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> See if you can turn off the lights, put on the shroud and do a quick switch before anyone can notice it.

Luckily for you the two heavy guards that look after the orphan girl haven't noticed you yet. Silently you retreat a couple of steps back towards the corridor where you came from and cover yourself with the dark shroud. The room ahead of you is square in shape, it has four jail cells in total, two in each side, and there isn't any other entrance. Entering without being seen is simply impossible, so you somehow have to take them out.

You look around for anything that might be used to lure them away and finally encounter a solution. There's a circuit breaker not very far away, it would be easy to break one of the fuses to generate a power failure and still make it look like an accident. On top of that there's an air vent above your head, and it directly connects with the brig. You quickly scheme a plan and get to it. First of all you open one of the covers and put inside your portable radio, your turn it on, tune it to some static white noise that from time to time turn into distorted voices and then push the radio deep into the vents.

Quickly you advance towards the circuit breaker, open the lid and with the barrel of your Laser Pistol push and break one of the fuses. Suddenly everything goes dark, all the lights go out and the TV and its horrifying and traumatic messages go silent, and shortly afterwards the static white noise and the eerie echoes created by the radio start reverberating all across the different nearby rooms, becoming especially loud around the brig and its surroundings. The two guards don't take long to notice that something is wrong and the strange and whispering noises all around them, and with a grunt and whispering profanities that would make a sailor blush quickly decide to leave the brig and investigate.

Covering with your shroud you easily camouflage from their view, they pass next to you without even realising how close you were to them. As they leave the brig you head in and use your Cosmic Knife as a makeshift Bobby Pin to break inside. The girl continues to cry in desperation and shiver in pure terror and takes a while to finally notice you lockpicking her cell and entering inside. Despite being her salvation she cannot avoid squirming and running away from you. Honestly, you cannot blame her, she seems to have been psychologically tortured for days, and you are dressed like one of the local guards, perhaps she believes that you are here to finally take her to her doom.

With one hand you cover her and muffle her mouth before she can scream and alert the others and with your other hand you open the duffel bag and kind of clumsily drop the corpse onto the floor.

"I'm here to rescue you." You whisper to her. "Get in the bag."

>>4541525

The little girl seems confused and hesitant at first, but after a while she finally complies and does as you ask. The inside of the bag must reek of half decomposed flesh and pungent chemicals, but its a small price to pay for living to see another day.

You put her on your back, close the cell door behind you and quickly scurry away before they can discover the origin of the ghostly sounds and the power failure. You leave the area and quickly head into the first gondola that you see, finally leaving the military ship behind.

Honestly, you don't have much faith in this plan working. You didn't had the chance of checking if the corpse that you carried looked like the orphan girl, and even if they did the dead body could still have marks of being executed by hanged or be in an advanced state of decomposition. Besides, the guards will sooner or later find the broken fuse and the radio in the vents, it's a shame that you will never see that radio again, it was a personal gift made by Kahuna after all. Regardless of if the plans works perfectly or not, the orphan won't be able to set foot in Fallen Horizon ever again, there will be shipborn that will know how she looks like, and as far as you know there isn't any cosmetic surgeon in the town below. She will live, but she will have to spend the rest of her days somewhere else.

You can feel the little girl squirming and quietly sobbing inside of the bag, she must be absolutely confused and stressed. When the gondola is finally far enough from the Montana you open the bag and let her breathe.

"Are you alright?" You ask, as you cover her with the shroud, both to keep her warm and to hide her from any privy onlookers. The orphan girl is skinny, around fourteen years old, dark skinned and with short and choppy hair. "Mr. Aikue sends me." You say, showing her Aikue's personal ID. "I will take you of of here. Can you stay in the bag and continue still and quiet?" She softly nods a couple of times and as the gondola finally reaches the Cielo Zafiro you shove her back into the bag and close the zipper.

You haven't been inside the ship for long, around an hour tops, so most assuredly the guards that you had met when first entering the ship would continue doing their round. With the little girl on your back and the map on your hands you search around for a different staircase that communicates with the town below and after a long time finally find it. You go down the stairs and the guards give you the halt.

"I'm going to get my dick wet before starting my round." You start to speak, as soon as they stop you. "If you guys make me lose my chance at getting some nice and cheap skank giving me head because of some formalities I'll get really pissed. Stop and frisk the others, I have shit to do." You hiss as you push them around and head into the docks, where the night workers abound.

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>>4541527

As soon as you lose sight of them you change of direction and move away from the red light districts, heading into the Cove of Mysteries. Nighttime falls by the time you reach the place, silently you ascend the stairs and go straight into Mr. Aikue's office. He's still there, along with Daphne. You gently drop the duffel bag and open it, revealing the little girl from inside. Daphne cries joyful tears and goes to hug her, and then immediately hugs you. You return the ID to his legitimate owner and sit down on the floor. The moment you finally relax all the accumulated stress finally hits you, leaving you absolutely wrecked and exhausted. Before you can even notice it your legs and hands start trembling, and your eyes begin watering and crying. You don't know if you cry of pure joy or unrelenting dread, but honestly it matters not.

The girl and you are given some food to recover strengths, you tell them all you had done and how you somehow managed to infiltrate the ship and avoid detection and violent altercations.

"Well, it's what I and the rest of the kids did as well." The orphan speaks as you end telling your tale. "We entered the ship, hid from the guards and the shipborn, stole what we could and left before being detected."

"It won't happen again. Not anymore." Mr. Aikue intervenes. "I wanted to give all of you a better future, to help you get fed and clothed, but instead I created a band of small thieves and put all of your lives at risk. Daphne and I have been talking about it and we will no longer participate in this scheme. No more dead drops facilitated by me, no more hidden drawings on the books."

"And what will you do then." You ask. "Will you simply let them return to absolute misery and vagrancy?"

>>4541535

"No." He says firmly. "I will do what I should have done for a long time. I will expand my business. I have decided to sell my position as a Shipborn. There are several ways of earning the right of being a shipborn, the most common one is simply being born from shipborn parents, the second one is being granted the privilege by doing an incredible great service to the ships, and the last one, is by simply buying your citizenship. Shipborn people can be exiled and demoted to belowdeckers, when this happens their rooms and everything they used to own get auctioned to the highest bidder, normally these other shipborn participate in these auctions, and that way expand their properties and such, but there have been a few occasions where belowdeckers or outsiders have been able to win the auction and get a small home in the Cielo Zafiro. I plan to buy several new printers by auctioning my citizenship rights, my home, and all the belongings and furniture that I cannot move to this small office. With these printers I will create a newspaper, one that tells the stories of the citizens around, of stories that happen everywhere in the wasteland, and I will give a voice to the dregs of society that have been silent for so long. And all the orphan kids will work for me as well, either as criers, sellers, deliverers, or even writers and photographers."

"Wow." You say, impressed and surprised by him.

"Yeah, wow indeed." Mr. Aikue continues. "All my life I have been too focused on my job, I never had enough time to build a family, or even to have friends. And despite all my effort and hard work the shipborn still considered me to be low class because I worked with belowdeckers. I have friends here, and all these children will be my family. Honestly, I won't miss living in that rusty ship."

Suddenly the phone in the office rings and Aikue grabs it, he simply listens and nods.

"It's time." He then says, as he stands up along with Daphne.

"Time for what." The orphan girl asks.

"You cannot live here anymore. The guards know how your face looks, if they see you they would discover everything, and you would be incarcerated again. We have contacted with a sea captain that has agreed to take you into his crew. I don't personally know him, but I have heard that he's a really nice person. You will work for him, and obey his orders. It might be hard, but trust me, its for the best."

You change back to your usual clothes and head back into the streets, covering the orphan girl with the shroud to hide her and having Daphne and Aikue close to her to conceal her as much as possible.

>>4541537

As you leave the building and walk towards the docks you cannot avoid noticing several powerful floodlights illuminating the prow of the Cielo Zafiro. These floodlights had been installed for this special occasion, they were illuminating a hanged body that dangled with the winds. The guards had hanged the corpse that you had left in the brig, but did they find out that it was a fake? It mattered not, the shipborn wanted to send a message, the message that they are not to be messed with, and with the corpse hanging and being visible even in the dead of the night the message had been loud and clear to everybody that was around. The orphan girl is a little girl after all, and like all kids she is curious by nature, and her unhinged curiosity makes her try to look at what the lights are illuminating, but you don't let her, you put in her field of vision and give her a stern look. "Keep walking." You tell her with a gravely and deep voice that frightens her. Perhaps you acted too rudely, but you know that if she saw the hanging corpse she would be even more traumatised.

Finally you reach the rendezvous point and silently wait in the docks. Tonight is a foggy night, its hard to see in the distance, but after a short while a big and dark silhouette finally starts to form, and when the ship finally gets close by you cannot believe your eyes. It's the Rustbucket.

"Ahoy." Says Saltgut's characteristically gravelly voice.

"You will be in good hands." You tell to the girl with a smile, as you put a hand on her shoulder. "I know the captain, he's a good friend of mine."

Saltgut finally docks the tugboat and gets down with a jump. "So, this is the little rascal uh?" He says, walking closer to the orphan. "I hope you like fish, because that's what you will be eatin' for week."

Despite your kind words the girl at first seems afraid of him, perhaps she hasn't had many experiences with ghouls before.

>>4541541

"Hey there Captain." You tell him.

"My eyes must be deceiving me! It's Diego! Long time no see! It has been what, a couple of months?" He says with a guffaw as he hugs you tightly.

"More or less yeah."

"How has the city treated you? I personally don't like it too much, but its a good trading stop."

"Well, my overall experiences have been mostly positive I think. What about you and the rest, how are they doing?"

"They are doing great! They are dinning right now, we didn't expected to find you there! If you want I can tell 'em to come and say hello!"

"We don't wanna attract many attention, so it would be better if we kept quiet." Mr. Aikue adds.

"Oh yeah." He says with a smile and a laugh as he puts one of his boney index fingers in front of his lips . "This is all hush hush."

The orphan finally decides to say goodbye and ascend the stairs into the tugboat and gets inside, a few minutes after she enters you hear loud cheers and applause.

"Well." Saltgut continues. "You know that you will always be welcome on my ship."

> Honestly speaking, Fallen Horizon has disappointed you. It's not what you expected, and your relationship with Daphne is kind of strained and cold since she reunited with her parents and you two stopped living together. Perhaps its time to return with Saltgut and the rest, if only for a while.

> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Stay in town and ask Aikue to give you a work in his newly created newspaper. Do what you do best, become a journalist and discover the hidden secrets and closeted skeletons of the town and its citizenry.

> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Daphne told you that her old shiphouse has been repaired and that the ship can now be used to explore the wasteland and its seas. The person that was living on the home has been instead been moved to Ethel and John's house's guestroom, without any increase in rent, which has been incredibly good for him because the guestroom is better furnished, closer to his work and Ethel will gladly do his laundry and prepare breakfast, dinner and lunch for him. Lucky devil.

> Other options, write in.

>>4541544
> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Daphne told you that her old shiphouse has been repaired and that the ship can now be used to explore the wasteland and its seas. The person that was living on the home has been instead been moved to Ethel and John's house's guestroom, without any increase in rent, which has been incredibly good for him because the guestroom is better furnished, closer to his work and Ethel will gladly do his laundry and prepare breakfast, dinner and lunch for him. Lucky devil.

Maybe before we go our own way again, we can ask if they have seen any suspicious ships. Any...enclave ships, perhaps? We haven't really seen them for a while after they fucked off. That or just any stories of towns being wiped off the map.

Fucking hell. I just noticed that I've been using the word "Round" when I meant to say "Shift."

AAAAGGHGGH! I've written stuff like "I'm going to get my dick wet before starting my round" and it makes no fucking sense!

