First of all, I apologise for another 2 week hiatus, but I’ve been feeling better lately and I think I should be able to run more often now. I’ll still have to be a bit careful and see on a day-by-day basis, but I am planning on running a few more times this week.

Now, I’ll be starting with a small retcon vote. I added in a part of taking some ammo and an extra hand cannon, and that was a mistake, as I was righteously called out on by the anons afterwards. They explicitly did not want to take anything at least until Weissdammer left the planet, and I didn’t take that into consideration.

So, the vote here is, do you want me to retcon that part or do we leave it as is and continue with the extra stuff taken?
>1. Continue, no retcon.
>2. Retcon out the taking of the handcannon and ammo.

Calling the votes in 10 minutes.

>>31493057
>>2. Retcon out the taking of the handcannon and ammo.
glad to see this running again OP, but yeah doing that after abandoning the C-10 for no reason at all just does not make sense at all

>>31493108 here again, I just looked at the clock and is just past 4am so I'm going to get a few hours sleep, sorry to bail on you at hte start off the thread OP, hopefully the other players turn up soon

>>31493123
>>31493108
No problem. I understand the lack of sleep very well. I've just been really busy lately, and only just got things calm enough again to be able to spend energy on running the quest. And when I reread the comments at the end of last quest I realised my blunder for not having voted on something like that. I guess I was tired and wanted to get over with it, but now I want to try and correct that.

The actual effect would basically just me posting the same piece again slightly rewritten and continuing on. I hadn't even adapted the pastebin yet.

>>31493057
Hmm, I'm hesitant to call this with only a single vote in, I'll wait a bit longer.

>>31493108

Seconding the retcon. I personally think stealing from the man is unwise in general, but if people will insist on taking it later, well, so be it.

>>31493379

although no need to exert yourself for my benefit, OP. It hardly pays to type for a single person, especially if you are feeling unwell.

>>31493379
>>31493108
Ok, (re)writing. I'm already working on a follow-up from votes of last time (going out into the jungle and training psionics some more), so that will be posted a bit later.

You activate your cloak and climb up to the roof. It’s not as hard as you thought, and it only takes a minute to climb up entirely. Once there, you check out the roof plating. The marine had a fairly good picture of them, and using that as a guide, it doesn’t take long for you to pry one open. You damaged the side a bit, but unless they actually take the time to inspect the roof they probably won’t notice if it’s put back into place.

You drop down, and one of the first things you notice is how much emptier the place is. A lot of the ammo is gone, and quickly checking the hidden room confirms that the rifle is on Weissdammer’s ship now. About half of the hand cannons and their ammo are gone, but here’s still plenty left. It’d probably be less risky than stealing the rifle, but you still decide against taking any of it. No point in taking unnecessary risks.


You head down as quietly as you can, and in the first room, it seems most of the CMC’s are gone. There’s only 2 left, but there were over a dozen before. Entering the second room, you find the marines sitting down on a few empty crates, drinking beer. They’ve gone to talking about the next mission, selling the weapons to some pirates, and apparently the C-10 rifle is being bought by a weapon collector somewhere in the rim.

The room itself has changed too. All of the C-14’s have been removed, along with several other kinds of weapons, but they’ve mostly been replaced by heavier weapons like tripod mounted cannons and rocket launchers. Seems they immediately restocked a bit too.

>>31493407
Thanks for the concern, but I wouldn't be writing if I didn't feel up to it. Which is pretty much why I've been away for so long. I'm really starting to feel better again lately.

And looking back at earlier threads, the beginning is always a bit slow, so I tend to wait a bit longer on the votes too. I don't mind.

>>31493491
>and apparently the C-10 rifle is being bought by a weapon collector somewhere in the rim.
:( goodbye my sweet

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>>31493545

Mind over matter, friend.

You head back out of the armoury, carefully putting the roof panel back in place. Even with your enhanced senses you can barely see what little damage you inflicted in opening it. Quietly dropping down the side, you head out towards the jungle again and decloak. It’s been only a few hours since you were at your earlier training spot, but already you can see the jungle mending itself. Fungi are claiming the fallen tree trunks as nutrients, and the dislodged bolders are being used as support for small saplings. Much of the ravaged area is filled with green again. You suppose it’s for the better. People don’t have to know about what you do here.

You gather a few torn branches with your telekinesis and for a small place for you to sit comfortably, and start your exercises. It hasn’t been that long, so you’re still feeling a bit winded after this morning’s thorough practice, but you quickly hit your stride again. Soon, complex formations of pebbles and branches are flying through the sky as you mostly work on your control. The raw power is there as demonstrated before, but accurately controlling your powers can take a lot more practice. There were more reasons to the ghost conditioning than just making you easier to control. Grimly thinking back to Tertius’ death, you’re more than aware what can happen if your powers go beyond your control.

