept of what's being done.

Now, the people who have engineering tool sets,

on your computer, it also shows the amount of gas in your

welding torches, and it shows the amount of electronics you have for your

automatic wrenches and socket sets.

So you can understand, basically, I've been working on this for an hour.

I don't have enough energy to keep finishing the project in return.

Okay.

She begins to do some basic drills for you guys to walk around the ship.

I would say also that they would have Annette's character also come out right now to

have

Bye.

Okay.

Good night. Oopsie.

That never happened to Patrick before.

I know, he was like on a roll and then...

Discord decked him.

I hope everything's okay.

Yeah, I hope his power didn't go out.

The recording bot is still on, though.

Well, that's server-based.

Yeah, that's a service you log into.

I still have power, and I don't live that far from them.

So I would assume we're on the same grid, but maybe we're not.

Here, I'll text her.

The completionist in me wants the Arab to have its own power system.

Yes. That's exactly what it needs to have.

It's only run by Jews.

I'm obsessed with the Arab.

I think they're awesome.

No, like, I was wild about the Erev

walking around Manhattan. I was like, look, there it is!

There's the wire!

We were discussing how the Erev had its own power structure and that that's what

happened to you.

What was the last thing people heard?

You were just about to say, and then Annette comes along and then you poofed.

Okay. So Annette, when you come along, they're going to give you one of the computer

packs that are on the VAC suits.

Okay. So you have a basic concept of the amount of distance everyone is, but you

still don't have direction in the Sea of Darkness.

Okay. And did people hear that if you're a tool user,

your battery percentages are on there?

Yeah, I heard that.

Okay, great. So can everyone who's outside the ship give me either a pure dexterity

roll or

a dexterity athletics roll?

Okay, dex athletics.

Okay. And your role was public, Josh.

Yay! Wait, I'm not outside the ship.

Oops. Yeah, no, yeah, they're showing you how to do it, too.

You're outside the ship, that's fine.

They're trying to have you with the team for now to understand the, like, the

commands and stuff if you lose communication, how to do hand gestures.

Oh, okay. Cool, cool.

So everyone who succeeded was able to Completely circumnavigate

the entire sub.

Everyone who failed, they turned around or a wave kind of pushed them.

Or when they got to the bottom, they got a little stuck in the ground.

You're able to recover because you have unlimited time, basically.

But those who succeeded, you can tell that they did it at a pattern while they can

improve their time.

They're basically now seeing who's fast and who's slow when they get out there.

Sabine turns on the communicators to everyone and says, I know some

of you, it's your first time.

Who wants to do drills or who wants to get straight

to work?

Let's do some drills.

I am happy behind my chair.

So what Sabine does is she takes out a flare

and she throws it off away from the ship.

And she says, everyone who was unable to circumnavigate it, you guys

go get the flare. So the people who did not succeed on the roll

can roll either Strength, Stamina, or Dexterity, whatever one is your highest.

To try to get to the Flare first.

By Stamina, do you mean Endurance?

Endurance, yeah.

I continue to fail my rolls.

Hey, the, uh...

The robot starts kicking a swim technique with a complete lack of care

of the idea of pressure or physical tiredness, and pushes off the ship

and grabs the flare while everyone else is trying to get a bit of momentum.

And she kicks off and pushes back.

It's not fair, I'm basically a skidoo.

Mario, that is very successful.

Now, what I would like you to do is pick one of the people who is having difficulty,

and I want you to go get a rock off the ground, and I want you to try to

play catch with one of these people.

It's important for you guys to understand how things move when you throw them, and

the weight differences when you're down.

Okay, well, I'll work with Zoe, then.

Okay.

He doesn't break the glass of his mask.

Right.

Zoid, can you roll either Tactics, Naval, Recon,

or

a Physical Trait?

Roll Recon.

As the rock kind of falls into a group of kelp, you are able to dive into the kelp,

grab the rock, and push yourself off with an aspect of success.

Now, Victor, let me show you a piece of your toolkit as she walks you over to a side

of the hull.

As you come to this piece of the hull, you do see that there is some scratches, like

maybe they skid against a rock or it was a peeling patch job of some other

type of repair. And she starts walking you through how to

use the underwater tool.

Blow torches to weld it together.

If you would like to roll either a repair kind of skill or an

engineering skill, feel free.

All right, I have mechanics, which

seems appropriate.

Wait, so who should be rolling this?

This is Victor. Okay.

Yay! Perfect.

That's a great weld line for especially down here.

You're going to notice as you get deeper dealing with different types of materials,

you're going to need to change the amount of air that you're feeding it.

You'll find if you give it too much air, it will merely bubble through a hole.

If you give it too little, you won't be able to

pull your weld.

Makes a certain amount of sense.

Now, Josh, were you a fighter

or a loader?

I think I was a loader.

I should have gone to any other test.

Every other test, I would have been done better. But yeah, I'm a loader.

Now, over here, she takes you to a pipe that you see

underground, like underwater.

She pulls up one of the layers on the pipe, and you see bundles...

Can you click again on the

map when you say over here?

Because I have my character sheet open.

Did I what over the map?

Did you click on the map when you said over here or no?

So never mind, continue then.

As she pulls up this layer of pipe, you see all of this fiber optic cable

with lights glowing down through it.

And she says, quite commonly, there will need to be repairs or situations in here.

You will find that the pipe is normally going in between bases.

If you find yourself entirely lost without communication, you're going to want to

follow the pipe until you eventually get to a base or an outpost where you're going

to be able to communicate from.

Right now, can you try to patch into this with electronics and see if you can get an

extended communication?

I should do comms?

Yep.

Okay, because I have zero comms, but okay.

If you have better electronics, you can use pure electronics if you want pure

electronics.

I mean, I have better remote ops, but it's okay.

I'll do comms.

Okay, perfect. You connect to it and you pick up a telenovela.

There we go.

So, are we all feeling pretty good right now?

There is a port on the outside that we can refill our suits.

Everyone go here, do a refill, and we're going to go down to Hadal and we're going

to look for a particular gear that we can find.

While that's occurring, I'm going to go to the last person.

And...

Oh.

Dan, I thought, was in the engineering group. I was like, Josh, I thought you were

the engineer, not in the water.

Yeah, I'm in the engineer.

Oh, this was the team that was going to the water.

I thought the name was...

Mattel Fortier.

Yeah, that's not who went.

I'm sorry.

This is the Sabine team that was all going in the water.

Okay.

It's fine. You're with the Sabine team day one.

Okay.

Okay. So it's easier.

It's just two groups. We can just separate between the two groups.

Okay. I'm going to go back to the captain for a bit, and then we're going to have

the undersea team start actually doing some recovery.

Okay.

Captain Valancourt is talking to Emma and Cass, and he begins to kind of start

showing you a bit about how You can

start doing control manipulation of like if someone

shoots a torpedo, you try to hack the torpedo's communications.

He shows you a bit about how you can overwhelm certain things, like one of the

weapons that they have, if the orcas get too close, they keep pinging the sonar to

overwhelm their ears.

And as it's kind of going and he arrives there, he stops the ship and he says, let

me show you a little bit more of what we have here.

And he begins to show you some logistic things.

He shows the storeroom where the oxygen and the other chemicals are being held.