Sorry guys, I'm ESL, Spanish is my mother tongue, and in Spain we can use "Ronda" to say shift. And I got them mixed.

>>4541544
>> Honestly speaking, Fallen Horizon has disappointed you. It's not what you expected, and your relationship with Daphne is kind of strained and cold since she reunited with her parents and you two stopped living together. Perhaps its time to return with Saltgut and the rest, if only for a while.
>>4541561
I did get what you wrote, probably because I too I’m a ESL Spanish speaker but I did.

>>4541544
>> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Stay in town and ask Aikue to give you a work in his newly created newspaper. Do what you do best, become a journalist and discover the hidden secrets and closeted skeletons of the town and its citizenry.

>>4541544

> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Stay in town and ask Aikue to give you a work in his newly created newspaper. Do what you do best, become a journalist and discover the hidden secrets and closeted skeletons of the town and its citizenry

>>4541561

Rounds (as in doing my rounds) still works, got your meaning right away. I suspected you were Spanish since castellano is my third language so the grammer style sticks out to me sometimes. But your English is fantastic and you're a great storyteller!

>>4541544
>Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Daphne told you that her old shiphouse has been repaired and that the ship can now be used to explore the wasteland and its seas. The person that was living on the home has been instead been moved to Ethel and John's house's guestroom, without any increase in rent, which has been incredibly good for him because the guestroom is better furnished, closer to his work and Ethel will gladly do his laundry and prepare breakfast, dinner and lunch for him. Lucky devil.

>>4541544
> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Stay in town and ask Aikue to give you a work in his newly created newspaper. Do what you do best, become a journalist and discover the hidden secrets and closeted skeletons of the town and its citizenry

work as a journalist, then head out again. No one on the ships has seen our face, right?

>>4541544
>Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Stay in town and ask Aikue to give you a work in his newly created newspaper. Do what you do best, become a journalist and discover the hidden secrets and closeted skeletons of the town and its citizenry.

Damn! So many replies! This makes me so happy! I was thought that the quest was losing steam.

I'm glad of having you guys as players, you are all awesome. Staying in town and becoming a journalist is the winning option. Writing now.

>>4542028
>work as a journalist, then head out again. No one on the ships has seen our face, right?
While on the ships a few people saw our face, but nobody was paying attention to it, most people that we crossed paths with simply moved out of the way.

The only ones that could identify us were the guards that we met when we entered and when we left. But it's doubtful that they will be able to recognise us. They weren't paying special attention to it.

>>4541544
> Fallen Horizon might not be a paradise, but you are enjoying your life here. Stay in town and ask Aikue to give you a work in his newly created newspaper. Do what you do best, become a journalist and discover the hidden secrets and closeted skeletons of the town and its citizenry.

You say goodbye to the old ghoulish captain and bid him farewell. You cannot avoid feeling sad when the ship finally departs and disappears into the horizon, but at the same time, you also feel happy for the poor girl, she isn't an orphan anymore, she has found a family of her own.

Slowly you all start turning around and returning to your respective homes. Daphne smiles at you, kisses you goodnight and slowly walks towards her parent's home, she won't tell her parents about what happened. Despite having good and pure intentions her parents might not approve of the scheme that she helped to create, after all she indirectly helped to steal countless goods and items. Despite of having to hide this good deed from her parents she seems to be happy about the whole ordeal, and cheerfully walks away towards her home. You are happy too, you have not only saved her life, but also saved her from a life of misery. Aikue on the other hand doesn't seems to be as content, he sighs and grunts as he slowly proceeds to move towards the Cielo Zafiro. The great cargo ship won't be his home for much longer, to ensure that no other children will risk their lives Aikue has chosen to sacrificed his privileges, he's an admirable old man, a fighter of the good fight.

"Wait, Aikue. What are you going to do now?" You ask him before he leaves.

"Well, before resigning to my shipborn citizenship I will try to move as much furniture and items as I can. It will be hard, I'm an old man and there aren't many elevators that connect the ships with the town below. I think it might take me weeks to move most of my stuff. I... I cannot leave anything behind, the moment I officially announce that I reject my citizenship my old room and everything that is inside won't be considered mine any longer and all will be auctioned."

These shipborn were cruel, their methods extreme, but this was done on purpose to punish the people that rejected their lyfestyle.

"I used to be a journalist before coming to Hawaii. Give me a job in your new newspaper, and I'll help you move." You tell him, putting your hand on his shoulder.

Aikue snorts and nods. "Boy, I was already planning on giving you the job. But alright, I accept the offer." He says, shaking your hand. "But wait for a few days before going in, if you go right now someone might recognise you."

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>>4542222

"Yeah, you are right, perhaps I should wait for a week or so?"

Aikue nods and continues walking back home.

"Its a shame that you won't be a writer anymore, your book was pretty good and popular, you might still get some residuals every now and then. But its alright, I need your knowledge and skills for something else now."

"Do you?" You ask, kind of surprised.

"Oh yes. I have no idea of how to make a newspaper. You'll be the expert here."

You laugh and nod. "Alright."

In the following two weeks you don't work on your writing or help him move, you instead spend your time teaching Mr. Aikue about how to manage and direct a newspaper, instruct him about what kind of printers he needs to buy, what type of ink is best, and even teach some of the other orphans in the art of writing articles, taking pictures, and even creating comic strips or crossword puzzles.

At the third week Aikue finally gives you the green-light and handles you his ID, letting you enter inside the Cielo Zafiro and access his home to move his furniture towards his bookstore office, where he will be living from now on. To not stand out and blend among the rest of the shipborn you dress up with your Tuxedo, and while some people still give you odd looks none of them stem from mistrust or suspicion, but curiosity and perhaps admiration.

It takes you an entire week of hard and continuous work to move all of his stuff, but at the end its all worth it.

Aikue resigns to his shipborn citizenship without any hesitation, saying good bye forever to a life of privilege. He seems to be happy about it thought, with the auctioning of his old home and the few possessions that he didn't mind leaving behind he gets enough money to buy the printers and necessary inks and products needed to run his new business.


"Well... I guess we are housemates now, we live pretty close to each other." Aikue says with a small raspy guffaw. "This wouldn't have happened without you. I do not regret my actions. I'm glad of how things developed, and I know that I will die a happy man. I cannot thank you enough Diego. So I want to give you the gift of a name. How do you think that we should name the newspaper?"

> "The Salt-Stained Inquirer"

> "The Pacific Presser"

> "The Belowdecker Bulletin"

> "The Unsinkable Truth"

> Other names, write in.

>>4542226
>> "The Pacific Presser"
I like the sound of this one

The Unsinkable Truth has a certain ring to it.

>>4542226
>The Bulletproof Bombshell

>>4542226
> "The Naked Truth"

Rolled 2 (1d4)

There doesn't seem to be a consensus so I'll simply use a dice roll. The name is not all that important to be honest.

> "The Pacific Presser"
1

> "The Unsinkable Truth"
2

> "The Bulletproof Bombshell"
3

> "The Naked Truth"
4

>>4542405
Yay I won.

>>4542226
> "The Unsinkable Truth"

"What about the Unsinkable Truth?" You tell him.

"I love it! It has moxie! It sounds good! And superstitious sailors like anything that refers to being buoyant haha!"

Aikue goes towards his desk and from one of the drawers grabs a small cardboax box with your name stencilled on it.

"More residuals?" You say, expecting another box full of bags of rice, razorgrain or tatos.

"No. Your new work tools." He replies with pride.

You open the box and find an old camera, several blank holotapes, a sound recorder, several pens, and a notebook along with a key.

"What does this open?" You ask, as you hold the key and put the rest of the objects in your bag.

"Your new office. You won't only be a journalist, but the Editor as well. Most of the orphans have shown some skill when it comes to writing or snapping pictures, and the unskilled ones are great information diggers and spies. The kids will find stories for you, and you will be able to chose which ones get investigated and written about, and if a particular case catches your eye you'll be able to look it up on your own. These kids will become your reporters and photographers, and you'll be their boss. Your salary will be fifty caps per week."

"Oh...that's, that's great!" You say, surprised by receiving such a great promotion.

"Daphne will also receive a promotion and a raise, she will become the layout designer of the newspaper and the illustration supervisor. She will teach the kids how to draw and oversee their creations, which might or might not end in our paperbacks or in the Unsinkable Truth."

"That's great! She told me that she was kind of tired of doing raunchy and perverted drawings."

"Well, these won't be changed, if we toned the erotica down our sales would plummet. But I get what you mean, after all someone else will do the drawing from now on."

"Will the kids be good porn artists?" You ask, kind of worried about his business decisions.

"These poor kids would have become gang members or sex workers if we didn't end employing them. They know more about sex than we do. Trust me, some of these little rascals know techniques and sex positions that would make a robot blush. If anything, the drawings will become even more naughty and perverted. I'm even expecting a sales boost."

You roll your eyes and blow air out of your nose, then smile at him.

"Anyway, the urchins have left several possible cases in your office already. All you got to do is check them out, and chose which ones should be investigated."

With that said he bids you farewell and you head out. His small office is now more cramped than ever, Mr. Aikue was forced to install himself in that small room, and now that there was a bed, several new drawers, countless boxes lying around and even a small kitchen, the office felt small and tight. Despite of all he seemed to be happy about his new lifestyle.

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>>4542523

The second floor of the bookstore, the floor dedicated to the printing of the paperback and the soon to be created newspaper is louder than ever, the newly added printing machines creating a lot of racket as they are prepared, oiled and calibrated. You head into your office and find a small and cramped room, but its a room of your own, your own little palace. Next to the office is a small photography laboratory that used to be an empty warehouse. All in all, Mr Aikue did a really good job in such a small amount of time.

You sit on the floor and find several notes, detailing different possible leads and newsworthy cases tht the urchins have found while on the streets. You better get to work.

>> Chose one to personally investigate, the rest will be investigated by the kids. Sending a kid to investigate and report on an event will yield worse results than if we do it ourselves, but as the time goes on the kids gain experience and become better journalists.

> There's an old submarine sunken under the city. Many divers have tried to open it, but never have been able to. Apparently the sub has started emitting some sort of strange code that can be received with radios. Investigate the radio signals.

> There's a particular part of town that people avoid for superstitious reasons. Apparently ghostly figures and other strange phenomena happen every night at 3 am. Investigate what kind of weird things happen there.

> A strange ship full of clowns and other artists has recently docked and is looking for a place to install their travelling circus. Investigate if they are a real circus or there's something dark behind.

> Two local gangs of hoodlums have declared war on each other, and their skirmishes are causing havoc. Investigate if there's a way of stopping them.

> Apparently a new powerful and highly addictive chem has found its way onto the lowest parts of the town. Find where it is being manufactured and what effects does it have. Inform the citizens of its dangers.

>>4542524
> Apparently a new powerful and highly addictive chem has found its way onto the lowest parts of the town. Find where it is being manufactured and what effects does it have. Inform the citizens of its dangers.

This is the one I would be least comfortable sending a kid to do

>>4542524

> A strange ship full of clowns and other artists has recently docked and is looking for a place to install their travelling circus. Investigate if they are a real circus or there's something dark behind

There's probably already some orphans in our crew that are junkies so investigating the chems shouldn't be too bad. These guys though sound like the real threat to kids lol.

>>4542524
>There's an old submarine sunken under the city. Many divers have tried to open it, but never have been able to. Apparently the sub has started emitting some sort of strange code that can be received with radios. Investigate the radio signals.

>>4542524
>> There's an old submarine sunken under the city. Many divers have tried to open it, but never have been able to. Apparently the sub has started emitting some sort of strange code that can be received with radios. Investigate the radio signals.
The sea is a scary, dangerous place

>>4542524
Alright, it was a hard choice but checking the submarine wins, the rest of the things will be investigated by the junior reporters.

