20230131 - Run 37 - D.va as Scribe

d. va's archeology logs

We have now discovered Ripley and time loop #2.

d. va's proposal:  let's figure out how long time loop #2 is.

we open the dick-marked door and peek in.  get hit in the face with radiant energy.  place smells of burning circuitry

and looks like a laser show.

nyla's chest hurts at the same moment we see one of the crew members erupt

it erupts out of someone who was just helping inside this room.

and then there's a horrible scream etc.

tentacles reproduce in other crew members

and the whole place turns into tentacles

and we watch it happen again and this time we close the door before the blast.

nyla thinks the pain in her chest is carl warning her of the profane.

let's try plan 'lure ripley out of the engine room and talk to her'

attempt 1:  the timing is way off because we were using nyla's chest pain as a timer.

nyla's chest pain is followed almost immediately by tentacle murder.

the engine room bucket line is loading chi into the engine?

plan:  use nyla's 'create bonfire' or d.va's 'mending' as a timer.

wait 4 castings worth of time after nyla's chest hurts.

open the door and shout at ripley that 'that guy over there is going to turn into a tentacle monster'

nyla:  HOW did we get here?  it started out with me going 'spaceship' and now there's tentacle horrors

we do this.

ripley does not lose her shit.

we do not convince her this loop.

it's a little different this time.

the order of death has been thrown off.

we close the door before we all blow up

hear ripley banging.  we let her out.

debrief with ripley:

tentacles are poisoning.  incursion/exposure

where ripley is contact with the ship, there's this nimbus of where the ship looks different and matches her instead of the present time.

we leave ripley alone for the time being and head to fusion room 1

and then realize that none of us know where fusion room 1 is.

whomp whomp

we look at the map to figure out where fusion room 1.  based on our understanding of the ship, we can extrapolate where fusion room 1 is.

across on the other spine.  where we do not want to be.

the party of intrepid adventurers are methodically moving through the center of the ship to the other spine.

there's a dead empty room that clearly received a large amount of explosive energy.

that might have been a power plant once upon a time?  layout isn't the same as fusion 2.

we work our way through that and come up on a door that we think is going to open into the other service spine.

Nyla notices the seeping ichor stains ringing this doorway.

Chad and d.va. look at the acid stains and going 'are we going to get this by this again'

d.va. is being a cat at the door.  Chad's the one who notices that whereas the other ones etched a little ways into the panelling and stopped, this one has eaten deeply into the surface.  the more he looks at it, the more he realizes he's seeing varying overlapping waves of acid etching.

and then the stutter happens.  and the door fades.  and it comes back.  and it fades out again.

we run the other direction.

chad wonders what would happen to a location that's under multiple timeloops.

hypothesis that we are in fact watching the last minutes of ship play out in the timeloops, and we're just always watching the same time.  and that those people in those loops are still alive and we think they're ghosts because we're not in their time.

we decide to walk to the end of the service spine that fusion 2 is on.

we know a bunch of people have died here because we see their shadows.  but these people are not looping through their death.

we go deeper into the ship.  the air does not feel heavy or stale or anything.  there are rising talc notes.  the bitter tang that you can taste in the back of your throat that lingers.  and it's harder to breath.

we have made our way into the aft end of the ship.

sounds of sagging of the ship are worse back here.

very very faintly, constant droning note in the background.  like wind against the hull.

we have made it to the very back.  and now we're going to try to make it to ghost spine from here.

at least one room we pas through looks like an officer's cabin.  which was not looted thoroughly.  which begs the question why.

so we case the joint.

we go through the effects still left in this bunk.  we suspect that this is an officer's space because there's only one bunk.  it's tiny but private.  there's a collection of slates that get dropped into the bag of holding.  there's a stuffed animal without a tag.  it looks like a cockatrice.  it too is going in the bag of holding.

there's a framed image, looks like a portrait.  extended family?

there's a plaque labeled in old kraskian.  'employee of the month' for the lieutenant commander of the ship collective.

"it's the princess di cockatrice"

we don't know if this ship managed FTL travel.  if it was a slow ship, it could have left before the collapse and landed after.

we open the door into a room humming with activity.  there are people strapped into chairs/crash couches.  Like the other people we've seen so far.  so like, on the other end of time.  this is the auxiliary bridge.  

there are people standing around what looks like a course plot.  there's a collection of other techs.  and a lot of hardware.  and someone standing by the door, looks at us, and holds up a hand.

and says 'halt!'

d.va tries to explain that fusion 2 is going to blow.  which of course they dont' listen to.

and the captain orders us off the bridge.

chad tries to look for time markers on the plot and sees nothing.

caleb is paying attention to something not the central plot but the words being said by three different people strapped into crash couches.  these people are intubated and have goggles on their faces.  they're holding various collections of joysticks and multibutton throttles.

and caleb hears them speaking in falsa.  and it sounds like they're praying in fala

they are each speaking different litanies beseeching the aid of a wide variety of spirits.

begging spirits to guide them and empower the ship to withstand the dangers of its course

has the tone of being an everyday necessity, and they believe it to work.

we're being chased out by the guard.  and there's a quick 'how did we get into the lieutenant commander's quarters!'

'there' sno course around it.  we can't change direction.  we can only go through'

and dr. castle shouts 'try not going through this time.'  only with a lot more cursing.

dr castle proceeds to get shot by the guard.  and then proceeds to hit the guard until he's stunned.