Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Tragic Tale of Julius Corple part one

A while back my players spent a couple of sessions searching for keycards and passwords to give them access to various places in the ancient military complex/megadungeon that they were exploring.  They knew, from some snooping around through personnel records on a computer, that the two head scientists in the facility were Julius Corple (in charge of the Alien Weapons division) and Hodges Craigslist (in charge of the Biological Weapons division).  Earlier, they had found a door labelled "Alien Weapons Research" that they had been unable to open.  Reasoning that the head of the Alien Weapons division must hold the key to this tempting area, they made their way to Julius Corple's quarters.  


Right away they realized that something was different with Corple's chambers - they could not access any interior cameras through the buildings computer network, and in fact, it seemed that the suite of rooms was not connected in any way to the power and computer networks of the rest of the facility.  They could not cut the power to the door and the normal spiderbot access shafts that connected almost every other part of the facility had been sealed off.  

Undeterred, a party member capable of teleportation bravely transported his body blindly through the closed door and luckily did not end up materializing in a space already occupied by a solid object!  He was greeted by an enthusiastic robot dog (named "Woody" according to the engraving on its water bowl) and a rather spartan set of apartments.  Corple apparently took his work home with him, as his bed, chairs and couch were low disks that utilized the alien repulsor field technology to suspend a body in mid-air above them.  The door opened easily enough from the inside, and the rest of the party entered.  Woody seemed overjoyed to have company after centuries alone, and instantly took to following the party around.  They found very little in the way of information on Corple's computers, which actually seemed to have been unused at all.  Likewise, they found no books or journals that might contain a clue or a scribbled pass phrase.


On Corple's bare desk sat a holo-portrait, the only furnishing in the entire suite that spoke of human warmth, depicting a woman with long brown hair and a pleasant smile.  The holo-projector was engraved with the words "Darling Alyssa".  Saying those words aloud resulted in the large repulsor disc that served for a bed rotating to the side and revealing a shaft opening up into a chamber below.  Descending down the short ladder, the party entered a room that unnerved them greatly.  The chamber that they found themselves in was glass-walled and circular.  Behind the glass walls pink and blue organic tissues throbbed and pulsed with visible electrical energy.  A confusing tangle of cables and what seemed to be umbilical chords passed through portals in the glass and connected with the naked body of a man lying in the middle of the floor.  This body was apparently Julius Corple, as the pile of synthetic military issue clothing next to the man contained his keycard.  Interestingly, and this is what really creeped out the party, they soon realized that Corple was still alive. His hair and fingernails had evidently been growing for centuries, and he did not respond to any stimulus, but his heart was beating and he was breathing.  They grabbed his keycard and beat a hasty retreat.


Part Two reveals how Julius Corple brought about the downfall of the military facility.

2 comments:

  1. Keep up with the updates! These are great.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, they ARE great, and I (or rather, my character) was even there the first time!

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...