I also forgot to say something.... WE LEVEL UP!

Rescuing the orphan was a quest on itself and we only needed 10 exp to level up so... yeah!

> +80 HP
> Current HP: 565
> + 16 Skill points
> + 1 Perk

> Character Sheet:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17h2Zm77a7A6MuvcRf4QdBZ-agS7B90SsgInJJ-O9COA/edit

> Standard perks:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17lByiQu0HWGGJrxEx-L1yL5pFQTAbE_abbrSClSn-Ps/edit

> Racial perk:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bDWe2DsgK5dr-WPCZx9wpKEAu7JyG-8biuiWqaOBrRM/edit

>>4542792
+16 Science, we’ll probably need it for this quest
>Fast Metabolism

>>4542792
Wait. Are we level 7 or 8? Char sheet says 7 but the exp is from before the last 10 points? If we're level 8 then we missed a Perk and some skill points? I'm confused.

Also,
+16 Science
>Computer Whiz

Physically we're decent, armed and armored. We need brain power now for not just the sub, but for maybe some shenanigans involving some...data manipulation down the line. An item here, a crate there, all nice and official like.

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>>4542965
Sorry friend. I forgot to update the sheet. We became level 8! It is updated now

>>4542979
Nice

>>4542792
+16 SCI
no idea for perk

>>4542792

Agreed with the others, let's throw all the points into Sci since we're going on the sub.

For the perk I'd say Child at Heart since we're king of the orphans now.

Rolled 2 (1d3)

Alright, the +16 SCI is set. But there's a tie for the perk. So I'll do a dice roll.

> Fast Metabolism
1

> Computer Whiz
2

> Child at Heart
3

>>4542524
> There's an old submarine sunken under the city. Many divers have tried to open it, but never have been able to. Apparently the sub has started emitting some sort of strange code that can be received with radios. Investigate the radio signals.

This particular case seems interesting, and dangerous. You might even need to go underwater at some point. So far you only had limited underwater experiences but you know fully well how terrifying and dangerous the depths can be. Every time that you descended beneath the waves has been a traumatic experience, there are monsters down there that could frighten a Deathclaw, radioactive hotspots that would make the Divide pale in comparison and countless of nuclear powered vessels ready to got critical at any time.

There's no way that you will allow a kid to go to the depths on its own.

Afterwards you summon your new subordinates, a group of ten raggedy kids ranging from ages seven to fifteen, grouped in pairs, with one being the writer and the other working as a photographer. They have name tags on their tattered clothes, most of them written with misspellings or poor calligraphy, good thing that their writings will be later transcribed into a typewriter. Right now you don't really bother learning their names, you will slowly memorise them as the time goes on. Each group receives a particular case and you send them out to work. They all scurry away cheerfully speaking about their case and how they plan to affront it. They are good kids.

You put your particular case in a folder and head out as well, camera and notepad in hand, ready to go back to what you do best.

> Interrogate and interview the people that might have heard the strange radio messages that the sub emit.
> Travel to the Diver's Guild and interview the people around, hear what they have to say.
> Travel to the Diver's Guild and ask for a diving suit, go down on your own and check the submarine yourself.
> Search for the strange radio transmissions on your own. See what are they about.
> Other options, write in.

>>4543536
>> Search for the strange radio transmissions on your own. See what are they about.

>>4543536
> Search for the strange radio transmissions on your own. See what are they about.

>>4543536
>Search for the strange radio transmissions on your own. See what are they about.

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>>4543536
> Search for the strange radio transmissions on your own. See what are they about.

You would love to search for the strange radio signals, but you don't have a portable radio anymore. Your last radio was used to lure the guards in the USS Montana. Damn it.

Slowly you walk towards Daphne's studio and gently knock on the door. The place is as messy and untidy as it was before, but now there are several new drawing canvases and kids doing their best to learn the craft, some of them are surprisingly talented.

The atmosphere inside of the room is lively and cheerful, the kids are listening to the music of the radio and cracking jokes between each other. Daphne is acting as their boss and teacher, and constantly oversees their craft and artistic evolution.

"Sorry kids, but I'm coming here to take the radio." You tell them all, as you pick up the small radio.

The kids start to boo you and a small hailstorm of crumpled paper balls rain over you.

"I need it to investigate something weird and mysterious!" You reply with a grump.

"Yeah, they won't listen to it. They really love Rainbow Jack. You gotta repay them somehow."

"Alright! When I come back I'll bring a couple of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes for each one of you!"

The kids cheer and stop throwing paper balls at you. You kiss Daphne in the cheek and all erupt in a roar of hollers and applause. Kids will be kids.

After leaving the bookstore you decide to head into the same rooftop where you first detected the Enclave radio signals. After you discovered and disrupting their plans the Enclave has stayed quiet and still, at first you believed that they were spying on you, but as of late this thoughts have been dissipating. There are more shipborn guards actively patrolling the slums, this has caused violent crime to go down, and inadvertently has spooked any Enclave spies that might have been after you.

It doesn't takes you long to reach the high point. Compared with the ships and their mighty decks this particular roof isn't really tall, but its as best as you can do without getting your ass in danger. You sit on the shack roof, turn on the radio and let the airwaves do their job.

> Everybody roll a 1d20!

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>4543677

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>4543677

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>4543677

Rolled 10 (1d20)

Alrigth, my turn

>>4543809
> +50 exp acquired

You tune in the different frequencies and hear nothing strange. Most of the bandwidth is unoccupied and returns nothing but static, there are a few pre-war distress calls that have been repeating the same dread inducing messages over and over for more than two centuries, a couple of channels used by nearby fishermen. there's of course Rainbow Jack's radio... and nothing else. Until you finally hear it.

"F̴a̷r̶ ̵a̷w̸a̵y̵ ̵s̸o̸u̴l̵,̵ ̸y̵o̴u̵ ̵h̴a̷v̷e̸ ̵s̴t̵o̴l̷e̸n̸ ̸o̸u̷r̴ ̵t̴r̶e̸a̶s̴u̶r̶e̴,̶ ̵c̷o̶m̸e̵,̴ ̶c̵o̷m̴e̷ ̸t̶o̸ ̵u̸s̶"

You cannot make the words, they sound extremely distorted, yet they are incredibly alluring. You grab the radio, raise it to your face and your body then freezes. You cannot avoid hearing the repeating message over and over, and before you can notice it a couple of hours have passed, it isn't until a painful rumble in your stomach happens that you finally break from your hypnotic trance. You are feeling quite hungry, your lips and throat are parched as well, you need to eat and drink. Your arms are incredibly sore from being in the same position from so long, tomorrow you will have muscular cramps.

What's wrong with this particular radio transmission?

Before it can snare you again you change the frequency and turn it off. Your eyes are dry as well, have you really been more than two hours without blinking at all? It sure feels like it.

>>4543889

You decide to pack the radio and head down to street level before a hunger and dehydration induced headache can kick in. As you descend staircase you cannot avoid noticing a person in the distance listening to the same frequency that had messed you up. It's a woman, around fifty years old, she is holding the radio in front of her face, just like you were doing, but she isn't still like you were, she is constantly nodding and walking across the street. The woman ignores everybody and everything around her, she simply walks, as if possessed, and when she finally reaches the end of the street she hugs the radio and continues walking, falling onto the waters and quickly sinking down due to the radio's heavy weight.

Quickly you try to reach her but there is nothing you can do, you are too late. Several bystanders try to rescue her as well but none dare to go down into the radioactive waters, and soon enough she is gone, not even bubbles coming out.

"My god. I've heard that there was a string of suicides around, all of them by drowning." Says one of the witnesses.

"Yeah, I heard that too, but I didn't believe it until now." Another add.

"I think its something in the water. There's poison in the water! Boil your water before drinking it!" A paranoid looking ghoul then yells.

"What's going on...?" You whisper, confused and scared.

> Interview these people. Ask around, some of them seem to know something.
> Travel to the Diver's Guild and interview the people around, hear what they have to say.
> Travel to the Diver's Guild and ask for a diving suit, go down on your own and check the submarine yourself.
> Other options, write in.

>>4543890
>Travel to the Diver's Guild and interview the people around, hear what they have to say.
Spooky

>>4543890
>> Interview these people. Ask around, some of them seem to know something.

>>4543890
>Interview these people. Ask around, some of them seem to know something.

>>4543890
> Travel to the Diver's Guild and interview the people around, hear what they have to say.

>>4543890
> Interview these people. Ask around, some of them seem to know something.

I have a suggestion OP. So far our Caps perk has been useless to us. The grind of buying some random item to resell it doesn't really work in quest format I think. Can we just create a steady stream of income instead, just assuming our character hustles around a bit every day he is in the city?

>>4544624
>I have a suggestion OP. So far our Caps perk has been useless to us. The grind of buying some random item to resell it doesn't really work in quest format I think.
I agree. Many of the stuff that is done in the videogames doesn't works here. But trust me, the perk will be useful.

>Can we just create a steady stream of income instead, just assuming our character hustles around a bit every day he is in the city?
We kinda did. Our new job as a newspaper editor gives us 50 caps per week. That's a pretty high salary for wasteland standards. We also have a small room where we can live and sleep for free, and Daphne's mother is a sweetheart and prepares us a free meal every day. We have hustled quite a lot actually.

>>4543890
> Interview these people. Ask around, some of them seem to know something.

For a moment you consider snapping a picture, but a second later realise that it would be useless, what kind of worth would have a picture of the sea have? There is no proof of a suicide happening in there, after all, the corpse sank into the bottom and left no trace behind. You better get information by other means.

Notebook and pen in hand you stop the nearby witnesses of the suicide and interrogate them all.

"What do you know about the suicides?" You ask to the person that first mentioned them.

"Not much. Just that they have been happening for the last week. Most of the people that offed themselves didn't really had any reasons to do so, some of 'em even had happy lives! But yeah... for some reason they all at some point left their homes and jumped straight into the waters, and never came back. I think that_"

"You gotta buy life preservers!" The lunatic ghoul suddenly yells, forcefully entering into your conversation. "Buy them and tie them up to your body! The voices of the deep are owed a life, and won't stop until that life is repaid!"

> Continue interrogating the person that you were talking with.
> Pay attention to the crazy ghoul. Newspapers with sensationalist bullshit like this will sell really well.

>>4544704
>> Pay attention to the crazy ghoul. Newspapers with sensationalist bullshit like this will sell really well.

>>4544704
> Continue interrogating the person that you were talking with.

let's let the man finish

>>4544700
>Continue interrogating the person that you were talking with.

>>4544704
>> Continue interrogating the person that you were talking with.

>>4544704
> Continue interrogating the person that you were talking with.

You ignore the raving lunatic and after a while it finally stops pestering around and leaves you two alone.

"As I was about to say." Your interviewee says. "I think that the radios have something to do. I'm a diver, and while I haven't found any body yet, I have found plenty of radios. Radios that a couple of weeks ago weren't there."

"So, the people hold the radios, jump into the waters and as they are drowning decide to release them?"

"That's the weird part of it all. If the corpses had dropped the radios after jumping, then they would have floated back into the surface. A body will float during its first 24 hours after death. The corpses haven't floated back, and they aren't in the bottom, they just arent. And they haven't been devoured either I know that for sure, because even the biggest of the Sha-manos leaves bodies and other remnants on its wake. It's has if they had simply disappeared."

You start to write everything down. Back in the day you preferred to write about real news, events that could shake the foundations of the NCR society to the core, and you believed that sensationalist headlines and yellow press were inferior and deserving of mockery, but right now you don't have anything better, so you will run with these foundation-less rumours, an ironic start for a newspaper that will be called the "Unsinkable Truth".

