Gordon heads over to the ladder, and, taking Collette's advice for haste, slides down the ladder instead of simply climbing down. He heads over to the trolley, and starts to wheel it into place. As he works, he takes the opportunity to marvel at the rock's beauty. As he gets closer, he slows the trolley down, and carefully eases the rock into position.
"It'll be in position in three..." Gordon says as he works, "two... one..." he locks the trolley wheels. "Ready," he then backs off, heading over to the ladder to the control console.
Gordon gives the cart one final push, the sample moves forward.. into the beam. Suddenly there is a loud explosion, and the sound of electricity arcing hard. Gordon looks up to see the spectrometer crackling with power. Dr. Watson shouts. "Oh dear! Gordon, get away from the beam!"
Frantically Dr. Collette speaks, as the Spectrometer bursts and crackles. "Shutting down.. attempting shut down.. it's not--it's not shutting down, it--AHHH!!!" The screams of the scientists fill the intercom as a large green bolt strikes inside the observation window, and then is cut off. The spectrometer is overloading, and the center of the room glows bright green, shooting bolts of energy every which way! The room is lighting up like a Christmas tree.
Gordon sprints swiftly to the ladder, climbing up as the chamber rattles. The glowing light, like a plasma ball hitting all sides of the walls, seems to be deriving its energy from the crystalline sample; Gordon catches brief glimpses of something popping into thin air, and then, suddenly the energy surrounds him...
Darkness. Gordon only hears his heart beating and the heavy breathing in his helmet...
Then suddenly he's back in the test chamber.. and the spectrometer is going insane--the alarms are going off, and explosions rattle debris down from above. Gordon manages to avoid it, but then there is another bright flash..
Gordon opens his eyes to find himself standing ankle-high in water.. looking over a jagged, pocketed foreign landscape.. the sky a dark green.. strangle bulbous things sticking out of the ground like trees.. and two large chicken-legged alien things with tentacle mouths munching on the ground before him. Before he can even move, there is another flash.. darkness for a brief moment.. then a dim light illuminates four figures.. ugly, hideous beings with giant red eyes, hunched over and looking at you, mumbling in an incoherent language.. another flash, and then darkness.
Gordon wakes up, in a slight daze, back in the test chamber.. the spectrometer is now in pieces on the ground before you.. and the sample and the cart is covered in heavy bulkheads.. this place doesn't look entirely safe.. and the door to the chamber is half open. The alarm is warbling loudly. What the hell happened?
Gordon checks to see whether he's all there. Hands, feet, okay, he taps the side of his helmet. I can still hear. Good. He turns on his radio as he picks himself up "Doctor Collette? Watson? Breen?" He says into it, hoping someone will be able to answer. He makes his way to the half open door. "Parson, Dewey, you there?"
There is no response from the radio as the spectrometer is giving really bad interference. The bottom half of the door to the entryway is open. There's no radiation detected, but it doesn't feel safe to be here right now.
Gordon climbs under the door and sees the dead corpse of a scientist, laying in a pool of his own blood. He hears a loud warbling alarm in the distance.
The door into the entryway is the dead corpse of Dr. Dewey, laying in a pool of his own blood. There's no evidence of the cause of his death, but he looks rather surprised.
The doorway to the outside is closed, the retinal scanner near it is half-active, sparking a little and blinking.
(You may make skill checks at any time during the game, as this is really where it begins.)
Gordon curses at this, apologizing to the two scientists. He craws over to them, and rolls them over, trying to confirm his suspected cause of death: flying debris.
(There is only one scientist laying dead here.) The scientist has nothing in his pockets, nothing looking like a key or anything. A calculator, a watch, a few pens.
Gordon spies the retinal scanner by the door. It looks somewhat operational. Maybe. He saw Dewey look into it to open the door into the test chamber--before it blew up. He wondered if anyone was coming to investigate the unfortunate failed test.
OOC: What skills would I use to try to determine cause of death? Survival? Knowledge (Biology)? Or is it bloody obvious with like a chunk of metal sticking out of his chest?
It's clear to Gordon now, after having searched the body of Dr. Dewey was killed by some sort of electric pulse or burst of energy. Perhaps something in the room short circuited.
The door outside is closed, but it doesn't appear broken. The retinal scanner seems to be partly malfunctional. Likely due to the fact that the door to the test chamber is half fallen open. It is still powered though, but it's flickering.
Gordon puts his face against the scanner through his helmet. The scanner blinks over his eyes and then flashes, sparking a little. The robotic voice of the computer garbles and warbles, malfunctioning. "Ragarffaraghhh--thorized Personnel."
The door leading out slides open, then slams shut, then open, shut, half-open, shut, then slides open and there are loud pops and sparks. The door is now fixed open.