He shows you the radio room and there is

plot for people who have computers to upload and download Messages and the like.

He shows you a laboratory that is kind of old and dusty, but you can tell that it

was used before.

Can you elaborate when you say before, like before when there were more people, or

even before that?

It looks like it's been used for at least three to four months.

Okay, I'm just like, how dusty does it get in a controlled environment?

It gets pretty dusty because of machine grit in the air.

Okay.

There is, like, even on a real sub, things actually get fairly dusty.

Okay. Yeah, I didn't know that. I just was like, you're purifying the air all the

time. I would think that it wouldn't, but I've never been on a submarine.

You also have to think that when they're purifying the air, it's constantly

diminishing returns.

So it's getting grittier and grittier as the air kind of goes by.

I went on a submarine earlier this year with my kids.

Towards the end, I freaked the fuck out.

Oh, no.

I was explaining to them how tight it was and how long people were on the sub for

months and months. And then I realized how small it was.

And I was like, can I push these people out of my way to get off the sub?

I mean, I held it together, so they didn't realize I was about to die, but it was

touching me.

Good to know.

Don't put Josh back in a submarine.

I think they must have realized something, because my son said, there's more air up

here, Papa.

I'm sorry, continue. Oh, you're good.

So,

Is there any questions that you're going to ask him since you have private time with

the captain?

I will let him know that I do have a particular specialty in communications, and so

if ever it comes into play, I can man the communications

station to try to run interference.

That was previously my specialty in my other life, shall we say.

Do you have any knowledge of sensors?

I think I do, actually.

Hold on.

Where would they be under?

Electronic sensors.

Okay, just double checking.

I have a one in sensors.

Perfect. Because by understanding communications and sensors, you can begin to

understand the intricacies of sonar.

As you're listening on all these sound communications back and forth, you can begin

to understand how the sound bounces off of everything.

So he's saying you can put education points in either.

Okay, cool. I get to be underwater Uhura.

Can you give me a comms role?

Yeah. Comms intellect or comms education?

Comms intellect, because you're

not prepared for it.

As you guys are leaving the radio room, you do realize that there is

group of communications that are

locked even from the captain.

Oh, interesting.

You think with your comms we could be fixed?

Sure. Nice roll, Laura.

Yeah, that was particularly badass.

I'm taking all the good juju, because that's how I got to be an executive officer,

too, was I just rolled really well.

Are you going to try to find a way to stay behind?

Do you encrypt them, or are you just going to let them

stay behind? Oh, I didn't realize that was an option.

Yeah, I'll be like, hey, I'd really like to familiarize myself with this equipment

if I can. I'm much more used to spaceships, and while I see that there are

similarities, there are some differences that I would like to be familiar with

before we're in the heat of a situation.

Of course.

I'll stay here and be able to poke at it a bit.

I'll send Remy when we walk back up and give you a little bit more details of the

subscommunications.

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

As you guys are going, you're going to obviously try to be super fast in your hack?

Yep. Okay. Can you roll the intelligence?

Now you can roll education or intelligence, whatever you prefer for that electronics

comm.

I'm probably going to roll education for comms.

Damn.

Damn.

In a matter of a moment, using some of your SolSec knowledge, It

is Jordanian military communications that

there are living people in a

particularly attacked location and they're asking for an SOS.

But the reason it is encrypted is these people have

data or military secrets where none of their communications were allowed to be on an

open band.

Okay, so let me just clarify, I understand that, right?

So people who have secret information are asking for an SOS, but it's being hidden

from the captain?

It's being hidden from anyone who isn't Jardinian military.

Oh, because we're on Transdar. Yes.

Okay, how did we acquire that information then?

Was it just put out on a broadband?

Yeah, it was a broadband, but it was encrypted.

So only the Jardinian military had the codes.

Oh, okay. I understand what's going on now.

Yes, I am a Hexor.

Wow. Interesting.

Okay.

Okay.

Laura, you have seen the first two episodes of The Expanse, right?

I have. Get a little holding.

While you're doing that, so you can think about it.

Okay. Nass, what would you like to do?

Are you there, Colb?

Can you hear me now? I hear you now, yes.

What would you like to do?

We can now no longer hear you. I want to continue the work in the bridge, if

possible. If I can do that again.

Okay.

He gets you up there. He's showing you some piloting stuff as you guys are coming

around. He also,

because you have a Gunner Zero, he also shows you basically how to initiate the

forward torpedoes.

The torpedo tubes.

But they're now

escape pods. Those are the missiles, not the torpedoes.

Oh, gotcha.

Yeah. The missiles were like ballistic missiles that they pulled out.

Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. See the surface missiles.

Yeah. So do we have an armament of torpedoes?

We do. We have four torpedoes that we are able to fire.

They are quite expensive, so we primarily use them to attack

underwater caves that we see

terrorist fleet in.

Gotcha, so if the Orcas go into a cave, you blow it up.

Right, because they're going to be faster than a torpedo, and almost all naval

ships out

here will either be Jordanian military or us.

That makes sense. That makes sense.

You said they're faster than a torpedo?

They're faster by being more agile.

Like, a torpedo comes up, they could turn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

More agile, that makes sense.

Can you roll your carouse at zero?

I can roll my carouse at zero.

There you go, you get a zero carouse.

I am rolling great.

He drinks from a flask, but offers you none.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

As you are in that kind of prep, he does, though, go and get you a cup of coffee.

And you can start your fine Navy tradition of an unwashed coffee cup.

Love it.

While he goes and gets the coffee, is the coffee on the bridge or in the galley?

It is in the crew mess, which is literally the door past the

main control room.

But what I'm hearing is I'm left alone on the bridge for a period of time.

Yes, you are.

I check the comm station.

I'm currently sitting at it.

She's in the radio room where directly comms.

You are able to see basically what has been assigned off the radio room.

What you have access to is sonar, weapons, piloting, And

controlling hatches and, like, water pressures and things like that.

Gotcha. There's no, like, historical data being kept here.

You know, like, messages that have been approved by the radio room appear here.

So, like, you see the message of, hey, go pick up this crew that's new.

You see the message of, can Valancourt pick the ten

people that he feels can pilot another ship?

And so he put his second-in-command and he put a few other people on there to pilot

the next ship. You have access to that kind of data.

You find out that Valancourt has a relationship that

is tumultuous on shore.

He keeps sending text messages of, I don't even know you're on the boat.

You could be seeing her.

In the storeroom are a group of hidden energy weapons that are listed

as welders, even though you can tell from the

schematics that they're actually

energy rifles.

Anything about previous salvage hauls?

A lot of the previous salvage hauls that they've been pulling up have been

equipment, oxygenators, power couplers.

There is a few scrubbed logs of rescue missions.

And you see, like it says, they went on this rescue mission.

And they acquired the people, and then when it talks about

the people, that message has been deleted.

Gotcha.

That's interesting. But I imagine I don't have a lot of time, so I'm just doing a

quick peruse and making note of stuff and research later.

And you make sure that, like, if anyone comes by, it looks like you're practicing

piloting.

Yeah.

Okay. So...

Laura, you did so well by the time that, like, you cover everything up, or Emmy

comes by and is like, oh, how are you doing?