"Anyway, why are you asking and taking notes friend?" The man continues, kind of cheerfully.

"I'm a reporter for a new newspaper that will soon circulate around this city. The Unsinkable Truth."

"Nice, I like the name already. Tell you what. What do you say about going with me and the rest of the boys for a dive? We have a submersible and spare diving suits. We are trying to find out what the hell is going on. We believe that the weird radio signals that drive people mad come from Big Bertha, the submarine sunken under the city. But its all rumours and theories so far. Wanna join us?"

> Yes, this needs further investigation. Something really weird and potentially dangerous is happening here. You need to find out the truth before more people die.
> No, you have risked your life too many times already. Your life has just started to get on the right path, you have just gotten a nice and cushy job, and you are not going to risk everything to investigate some rumours.
> Other options, write in.

>>4544799

> Yes, this needs further investigation. Something really weird and potentially dangerous is happening here. You need to find out the truth before more people die.
we're an adventurer

>>4544799
>> Yes, this needs further investigation. Something really weird and potentially dangerous is happening here. You need to find out the truth before more people die.

>>4544799
>> Yes, this needs further investigation. Something really weird and potentially dangerous is happening here. You need to find out the truth before more people die.

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>>4544799
> Yes, this needs further investigation. Something really weird and potentially dangerous is happening here. You need to find out the truth before more people die.

"Yeah, I'll come up with you. I need to get to the bottom of this."

"Well, you will get to a bottom alright, to the bottom of the ocean har har. Name's Harris."

Harris is a seasoned and burly man. Short in stature, but not quite reaching dwarfism, body with a mighty beer gut, but surprisingly fit arms and legs. He looks like the man that could easily smack someone's light out without even breaking a seat. His skin is tanned and covered in small scars, bite marks and a couple of badly scarred bullet holes. Despite your impressive stature and musculature you wouldn't want to get in a fight against him.

You stretch his calloused hand and together walk towards the Diver's guild, where he and other brave people dip into the waters to skim the depths in the search of anything valuable. The guild is a pretty plain looking building on the outside, but the interior is heavily decorated with all kinds of treasures and mementos that they have found along the way. An entire whale skeleton decorates the ceiling, many other other marine remains cover the walls as well, clumped together along with dozens of pre-war paintings and countless photographic pictures. The area is full of other divers, all looking as grizzled and experienced as Harris, and all cheerfully speaking about the strange radio frequency and the suicide spree. It's... weird to see these people so happily speaking about people killing themselves, but perhaps it is part of their nature, they risk their lives every single day for a crust, and they have become too jagged and accustomed to death to really be fazed about it. Unsurprisingly, most of the divers are ghouls, perhaps their affinity with radiation makes them better suited for the job.

"Welcome to the guild. Feel free to ask for some Grog to Old Rusty." Harris then says, pointing towards a rusty and mollusc covered Protectron that limped around serving drinks. One of its legs had been broken and substituted with a wooden peg leg, and despite not really having eyes, someone had put an eyepatch over its head. Unsurprisingly, there was a heavily mutated and almost bald parrot perched in one of its shoulders.

"What do you do around here?" You ask, as you take a pint of a dark and foul smelling drink from the passing robot.

"The ships need rare resources to keep on working. They give us lists and we go down and search what they need. Luckily for us they have submersibles and scanners that more or less give us a general indication on where to look. When we have what we need we go up, deliver the goods and get paid handsomely. We can also keep whatever other stuff we might find. It's a great job, every day is unique and different, and if you are lucky you might end being set for life, but its not a job for the faint of heart, I have seen many people die down there."

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>>4545119

"And you all go solo, or in groups?"

"If you are a diver you don't have a boss. You can go down whenever you want. All you find and carry will be yours, but going alone is pretty much a deathwish. People here group when they need to, and then share the booty. The submersibles that we have around technically belong to the big ships, and are only to be used when they entrust us a mission, but since we are the ones with the keys we have decided to rent them to whoever needs it. If you have a lead on some good treasure you can always group with whoever you want and rent the sub for a relatively good price."

Despite being so hardy and aggressive looking these divers were surprisingly calm and democratic.

"Tell you what." Harris continues. "My particular group has already rented a sub, and we were waiting for Charlie, one of the best divers around, but she is completely awol, perhaps she has committed suicide by drowning as well, an ironic death for her, wherever she is, let's just hope that the Fiddler green's door open for her. We have an open position. But wait, before you answer, you should know that your Laser Pistol will work underwater, but the laser blast will be weakened, and they will leave a pretty noticeable bubble trail behind, you know, boiling water and all that. I could lend you a harpoon gun if you want, but please, take care, these little beauties are pretty delicate. Oh and if you decide to come what kind of suit would you want to take? A wetsuit offers almost no protection but will not hinder your movements, many people have managed to escape from danger thanks to them, there's also the classing diving suit, a model so good that it has been in use for almost four hundred years, and perhaps...a big guy like you could use the submariner armor, a heavy diving suit created by the pre-war army to sabotage nuclear submarines and clear minefields, the thing is an absolute beast."

"Why are you so sure that I'll agree to come down?" You ask, surprised by his enthusiasm.

"Come on! We need another person to go down, otherwise we will be short staffed and our survival rate will descend a lot! And you have already made all the way here! Not going down would be losing a great opportunity. And also, because this shit is addicting, trust me, you will want to descend in more occasions."

> Accept. Take the wetsuit.
> Accept. Take the Diving suit.
> Accept. Take the Submariner Armor.
> Decline.
> Other options, write in.

>>4545123
>Accept. Take the Submariner Armor.
Underwater power armor? Hell yeah

>>4545123
>> Accept. Take the Submariner Armor.

>>4545123
>> Accept. Take the Submariner Armor.

>>4545123

> Accept. Take the Submariner Armor.

Probably the only thing that would fit us at this point!

>>4545123
We a big boi, let's grab the submariner armor and a poon gun.

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>>4545123
> Accept. Take the Submariner Armor.

"Every time that I've dipped into the waters has been a terrifying experience. I'll take the Submariner Armor." You say, looking at the extremely heavy and thick suit.

The Submariner armor seems to be based on Power-Armor technology, perhaps since it was developed and created by the US army it might even be considered a proper Power Armor.

"Excellent choice. You will be slow as a slug, but strong as a tank. Give me a second to measure you..." Harris says, suddenly grabbing a measuring tape from one of his pockets and using it to more or less measure your height and other dimensions. You let him do his job and in the meanwhile look around the place. For some reason most of the divers are getting dressed, armed and ready to get down into the waters. A couple of the submersibles are even turning on their engines and getting mechanically lowered to sea level.

"Why is everybody submersing now?" You ask, as he continues measuring your ample body.

"It's going to be mid day soon. The sun will be directly over the ocean, and that will give us lots of sunlight to explore the dark depths. These few mid day hours allow us to save on fuel and power that we would otherwise need to power up the flashlights."

No wonder why Harris wanted you so badly. Without you his expedition might have been entirely cancelled. After he's done with the measures he quickly hurries towards a nearby workshop and starts modifying one of the mighty submersible armors, widening its inner frame and elongating its limbs to better accommodate you.

"I did all I could." He says with a small shrug as he finishes his job and quickly proceeds to put on his own diving suit. You store your Trenchcoat and all your belongings except your camera and recorder in Harris' personal locker and then proceed to put on a second hand wetsuit before entering into the Armor. The wetsuit is a couple sizes too small and reeks of sweat and other pungent aromas, and due to your massive and slightly inhuman frame the armor cannot fit you perfectly, becoming hard and uncomfortable to use, but it's as best as it will get. Lastly, you holster your knife in your left leg, your laser pistol in your right leg, grab a massive harpoon launcher and put it in your back.

With the helmet on your field of vision becomes tighter, and everything around you acquires a bright greenish hue, apparently it has some kind of night vision incorporated on itself.

"Can you hear me?" Harris suddenly radios you, speaking with a slightly echoing and distorted voice. "There's a small button in your forearm, use it to connect the radio, and then press the red one to the right of it whenever you wanna speak."

>>4545987

You follow his instructions and then hear him and other voices.

"Alright Freebooters!" Then Harris suddenly screams. "We got a new face in our team! What's your name boy?"

"D-Diego!" You yell, after pressing the red button.

"You heard him, he's going to be our heavy support. Now that the team is finally complete meet me in front of the submersible number 7. We are going down in five."

Harris motions you to follow and you sluggishly walk along with him. The armor makes you even bigger and looks sturdy enough to stop a Howitzer shell, but it also makes you extremely slow moving.

"Don't worry, the armor won't be as lagging once you are underwater, that's what it was designed for."

"I've never heard of an armor of this kind." You say, speaking with your real voice and not with the radio. Still, your voice comes out from a small speaker mounted in the helmet, and comes out sounding echoing and distorted.

"Really? I thought everyone around here knew about 'em."

"Well, I'm not from around here exactly."

"Wait, are you a mainlander?"

"Yeah. San Francisco."

"Uh, let's keep that a secret between us ok? Most locals don't like mainlanders, think that they are bad luck. And divers are particularly superstitious."

"What, why don't they like mainlanders?"

"Fear of the unknown mostly. Mainland America is really far away, and all we know about it comes from comics, novels and movies, most of which are violent in one way or another. I'm sure that most of the states aren't very different from what can be found around here, but people can have a pretty distorted view of the outside world. There are also a few people that believe that Hawaii should have never joined the USA, and that if it had stayed independent it would have been spared from the Great War. And finally there's a common belief here that any mainlander that comes to Hawaii does so because it is running from a terrible and heinous crime. Of course not everybody believes such things, but you might find a jackass every now and then, if I were you I'll keep your birthplace a well guarded secret."

"Uh... so far nobody has mistreated me for being an outsider."

"So far you have been lucky then."

File: Submersible 2.png (1.91 MB, 1366x768)

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>>4545989

"I guess so." You reply, kind of bummed.

"Anyway, I don't know about mainland America, but Hawaii was a hotspot for Chinese submarines, there were countless of them, hidden among the depths, ready to launch their nukes at any moment, spying on their communications, deploying spies, and doing god knows what else."

San Francisco also had a Chinese Submarine that ended on its coast, the descendants of the sub crew ultimately became the Shi, which ended becoming a very influential powerhouse in the city. You had learned of the Shi during your high school years, but you had never considered how many american and foreign submarines might have ended marooning in the different coasts or sank to the dark depths.

"The Americans had better technology and weaponry." Harris continues. "But the Chinese were better at stealth and spying. When it came to underwater warfare the Chinese had an edge because they always managed to intercept the american communications and avoided being attacked or activated stealth fields and became nearly undetectable and impossible to target, there are rumours of several chinese submarines that haven't been found yet because they are still invisible to the naked eye. Anyway, the American radars and detection systems were good enough to detect and triangulate the Chinese subs, but they were always too late and by the time they managed to send some response the Chinese were gone or had turned invisible. So they developed these armors as a countermeasure, as a mean of fast responding to these threats before the chinese could run away. The armors were mounted on specially designed stealth ships, and when one of those commie subs was discovered a nearly supersonic plane was scrambled and sent over the coordinates of the enemy, when they were finally in position the Submariners simply jumped from the plane, falling directly above the enemy submarine, sinking too quickly for the chinese to react and escape. These armors could either be equipped with mine launchers, breaching plasma cutter or Gatling guns. The mine launchers were used to create a floating minefield around the sub, making any kind of escape impossible, the plasma cutters breached the hull and were used to create an entrance, and the Gatling gunners killed anyone on board. These Submariners achieved many great things, but they were never deployed outside of Hawaii. The Great War happened before it could be done."

