Episode II: The Gathering Storm IC Thread 3

[Hyperbolic sine]

With the Shadowhawk safe inside the hangar and the doors closed again, Gial felt pretty confident in the base's camouflage. Leaving Danko to begin repairs on the ship, he took the turbolift up to the control room and started his painstaking hunt for access codes, overrides and backdoors.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Taking 20 for 42 Use Computer to remove/replace as needed and become the true master of the station.

[RandomLunatic]

"So that's why she doesn't trust you with anything more complicated than 'push the button'. You're one of those mindless bootlickers. Your mother must be so proud," Shyar commented, then none-too-gently urged 419 down to the brig. Hopefully the Sith had at least gotten around to installing the cell doors.

[Thundercracker]

"So that's why she doesn't trust you with anything more complicated than 'push the button'. You're one of those mindless bootlickers. Your mother must be so proud," Shyar commented, then none-too-gently urged 419 down to the brig. Hopefully the Sith had at least gotten around to installing the cell doors.

The soldier is non-compliant, going limp and forcing you to drag him to the turbo lift. Assuming you do, you get down to the brig to find it is mostly empty space. Areas you’d normally find with holding cells and processing areas are filled instead with painted lines on the ground and some equipment and construction materials. There are several more advanced stasis cells set up, the type that use force fields to keep prisoners inside, probably installed as a stopgap until the brig could be completed.

[RandomLunatic]

Well, fine. Shyar dragged the trooper by his ankles down to the brig, patted him down, and set him up in one of the stasis fields.

Then she went back to find Zavi and ask a pressing question. "You said you found this place because it was all dark-sidey, right? Can the GT do the same to us now?"

((Take 20 to search, 34.))

[whoiam]

Zavi just stares at Shyar for a moment, before bursting out laughing.

"You know, just 'cause Kikari and I both have fur doesn't mean we're the same person. She found it, go ask her!"

[RandomLunatic]

"Alright, if you don't know," Shyar said, going off to ask Kikari the same question.

[Hazuki]

"They...may be able to, yes," Kikari answers from the spot she's found herself, which is a chair where she can sit cross-legged and focus her mind. "I am not a scholar, but I could sense this energy because of what happened here, and what it was linked to. I have been too focused on not letting the echoes get to me. I can check now, to see if it remains. One moment..."

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I'll take 10 on UTF for 26 to sense dark sidedness.

[Thundercracker]

Shyar: you pull a One Sith standard issue blaster pistol, vibrodagger and a comlink off the soldier.

Zavi & Kikari: while the Dark Side presence is still there, it is much more subdued than before, nowhere near the crushing fear and despair it was previously. It is unlikely anyone off the station would be able to sense it but the Force works in mysterious ways.

[Hazuki]

Kikari reports her findings to Shyar.

"I hope that this information is useful," she adds.

[Thundercracker]

With the Shadowhawk safe inside the hangar and the doors closed again, Gial felt pretty confident in the base's camouflage. Leaving Danko to begin repairs on the ship, he took the turbolift up to the control room and started his painstaking hunt for access codes, overrides and backdoors.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Taking 20 for 42 Use Computer to remove/replace as needed and become the true master of the station.

Spoiler

Show

somehow I missed this, my bad.

Gial finds the security around the main computer is not exactly world class and it isn’t long before he breaks in and has full control, for all the good that does. The main computer is not yet hooked up to all the subsystems it usually is. Gial has access to comms, cameras, turbo lifts, and doors, and that’s about it. Everything else has to be done manually.

[RandomLunatic]

"It helps me rest a little easier," said Shyar.

Then she went to find Gial. "Have you found their camera logs yet? I'm curious what was in that box that was all so important."

[Hyperbolic sine]

"I wasn't looking for that yet, but the console's unlocked. It's all yours for the viewing, I have stuff to do." Gial said, leaving the seat to Shyar and heading for the turbolift.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

To do "everything else".

[Thundercracker]

Unfortunately, the camera feeds aren't yet hooked up to the servers which could record and archive their footage, so there are no logs. You might be able to gather some clues if you head to the room Maladi emerged from; there are no cameras in that room.

Gial discovers that a great deal of the computer and technical equipment for the base is either missing or still sits in pieces on the floor, or even in their factory boxing. He could start working on putting things together so the control room can act as a 'bridge' of sorts, but he'd need the others' help.

[RandomLunatic]

"Blast," Shyar said, then went back to the lift to take it down the the room Maladi had emerged from.

[Thundercracker]

Shyar heads down to the room the Sith emerged from. Inside the normal door is a roughly spherical chamber, about twelve feet across, with a small platform raised in the center. Every inch of the walls, ceiling, and floor, everything except the top of the platform, is covered with carved sigils or markings of some kind but Shyar is not able to understand them. The whole room exudes a kind of unsettling feeling, like she’s being watched.

[RandomLunatic]

Realizing she was out of her depth here, Shyar quickly retreated to find Kikari again. "I think the Sith had a room set up as some kind of shrine or something. Symbols all over, a pedestal in the middle, and wicked bad vibes all over."

[Hazuki]

"Oh." Kikari opens her eyes to glance at Shyar. "I suppose I could look at it. But I warn you I am no scholar."