Oh, let me show you this part of the radio room.

Oh, I really appreciate it.

Like I told the captain, I'm familiar with spaceships and that sort,

but submarine is entirely new to me.

I don't know. I can see the similarities, but I also note the differences.

Now, that Alan is here, Alan, would you feel that you would be part

of the outside crew doing, like, welding and defense,

or part of the flying command crew, or some aspect of engineering?

Probably flying command.

Okay.

Since I have plenty of experience flying anything.

Okay.

Anything with wings.

You're brought into the control room and they have you do a bit of

the piloting as he shows you kind of the direction and we will see how you do on the

pilot. I'm going to roll for you.

And that was a perfect roll.

I'm never rolling for myself again.

You show your knowledge of being able to control the ballast,

you turn the sub exactly at the angle you need to, to have a clear kind of

area, and You pull it within five feet of a stabilizing pad

that the sub can lock onto.

And it basically is like almost like an RV plug.

Like if there was power energy coming from the station, it would begin to start

refilling what's there or transfer oxygen from here

to them and the like.

Valancourt also says, I think it'd be a good time, though, for all of you to get

into VAC suits to experience it now that I've got a communication that your primary

VAC suit team is doing well.

Okay.

So, Ken, I have Cass, Varen, and Emma.

I'll roll VAC suit.

Again, I apologize. Is that an endurance, or is that a dexterity, or is that a

strength?

It is either a Dexterity or an Education.

Can we Buddy Check?

Yeah.

If you Buddy Check, you can roll with a Boon.

But it just takes one more time.

Okay.

I would like to Buddy Check, not Buddy Check.

Buddy Check. Always Buddy Check.

Same, same, same. All right.

Boon.

Success!

And then, Alan, you got your roll?

Oh, wait, what? I thought I was never...

You can roll your backsuit.

Oh, God.

Foundry, right?

You're not in yet. I'll roll for you.

Can you roll for me? I, like, just walked in.

No worries.

Thank you so much.

So much. He failed. Oh, I didn't boon.

Just clarifying, a buddy check is for those who have already succeeded.

So basically, buddy check is everyone gets it with a boon, but you're

doubling the time to put on the suits.

So, as you get more experience, you may not want buddy checks, or as there's

emergencies, you may not want buddy checks.

Okay.

You put on your suit, and then you walk up to a guy who is standing next to you, and

he checks all your valves, and he checks all your prep.

I see.

Okay.

All of you have VAC suits now with success.

You go to...

The airlock, it fills with water, and as you come off, you see the rest of the

outside people all kind of going there.

They've been holding onto parts of the ship as things have been kind of moving, and

you are at your first location, the Hadal Research Site.

There is aspects of Hadal that when you are looking at it, there is still some

energy here, but you do see some domes have been shattered.

You do see wreckage on the ground.

You do see some corpses.

In the ship?

No, at the Hidal Research site.

It's on the map, yeah.

If you load in, you can see the map.

This is a different location than the secret message I intercepted.

I don't know.

I don't know. It didn't come with coordinates?

What's your naval coordinates knowledge?

Super good at that.

They said, SOS, we're at this number.

And you're like, that's a number.

Maybe one of us who has a...

One second, I'm

pulling up my...

Would I be in the same area as you, Zora?

All you guys are in the same...

Yeah, but I intercepted that by sneaky means.

It wasn't something you would have been able to overhear.

It was through a communication sonar channel.

What was the skill to figure out where that location is, navigation?

No, it would actually be...

Where is it?

Seafarer. Yeah, there's a Seafarer skill.

Which I think one of us had in the last game.

And it was very... I will Jack of all trades it.

Okay. I haven't told you.

That's just to tell you where it is first. My bad, my bad.

I apologize.

Jumping the shark.

Well, the shark's going over you.

I'm under the shark. You're under the shark.

Okay. Yeah. Now, that you're at Hadal, there's a few roles that people can choose to

do. Recon, you can directly see which ones may still be powered at a distance.

You can try to go and find out what work and stuff that you might be able to pull

that way. Now, you can try to do remote ops

for Soshi and anyone else who has a remote ops of a high level and actually

control the drone that is basically sailing around.

I am willing to hear other crazy ideas, like you can try to do a communication to

listen if anything's coming through. You guys could try to do a lot of stuff.

But those are the open ones. I'm happy to hear hijinks.

Yeah, I mean, that communication prompt is not a bad one.

If there was any sort of like I have ideas for Survival and

Velter, but my Recon is higher.

So, well, but they're all going to get different things.

Remember that. So if you roll Recon, you're going to find the same Recon stuff.

Okay.

If anyone wants to do the communication is with Bane, so you feel free to roll that.

Sure.

So I have a hijink that would require or would be in that vein.

I want to pretend that I intercepted the message while I was outside the ship so I

can give it to the captains.

Okay, I'll accept a deception.

Okay.

You're hearing a buzz that has some pattern to it.

Emma, you succeed at saying, Captain, well, actually, you're out here with Sabine,

so you tell Sabine, I have intercepted this communication.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I will. I would prefer to go right to the captain, but I mean,

if the communication has to be through Sabine, I can be like...

He's not outside.

Pardon me?

The captain isn't outside the ship. You guys are outside the ship.

Right, and there's no way to communicate from your device into the ship?

So the basic ask, you have to tell it to basically do that.

It's a natural thing is to communicate with the team outside of you, because they

don't want to hear every word of, hey, dogs that rock.

Okay, I will tell Sabine then that I feel that I've intercepted a

naval message, and it involves an SOS.

Should I go and tell the captain?

Can you transmit it up, and we will clear ban transmit it to

the communications on the ship.

Can I do that? Do I have to roll for that?

Do I have to roll comms for that?

Because you already did first.

Boom, okay, I'm like, do I have to do a thing, or can I just have it on the thing?

Now, every player does know where they said the statistics are.

So, Colb, you can now roll

your jack-of-all-traits up to roll.

What did you say the remote ops would do?

I don't think I understood that. You're basically searching

the site with remote

ops. I don't know why.

Could a sensor check be part of it, or a computer?

Or it would just be cons?

Probably not, but sensors, absolutely.

I can do a sensor check.

So, Josh, as you're controlling the drone out there, you do find that one

of the power stations is still running, and you do note that there is a load.

It could be that there is another air filtration that it's running to.

There is some damage here.

Someone could try to repair it to make sure that there's no problems, but you do

see that there is still some activity either on computers or something inside the

base that is taking part of this geothermal load.

Okay.

Now, Alan, you're going to try to just do a sensor.

Yeah, do I roll a boon or just normal?

Just normal.

You do notice

that there are, of the five domes here, three of the domes have been broken and

two of the other domes do have damage but are

still holding oxygen inside of them.

Anyone who has not rolled have any hijinks they'd like to try?

I was just giving anyone else a chance if you wanted to roll Recon to roll it.

I could still do some shenanigans with the drone.

So you've gotten to where

one of the oxygenated domes are, and you see that the

airlock has been blown

away with underwater explosives.

Did we lose the net?

No, I'm here. I'm here. Is there anything you'd like to investigate or do with that?

Can the drone go through the explosive,

like, can I go deeper?

So let me kind of describe it. You can tell me how you want to do it.