"Wow." You say, impressed to wear such a piece of history around your body.

>>4545992

Finally you reach the Submersible number seven and find another three persons, which will conform your expedition group.

Harris will be the leader of the group, he will wear a diving suit and be equipped with a power drill and a some breaching charges, he will coordinate the rest and be a jack of all trades, helping whenever he can.

The next one is Nanna, ayoung ghoulish woman wearing a wetsuit, she is equipped with a couple of highly modified sub-machine guns that work underwater and instead of bullets use electrified flechettes. She will be good against lightly armoured enemies and her natural agility and speed make her an ideal scout and explorer.

Following her is Kalili, a tall psyker woman wearing a diving suit, and equipped with a handmade sonic cannon that can stun submarine creatures and is capable of breaching holes inside the hulls of most ships. She will be good against robots and most heavily armoured enemies, and will also be the main techie of the group.

And finally there is Marcus, another wetsuit wearing person. His wetsuit is covered in small leather bags and pouches full of medicines, ingredients and medical tools. On his back he has a small sword and a sawed off shotgun. He's will clearly be the medic and scientist of the group.

"Alright." Says Harris as he opens the hatch of the submersible and ends introducing you to the rest of the group. "Our mission is finding the source of the strange radio transmissions, which we believe come from somewhere under the city. The rest of the expeditions have each allotted a particular place to start their search, we have a place as well. We will go in groups of two and one will have to go alone. How do you wanna pair?"

> Go with Harris. He's the leader and most experienced one of the group, your survival chances will increase a lot with him.

> Go with Nanna. Her weapons will be great to fend off agile yet feeble enemies that might cause you some trouble due to your sluggishness.

> Go with Kalili. Together you two will be nearly unstoppable, and whatever enemy or obstacle you might find will be easy to deal with.

> Go with Marcus. He's the medic of the group, nuff said.

> Go solo.

>>4545999
Let's roll out with Nanna, big and small is good combo.

>>4546000
Holy shit you are a fast reader, most replies take more than thirty minutes. Also nice trips.

>>4546003
Well shucks pardner. BTW posted in first quest, liking this one too.

>>4546011
Glad to hear that! What parts do you enjoy most? Do you have any suggestions or criticism? I strive to become better

>>4546029
I like it all pard, but I can say that I especially like the quests ya come up with. If Bethesda had half of your imagination their games would be hella better.

>>4545999
>> Go with Harris. He's the leader and most experienced one of the group, your survival chances will increase a lot with him.

>>4546000
I was gonna go with the scientist but I will bow to trips

>>4545999
>> Go with Nanna. Her weapons will be great to fend off agile yet feeble enemies that might cause you some trouble due to your sluggishness.
Sounds like good synergy

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>>4545999
> Go with Nanna. Her weapons will be great to fend off agile yet feeble enemies that might cause you some trouble due to your sluggishness.

"I'll go with Nanna." You say, your voice sounding booming and distorted as it comes out of the centuries old speakers mounted on your helmet.

The petite girl nods and cheerfully gets on your side, your massive frame towering over her. She has to be barely five feet tall, lithe and slightly spindly looking, breasts and ass barely bulging on her chest and rear.

As far as you know children cannot become Ghouls. Nobody knows exactly what causes some people to turn into ghouls, but it is believed to be something genetic that triggers after puberty, explaining the lack of infantile ghouls. Nanna must have been barely an adult when her ghoulification process began, barely eighteen when the rads mutated her. If she was born before the nukes then she has to be one of the youngest looking yet oldest living ghouls out there.

Kalili and Marcus group together, apparently there's something between the two of them, and always try to group along when the go to some expedition.

"Of course, old Harris will have to go alone." He says, opening the hatch and getting inside.

The rest soon follow suit, with you entering last, as your body is the biggest and requires the most manoeuvring to fit around. It takes you a great deal of work to finally fit inside, and by the time you are finally done you are the last group to descend. The vehicle is descended with a crane and slowly dropped onto the waters.

Harris gets on the helm, turns the key and a great deal of small lights and machinery turn on, the entire submersible becoming hot and noisy as several fans begin to spin and recycle the air inside. The underwater coffin finally goes down, and nothing but the faint sound of the spins, the cyclic ping of the radar and soft murmured prayers dedicated to old careless gods can be heard.

The sunlight can only lighten so much, and soon enough a thick shroud of darkness engulfs all of you, the weak lights barely illuminating around the ship.

"Alright, so far so good." The leader says, as he steers and sails downwards. "Each one of the expeditionary teams has a particular part of the sea bottom to skim and scrounge, but most of them won't even bother checking them out. We believe that the signal originates from the great Dragon, the Chinese submarine that has lied dormant down there. We know that the Dragon is normally out of bounds, too many people around these waters have gone mad, and the area reeks of bad juju. But today we are going to do an exception, we can search it, but be wary, once we are down there that place will be no man's land, we will be able to kill divers from other teams and no legal repercussions will come from it. Pray to all the gods that you might know, because we sure are going to need their blessings."

> Roll 1d20!

Rolled 12 (1d20)

>>4546216

Rolled 6 (1d20)

>>4546216
Rng have mercy.

Rolled 20 (1d20)

Rollan

>>4546234
Thank you 1 post ID

Of course you guys get a nat20

>>4546237
You are welcome anon-kun

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>>4546234
You've saved us from the spooks, for now anyways.

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>>4546216
> Rolled nat20
> 450 exp acquired

The submersible has only one window to look upon, the rest is completely encased in metal. The glass is kind of grimy and the darkness and trash floating around makes visibility even harder. Somehow Harris manages to reach the bottom, and then heads straight into the Dragon, the massive sunken submarine that had laid untouched since the great war.

So far your Geiger Counter has been quiet and dormant, you are surrounded by radioactive waters but the submersible and your armor have proven to be a great shield against the decrepitude inducing effects of the ionic radiation. Still, the moment you approach the submarine the Geiger starts to tick and crackles back to life. The submarine is absolutely radioactive, perhaps it didn't manage to launch its nukes before being sunk and countless of tonnes of uranium still wait down below.

No wonder why so many people were driven into madness when approaching this unholy place. The radiation out there has to be brutal. As you get closer you see it with your own eyes, a massively long metal beast, old rusty metal covering a still beating heart, a bright green glow coming out from the cracks in its hull.

This also explains why Fallen Horizon has chosen this particular place to be stationed in. The submarine seems to have suffered massive damages, and surely as it sank it ended spreading uncountable radioactive material everywhere.

Perhaps other areas of the Hawaiian seas are not as radioactive, and can even be safely swum. The shipborn could have chosen a less irradiated place to settle on, a portion of the sea where falling into the waters wouldn't be a fatal outcome, but they preferred to put the lives of the belowdeckers at risk and in exchange have easy access to nuclear material. You look at the others and see some jaded and with thousand yard stares, other praying and mumbling incomprehensible phrases, these poor folk risk their lives for people that don't even care about them. Harris might be one of the few ones that truly enjoys this lifestyle, but the rest have been dragged into it. It's terrible.

The submersible finally stops about then feet from the sea bottom and then drops a small anchor. Everybody puts on their helmets and assure that their suits are completely airtight and then Harris presses some buttons that start the long and painful process of decompression, when that's finally over a radio check is done to assure that everybody can speak with each other and a bottom hatch is opened, allowing the divers to jump straight onto the waters below.

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>>4546297

Since you are the biggest one you are the first one to go down, and the moment you do your half melted Geiger counter turns mad. You are even worried about it melting even more, and becoming completely useless.

One by one they all jump down and reunite with you. The submarine is a few feet away, you will need to walk towards it for a few minutes to reach its hull.

"I couldn't drop the anchor any closer. If we anchored closer to the Dragon we might risk soaking the Submersible in rads, which would in turn would end irradiating us and anyone that might be at the Diver's guild after we go back, besides we simply cannot afford a decontamination of such scale. These beauties can only be decontaminated in the big ships, and doing so can go as far as ten thousand caps."

The rest of the group nod and prepare for the long walk. Despite having the sun on top of you and illuminating the ocean the visibility is pretty bad. You can hear gunshots and explosions in the distance, but there's nothing you can see. You look up and see the sun and three small dark smudges in the distance, are these really the ships and the town. How deep are you really?

Slowly and with the weapons ready you all walk towards the Dragon's hull. Your journey is slow, your armor can only walk so fast, and despite being slightly faster and more agile underwater it is still sluggish compared with the rest of the team. After a stroll that feels like an eternity you finally make it to the submarine.

No wonder why is it called the Dragon. It's absolutely massive, by far the biggest vehicle that you have seen so far, and you have seen the great NCR locomotives and the countless of trailers that they pulled crossing all across the railways of the wastes. The Dragon is a submarine that might easily be bigger than the three ships that form Fallen Horizon, and without a doubt, if the ship were still seaworthy you could easily fit the entire population of the ships and the town several times over. You are absolutely in awe. Fallen Horizon has been surviving of the Dragon waste for more than two centuries, and by the looks of it, it could survive for another five hundred years easily.

As you walk you cannot avoid noticing that every now and then you come across a radio. Most of them are broken, possibly destroyed as they heavily landed on the rocky sea bottom, but a few of them are still functional and on, and whenever you walk close your radio starts going crazy... so far your group has been able to avoid all the working radios, but who knows what might you find inside of the sub.

Luckily for you the particular part of the submarine that you have reached has a huge gash on its hull, letting you all easily enter without the need of using any breaching charges.

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>>4546298

You get in, go inside and after ascending for a while you finally manage to reach an area that isn't completely flooded. It seems that while a great part of the ship has been inundated many others have stayed dry thanks to the sub's airtight seals.

Everybody sits on the floor and rests for a while, Kalili even uses some strange rocks and flammable leaves to make a small campfire.

Harris grabs a strange device and turns it on, scanning the air around and checking some readings that the machine is returning.

"Alright." He starts to speak. "Air is more or less breathable, radiation isn't as high as I was expecting. I think we should set camp here. We don't for how long will we stay here, so our priorities right now is getting some food and water in case we need to extend our stay, obtaining some scrap metal and ammo so Kalili can set up some turrets around us is also important, and one of us has to go and explore the nearby tunnels to see if there are dangers or treasures. As you all know I prefer to leave the choice to you guys."

> Go with Nanna in the search of food and water, and if possible chems as well.

> Go with Nanna in the search of scrap metal, junk and other resources that can be used to build turrets and other defences that will keep other divers and whatever mutant abomination that might lurk around away from your camp.

> Go with Nanna and scout the areas around camp, see what parts might be interesting to explore and what kind of dangers might lurk around.

> Other options, write in.

>>4546029

Is there a link to your first quest? Really enjoy your writing and want more

>>4546301
Yup, it was in the beginning of the thread. Here ya go friend:
> http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/4504658/

>>4546300
>> Go with Nanna and scout the areas around camp, see what parts might be interesting to explore and what kind of dangers might lurk around.

>>4546300
Let's go scout some shit, since we're the big guy with big armor it's our responsibility to look for spoops.

Rolled 12 (1d20)

Alright, scouting it is. You will do 1d20+PERCEPTION, which is 8. Best of three. I'll roll 1d20 as well.

> Roll 1d20+8

Rolled 16 + 8 (1d20 + 8)

>>4546335

Rolled 3 + 8 (1d20 + 8)

>>4546335

>>4546306
Ah gotcha. I thought you had done another quest other than this storyline. Been following this one from the beginning! And echoing another anon, if you wrote for Bethesda the games would be a million times better.

Rolled 10 + 8 (1d20 + 8)

>>4546335
Rollen

>>4546348
Well, this quest is sorta a redux. A year or two ago I ran this same quest. Sadly, life went to shit, curse got me, and I had to abandon it.