A loud klaxon alarm is railing in the hall. A live wire is hanging down from the ceiling. One of the scientists that was working on the system is now performing CPR on a seemingly unconscious security guard, a medkit nearby. Laying on the ground in a puddle of blood is another scientist.
Gordon is almost to the door when it slams shut. He decides to wait until it's done with whatever it wants to do before continuing.
He waits a good ten seconds after the sparks before heading out. Carefully maneuvering around the wire, he heads into the hall.
Okay, whatever happened looks like it was probably base-wide, he thinks.
He passes by the medkit, He needs it more than I do, and starts to look for then follow the orange Control Room line. He knew that thing took a direct hit. He had to see if he could help somehow.
To get through to the Control Room, Gordon has to take the elevator back up. Following the red line down the hall, Gordon rounds the corner to see more dead scientists littering the floor. As he approaches an unstable server, it explodes and crushes a corpse into a red paste. They appear to have been shocked to death, though their bodies show scratches and tears, spraying and pooling blood all around. Red lights are flashing on the walls. It's almost like the sector is tearing itself apart.
Gordon sees the elevator behind some piled rubble and, with some effort, climbs over. One of the four windows in the elevator door is pierced with a large tube, but the other door opens, letting him in. Still no reception from the radio. The elevator goes back up and the doors open. Dr. Vance is standing by the destroyed computer terminal, the one that had overloaded earlier. He is with his companion, though he looks to have a twisted ankle as he sits on the floor, holding his leg, and his stomach.
"Why didn't they listen?" He moans.
"We tried to warn them!" Eli laments.
"I never thought I'd see a Resonance Cascade, let alone create one."
Eli looks up and shouts. "Gordon! You're alive! Thank god for that hazard suit! I'm afraid to move him and all our phones are out. Please, get to the surface and let someone know we're stranded down here." Dr. Vance was never one to put himself above others.
After seeing the carnage, Gordon took a few deep breaths, trying to keep the bile down. He shook his head, and made his way through. The only thing I can do now is make sure nobody else ends up like this.
"A cascade... I knew I had a bad feeling about this," he says after Eli's companion spoke, prompting Eli to turn and speak.
"Alright, I'll let them know," he says after Eli finishes. "By the way, someone was giving CPR to a downed guard back down there. I'll be sure to let them know once I get up there."
He heads back the way he came in, trying to get to the surface.
Eli nodded. "You'll need me to get you past the retinal scanner to the control room. I'm sure the rest of the science team will gladly help you." He nodded to his friend and started walking with Gordon back towards the Control Room, when suddenly inside of the three empty containers three small flashes of green turned into strange, four-legged creatures, the size of small heads, walking on tiny legs. They 'saw' Gordon and Eli, somehow, following them. "Good god, what's going on... the Cascade must be reaching to another.. world, or something."
One of the small creatures tries to leap at Gordon, its massive sucker mouth on the bottom pressing against the glass, to no avail.
Eli walks to the retinal scanner to the Control Room and presses against it. This one is entirely operational.
"Gordon, I'll take care of things here. We'll try to find our own way out as soon as we can. You need to get out of here before it gets worse. If anyone knows what to do, it'll be Isaac."
Isaac Kleiner was the head of the Lambda Complex on the other side of Black Mesa. "If you can't get out of Black Mesa, look for him."
"GYAH!" Gordon yelps at the creature trying to latch onto him. He grabs it and tries to pull it off. Should he succeed, he places it under his foot, and stamps down hard.
The creature is quite unable to break through the glass and get to Gordon, but despite his usually calm demeanor he still jumps. Eli moves to the retinal scanner and activates it. The door slides open.
"Get going, Gordon.. I'll try to figure out a way to.. dispose of those things before they can break free."
Eli waves Gordon through and he enters the destroyed Control Room. There is no real evidence of any scientists here at all, even. Just as Gordon crosses the room to the other door, a huge green bolt of energy flies through the Observation window as it looks into the Test Chamber!
Reflex:
Dice Roller1 D20 rolled with a +5 modifier
13 + 5
Gordon jumps back, and then another bolt flies in, hitting a second spot just behind him, then a third further back. The beam in front reappears for a moment, then vanishes.
"It'll be in position in three..." Gordon says as he works, "two... one..." he locks the trolley wheels. "Ready," he then backs off, heading over to the ladder to the control console.
Frantically Dr. Collette speaks, as the Spectrometer bursts and crackles. "Shutting down.. attempting shut down.. it's not--it's not shutting down, it--AHHH!!!" The screams of the scientists fill the intercom as a large green bolt strikes inside the observation window, and then is cut off. The spectrometer is overloading, and the center of the room glows bright green, shooting bolts of energy every which way! The room is lighting up like a Christmas tree.