A few hours later, you let the last tree trunk fall from the position you’d been levitating it at for over five minutes. You’re absolutely exhausted from your training, albeit mentally. There are things you can’t train without having… assistance, as you recall from the Omega project. Invading the minds of the training subjects was a horrifying but learning experience, while showing you exactly what could happen should you go against the Confederacy. You’ll just have to hope that your more mentally-aligned powers will be up to par with the rest.

>>31493773

> It’s now around 4pm. You have a meeting with Lisa at 8 to help her train her mental defence.
>1. Go home, check on the state of the confederacy and the rest of the galaxy.
>2. Stay in the jungle, train something else (specify).
>3. Write in.

>>31493790

Oh yes. Let's go check out the News. Maybe there's a pub with a public tv in the settlement?

>>31493790
asleep anon here, seconding >>31493847 while sleep eludes me

>>31493847
>>31493870
Writing.
Good night anon.

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Quietly heading back into the settlement, you look for a bar of some kind. Your house isn’t exactly well equipped to find out how things are going around the galaxy, but public bars tend to have some kind of television. As you pass the biodome entrance, a small group people exit and you hear them mentioning going for a drink. You follow them and quickly end up in a little place called “The Baron’s Behind”, featuring a cartoony image of a man with puffed up cheeks and a twirly moustache. It leaves little to the imagination as to whom this would refer to.

According to your expectations, there’s a small television hanging from the ceiling at the bar and you move to sit down next to it. A casual observation shows that the bar probably only just opened for the day. The only people than you or the group that just entered are a teenaged couple glued to each other in a corner.
The TV channel is about some odd sports involving a ball made of high explosives and two teams on vulture bikes. No one seems to be watching it and no one seems to mind you switching over to a news channel. The screen is showing an older man in regal clothing standing on a stage and giving a speech, the background being banners with a logo of a red arm in a circle.

“-let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning. And let no man consort with alien powers. And to all the enemies of humanity, seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, NO MATTER THE COST!”

>>31494321
“And as you can see here Trevor,” the screen switches to a reporter standing a little bit away from a huge crowd, with the stage and the older man calmly walking off it, “the crowd is going wild at the newly crowned Emperor’s speech. The confederacy is no more, and it looks like the Terran Dominion is a fresh new start, with Arcturus Mengsk being the strong man the Koprulu sector need right now.”

“Yes indeed Vince. That was a powerful speech, fitting for the man who has saved so many worlds from the alien threats these past few days.”

After this, the channel seems to go over a short bio of the man, and it seems just a bit too perfect to be true, though you mostly realise this because of your assignments in the academy. It looks a bit too much like the “official reports” on what happened after you finished a mission. No wonder the crowd is eating his words with glee.

You might have to figure out how things went with the Omega project though, What you gathered from your little mind-trips was that Primus seems to be in charge now instead of the directors and scientists from before, and seeing how it was a top secret project, it’s highly possible the new “Terran Dominion” is completely unaware of its and your existence.


>You’ve still got time for one more thing before you have to go to Lisa for your appointment.
>1. Go home and try to see how you can make your own meals. living off food from stalls or leeching off Lisa might not be ideal in the long run.
>2. Go home, meditate some more on your ghost conditioning.
>3. Write in.

>>31494365
>>2. Go home, meditate some more on your ghost conditioning.
and also think on how we can start teaching Lisa

>>31494365
>1. Go home and try to see how you can make your own meals. living off food from stalls or leeching off Lisa might not be ideal in the long run.

>>31494444

Seconding comedic intermission.

We should have some survival training, but finer points of culinary art are probably lost on us.

>>31494546
>>31494444
Ok, writing.

>>31494572

don't murder the poor tomato plant from earlier in process pls.

You’ve still got some time before your meeting with Lisa, and you feel like you should stop relying on junk food or leeching off Lisa. You decide to delve into the deeper mysteries of the kitchen.

Your first stop is at the marketplace, where listening to some people buying things and your earlier experiences of Lisa’s cooking you manage to pick up some things that seem to be the staple of most meals. You also heard things about there being books to show you how to cook, but these don’t appear to be sold here. You’ll have to wing it.

>Ok, let’s see how good Artemis can actually cook. Gimme a d20. Best of first three, as usual.

Rolled 13

>>31494657

Let's see if we can compare with the swedish chef.

Rolled 15

>>31494657
rolling to not set the milk on fire

>>31494721
>>31494726
Well, still one roll. Shall it be catastrophic failure or shall he actually be able to make a decent meal?

Rolled 14

>>31494825
whynotboth.jpg

>>31494721
>>31494726
>>31494868

Ok, writing.