Okay. So you had an airlock, and one of the doors was blown off.

Yeah. So if you go to the second door, you can get there.

But if you open it, the water goes in.

Sure. So you could try to just drill it or break it with the drone and keep on

going. But then it is sealed.

Its seal would no longer be sealed.

Right.

Yeah. Oh, I'm not there.

But you are on comms, right? I mean, I can describe this to the team and

say, we've got some explosive damage, but there's one door

that has compression behind it.

Idis would be concerned that there are survivors of any kind.

Ooh, can I do anything like listen to sonar and see if I can...

I don't know. Determine if there's any...

So, it's about the size of...

It's about 40 by 40.

So, you're not going to easily get sound there through a

drone. It would take people going there and doing sensor rolls and actually using

equipment on the edge of it.

Okay.

Also, there is noise from the generators nearby.

OK.

Well, like I said, I was mostly on a recon for this.

So I will continue to, I will actually just say all of that to the team over

comms. I will say, we've got a compression area, an area withheld compression,

but I don't want to try breaching for

sake of damaging anything interior.

Is there anything that leadership would like to do or

send a crew down?

Sabine says this is

a salvage setup. If you feel that there's important salvage behind there, feel free

to break the seal. If you feel that we need to invest more,

that needs to be part of your recommendation.

I just don't know if there's

a protocol for sealed breach

because I would hate to diminish the value of the

salvage recovery by

introducing atmospheric compression to the interior.

If there are better mechanics, maybe we can get some scrap To surround

the hole and basically build a faux airlock to get people

in to see what the recovery is.

Do we have the equipment to basically secure or

weld a makeshift

airlock, as you said? So let me kind of describe what it would be.

You basically, everyone who wants to go in and explore would go up against the door

and then outside people would weld that shut.

And then you'd pop the hole and only part of the water that would come in.

And only the water that's in the bubble, yes, would go in.

And then, yeah.

That would have to be a manned mission. So are there any mans that want to raise

hands?

I'm still concerned about survivors being in there because this is a Patrick game.

Well, survivors as in like violent survivors?

I mean, just people in general.

But I thought the whole point of popping it was that even if there's people there,

if it's only like, let's say, you know, a room full of water, if it's immediately

welded behind you, even if people are not in VAC suits, then they'll still be okay.

I thought that was the point. Did I misunderstand that, Patrick?

No.

Yeah.

And I'm also, I guess I'm missing the metagame there.

Like, if there's people in there and we're worried that the people will kill us, we

can just flood the place with water.

No, I think she means like a plot point of people who we'd want to talk to, not

like... Oh, yeah, no, this would just cause, say,

50 gallons of water to just splurge inside as opposed

to flooding the whole thing. Probably like 5,000 gallons of water, but sure.

Yeah, like 500 to 1,000, but that's still not enough to cover a 40 by 40 room.

Yeah,

so I could say that every one that you want to have

on the other side of the airlock is going to be that level of success needed.

Guys, I can weld it shut. I don't mind coming in, but I think I can do this.

Steinbach, you have some success in welding a little bit ago.

I suppose I could stay out here and help you all put this together.

Are we all who are piloting not going inside?

Is it like two teams?

People choose how many they want because that's going to matter on how good of a

role they need.

I

will maintain distance while

executive being the comms unit.

I don't want to be there to complicate the situation because I can't do welding.

But I want to monitor the situation.

Okay.

State to state with no pass.

That's your executive briefing.

Okay. Extra security, obviously.

Okay. So again, everyone who wants to go, can we hear that call?

I'll go. If we don't have enough people to go, I will go, but I would think you'd

rather me welding it shut.

Well, you could weld from the other side.

Okay, then I'll

go, sure.

I'll go. Okay, so that's three, right?

That's three so far.

Okay. So Steinbach and Josh, do you feel that you guys

giving a boon support can get an average three success?

Yes, if I get a boon to support me, I believe I could roll decently.

Okay.

So we both roll?

No. One of you rolls, the other gets a boon for me.

Okay, I have a plus two, and with my intelligence a plus four.

What do you have, Sama? I think I'm probably better at this.

I think I'm effectively plus three, so yeah, probably best then for you.

Okay. Josh, do the roll.

You got five. You only brought three in, but you got five.

So it's a very well-sealed thing.

Thanks.

Steinbach, as they open the door, you do feel it kind of give like

a shake as the pressure changes, and you are seeing leaks that you're constantly

working on. So can you just give me a roll?

I just want to see how long it's going to hold.

Sure. What would you like as the roll?

Does it get a boon?

Mechanics.

You said mechanics?

Nice.

Nice.

So there's eight turns they're going to have before there's even any leakage.

Great.

Everyone who went in, when it opens up, there is about

four people in there, and there's

about ten people dead.

So, four people living and ten people dead.

These people have probably been in here for about,

let's be generous, and say three weeks.

Oh my gosh.

They are in a rough spot.

They've been basically converting their water vapor

back into drinkable water.

Okay.

I'm like, guys, we heard there was trouble.

We're here to get you out.

I sealed the door, and I think I did a decent job, but maybe let's get out of here

soon, because you look like you all could use some help.

You have some suits? Maybe we could help you with them?

We don't have any suits.

We have one here with the attack occurring.

Okay, I'll send a message to outside.

I'm like, we have some survivors here.

Do we have any suits outside that we could bring over?

How are you going to open the door?

I welded it from the inside.

I'm going to weld it back from the outside, from the inside.

Okay, so water will get in.

That's great. It's an emergency save.

It's not a great save.

They're going to break the weld they made.

They're going to bring the suits in, they're going to redo the weld, and then

they're going to reopen the thing, is I think what he's trying to say.

I'm open to better ideas that sound less crazy, but I don't have a better idea.

Is there another

way in? There were all those escape pod things.

Can they be used as reconnaissance pods?

Wow, that's a really interesting idea.

So...

It's probably

negative 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

So they could survive swimming to one of those pods.

Well, they're emaciated, I presume, so they'll probably need help.

Right. But okay, I think Laura's plan, just by the way, if I'm wrong, tell me I'm

wrong. You want to pull four of the pods...

Yeah, that was more or less what I had. I was hoping that there was some sort of,

like, airlock to it, but if there's not, then...

The problem is you don't have a working airlock on their side.

It's been damaged.

Oh, okay. And it looks better now that we've welded it.

Okay. Does anyone have a better plan?

What is the actual depth that they're at?

I'll look it up.

Can I do a naval tactics to understand which one has a better odds of survival for

them? Can I help you with it, like Boone?

Yeah, I'll accept that.

If someone's like a naval genius, then they should do this instead, by the way.

I have a plus one in naval tactics.

Yes, me too.

I have a three.

Plus five.

Honestly, they would die if they hadn't already been pressurized to these depths.

Yeah, you said 1,500?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because they've been at 1,500 for all this time.

Like, you're not going to drain the surface and do the bins to kill them.

Like, they can probably, you can probably, with people in suits, push them in

basically the 7 to 10 feet that you need to to get them in the tubes.

So, Josh, did you do your roll?

Yeah, I got a plus 5. Okay.

Okay. The issue is getting them in Vax

suits very much implies they still have the strength and stamina to then get to the

ship.

