Lets Play - Falcon 6: At The End of Time

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 9:11 am

You raise your face to the sky and shout out above the boom of the machinery, 'Open the gate, I come in peace,' at the top of your voice. For a while there is no reply and you are about to call again when there is the scrape of metal upon metal from the manhole cover.

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As you watch, momentarily transfixed with horror, strange human-like beasts lever themselves out of the manhole shaft and close in. They look like cadavers, with their sickly pale green skin and disk-like, pale, glowing eyes, but their movements are lithe and quick. They are grotesque travesties of the human form, over sized heads as if they had water on the brain, and many jointed, knobbled fingers make them look like the bizarre creations of a mad professor. Ten of them have closed in on you menacingly. Will you:

Run amongst them and attack?
Try desperately to push the gate open?
Slide the gate sideways?

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 9:59 am

Slide the gate sideways, it'll be less embarrasing.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:04 am

Of course I pick the "fuck yourself over" option.

Sure lets slide the gate. 50/50 at this point.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:41 am

As soon as you touch the gate, a terrible shock jolts through you. Lose 2 Endurance points. The gate must be protected against outsiders. If you are still alive, you see that the gate has started to slide open, enough for you to slip through into a lit passage- way beyond. The boom-boom of the machinery buffets your eardrums. Just then a gnarled fist smashes into your hip, a bruising and battering blow. You lose 3 further Endurance points, but, if you are still alive, the force of the blow has knocked you through the gateway.

As soon as you are through the gate it slides shut once more with a whir of heavy machinery cutting your assailants off from you. There is a spate of sound like a blaster discharge, perhaps they are trying to open the gate once more and suffering electric shocks. You run down a featureless corridor into what is evidently a lift.

The lift door hums shut behind you and you are bathed in the glow of lights of every conceivable colour. The entire walls of the lift capsule are covered in lighted buttons - the lift must have thousands upon thousands of possible destinations. Suddenly all go dark save one flashing white light and the lift whooshes into motion. For a time you can hear the steady boom-boom of the piston, but the lift twists and turns through many shafts before coming to rest at least a mile up the tower.

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The lift stops with no more warning than when it started. The door hums open to reveal a room in which every chair, screen and console is pure white and so are the people who are waiting to greet you. Clad in white, one-piece suits, their skin is purest white, so is their hair, and all their eyes are white, except for the pupils. There are eight of them all looking exactly alike, as if they were clones. They are evidently human except that the heads are massively bloated and the hands are large, the fingers many- jointed. 'Welcome to the tower at the end of the universe,' says one of the clones.

'Are you in command here?' you ask.

'No, the paranoids in the blue room command here, but they are too frightened to encounter you.' You begin to ask a stream of questions but one of them suggests it would be easier if he/she thought the knowledge you require into your head. Will you:

Let them do this?
Try to dominate him/her with your will?

There is a picture here

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:44 am

Sub, don't dom.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:04 am

We probably can't dominate 8 of them, so let them probe our mind.

SGamerz · Post by **SGamerz** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:29 am

One should always keep an open mind....so open our mind to them.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 12:27 pm

You remain in possession of your own thoughts but a wave of understanding and knowledge immerses you as the eight clones think into your head. To the Earthers of your remote future, these people will be known as the Future People. It is a billion, billion years after the founding of the Earth Federation. The universe is contracting, its energy all but spent. Soon the universe will coalesce into a single ball of matter, eradicating all life, and explode apart again to begin a new cycle. These people are doomed. A device called the Time Destabiliser pulled them from their own time to this barren planet, but none of the entropists, people genetically designed to study ways of con- serving energy, were transported with them. The tower was built, but life as they are used to it is becoming impossible to sustain. Already hundreds of them have 'gone green', for they are running out of the drugs which some need to prevent an unpleasant mutation that damages the intellect. When this happens people turn a sickly shade of pale green and become scavengers. You realise with a shock, that these people are looking forward to death as a new experience which they have not yet tried out.

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A great machine in the tower's foundations maintains their life support systems. If it exploded, everyone in the tower would die. It seems it is close to that now. The green scavengers rule the lower levels and the paranoids of the blue room have commanded that no-one, not even the technicians, be allowed to service the machine, or leave the tower. They are more scared of going green than of death. 'Why allow "paranoids" to rule you?' you think. The reply is immediate. They are genetically designed to make cautious decisions, based on fear, to shepherd mankind through dangerous times. Now that their usefulness is over, no-one cares to overthrow them, not least because they surround themselves with sensors and traps, seeing no-one but their particular clone brothers. After some time you can sense that your well being means nothing to them. You are no more than an interesting diversion to pass the time with. Suddenly one of the white screens turns red and a human with four arms and hands, each of differing shape, in which tools are grasped, appears. It speaks: The machine is critical, prepare to die,' then the screen goes blank once more. One of the white humans invites you to step into the lift so that they can return you to the outside before the tower explodes. Will you:

Do as he/she says and step into the lift?
Remonstrate with them and ask them to help you?

SGamerz · Post by **SGamerz** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 12:52 pm

Let's not waste time getting blown up here.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 7:35 pm

Try to talk them into helping? Otherwise all we did was lose 5 HP for nothing.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:15 pm

Escape. Hopefully the sitch outside has changed.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:49 am

As soon as you step into the lift the coloured lights go off and the door hums shut. A single green light flashes as the lift accelerates, spiralling down a long shaft and then stops. When the door hums open, you realise you are on the far side of the tower to that which you entered. A blue grey desert stretches as far as the eye can see. You are only a mile or so from the tower when a blast wave flings you head over heels and there is a sound like a nuclear detonation. You catch sight of the tower collapsing in on itself, as if the middle was being sucked out into null-space. Soon all that remains is a monumental pile of rubble. You head towards a large expanse of blue slab-like rock.