Our character was called Dillinger Rast, it was a survivalist from Sanctuary. It was a pretty cool guy.

This is my attempt at running the same quest again because I really enjoyed the experience.

You can check it out here.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?searchall=Nukaloha

The beginning is more or less the same, but soon enough the two quest divert and become pretty different. If I recall correctly in the first quest we never set foot on Fallen Horizon.

>>4546353
Was Fallen Horizon even a thing in the first run? I don't remember it being mentioned even once.

>>4546355
You are right, it wasn't mentioned, not even once. I checked it.

It isn't a new addition thought. I have loads of word documents bloating my hard drive full of lore, names and descriptions for the islands and its settlements. I want them all to be more or less unique.

I originally came with the idea for Fallen Horizon two or three years ago. But originally the settlement would have been very different. It would have been a high tech city made up by the three ships and that was it.

There wasn't two different halves of the city, the belowdeckers and shipborn weren't a thing as well. I made all that fluff on the go. You need to be good at improv if you wanna be a QM.

I also know who will be the big antagonist of the quest, what are its motivations and goals. But I honestly have no fucking idea of how you guys will end crossing its path. That's what makes questing fun and interesting.

>>4546300
> Go with Nanna and scout the areas around camp, see what parts might be interesting to explore and what kind of dangers might lurk around.
> Exploration successful
> +150 exp

The group starts to move away the trash and clean the area to deploy sleeping bags and create a corner where one can relieve itself.

"Nanna and I will go and explore." You tell to Harris, to which he nods and gives you the greenlight.

You turn around to tell her that its time to go but become unable to find her. Suddenly, from behind you hear a soft giggle and a small knock on your metallic helmet.

"Diego, since you are so big and I'm so small I was thinking of jumping into your back and letting you piggyback me. I'm kinda tired after the walk, and it's not like you will notice it anyway."

You shrug and proceed to walk towards the first hatch door that you find. Despite of its old age and lack of maintenance the submarine is surprisingly well lit, and most of the lights around still glow with some faint and intermittent intensity.

Honestly, you didn't knew what could you find, but you weren't expecting to see a massive room full of old and decrepit mannequins, a great layer of dust and cobwebs covering everything from head to toes.

"Jeez, this place is creepy." Nanna mutters as she loads her weapons.

Most of the mannequins are undressed, but a few have ruined and half destroyed Chinese uniforms and Hēi Guǐ armors put on them. Apparently the spiders and whatever other insects might roam around had been feeding on these clothes for the last two centuries, as most are completely ragged and tattered to the point of losing all of their value.

Suddenly the lights go out and a couple of seconds later turn on again. Nanna screams and you gasp, closing your fist and punching the nearest mannequin, crushing its plastic head as your metallic fist impacts. All of the mannequins had changed in position, they were all now looking and poiting at you.

"Let's get out of here." You say, walking as fast as you can and carrying Nanna on your back, tumbling down several mannequins and crushing them under your heavy weight as you stride towards the next room.

You walk across a door and reach a staircase, the stairs upwards are blocked by debris, so you have no choice but to go down. After descending a few feet a strange mist suddenly forms around you, becoming thicker the deeper you go, to the point of making the lower levels absolutely impossible to navigate. To add insult to injury your Geiger counter starts to beep, the fog is somehow radioactive, you need to get out of there as soon as possible, so you leave the staircase and head into the first corridor that you see.

>>4546446

This corridor is particularly full of pipes, dozens of different pipes surround its walls and ceiling, all of them being of different colors and widths, hundreds of small rusted valves dotting the area. This place has suffered damages, most of the pipes have been damaged and are leaking. From their rusty cracks glowing and radioactive slime comes out, fiery multicolor flames are spewed, or dirty water leaks. If this place weren't as dangerous and radioactive it might have become a good source for dirty if drinkable water.

You don't go very deep into the corridor, and you decide to enter into a room before the heat or the radiation can affect any of you.

The room you enter in seems to be some kind of control room, there are around twenty skeletons in there, the walls have been decorated with crude drawings of nuclear mushrooms and fire, and at the end of the room there is a big and red glowing button. The skeletons gather around it, and by the looks of the many bullet holes, empty casings and rusty chinese pistols that lie around the button it seems that some kind of battle occurred here, perhaps the button launches the nukes, perhaps there had been a mutiny and some crewmembers wanted to avoid an even bigger nuclear fallout. Whatever that button does it isn't good, people killed and died for it, you do not dare to press it.

Slowly you retreat and go back to the leaky corridor, crossing it a few more feet and entering inside of another room.

Somehow you end in a mess hall, an eerily empty and disturbingly clean mess hall. You check the fridge and pantries and find it full of fresh fruits and pre-war chinese foodstuff. How this kind of food could last this long without being spoiled will be something that you will never understand, but you try not to question it, it will be easier to sleep at night that way. At the end of the mess hall there is an automatic door that is constantly opening and closing, apparently affected by some mechanical problem. There's something blocking the door as well, something big, every now and then the door slams with unprecedented force, filling the room with the sound of breaking bones and blood splattering. You walk towards the door to see what might be blocking it and find a massive Sha-Mano trapped in there, a great deal of blood is coming from it as the door slowly yet unrelentingly continues cutting it in half.

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>>4546447

When you approach the massive shark it reacts to you, jumping and thrashing violently and desperately trying to get a bit of you two.

Both Nanna and you yell in surprise, as you expected the beast to be completely dead. It just made no sense, the shark couldn't have reached this place on its own, and even if it somehow did, it must have come very recently for it to be still alive.

Suddenly the door slams shut with a strength that its servos shouldn't be able to generate. It violently cuts the shark in half, splattering blood and guts all around it. The door then slowly opens back, creaking with every inch of movement. From the other side of the door you see nothing but darkness, but then some strange howling reverberates all across and a dozen clawed hands emerge from the darkness and pull the bottom half of the shark into the darkness. The sound of more breaking bones and flesh being violently torn and teared following soon after.

With both hands you grab the door and slam it shut. Then simply turn around and run away.

"What the hell was that?" You scream, as you head back into the leaky corridor.

"I've heard rumours about ships like these. Some of these vessels had a lot of surviving crew when they sank. The radiation along with other toxic materials and perhaps even chemical weapons that these ships carried ended mutating the crew, turning them into beasts way worse than Ghouls."

"What?"

"The world knew that the Great War was about to happen, it knew that it would be the biggest one there was, so they used all of their cards, went all in. Some of those ships carried mutant viruses, other nukes, other carried genetically engineered beasts, perhaps even a mixture of those three. Those ships then sank down, but maintained big air bubbles inside of them, becoming isolated biospheres on their own. The viruses or radiation mutated the crew or the gene freaks that they carried, and after two hundred years of inbreeding they have turned even freakier and more dangerous. Several ships are considered out of bounds for a good reason."

"Yeah, alright, but what about the mannequins, and all that other freaky shit."

"We like to believe that these places have lower oxygen levels, or that the air might be contaminated with things that might make you hallucinate. But honestly, we are never too sure, these places might be truly haunted."

As you walk you find another door, one that is blocked with woodboards, but thanks to your suit these boards offer little to no resistance to your titanic strength. You remove them one by one and kick open the door, before jumping in.

>>4546450

This new room is a bathroom, one illuminated by hundred of candles and almost completely covered in graffiti. The walls, ceiling, stalls and cracked mirrors are covered in chinese characters, random sets of numbers or nonsensical sentences and sets of names. The entire area smells of fresh marker ink. Slowly you drag your metallic fingers across one of the stencilled names and see the ink smudge, these are freshly made, but at the same time a thick layer of dust covers everything, making it look old. It makes no sense. Suddenly the different pipes start to make an echoing noise, reverberating loudly before from the toilets a dark brown sludge starts to come out, quickly filling the entire small room in a foul and rotten smell. From the sludge several small bones emerge, human bones, but too small to belong to an adult, these are children bones.

As you avoid the dark and possibly irradiated sludge you notice a huge crack in one of the walls. You decide to give it a try and with a well aimed punch manage to tear a hole that leads to a new corridor. You head in and find a normal looking corridor, yet suddenly countless of surveillance cameras turn around and look at you, their red eye like lens being the only light source around.

There is no way you will go back, so without any other choice you decide to cross the corridor, the many cameras turning around and following your movements as you walk. The entire corridor is silent, dreadfully silent, not even the sound of dripping water or your Geiger counter can be heard. You cannot even hear your breathing or your heart. What's going on.

At the end of the corridor there is an elevator. As you are midway across it an elevator descends, and slowly opens its doors. Inside you see... Nanna? You look behind you and see her still perched to your back, looking at her doppelganger with horror, suddenly she yells and points in front of you. You look back at the elevator and now that its doors are fully open see that you are inside as well. The two of you lie on the floor of the elevator, covered in blood and absolutely gutted open, your blood and guts lying spread across the floor and walls.

"Fuck!" You say, as you proceed to run towards the elevator as fast as you can. Just as you are about to reach it the doors suddenly close and the elevator continues going down. You forcefully open the doors and find an empty hole, no remains of the elevator at all. You push the call buttons and receive no response, there's no power. Of course.

>>4546452

Next to the broken elevator there is a rusty staircase, the stairs that go down lead to a flooded floor, so you decide to go up and to your surprise reach the encamping area where Harris and the rest of the group had set. Only Harris is around, the rest are missing.

During your absence they had mounted some tents, built some defences and even gathered some food and water.

"Hey there! Where were you?" Harris asks, raising his beer bottle and inviting you to sit next to him.

"What do you mean, we were gone for about an hour at most."

"More like twelve hours. We tried contacting you but there was too much noise." He replies shrugging.

"Just believe that we have been smelling hallucinogenic gases Diego. It will be easier that way." Nanna whispers to your ear, as she gets down from your back.

"Have you found any enemies?" Harris then asks.

You look at Nanna and she shakes her head. "No. We saw some strange stuff out there, the usual. But no critters." Nanna replies.

"Good, good."

As you get out of the armor and rest you suddenly notice a radio near the campsite. You aren't sure if having that around is a good idea.

> Try to eat something, recover some forces and go to sleep. Give your mind a break, otherwise you mind end too crazy.

> Ask Nanna to talk privately. Ask her about the strange phenomena and other dangers that might be in the submarine.

> Rest for a while, get back into your armor and go back into exploring. There's something wrong with this submarine, but you are sure that somewhere out there is a something that can stop this suicide spree.

> Other options, write in.

>>4546455
> Ask Nanna to talk privately. Ask her about the strange phenomena and other dangers that might be in the submarine.
There's spooks here. Deep sea lore

>>4546455
Whoops, I forgot to add one of the options. Sorry.

> Fiddle with the radio, see what kind of strange frequencies can you find inside of the submarine.

>>4546455
>> Ask Nanna to talk privately. Ask her about the strange phenomena and other dangers that might be in the submarine.

>>4546455

> Ask Nanna to talk privately. Ask her about the strange phenomena and other dangers that might be in the submarine.

We need more intel

Ask if the radio is ours and if it's not SMASH the fucker.

>>4546455
>> Ask Nanna to talk privately. Ask her about the strange phenomena and other dangers that might be in the submarine.

>>4546515
>>4546563
+1

>>4546455
> Ask if the radio is ours and if it's not SMASH the fucker.

The radio is off, but still gives you the creeps. There is something wrong about this place, and radios seem to act as a catalyst of some kind, if they are able to bring the strange and hypnotic energies of this submarine all the way to the to, who know what could they do here, closer to the source.

"Is that radio ours?" You ask Harris.

He looks at where you are pointing at and seems surprised.

"No, I don't remember bringing it, I in fact asked the rest to NOT bring radios. What the fuck."