Laura's plan is you guys are literally hauling tubes, so they don't need any energy.

Okay.

It will be everyone who's pulling them is going to have to do Vax suits of literally

pushing against the sea falling into this thing.

Everyone who's inside, though, can you give me an investigation?

Yeah.

I want to see all the people who are in the HAB give me an investigation.

Regular investigational?

Yeah.

Okay. Where is investigation?

The drone stayed outside the HAB because it can't...

The drone stayed outside.

Yeah. Yeah. Lie.

Did that include me?

Everyone who wins.

Okay.

Nice. That's amazing, Varian.

Wow.

Oh. And by the way, that was him rocking it with an untrained investigator.

No, I saw him. He rolled an 11.

I know, but he has negative three on the roll.

Yeah, awesome.

There was one other person in there, right?

There, supposedly. I didn't know who that person is.

Sochi was technically there, but she didn't take the drone in, so she's just

outside.

Sochi doesn't have an investigation, she only has a recon, right?

No, so I think Sochi is inside, but doesn't have the drone with her, is that

correct?

No, no, I'm back on the ship.

Okay, who was, there were three people who went in.

It was Peter, it was Josh, and it was one other person.

I guess it was Alan.

It was Casp.

Oh, it's Cass. Okay. Can Cass roll his investigation?

I misunderstood when you said it inside the ship. I thought you meant on our

original submarine.

Everyone is in the hat.

Oh, are you in the ship that we're in, or are you on the submarine?

Hey, finally a decent roll, and it's something I suck at.

Okay, so I am going to give it to Alan, just because that was the most amazing roll.

Yay!

One of the people who is all emaciated,

he looks exactly like the politician.

Like emaciated? What does that mean?

He's been without water for a week.

No, food without. Food without a

week. And he looks like the politician?

They're super skinny.

He looks very much like the leader of genetic research that you were all in the

room that you saw blown to pieces.

Exactly like him?

I don't know how I can phrase exactly.

He looks like him. If one of them is living the life of Riley and then the other

just had a very harrowing experience, Uh, yeah.

So, I just want you to note that while you guys are doing that.

Obviously, you're not going to be, like, stopping and interrogating the dude while

he's, like, barely able to lift his hand.

I mean, this might be the best time.

You're like, I promise you good life.

You're definitely one of the ones you want to do.

Okay. So, everyone gets the tubes over here.

Steinbach, can you give me another machinist roll?

Because you're trying to get the tubes as soon as possible and basically have them

float forward as the break occurs.

Nice, Steinbach. Perfect. There we go.

Okay. I'm actually going to say with that roll, you get everyone in the tube.

Because I was going to make it that you had to get four successes across both sides,

and you just got four successes.

So you get the four people in the tube, all of you gradually lug them

back.

Other things that are found, you guys find some power generators, you find a few

computer things, you find

few data cubes, and you do find a

computer chip that is seafaring land.

So anyone who has a computer chip can try to put it in for their seat bearing.

Cool.

I definitely wanted to stop and get chips beforehand, but we are kind of wounded

criminals, unfortunately.

You're like, hey, no one needs that.

Let me shove that in right now.

Okay.

We've got a helmet on, so we can't quite do that.

Yeah, so you guys all get back on the sub.

And let's go back to...

So while we're waiting, do we have time to talk with them and ask them what

happened, or not really?

Well, no, because they're in the pods, and you guys are

not in pods.

No, I mean while we were waiting for the pods to get there.

They're not feeling so great. Okay, so fine.

Kiernan's going to start going through the process of first aid as best he

can on some of these people.

That would be perfect.

Can you give me the first aid, and I do have a question.

Are you trying to focus on anyone in particular, or are you trying to make sure all

of them live?

Kiernan hasn't recognized any, right?

There is a role necessary to recognize some familiarity with these people.

But is it a triage you're trying to keep everyone alive, or are you just trying to

make sure some people live?

It's triage. He's trying to keep as many people alive as he can.

Okay, roll with a...

Unless I'm doing too much, I can assist with that.

I have a pretty good medic check.

Okay, I'll let you roll it natural then.

Awesome. Me?

He nods his head into you as you come in for assistance.

Ugh.

Well, I don't know why...

So, Alan, two people almost never do a roll.

Oh, I didn't

know that. I'm so sorry.

No worries.

It's funny because he said, I would like to help.

And at first you said he should be on the boon, and then you're like, okay, then you

said, never mind.

And that made it a normal.

Okay. Oh, okay. So I should never roll then.

Yeah, it's fine. So now, I would like, who feels lucky tonight?

I feel lucky.

Okay, I would like you to pick a number of 1 through 4.

The number you pick is the guy who looks like the person who was

there. I'm going to roll a 1d4, okay?

And we're going to see if that's the one who lived.

Oh, so, oh, three died. The reason we're dying?

He rolled a neg 3.

Yeah.

Wow.

Dice gods are cruel.

Okay, two. Two, okay.

Too late!

Cha-ching, folks.

That is a really lucky moment.

Dice gods are cruel things.

Is that like me coming over to help with the medic and I'm like, hey, isn't there

like a hole here in his chest? Maybe she plugged that thing right there.

And you're like, maybe this guy needs us.

I mean, what it comes down to, like, realistically, is

the best he can do for some of these people is give them thermal blankets, give them

little nibblings of food, and try and get your

bodies to, like, thermoregulate.

And it literally just comes down to, we need to give them time and see how they

react.

And then The biggest issue is, by the way, they were pressurized under there, and

you're pressurized at a different pressure.

Exactly. It's just kind of seeing how the goldfish acclimate to the new pond.

We just see who lives and who dies.

In a matter of an hour, all of them are dead but one.

It is the one, though, that Alan has realized looks like the other

person. Now, I would say everyone who's been around him and touching him

has kind of realized it now, too.

I'm sorry, what?

Everyone's kind of picked it up on now. He's the last living guy.

You're all looking at him a lot.

Okay.

I mean, maybe I'll say into the thing.

Hey, remember my friend John?

What's the guy's name again? Actually, I'll say his name.

I gotta look at my notes.

It's the author of the...

Oh, I might have the wrong guy thought of.

Patrick, what's

the last name? Oh, I just wrote it as the guy who was murdered.

It is... Mercer is his last name, so I'm right now trying to guess his

first name.

It's interesting, you know, this guy reminds me of a friend of mine.

I'm sorry, what was it?

A-L-A-I-N.

Align.

I'm like, this guy reminds me a lot of a friend of mine.

A friend of mine who has passed on, unfortunately, Mercer.

Like, the spitting image of him. Like, they could be twins or something.

Do I say something? Do you say this out loud?

I say this, like, over the mic so that the rest of the team can hear.

I would also say that this guy is currently unconscious but stable.

He's asleep, but, you know, you might want to come and see my good friend, guys, if

you can get off from your duty stations.

Maybe we can poke him with poking stick.

He looks like he should not be poked.

He probably shouldn't poke friends.

He didn't do anything to us. He's the one who got hurt, so we don't need to torture

his twin brother.

Well, we don't know that. We don't know that yet.

But we shouldn't start with that, perhaps.

Please don't let friends vote unconsciously.

I'm joking. I'm joking. I didn't say that.