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Darkness. Gordon only hears his heart beating and the heavy breathing in his helmet...
Then suddenly he's back in the test chamber.. and the spectrometer is going insane--the alarms are going off, and explosions rattle debris down from above. Gordon manages to avoid it, but then there is another bright flash..
Gordon opens his eyes to find himself standing ankle-high in water.. looking over a jagged, pocketed foreign landscape.. the sky a dark green.. strangle bulbous things sticking out of the ground like trees.. and two large chicken-legged alien things with tentacle mouths munching on the ground before him. Before he can even move, there is another flash.. darkness for a brief moment.. then a dim light illuminates four figures.. ugly, hideous beings with giant red eyes, hunched over and looking at you, mumbling in an incoherent language.. another flash, and then darkness.
Gordon wakes up, in a slight daze, back in the test chamber.. the spectrometer is now in pieces on the ground before you.. and the sample and the cart is covered in heavy bulkheads.. this place doesn't look entirely safe.. and the door to the chamber is half open. The alarm is warbling loudly. What the hell happened?
Chapter 2: Unforeseen Consequences
Soundtrack: Space Ocean
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The door into the entryway is the dead corpse of Dr. Dewey, laying in a pool of his own blood. There's no evidence of the cause of his death, but he looks rather surprised.
The doorway to the outside is closed, the retinal scanner near it is half-active, sparking a little and blinking.
(You may make skill checks at any time during the game, as this is really where it begins.)
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SEARCH
SPOT
The scientist has nothing in his pockets, nothing looking like a key or anything. A calculator, a watch, a few pens.
Gordon spies the retinal scanner by the door. It looks somewhat operational. Maybe. He saw Dewey look into it to open the door into the test chamber--before it blew up. He wondered if anyone was coming to investigate the unfortunate failed test.
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SURVIVAL
OOC2: Well that's a big help
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KNOWLEDGE (TECHNOLOGY)
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The door leading out slides open, then slams shut, then open, shut, half-open, shut, then slides open and there are loud pops and sparks. The door is now fixed open.
A loud klaxon alarm is railing in the hall. A live wire is hanging down from the ceiling. One of the scientists that was working on the system is now performing CPR on a seemingly unconscious security guard, a medkit nearby. Laying on the ground in a puddle of blood is another scientist.
The man performing CPR doesn't notice Gordon.
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He waits a good ten seconds after the sparks before heading out. Carefully maneuvering around the wire, he heads into the hall.
Okay, whatever happened looks like it was probably base-wide, he thinks.
He passes by the medkit, He needs it more than I do, and starts to look for then follow the orange Control Room line. He knew that thing took a direct hit. He had to see if he could help somehow.
Gordon sees the elevator behind some piled rubble and, with some effort, climbs over. One of the four windows in the elevator door is pierced with a large tube, but the other door opens, letting him in. Still no reception from the radio. The elevator goes back up and the doors open. Dr. Vance is standing by the destroyed computer terminal, the one that had overloaded earlier. He is with his companion, though he looks to have a twisted ankle as he sits on the floor, holding his leg, and his stomach.
"Why didn't they listen?" He moans.
"We tried to warn them!" Eli laments.
"I never thought I'd see a Resonance Cascade, let alone create one."
Eli looks up and shouts. "Gordon! You're alive! Thank god for that hazard suit! I'm afraid to move him and all our phones are out. Please, get to the surface and let someone know we're stranded down here." Dr. Vance was never one to put himself above others.
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"A cascade... I knew I had a bad feeling about this," he says after Eli's companion spoke, prompting Eli to turn and speak.
"Alright, I'll let them know," he says after Eli finishes. "By the way, someone was giving CPR to a downed guard back down there. I'll be sure to let them know once I get up there."
He heads back the way he came in, trying to get to the surface.
One of the small creatures tries to leap at Gordon, its massive sucker mouth on the bottom pressing against the glass, to no avail.
Eli walks to the retinal scanner to the Control Room and presses against it. This one is entirely operational.
"Gordon, I'll take care of things here. We'll try to find our own way out as soon as we can. You need to get out of here before it gets worse. If anyone knows what to do, it'll be Isaac."
Isaac Kleiner was the head of the Lambda Complex on the other side of Black Mesa. "If you can't get out of Black Mesa, look for him."
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STRENGTH/GRAPPLE:
"Get going, Gordon.. I'll try to figure out a way to.. dispose of those things before they can break free."
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Reflex:
Still no contact on the radio.
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In the unlikely event this isn't possible, he tries to move quickly through where the first beam had been.
Either way, he starts trying to get to the other door.