Back at your home, you methodically sort all the ingredients you bought. Potatoes, vegetables of all kinds, spices even. A bit of meat. You rummage around the kitchen for a moment before finding pots and pans, and go to work. After about ten minutes, you immediately realise that you made a mistake, as a foul odour is coming from one of the pans. You throw away the charred remains of a piece of cauliflower. You don’t let it dishearten you. You managed to live through the Omega project and were in the field as a ghost for two years. You can’t let a few pieces of food beat you!

Roughly an hour and several abortions of a meal later, you find yourself with a small meal with everything that didn’t go wrong too badly. The sense of relief is overwhelming as you finally sit down at the table you cleaned up. You just made another step in the direction of being your own man, no longer shackled to your past as a socially inept assassin.

Your thoughts are interrupted as when you take a bite from the half piece of meat you didn’t burn.

It’s quite spicy.

Very hot.

OHDAMNWAYTOOHOTWATERWATER!

A few minutes later, you resort to taking small bites of the meat combined with a lot of the potatoes that fall apart when you try to stick your fork in them, carrots that are quite mushy but still taste alright, and lots and lots of water.

You wouldn’t say it was a big success, but all in all it didn’t go as badly as it could have went. You try to convince yourself.

>What do you do now? If you don’t go straight towards Lisa you will after this.
>1. Go to Lisa. It’ll be a bit early, but she probably won’t mind.
>2. Try to squeeze in a quick session of meditation.
>3. Clean up the mess you made.
>4. Write in.

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>>31495176

>Meditate and contemplate our actions.
>don't be late though.

>>31495176
> Enjoy the meal no matter what we do
It is the taste of freedom. It terrifies at first, but the lessons learned from our first meal will shape us forever.
(Basically, naive option)

>>31495320
>>31495326
Writing.

As you finish your meal, you start to enjoy it. Sure, it’s not restaurant worthy, it’s not even close to what Lisa made for you, but it’s the first damn meal you made. No more of the grey-brown paste rations you took with you on week-long missions. No more tasteless blobs of nutrients at the ghost academy. You made a meal, and you’ll be damned if you don’t enjoy it.

When you come back to reality, you find your house a mess. At least, the kitchen part. What few utensils and pots you had are all dirty or covered in smears of charred pieces of food. You hesitate, but decide that that’ll be the work for another time, as you quickly do a short meditation.

You’ve come far already. You’ve gone from naive psychic boy to hardened psionic killer, and while you always had a bit of a core that stuck true to yourself, you’re still fighting against almost two decades of suppression and training. Sometimes it’s still hard to resist just killing yourself through problems, but you’re tired of it all. You’ve made good progress here on Lahan II. You’re growing into a new and somewhat decent person. Lisa , Haverdam, Murphy, Holmes, they’re all proof of that.

Your thoughts are interrupted by the alarm you set and you head out to Lisa’s house. The door again opens right before you manage to knock. “Hey, come in.”

She leads you to her small sofa where she sits down next to you, though not too close. “So… Psychic. It’s still hard to believe.”

“I can understand, but it’s important you learn to keep it in check. Your talent is only minor, but I’ve seen people who lost control. It… wasn’t pleasant.” She looks at you with a look you can only describe as emphatic. You wonder if she’s actually picking up your feelings subconsciously and quickly reaffirm your own mental defence. You find it’s surprisingly easy to let your guard down with her.

>>31495790

>How do you proceed to teach her how to protect her own mind? Write-ins strongly encouraged.
>1. The standard way. Let her imagine a wall and go from there.
>2. Try to let her reach out to yours first. Telepathic communications isn’t too hard and once she understands that it’ll be easier to convey the reverse.
>3. Write in.

>>31495816
>2. Try to let her reach out to yours first. Telepathic communications isn’t too hard and once she understands that it’ll be easier to convey the reverse.

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>>31495816

Hue. I'm no psychic. But I imagine we could try to get her to 'talk' to us as she did with the psionic cat, so 2.)

Do we have any recollections of how our own training went? Actually, nevermind, that would probably not be something we want to inflict onto another.

Feel the Force, young Skywalker. I mean, start with some meditation, clear your mind, see that thing over there? That's probably me. What am I thinking about? (get slapped) sorry....

>>31496051
>>31495942
Writing.

“Right, let’s focus. I’m probably not that good of a teacher, but I guess my experience can help. Close your eyes. Yes, good. Now, you said you could talk to Mittens, right? Think back to that. How did it go?”

She opens her mouth to start talking, but you interrupt her. “No, don’t tell me, just think back to it. To the sensation of feeling another mind. Do you remember?” After a short time, she nods.