I'm just saying that the guy who got murdered, I don't think, wanted to get

murdered.

You're not a victim blamer? Like, if you got murdered, you probably deserved it?

No. Liberals.

It's true. My bleeding heart is right on my sleeve.

He was in the wrong part of the government building.

What was he wearing?

Yeah, yeah. He was asking for a bit of movement.

Yeah, yeah. It's what he was wearing.

Listen, by definition, anyone who gets murdered doesn't want to die.

Otherwise, it's a sacrifice.

We're all terrible people.

In a private channel to Caspian,

he's just going to say in the private channel, hey, so it looks like we found some

evidence.

Yes, it does appear to be that way.

And we need to log this, and then, you know, it'll be some days before we can

feed this information.

But keep cool, man.

Keep cool.

What you need to do is stop giving him grace and start giving him food.

Let us let him nap first.

Look, he looks so peaceful.

It was more that he probably needs an IV.

I don't think he can eat a cube without vomiting everywhere.

Oh, I've been trying to find them for some time.

They're quite swollen.

Yeah, IV in a decompression chamber, I would say.

Yep.

And maybe a feeding tube?

If it stays in a coma long enough?

He's not in a

coma, he's just sleeping. I'm assuming he's in a coma until he wakes up.

Isn't that what being in a coma is? Being asleep until you wake up and then you're

no longer in a coma? I guess we each go into a coma every night.

This is my medical opinion.

So you guys put him in the sick bag and you guys are having at least someone with

medicine with him. Valancourt says he's wearing a Jardinian navel uniform.

We have to decide if he can survive or take him

to the undersea base.

The one in the center, right?

Well, I think he would probably do best if he came back with us to the company.

He could get the best care there, I think.

He's Jordanian Navy. We have no right to take him.

We're not taking him.

We're bringing him back as a rescue.

Josh, are you just your character talking that suspiciously?

Or like... I just want to chat.

I don't want to...

I guess I didn't know it's suspicious.

Well, he's directly saying that we could be like an hour away from an undersea base,

or we can take him to naval medical staff, and you're like, you know, how about we

like, kidnap him?

Okay, I'm going to shut up then if I'm saying something.

You can phrase it in another way. That's why I don't want to have these words locked

down.

I thought that how far away are we from where we took off?

Like if you're saying a naval base is an hour, how far away is it?

To get back to the main location, you're one hour away

under sea base.

You know what? I'm not the social guy.

I'm going to take a back seat.

If someone else wants to say something, they can say something.

So, just so that I have this right, we found him, we found four people, and

now we're deciding what we're doing with them?

Well, three of them die.

Three of them die.

Also, we're not the captain.

Right, but he's waiting for medical advice, and some of you guys seem to be

medically taking care of him.

So then medically, I would say, well, really what I think is that we should stay at

this pressure level for as long as possible so his oxygen level can

equalize. And on our way back, I think that's the best way

for him to stabilize.

Okay, so that answer is that we take him to the understate base, which is that

pressure level.

Well, that's going to be at a slightly different pressure than we are right now.

I don't think he can afford that.

He's in a shaky situation.

But if we take him to the naval base, he has to decompress faster.

Yeah, but we don't want him to decompress faster. We want him to be slowly.

That's how you get the bubbles. Wait, what is it called?

It's called the...

Yeah, that's how you get the bends.

Okay, so just so I'm trying to understand the clarity.

One is, because nine hours back to the naval base is not going to be enough for a

decompression.

So we'd have to basically wait a week in front of the naval base, gradually

decompressing.

Wait, wait. So he's saying, when you say the Gardenian Navy, correct?

Yes. Like, I will push everyone to undersea, so we're all talking on the same.

Is everyone on undersea?

If I understand it correctly, an hour away, at the same death we're at, there is a

Navy base, and he has a Navy uniform.

And they would keep him there until it's safe.

Undersea Base Allion is Transtar.

Oh, okay.

But there's no medical support there.

Oh, as long as it's Transtar Base, right?

Like, that's a key part of that piece, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. The Jordanian Base on the coast is full-on naval military.

Okay.

If you need medical help at the Transstar base, why does it sound crazy if I say we

go to the Transstar base?

You didn't say the Transstar base. He asked twice if you want the undersea base, and

you said no. You said you wanted to Transstar, which sounds like it's the one on the

coast. That's what I'm trying to just get cleared.

So you're saying you do want the base that's an hour away.

That's the Transstar base?

There are Transstar and there are military people there, but Transstar owns it.

Yeah, we want to go to the TransDar, please.

So let's call it Undersea Base Allion, as is listed on the map.

Okay.

I mean, does anyone... I kind of look around, like...

Does anyone have a idea?

No. No, we definitely want to be a proper PECON champion.

If everyone's of a...

Yeah, I'm just saying, again, the military base is nine hours away, and then this

one is one hour away.

We do the one hour.

Yeah, I'm very confused why you'd want to kill him.

What? No, it's not about the time, it's about the control, right?

Like, if we put him in our company, we can have access to him.

Even if it was reversed, if we would put him in a military base, then we maybe never

see him again. Yeah, he might go get offed, since they did try to

pretend off

him, at least. Okay.

So, you guys start moving towards undersea base Elyon at full speed that you can.

You arrive in an hour, and the

communication of...

Remy Buchchamp, he basically sends a message that we have a rescued

person. The rest of the crew died from the attack that happened a

few weeks ago, and

we are needing medical assistance right away.

He is Sardinian Navy.

We don't have an identification, but he's in a naval uniform.

As you guys pull up, There is a full crisis team

there that is there with the body.

They start working on it right there as they're taking him to a med bay.

You guys are happy to follow.

And they start doing

work on him. And let's see how quickly they recover.

Is there anything we can do to aid their medic roles?

They're basically all Medic 4, Intelligence Plus 3s.

Okay. They're a full team.

They do incredibly well. You guys see some color in him.

They basically shoot him with

nanites that are going to start trying to repair the damage on his

body and be able to Clean up the bends issue by actually going through

his veins

and gradually equalizing the pressures.

You see him actually awake as some of this is occurring.

Ten that they fully healed him, they got him at an eight.

So, you see him taken to the medical area, they have him, like, under an observation

area, but he's not under, like, armed guard or anything.

Right, but did we really all go, like, is there really, like, eight of us hovering

around this guy and a robot?

I imagine that it's much more like, hey, you know, we rescued this guy.

It's like when you watch Abyss. Like everyone is helping out the person who's been

swimming underwater without a suit kind of thing.

This base, by the way, has a very strong

vibe like the undersea mining platform from Abyss.

Okay.

But there is a bar and there's probably

60 to 100 personnel on this place.

The most noteworthy thing is they have a full-size airlock to actually bring ships

in it.

So if there is repairs that need to be done that the ship's not going to be able to

make the nine hours back to the coast, they can do work on it.

Sort of a mini dry dock almost.

Exactly. Can they look into the little ship that's on our ship that's all

bustinated?

You do see that there's a lot of replacement ships of that type around here.

But they are not They're not going on your ship and investigating that.

Valancourt is filling out the paperwork of what occurred and

is trying to kind of basically say they have this and

Sabine is also taking all the bodies and she's prepping them

for transport to the military to tell their families that these people

He basically died under the ocean and what was happening in the

line.