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After some time you are walking across a flat-bed of bluish slate
-like rock. The rock is warm-it seems of volcanic origin, for the whole place radiates heat from the ground. Eventually you find yourself at the lip of a large bowl-like depression, at the bottom of which lie several grey domes. You gasp involuntarily at what greets your eyes. One of the domes has another transparent dome, much smaller, attached to its rear. Inside you can see Bloodhound. His uniform is in tatters and he looks tired and worn, but essentially OK. He is held upright somehow. Most of the domes have single arches as doors - the dome with Bloodhound in is guarded by a strange beast. It is about seven feet tall, in appearance rather like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the carnivorous dinosaur of Earth's distant past. However, its head is crocodilian with an extended crested braincase that hangs down over its back. The hind legs are massive, the forearms smaller, ending in four fingered manipulative hands. It has rudimentary clothing, mostly belts and straps holding various items of indefinable equipment. In its hand it holds some form of weapon - possibly a laser rifle. Its jaw slavers continuously, its yellow lidded eyes flick constantly. These reptiles are probably cold blooded and need high temperature to maintain their metabolic rate. No other reptiles seem to be nearby but several of them are in some kind of corral on the other side of the bowl. You cannot make out what they are doing but there are many violent and savage movements and the squealing cry of some beast in pain. Feeding perhaps.

Realising you will have to get into the dome you climb down into the depression and crawl as silently as you can towards the dome, sweat breaking out on your forehead as you labour in the tropical heat of the depression. The heat seems to be held down here. You are about fifty yards away, crouched down behind a trough filled with hot bubbling mud. Its purpose is beyond you. The Saurian guard begins to sniff the air suspiciously. You will have to act now, or the guard will find you out in moments, using its obviously powerful sense of smell. Will you:

Fire your blaster at it, if you still possess it?
Use a cold lance, if you have one?
Thinkstrike the reptile?
Try to control it with Powers of Will?

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:40 am

Blue option - we presumably can't lose our brain powers, so obviously they're not the best course of action.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 6:59 am

Sure, blast em.

SGamerz · Post by **SGamerz** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:55 am

Blast.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:12 pm

Make an Attack Roll as you level your blaster and unleash a lightning strike of plasma at the reptilian beast.

If you score 8-12...2 and 6, so:

The blast of plasma lands squarely on its massive head. It explodes in a mass of flame, brains and blood. The body flies backward, slamming against the wall of the dome where it slides to the ground twitching, its head simply burnt off. It is over in seconds. You pause to see if anything has heard you, but nothing happens. You dart forward towards the archway. Around one of the forearms of the beast is a band of polished metal, brightly painted with three bars of colour - red, green and yellow. You pause at the entrance but all is quiet. Silently you glide into the dome.

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You walk through a thin corridor into the dome. You are in a long corridor-like chamber which stretches ahead of you. You judge the end to be the back of the dome. The walls are grey and tables and worktops litter the place. It is some kind of workshop. The heat in here is stifling. You notice a bookshelf (the Gra'ak keep their records in written form, though their script is bold and clumsy). Absently you note that they read from right to left. There is a door straight ahead of you and a door to your left. Will you go through:

The left hand door?
The door straight ahead of you?

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 6:59 pm

50/50 coin flip. Straight.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:23 pm

Agreed.

SGamerz · Post by **SGamerz** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:02 am

Sure, why not? Straight.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 4:49 am

340
You step through the door and find yourself in the transparent dome housing your old friend, Agent Bloodhound. He is held within a small personnel dome, standing on a steel pedestal, linked to a bank of instrumentation. He is looking rather the worse for wear, but he does not look badly injured - more tired, mentally. At the sight of you his jaw drops and his eyes light up with hope. His voice comes to you through the small air holes bored into the dome that covers him. 'Section Chief Falcon! You came! Thanks, sir. Good to see you again Falcon, that's for sure. I managed to destroy my Time Machine, so those Gra'ak couldn't try to use it - that's what these reptiles are called, from the planet Gra'akii, beyond the galactic rim. I thought I was marooned here.' As Bloodhound talks you are busily invest- igating the tube-like clear dome that imprisons him. 'They've been keeping me here, using mind probes on me, trying to force me to tell them how to build another machine, but I've resisted so far. It seems this is the end of time, Falcon, in fact time does not really exist anymore. People get drawn here by some strange force or temporal warp.' Bloodhound seems to be almost delirious. The mind torture has effected him.

'Listen to me. Blood, listen,' and you batter on the dome. He stops and stares at you, wild eyed. 'How do I get this open, Blood, there's not much time!' You cannot blast it for fear of hurting Bloodhound.

'Oh yes, Falcon - sorry, my head, it's ... That console there - those three coloured buttons. You have to press them in a certain sequence but I haven't been able to determine the correct sequence. I think if you get it wrong, an alarm goes off.' You must try to get him out. Will you press the buttons in the following order:
Red, green then yellow?
Red, yellow then green?
Yellow, green then red?

(There is a picture here)

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:09 am

Y G R

It was the color on that now headless lizardman's wristband thing. The order on the band was R G Y but these guys read backwards.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:19 am

It's the clue we have to go on so yeah.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:36 pm

Well spotted.

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You depress the buttons. Nothing happens for a moment. Then there is a humming sound and the capsule around Bloodhound splits and opens up like a blossom. Bloodhound steps out. 'I knew you could do it,' Bloodhound says. Supporting him with one arm, you re-enter the dome proper. You may open the door, now on your right, before leaving the dome, if you have not done so already. If so, turn to 218. If you want to leave the dome immediately, turn to 326.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:52 pm

218 it is.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 6:05 pm

Sure why not. At least if things go sideways he have backup from Bloodhound.