Back in your armor, you walk towards the square shaped radio and as you are about to reach it, it suddenly turns on on its own, a weak light coming out of its diodes and tubes.

"We are owed a soul. You took it from us. We are coming for you. Diego." The radio suddenly speaks, with a ethereal and inhuman voice.

Before it can spew any more maddening sentences you grab the radio and crush it with your own hands. Smashing it to bits and sending electrical sparks everywhere.

"Did you hear that?" You ask to the rest.

"Hear what?" Nanna replies.

"The radio, it just said my name." You yell back, throwing the broken pieces away.

"I didn't hear anything." Harris says, trying to calm you down.

"Me neither. Perhaps it was just your imagination. You are still inexperienced, and you must be tired, try to rest." Nanna adds.

>>4546891
> Ask Nanna to talk privately. Ask her about the strange phenomena and other dangers that might be in the submarine.

Once more you leave the armor and Harris prepares to do a quick checkup and charge its batteries. Soon enough the rest return to the camp as well, bringing with them heavy sacks filled of food, valuable resources and chems.

"We were lucky and found a mess hall full of food. There was also the upper half of a shark in there,we tried to bring it here to eat it, but it was too heavy. It's ok thought, with the food that we have here we should be able to last for a couple of weeks."

You look at Nanna, who doesn't seems phased by the mention of the eerily clean and empty mess hall, and the shark that you had found as well.

"Weeks..." You mutter to yourself. You expected this to be a quick thing, in an out, and return home before midnight, but now according to Harris more than twelve hours had passed, and by the looks of it you will be here for a couple of days.

Daphne and the rest don't know where you are, don't know that you are in the middle of an investigation, honestly, they might believe that you are dead. Hopefully they won't be really mad when you appear back in the Bookstore.

"Nanna, can is speak with you?" You ask, as the rest start to cook some food.

"Sure, what's troubling you?" She says, standing up and walking to another corner to have some privacy with you.

"What..." You start, as you reach her. "What is wrong with this place?"

"I told you, we are in an air bubble that has been stale for centuries. These humid and slightly radioactive vessels are ideal for all kinds of nasty molds and mushrooms. We might be breathing really nasty spores that might be messing with our heads.I'm not a scientists, I cannot give you a clear answer."

>>4546892

"Well, can you at least tell me more about the depths, its dangers and such?"

"I don't know what to say. Some people have a connection to the sea, they say that humanity came from the waters. I've meet sailors and captains that abhor land, and prefer to live and die on the ocean. The seas also attract all kinds of weird stuff and beliefs, even before the war there were many stories and cults dedicated to strange gods that lived in the ocean depths. I've been invited to them, but I've always declined, the orgies and chems are fun and cool, but the rituals...bleugh. There are entire communities of people who live underwater, they might come by Fallen Horizon from time to time to trade, but they mostly keep to themselves and don't interact with people outside of their faith. There might be cultists in this same submarine, a place as big as this would make for a great headquarter. When it comes to critters well... depends on the ship, but there are a few creatures that are kind of common. Radroaches and rats are an usual sight, feral ghouls as well, Mirelurks too of course, packs of feral dogs might appear from time to time, Gulpers and Geckos and other mutated lizards like Deathclaws as well, but those are not as common...just shoot anything that moves. And be sure that its fully dead. If you can stomach it you could remove the used harpoons from the monsters that you kill, and reuse them."

"You two! Get a room for yourselves or come to eat dinner with the rest of us!" Marcus suddenly yells to Nanna and you.

Nanna blushes and then pats you on the arm before cutely running towards the campsite. During your absence the rest had deployed a small electric stove, several electric lanterns, sleeping bags and even a corner where one could deposit whatever useful and valuable objects one might find while exploring.

Harris hands you an old plastic plate, with some strange stew on it. It smells pretty bad, and pales in comparison with Ethel's food, but honestly you are pretty hungry, and you know that if you don't eat your survival chances will descend a lot. With some difficulty you manage to gulp down the leathery and foul smelling chunks of meat and the thick and salty gravy. Belching a little bit as you finish.

"Alright. I've decided to make the night rounds. The rest of you go to sleep and rest. I'll keep away and be sure that nobody gets close. Since I'm alone and I'm the only one that knows how to drive the submersible, I also going to be the only team that won't explore around. I'll instead stay here, guarding the camp and cooking. Anyone got a problem with that?"

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>>4546894

Everybody shakes their heads, including you. Honestly it's not a bad plan, despite its impressive physique Harris is kind of old, and going alone is a deathwish, he told you so. Having him guarding the campsite will make exploring and scouting easier for everybody as well.

"Then goodnight to all of you." He says, as he lowers the intensity of the lanterns, creating a soft and gloomy atmosphere. You head into your sleeping bag and quickly find that it doesn't fits you, you are simply too big.

"Wait." Says Nanna as she witnesses you tossing the sleeping bag away. I have a needle and some thread, and I know sewing. My sleeping bag is far too big for me, what if I sew your bag and mine together, perhaps that way we might both be able to fit inside.

It seems that Nanna is attracted to you. And while she is pretty good looking, for a Ghoul, you barely know her. Would this be considered cheating? You don't really think so, but you are sure that Daphne wouldn't like to know that you snugly slept with another woman. On the other hand... are you and Daphne really dating? Yeah, you have kissed her, fucked her, several times, but is she really your girlfriend? Lately your relationship has become quite strained, you barely spend as much time together... Damn it, why is everything so hard and complicated?

> Let her use your sleeping bags to create a bigger one. Sleep next to her.

> Tell her that it's ok. Lie on the floor and try to sleep.

> Other options, write in.

>>4546897
>Let her use your sleeping bags to create a bigger one. Sleep next to her.
About Daphne well, she cares for us but the relationship isn’t going anywhere, tell her to stay as friends when we are back.

>>4546897
>Tell her that it's ok. Lie on the floor and try to sleep.

>>4546897
>> Tell her that it's ok. Lie on the floor and try to sleep.

>>4546897

> Let her use your sleeping bags to create a bigger one. Sleep next to her.

Let's not get too tied down. The relationship is on the rocks anyways.

>>4546897
> Tell her that it's ok. Lie on the floor and try to sleep.

we are not fucking a goul. Also I would like to call out Harris on his bullshit, like "What the fuck Harris? You could've told me you wanted to take me on a week long expedition to a radioactive ghost ship?! "

>>4547056

Racist. All you smoothskins are the same.

We should absolutely captain kirk this.

>>4547168
Please keep in mind that OP has REPEATEDLY told us that catching nasty STDs is a real possibility in this quest.

>>4547283
We need to fuck every mutant in the wastes until our dick mutates and becomes a giant glowing missile that will pierce the heavens

>>4546897
>> Tell her that it's ok. Lie on the floor and try to sleep.

>>4547283

So it's fine to jump into bed with the human woman who literally wants to fuck a guy who just randomly knocked on her door, but not the ghoul cutie who had our back during the latest adventure?

Definite ghoul stereotyping going on here! Poor Nanna...

>>4547438
Only one person here emits so much rad that our dick might rot and fall off.

>>4546897
> Tell her that it's ok. Lie on the floor and try to sleep.

"Don't worry. I'll sleep on the floor." You tell her, rolling up your sleeping bag and creating a makeshift pillow to rest your head on.

Despite being exhausted, both in body and mind, you barely manage to sleep at all. Everything around you makes falling asleep a nearly impossible task, the metallic floors are extremely cold and humid, the faint lights on the walls loudly turn on and off at random interval, several of the nearby walls and ceiling pipes leak dripping water and in the distance strange echoing sounds can be heard and from time to time, very faint gunfire and explosions.

"Fuck it." You say, after a couple of hours of rolling of being unable to fall asleep. You stand up and pass by your snoring companions. Harris notices that you are awake and offers you a hot cup of coffee.

"I couldn't sleep during my first night either." He tells you, with a sly smile.

"You should have told me that this expedition might last weeks. My boss must be freaking out, I was supposed to return home with a nice article for tomorrow's print." You say kind of pissed, grabbing the cup and sipping the rich and bitter drink.

"C'mon. Aren't journalists like you supposed to spend days investigating?"

"Maybe on the newspapers that can afford it. We haven't even printed our first issue."

"The Unsinkable Truth wasn't it? Well you are in the depths, and you will survive and get out of there with a treasure of your own, perhaps not gold and riches, but a true story that will rock the city."

"You better be right about it Harris." You say with a deep and gravely voice, trying to sound intimidating.

Despite your hulking appearance your fearmongering doesn't works, and your intimidation attempts simply slid off him. He's too jagged to be terrified by you.

>>4547515

"Look. If I told you the truth you would have never come with us. We needed another one. The submersibles can hold up to nine persons inside, the pilot and eight occupants in the back. But nine is an unlucky number, so we try to make teams as big as seven people."

"Why not eight?"

"Even numbers are bad luck too."

"Of course." You say, rolling your eyes.

"Anyway, we were only four, four is an even number, an unlucky number, and three is simply too small for an expedition of this size. I'm sorry I didn't told you all the truth, but desperate situations require desperate measures. If I had been honest I wouldn't have managed to descend into the waters, and you wouldn't have found your story."

"If I ever find it..." You say, finishing the drink and handling him the empty cup so he can refill it.

"You will. The Dragon has been something that we have wanted to explore for centuries."

"And why the sudden change, why now?"

"I would be lying if I said that our motivation comes from goodness and our interest in stopping the suicides. No, it's not that. The Shipborn will reward the team that discovers and stops whatever is causing the suicides with ten thousand caps, a citizenship status and a small home in the Cielo Zafiro. As the team leader I will keep the citizenship and the house, the rest of you can share the money."

"Really? That would be like, two thousand and five hundred caps for each one of us."

>>4547519

"Yeah, I don't really care, I only want the house and the citizenship. Apparently a few weeks ago a Shipborn decided to rescind his privileges and went to live with the Belowdeckers. What a fool. Normally the Shipborn would have bought his belongings and then auction them, but nobody came to the auction and bet for his stuff, and shortly after came the suicides, which have also been wrecking the snobby folk that live up there. Using their scanners and radars they discovered that the suicides were caused by a strange radio emission that originated from somewhere under the ships, so they forcefully shut down every radio that was on board and decided to offer the citizenship, the house and the caps to whoever stopped it."

"The shipborn really dislike Belowdeckers, to grant a citizenship and gift a house like that... Kind of desperate and extremist don't you think?"

"Yes, but I think I know why. The radio emission randomly changes of frequencies, as long as you have a radio turned on it will sooner or later emit that damned thing and make anyone that hears it kill themselves. I believe that this affect to every single radio, including the mega scanners and other strange machines that they use to scan their surroundings in the search of enemies. So right now they are completely blind, no scanner, no radar, no nothing."

"Damn."

Could the Enclave have caused this? If they did and the three ships were really blind and defenceless then they could easily invade and conquer the entire city, you hope that you won't find an absolutely destroyed ruin when you go back up.

"I don't want the money, I have enough saved. After I get the citizenship and the house I'll turn my old home into a submersible docking station, create my own diving company, send my divers into the search of treasure, and live from it. I have big plans boy. If you ever find yourself in need for a job I'll gladly take you in, as long as you forgive me for lying to you."

>>4547521

You look at him in silence and grab your second cup of coffee, sipping on it as your eyes meet.

"We will cross that bridge when we come to it." You reply drily.