As things were kind of basically progressing, Valancourt gradually calls you guys

back on the comms and says, while we are going to be here for a day,

I would like to speak to everyone in the cruise mess.

Okay. And everyone...

Yeah, we go.

It's like I have a lot of things to say. The first thing is I think I'm very honored

that all of you risked what was necessary to attempt to rescue people

that were trapped underwater.

There's a lot of people their first few days under the sea would be paralyzed by the

idea of attempting to jury-rig, airlocks, be able

to give them the paths The fact that you are running straight in and being a crew

to help all of those that may be hurt is

true honor for your work here.

The thing I would like to bring up, though, is the location we went to was not

a Jordanian military base.

It was a transtar research facility.

And the fact that you were in a room full of military Jordanian Navy

makes me wonder why they were in there alone to even be captured.

Well, do we, is it

possible that all of the trans-star personnel on that base had perished,

and they just, we just happened to have the military people left alive

after everyone else died?

I can't imagine a, and by the way, all ten people you saw in

there, even the dead ones, were in Jordanian military uniforms.

Okay.

I can't imagine a full naval group there getting trapped.

Even if they do rewrite this as there was a naval team attempting to rescue a

transtar scientist and they got trapped on their own,

where was the ship that got them there?

These people were there.

And I can't imagine they were there for a positive transtar response.

Well, we did intercept that message that was only to the military as it was.

So there's some veracity to your statement of why

were they there in the first place kind of thing.

If you...

Hold on. I want to actually look at my skill.

What is my diplomacy actually at?

My deception is actually two, and my diplomat.

Oh, my diplomat's actually negative three. I only have deception.

Good job. I can only lie.

I can't be nice.

Do we have any diplomats among us?

I don't even know. I think I have a point

in it.

You're, like, very broadly spaced.

I have two. I have two points in diplomacy.

I am not diplomatic at all.

What I was going to say was that it may be advantageous to us to find out what he

was doing there, especially since he is currently in a Transgard

location. We can push that out as far as we can.

We can even poke him.

Let's not poke. Let's not poke anyone.

I know it's beyond your scope.

Being naval officers, but if you are better at gathering that information

before we are asked to leave him here, I might

be able to delay our ship leaving in two days.

I'm sure I can figure out a way by not poking him.

It also might be helpful as he looks at Steinbach

And Josh,

maybe you might be able to create an accident with

your machine work to distract

them while other members didn't get information.

Yeah, that sounds doable.

I think we can set up the distraction easily enough.

Let's not have any corpses, please.

What? I would never. We're in the life-saving business.

We're the good guys.

Let's go blow shit up.

Except when we kill lost three out of four.

You know, when it comes to pressurized zombies, one out of four is great odds.

I'm great. Yes.

Serena made a point to take hair samples of all the dead people, so...

When we get back to Transtar, we can genetically check to see who they are.

Can we do that to the guy?

Has that not already been done?

She's

like, I took hair from the dead. I wasn't going to take it from a living guy.

Well, I mean, but has the hospital done that yet since he doesn't have any

identification on him or on the uniform?

I don't know, but the communications are going to be massively delayed down there.

So if you're worried about his identity, maybe your accident should be the

communicators.

Annette, you also can walk outside the base and basically

stay outside the guy's room and investigate who comes in and who comes out because

no one's going to expect someone to be able to literally be outside for hours on

end.

Yep. That sounds great.

Take my fully charged guard watch.

Yep.

Can you give me a Recon Roll? Would you have a?

Yeah.

Pass.

Yep.

You see about what would normally be like 11 to

1 at night.

A SolSec operative goes in there.

He does some scanning on the guy who is quote-unquote asleep.

And he takes his hand and he makes a hand scan of it.

Makes a hand do what?

Hand scan, that's me. Oh, OK, scan.

I heard hand scan, and I'm like, he just like picked the guy up.

This guy is SolSec.

He is in a SolSec-labeled environment.

Yeah, I send a security notice report to the rest of the team just because

that's my job.

Is anyone going to try to stop the SoulSec agent?

I don't know if I can stop him from where I am, but as a former SoulSec person

myself, can I know what he's doing?

Laura thinks she has an idea, but I'd like to confirm it through my character.

What sciences do you have?

Or medicine? What sciences do I have?

I have psychology at one, and I have everything else at zero.

And then what was the other thing? I apologize.

Medicine? I have medic at one.

Yeah, I have medic at one.

Okay.

Education or intellect?

Educate.

Okay.

Wow. One of the things that Simple Psych does...

When people look similar, they basically need to prove that they are genetically

identical because you could do a genetic change of just changing your face and your

bone structure, but does that actually change every part of your fingerprint?

Does that change every part of your internal muscle growth?

What the scanners actually do also They scan

the bone structure in your hand to see how quickly the bones grew.

Wow, that's a whole thing.

Because it instantly tells you how old the person is.

Right, right, yeah.

Well, if they're a clone in some way, they would have been advanced enough

to look the same. I guess you can still look at the calcium deposits, though.

Right, exactly. The thing is, an advanced clone is not doing layer after layer after

layer. It's building your own.

Yeah, I thought of that after I said it.

Yeah.

Okay.

If I can hold on just a minute longer to my turn.

I'm going to presume that that information is being transmitted to a database

somewhere in some capacity.

Is that a stress?

In the database they'd be set up to.

Pardon me?

You know exactly what database it's likely set up to.

Can I try to Haxor into that so I can see the information for myself?

What? One in the guy's head like yours.

Oh, yeah, I got one in my head.

So he has one in his head.

I always forget I have one in my head, so he's got one in his head, too.

I cannot Hax's head.

Well, you can hack it off.

I'm not. We're not poking anyone, we're not hacking anyone's head up, we're just,

we're gonna be cool, guys. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

No doubt, no doubt.

I'm taking that off the table, it's just really down the list.

I noticed you're against poking and killing

and murdering for some reason.

Machinery roll, I mean, yeah, the machining roll.

Me?

Steinbach.

Oh.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were talking to me on that.

Yeah.

You said mechanic roll?

Yeah, Mechanic at a boom.

You did a great roll. Don't worry.

You did a great roll. Okay, so you, with

Josh, basically go and you flood concentrated salt water into the

batteries for the communication and basically make a minor leak they're going to

have to fix in about an hour.

Yeah.

My... Fair enough.

I'll go with that. I will say my thought was if we could sabotage the communication

gear in a way that they might come to us and say, oh, well, with your sub, we can

send messages back to the mainland via your sub's communication gear while you're

parked here.

That way we maybe then had to tap into their communication channel.

But the saltwater trap makes it nice and easy.

Right. The thing is they're not going to...

You can't relay anything out right now unless there's an emergency, like an actual

collapse of the base.

Right.

But you do stop them from sending random stuff or having soul sex on their messages

on the download.

That makes sense.

Does anyone else have any hygiene they want to do on the base?

I would like to go back to if anyone wants to actually physically intercept him, or

at least try to

talk to him. You want to intercept the SolSec agent?

Yeah.

Does anyone give a pro or con against that?

Yeah, I just want to follow in that same endeavor.

Security ping has gone off, and he wants to resolve the ping.