“Good, now try to turn off your other senses, ignore what you feel, what you taste, what you smell. And try to truly See.” You slowly walk her through some meditational exercises you learned at the beginning of your own training, and when you think she’s well inside a trance-like state, you continue. “Now try to reach out to me. To See me. And to tell me something with your mind” You open up your mind a little bit, so she wouldn’t slide off your mental fortress but would manage to get some grip.

And grip she does. It’s not strong, but after a short while, you start hearing something.
“Come on, work work work. Damn this is hard!”

You reply to her through your own mind. “Congratulations Lisa, you did it.”

She almost jumps from the sofa, eyes wide in surprise. “I… What. Oh, right. Sorry, I was focussing so hard, you scared me.”

You reassure her that it’s ok, and continue with the lesson. “I always felt that when using psionics, things became a lot easier once you consciously do it yourself. This is a good first step, we can try practicing this a bit more now. It’ll be a good stepping stone to go into mental defence, and even just this will allow you to be more disciplined with your powers. When you get a good grasp at this, you’ll pretty much automatically stop broadcasting your thoughts since you’ll be aware of the actual process and you’d notice.”

She vigorously nods. It seems you have an eager learner here. You spend most of the next two hours practicing her sending you messages in all kinds of ways. Images, voice, everything. It’s a good start, and she’s a quick learner. You’re confident that she’ll reach her potential peak in no time if she keeps this up.

After a particularly taxing exercise, Lisa calls it a night though. You’re barely tired at all, despite all the training and work you’ve done today. You say good night and walk out into the night.

>It’s about 22:00
>1. Go home and sleep. It might be a bit early seeing how you don’t seem to have a trace of fatigue.
>2. Go home and meditate on something (specify)
>3. Write in.

>>31496467
>2
Lets keep an eye on our fatigue. Go to sleep when we Getty tired, but not exhausted.

>>31496581

Sounds good to me.

>>31496581
>>31496658
Erm, what exactly would you meditate on?

>>31496770
(also, sorry for the delay, got distracted for a moment)

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>>31496770

Try to psionically explore the surroundings. How far away can we sense. Can we sense doctor's seething kitten? Can we sense wildlife outside of settlement? Can we sense anything anomalous worthy of exploring in the jungle?

>>31496853
Ok, writing

>>31496770
Work on our conditioning.
>>31496853
If we do this, we should disguise our psychic signature. Don't want to make it easier for Primus to find us.

You head back home, and quickly clean up most of the mess you made earlier today. You still have no trace of exhaustion, and you decide to meditate some more. While you used to do it too while you were still at the ghost academy, you’ve been doing it a lot more lately, and it’s been helping you in various ways.

You try something new. In the middle of meditation, you activate your psychic senses. Expanding them slowly as you take notice of everything you touch. your snoring neighbours, the people in the other houses around, it goes on and on. You even briefly touch the marines’ minds. You stop for a moment when you reach Mittens though. You carefully let your senses roll over it without disturbing it, which seems to work, but at the slightest prod, it suddenly goes in a berserk fury when it recognises you. Your mind is assaulted by bestial snarls and psionic attacks that mean little to you now, but you still pull back and avoid the creature for now. It becomes a bit harder to focus on everything as you start reaching the edges of the village, though you easily recognise Lisa. For a moment, you think she feels you, but it seems she was just trying out a bit more of what you taught her. She’s not strong enough to be able to pick you up when you’re as subtle as this, but you note that longer range communication might be possible in later stages of her training.

As you continue into the jungle, you’re overwhelmed by an odd sense of Life. You noticed before that even the plants are odd on this planet, but you’re certain now. They were also modified in some way. Normal plants do not feel like this. They don’t have a psionic echo emanating from them, however faint it is. Whatever these aliens were, they were obsessed with psionics it seems. You find yourself unable to push deeper into the jungle with your senses so attuned and open as they are.

>>31497169

>1. Try to numb your senses, continue pushing into the jungle.
>2. Do something else (specify)

>Next post is probably the last one. I’m at my dad’s place and the internet here is set up to switch off at about 12:20 or something, so if I disappear before the next story post, can someone please archive for me?

>>31497009
You don't have to worry about that, you're not reaching into space or drifting off into other people's minds.

>>31497227
Due to slow responses and me not knowing when exactly my internet will shut off, I think I'll call it a night here. I'll count any votes on this for next time, which I hope will be tomorrow or thursday.

Thanks for sticking around, and again, sorry for the long wait. I'm hoping to get back into gear and get threads more regularly.

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>>31497169

>mfw lawnmowing might be genocide on this world

>>31497483

don't worry, OP, and nighty night.

As for the vote, admire the extent of xeno bioengineering and then go to sleep too.

>>31497187
>1