[Thundercracker]

Sith chamber:
The chamber is clearly infused with Dark Side energies, but they’re much subdued from before, and and even as she studies the markings, Kikari senses it decreasing even further.

Kikari is able to identify the glyphs as Sith markings, but she’s unfamiliar with the forbidden language and is only able to get a sense the chamber is used to focus the power of the Dark Side somehow, and she also discovers a triangular indentation at the top of the pedestal at the center of the chamber, where something once rested.

[Hazuki]

"This, it is some kind of channeling chamber for the Dark Side," Kikari tells Shyar, as she regards the room like a shadow might jump out at any second. "The dais, it makes me think of a Holocron - they are like computers, but with knowledge, dead people's, inside. But they are not used to store power...or I don't think that they do. We should..." Her brow furrows in concentration. "Scan it, take pictures, recordings. Send them to the Jedi. Maybe they will tell us how to dismantle it, safely, but even if they do not, it will tell them what Darth Maladi is doing, which is good, yes? Blowing up big places like that is bad for business."

[Hyperbolic sine]

"What do you mean, safely?" Gial, having caught the last part of the conversation, said as he stepped inside the chamber. "What could happen if just tore it down? It sure is one creepy room, though."

It felt like he was being watched.

"Anyway, I need some hands to make the control room an actual control room."

[Hazuki]

"What would happen if you found a new engine, one of a kind you had not seen before, and then you decided to treat it like any other engine? People would call you a fool, and it may explode in your face, and then you would be dead," Kikari explains. "This is not an engine, but...the dark side, it sticks to things, and lurks, and a great deal of it was just here. It would be foolish to treat is like any other room when we do not truly know what it is or what it does."

[RandomLunatic]

"Maybe your new friend, that master?" Shyar suggested as Kikari brought up the Jedi. She shivered and looked over he shoulder. "They can't like see us in here, can they? I swear that one follows me around the room," she said, pointing at a glyph on the wall.

"I'll give you a hand as soon as I figure out just what the Sith are up to. None of this makes sense. And I hate when things don't make sense." She headed back up to the control room to trawl through the computer bank again. She decided to start looking at comm logs.

[Thundercracker]

Shyar heads to the control room to try and pull the logs, but the databases which were supposed to store the communication logs aren’t hooked up. Anything prior to the current day has been overwritten. On today’s logs, she finds the time stamps of the calls with the GT transport, and prior to that, only a few calls from the Medical level, requesting assistance with maintenance like fixing power couplings or doors.

Combined with what Gial has found, it looks more and more like there’s plenty of equipment on the station, but Maladi’s band didn’t have the technical expertise to keep the lights on in the partially constructed base.

[Hazuki]

"Oh, before you go," Kikari says to her two criminal companions. "Could one of you search the records for any Nautolans that were in Maladi's employ here?"

[Thundercracker]

"Oh, before you go," Kikari says to her two criminal companions. "Could one of you search the records for any Nautolans that were in Maladi's employ here?"

Unfortunately there are no records of any nautolans because the databases aren’t set up... but there is a prisoner in the brig.

[Hyperbolic sine]

"Yeah, but I mean...can't we just rip the walls and toss them out? It's a room. It can't explode."

"...it is pretty creepy-feeling, though. I'll trust you on this, I suppose."

---

"There are no records, I'm afraid. You'd sooner find a luxury resort than an installed server on this damn asteroid. No wonder they wanted to blow it up." Gial replied, then went to search for Zavi to enlist her as well, and swung by the hangar bay to see of the Shadowhawk's repairs were coming along (and possibly enlist Danko, too).

[whoiam]

When Gial finds Zavi, she's actually in the hangar bay. She's not helping with the repairs to the Shadowhawk... mainly because she's not very good at such things. Instead she's just picked a corner of the bay and gone to 'sleep'. Well, to a Jedi Trance, technically, but Gial's probably the only person present who knows she's capable of that.

When he approaches her, the response is a distinctly cool "What now?"

[Hyperbolic sine]

"I need hands to make some basic control infrastructure, this place isn't even half finished."

"Also, we found a creepy Sith-room. Kikari says we should ask a Jedi how to safely dismantle it. Any insight on the matter?"

[whoiam]

"A meditation chamber, I'm guessing. On the one hand, we really should keep it intact until we can show it to the Jedi as proof the Sith are active in the sector. On the other, Darth Maladi can probably scry on the chamber at will. Take some holos for evidence and then blast the place apart with explosives. Then fill it in with duracrete. Unless it's near enough to the surface we can cut that section off the base and leave it behind when we jump again. That would be better.

As for the control chamber, " Zavi gestures at the people working on the Shadowhawk. "Why don't you borrow some of them instead? Most of your tools are built for people with more, and smaller, fingers than me. And frankly I wouldn't know how to use them even if they did fit my hand."

[Hyperbolic sine]

"Scry!? ...yeah, that chamber's blowing up, no question about it."

"And...yeah, I'm not looking for technical help. There's stuff to move and unpack. I'm asking everyone to chip in." Gial replied, then turned to the ship and called out to Danko (or commed him, if he wasn't in sight/too far).