So, I don't think I'm asking my opinion, but I'm not super into this when we're in

an enclosed space that we cannot escape tangling with SoulSec, which is like a super

powerful, like one of the most powerful agencies in the world that we're in.

So, if someone would ask my opinion, I'd be like, how is this going to work?

What's our endgame?

I just want to talk to the guy.

Yeah, I am.

I'm not talking about kidnapping or beating him.

Yeah, I'd like to find out if his feet's connected to, uh, what's his face that

we fed information to.

So, like, yeah, I support you in this endeavor.

Yeah, uh, unfortunately, uh, Kiernan is not really, he's just

going to confront the guy.

Uh, yeah.

Wait, you're going to go confront the guy?

No, he's backing up the questions.

I'm just saying that he's just...

There is backup in Russell. Are you all not confronting him?

Because I thought that's what you said you were going to do. I misunderstood.

That is what they said they were going to do.

Intercept. Go talk to him.

Talking to someone is not confronting someone.

There is a difference.

Sure.

We are going.

We are intercepting.

Damien and Peter are going to go intercepting.

Okay. So he's walking down

a corridor, and I would say because Damien's a monkey, he comes

from behind, and Peter comes from the front.

Sounds good to me. What did you guys say?

So we noticed...

And we're not going to spread

this around or anything, but we noticed you were in a room taking a scan of a man

who happens to look exactly like an assassinated minister

that you guys are being partially blamed for.

Now, we know what happened there, but no one really believes us.

But we believe you want to get to the truth.

So if you just want to share some information a bit later or

have a conversation about it, we're open to that.

Okay.

I need you, Damien, because you were the talker, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I need you to roll a athletics plus dexterity.

Okay.

Okay.

I need you to roll it again because both of us got the exact same number.

He puts a gun to your head before you even notice it.

He basically pulls it out and shoves it up against your head.

He turns you around, and he's now basically behind you with the gun to you as he now

notices that there's all these other people around him.

You were enemies of the state, and you dare come to me in any aspect of

communication?

Well, you see, If we were enemies of the state,

would that be a bright idea for us?

If we were looking for the downfall of anything to do with the

Somali Empire,

wouldn't we be reaching out to you? That would be kind of crazy now.

You have a gun to your head, you're a monkey, and this is a

racist, that's a lot of slavery.

Yeah, I know.

So... I would like an intelligence roll.

If you win the intelligence roll, you go on your bit.

But most people are sick when there's a gun to their head.

I understand.

You're quiet.

Yeah. You're not shaking in your boots, but you're quiet.

Yeah.

Are you attempting to interfere with SoulSec activities?

No, in this particular case, we would like to help.

I'm not asking for your help. I don't want associations with criminals.

And whether or not the person that you were involved in the assassination to

has a duplicate or the duplicate was killed is part of SolSec

investigation. You are currently a transtar employee on a transtar base, and that is

why I'm not

putting a bullet through your monkey face.

But even if I did, what would I get?

A slap on the wrist as they throw you out for the orca.

He pushes you to your knees, and then he lets you go and walks away.

I didn't hear all that.

Emma's like, that's the kind of agent I was.

Yeah, the thing is, again...

I get it. I get it.

Surrounding him is not going to adhere him to communications.

And by the way, Laura, you are on mute.

Oh, man, you didn't hear my great story about, I was like, not story, but you were

like, that's the kind of agent Laura was. And I'm like, there was a reason I was

staying quiet through the whole thing.

I was reading your lips. Do you want me to tell everybody what you said?

That

is what I said.

Yeah. So the rest of you are like, hmm, maybe being up front with a

soul set guy while we're 2,000 meters underwater.

Maybe we should be a little bit calmer with that.

He could probably get us delayed, or put in a brig, or fed to the

orca.

Yeah, that approach wasn't the approach I would have taken, but I do appreciate the

effort.

Good, Tim.

So... We are at 1130.

If anyone has any things that they would like to get wrapped up, I'm happy to do it.

And I'm happy to basically, you guys are locking out communication and you're going

to obviously try to be more friendly with the SoulSec person in another time period.

We are? I imagine.

Okay. I want him to send negative data about you.

Well, not less friendly.

Yeah, we can find someone else who can be friendly to that guy, I guess, because

Kiernan's never going to be that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fun. As a player, I have scruples.

As a character, I am indifferent.

As a character, you're a murderhobo. I get it.

Only when directed. Only when directed.

She's actually the not-murderhobo.

Yeah.

That would involve emotional disconnection.

Well, a murder bot is just I'm blowing people up because that's what guns do.

I was told to aim my

guns in that place.

Yeah, like, honestly, I would understand if you basically go send the associate to

go kill the SoulSec agent before he can transmit anything.

Yeah, I'm not doing anything. I could do everything.

I could solve this problem in one way very quickly, but...

Right now, I was just like, hey, just letting you guys know.

I can solve all the problems

super fast.

And then we can pull that chip right out of his head, and I can see what's on

it.

Kiernan was on that wavelength when a security blip went off on the person we were

watching. He was very much like, we're going to go apprehend a person.

And then everyone was like, no, no, no, let's not.

Well, we didn't know you were going to walk up and be

sassy bitches.

Why are you saying that Kiernan was anything in that?

Because you were there?

I was backed up. I did not say words.

I was silent. As the grave.

Right, but you were surrounding the guy.

Like, your presence definitely was an influence.

And you're not exactly a mild-mannered-looking guy.

All right. Did we want Zoey to go alone?

I understand I'm very lippy for a monkey in this society, all right?

That doesn't go for me.

Did we want Zoey to go alone? Did we want to know what would happen to Zoey if he

had gone alone?

I would say that Zoey's nickname should be Gunface.

Not because he shoots people, because everyone wants to put a gun in his face.

No, I think we should definitely stick together. I think it was good that you stuck

together.

Honestly, it's why the guy retreated without forcing an interaction.

He wasn't going to shoot a random person with who knows what weapons you guys had

on.

Yeah. Did people enjoy, though, their first undersea adventure?

None of us did.

The seaweed is always greener.

I was waiting for a Jamaican crab to come around and talk to us, but...

I got to do crab RP over the whole boat.

I was doing my vac suit stuff.

I was doing my climbing.

I really hope I landed the vibe of you guys being on the sub and

controls and Getting the suits on, and everyone has their little mission part.

Oh yeah, I loved some of the description stuff you were doing with how Vaxuit

phenomena kind of work out.

The moment you started talking about that facet of the career, I was already

thinking of little...

Not like folk phenomena, but like common phenomena amongst...

Operators of like, oh shit, yeah, calm down, focus up, you

know, the heat that you think you're feeling from the ship is not real, like phantom

heat and phantom cold in environments where there is none of that.

The training was fun, like not assuming that the players were competent, but like

that they needed to be trained for the job.

That was good stuff. Yeah, good stuff.

I really liked some of the ideas you floated there, Patrick.

Floating.

Have a good night.

I would say that not everything that you had tonight landed very well.

Good night.

And a lot of good nights.

Womp womp.

I don't know that I got this fun, but sure.

I'm glad you had a joke.

I did have fun, Patrick.

The landing was purely a joke.

All right. Good night.

Bye-bye. Good night.