"C'mon, I want to repay you somehow... Look, I think that I saw a ham-radio a while I was cleaning the campsite. If we find it I could see if it works, and perhaps help you use it to communicate with the Diving Guild, which would then send a courier to communicate to your boss, family or friends your current situation, and let them know that you aint dead. What else... your Submariner armor is big and sturdy enough to carry one of the turrets that Kalili built on its back, the turret would find enemies and attack them on its own, it will be really useful when exploring, the rest of course will not like you using one of the turrets, but I'll convince them that it's for the best... I could also brew some of my homemade knockout juice, it will make you sleep like a baby for the next hours, making you wake up all rested."

> Let him search for the radio and use it to contact with the surface and send a courier that will inform Mr. Aikue and Daphne of your whereabouts.

> Ask him to install a turret on your armor, having an extra of firepower is always welcome.

> Ask him to brew his Knockout Juice, a good night of sleep and being well rested will do you a lot of good in a place as dangerous as this one.

> Tell him that he owes you a favor, and that you might come to reclaim it at some point in the future. Having a contact among the Shipborn that owes you a favor might be incredibly helpful at some point.

> Other options, write in.

>>4547523
>> Ask him to install a turret on your armor, having an extra of firepower is always welcome.
The coralfuckers won't get to see what hit them.

>>4547536
>The coralfuckers won't get to see what hit them.
Oh shit. i hadnt considered that this could be caused by the coral walkers. makes too much sense. fuck im dumb

>>4547545
I thought of saying it after we heard the radio the first time but I thought it was too unsubtle to be proud of figuring it out.

>>4547523


> Ask him to install a turret on your armor, having an extra of firepower is always welcome.

> Tell him that he owes you a favor, and that you might come to reclaim it at some point in the future. Having a contact among the Shipborn that owes you a favor might be incredibly helpful at some point.

I'd ask for both of these, since we're not only stuck down here for a couple weeks but we're also risking our ass so Harris can get a cushy life as a shipborn. Seems that's worth two favours to me. Maybe need a speech check?

>>4547570
Sure, I'll allow to favours if you succeed a speech check.

> Roll 1d10 to see how much Charisma Harris has.

Rolled 3 (1d10)

>>4547575

>>4547576
Alright, his charisma is 3, ours is 7.

Makes sense, Harris is ugly as sin, while we are relatively handsome.

If other people vote for this then you guys will do a best of three 1d20+7 and I will do a 1d20+3. If you succeed you'll get some exp and get two favours out of him.

>>4547581
Cool, I'll do +1 >>4547570

Rolled 16 + 3 (1d20 + 3)

Alright, an hour has passed and there are no more votes.

> Everybody roll 1d20+7
> Best of three

Rolled 16 + 7 (1d20 + 7)

>>4547658

File: MOSHED-2020-11-8-0-43-31.jpg (542 KB, 1490x2048)

542 KB JPG

>>4547660
Cool, you guys succeed. There are still two available rolls, if one of you get a nat20 then you guys will obtain an exp bonus.

Next update will be in a few hours. I'm going to sleep now.

> You can ask questions about the quest, its lore and other details and I will gladly answer them all as soon as I wake up
> I am also open to constructive criticism and suggestions or ideas

Thanks for playing!

Rolled 20 + 7 (1d20 + 7)

>>4547665

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>4547665

File: 1442045069478.gif (2.14 MB, 500x281)

2.14 MB GIF

>>4547677
Ask and ye shall receive.

Possible reason for suicides: The Enclave is manipulating the coralfuckers to enlarge their numbers and make an attempt on the town. While that is happening, the Enclave will ram the town and fuck up the bank, then slink away. Then they'll wait a few months/years and firmly take control when the town is sufficiently weakened.

The coralfuckers calling us by name is not a hallucination. We robbed them of a new member in the crazy lady ghoul they marked and want their pound of flesh.

Turret on the armor is the right choice as we'll need the firepower. I would also argue to Harris that we get to keep the armor and have it properly modified for us so we can use it to it's full potential.

Let's not, however, go full Dillenger with it this time.

Also, CHECKED

>>4547523
> Ask him to install a turret on your armor, having an extra of firepower is always welcome.
> Tell him that he owes you a favor, and that you might come to reclaim it at some point in the future. Having a contact among the Shipborn that owes you a favor might be incredibly helpful at some point.
>CHA test
>Crit success
> 300 exp gained

"This fucking ghost submarine creeps the hell out of me. Having a turret on my back will do me real good. But I don't that will enough for me to be fine with you. Understood?" You say, finishing your second coffee and firmly planting the metallic cup on the metallic floor.

"Alright, alright, I will still owe you one. Deal?"

"Deal."

The two of you shake hands and stand up, walking to a nearby workshop. Your team had been really lucky with this particular camping site, it was really cluttered with trash, but at the same time, there was plenty of space to settle on, and the nearby workshop allowed for the easy construction of turrets and other defences.

Around the campsite there was a ring of defence made up by machinegun turrets, and around it a minefield full of makeshift mines full of nails and other sharp objects. So far, no enemies had approached your camp, but according to Harris many expeditions ended in disaster because their teams couldn't defend their turfs.

"I'm not a blackthumb like Kalili, but I know a little bit of engineering, I could modify some of the turrets to fit your needs. What kind of turret do you want?"

> Machinegun Turret:
Effective at medium and short range. Uses 5.56mm rounds. If you run out of ammo you will need to find more somewhere.

> Shotgun Turret:
Very effective at short range, specially with unarmoured enemies. Uses 12 gauge shotgun shells. If you run out of ammo you will need to find more somewhere.

> Flamer Turret:
Very effective at short range, specially with unarmoured enemies. Uses fuel as ammo. If you run out of fuel you will need to find more somewhere.

> Laser Turret:
Effective at medium and short range. Uses the Submariner Armor's own power source as ammo. If you run out of energy you will need to find a fusion core or an electric outlet somewhere.

> Tesla Turret:
Very effective at a short range. Tasers and stuns nearby enemies. Uses the Submariner Armor's own power source as ammo. If you run out of energy you will need to find a fusion core or an electric outlet somewhere.

> Rocket Turret:
Very effective at a long range, useless at short range. Uses rockets as ammo. The rockets are hard to come by, and the turret cannot hold many of them before running out, but it will be absolutely lethal and be even able to breach holes in the hull and flood entire floors if neccesary.

>>4548196
> Laser Turret:
Effective at medium and short range. Uses the Submariner Armor's own power source as ammo. If you run out of energy you will need to find a fusion core or an electric outlet somewhere.

If we're going to be down here for a few weeks we can secure some energy that the ship still has and keep ourselves powered up. If there are spare power cores we can hopefully find a way to charge them and keep ourselves powered.

>>4548196
>> Laser Turret:

>>4548196
> Machinegun Turret:
I think that's the only option that will be equally effective underwater. Also I don't want to run out of energy and not be able to move OR shoot

>>4548196
>Rocket Turret

>>4548196
>Machinegun Turret:

Rolled 2 (1d2)

There is a tie so I will do a dice roll

> Laser
1

> Machinegun
2

File: Winterized_chinese_assaul(...).png (1.22 MB, 2750x950)

1.22 MB PNG

>>4548196
> Machinegun Turret:

"Just put the turret on the armor, and if you have time build another turret with what we have around, that way the rest of the team won't be as pissed."

Harris snorts and nods, then without a word grabs one of the nearby turrets and gets to work. Despite loudly bolting, drilling and welding the metal and pieces of the turret the others didn't seemed to be bothered and they didn't woke up, their sleep was incredibly deep, and hopefully lacking in nightmares. This haunted Chinese submarine was dreadful enough on its own, there was no need for night terrors.

After several hours of hard work he finally completes his job. The turret itself is really simple, it's just an old Chinese Assault Rifle scavenged from the submarine crudely attached to a few servos and a connected to a digital eye capable of detecting enemies. The weapon now rests over the armor's helmet and the fixtures and servos are placed on the back and shoulders. The weapon has 360 degrees of operation, but its slow to rotate and might take a while to find enemies in dark areas. Perhaps during your time inside of the sub you might end scrounging tools and resources that will allow to further upgrade and improve it.

Soon after finishing the mounting of the weapon several alarm clocks start to buzz, and the rest of the team quickly starts waking up. You have end pulling an all nighter, and honestly you feel like shit, but you truly believe that it was worth it.

>>4548710

The rest of the team don't notice the missing turret, they are simply too asleep to detect it, but sooner or later they will find out, and hopefully Harris will have made a substitute turret before that happens.

"Can we expect a shift?" Marcus asks, as he serves himself some coffee.

"I think so yes." He replies.

"A shift?" You ask.

"Vessels like this one might change in layout. They have draining, venting and temperature controlling systems that most assuredly are half broken and faulty. What yesterday was a flooded floor today can be walkable and dry, what today is a normal corridor tomorrow might be an airless frozen trap." Marcus replies, quite calmly.

"Then, at any point this campsite might flood or freeze?" You say, quite worried.

"Yeah, but that's why I stay awake while you all sleep. I not only guard the place from enemies, but make sure that everything is fine and dandy."

Somehow his words doesn't feel reassuring in the slightest. You sit with the rest of the team and join them in breakfast, drinking coffee and stale pastries, filling your stomach and caffeinating your system to get it ready for the day ahead of you.

Harris grabs a small handheld device and turns it on. It's rectangular in shape and has a small light bulb coming from each side of it. A little while after turning it on the right lightbulb illuminates with a red glow.

"Alright, the Shipborn haven't given us the greenlight. The other teams haven't found the source of the radio transmissions either. We can't go home yet, it's time to get to work."

You along with the rest finish your breakfast and proceed to suits up and arms yourself.

"We need two teams." Harris continues. "A primary one dedicated to searching the source of the radiowaves, and a secondary one focused on scavenging food, medicines, resources and whatever valuables you come across. What teams you wanna be on?"

> Primary team. Search for the suicide inducing radio transmissions and end this madness once and for all.

> Secondary team. Help the team stay alive and well and help them gain some extra income by searching minor treasures.

>>4548712
>> Primary team. Search for the suicide inducing radio transmissions and end this madness once and for all.

>>4548712

> Primary team. Search for the suicide inducing radio transmissions and end this madness once and for all.

>>4548712
>> Primary team. Search for the suicide inducing radio transmissions and end this madness once and for all.

>>4548731
>>4548723
>>4548720
Alright! Roll 1d20!

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4548732

Rolled 13 (1d20)

>>4548732

>>4548746
>>4548733
Seems like the third voter isn't around, so feel free to roll again.

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4548732

Rolled 15 (1d20)

Aight, my turn.

>>4548712
> Primary team. Search for the suicide inducing radio transmissions and end this madness once and for all.

"Nanna and I will look for the source." You say, as you hop into your freshly charged armor.

Marcus and Kalili don't seem to mind being relegated to scavenging duty for a second day, after all their mission won't take them as far and it won't be as dangerous.

Once more Nanna tries to jump and perch on top of your armor, but the newly added turret makes it an impossible task.

"Hey!" She says, as you leave the campsite and head out. "What's this thing on your back."

"Extra firepower." You simply say, as you open a hatch door and cross into the unknown.

The door leads to a strange corridor. By now you are starting to believe that there isn't a single normal room in the entirety of the submarine. The floor of the corridor is littered with origami cranes, you grab one and unfold it to see that it is a pre-war american bill, more exactly a 10,000 dollar banknote.

"Heads up, there's something on the ceiling." Nanna says, as she aims her guns up.

The ceiling is dark, and it takes you some time to finally discern what's up there, luckily it isn't anything dangerous, just several hanged skeletons. These bodies don't look like they belonged to soldiers, their tattered clothes aren't navy fatigues, but well tailored suits, were these people spies ready to be deployed in Hawaii perhaps?

>>4548947

"Money...useless...war." Nanna suddenly mutters. You turn to her and see that she is reading some Chinese characters scribbled on the walls.

"You know Chinese?" You ask.

"A little bit. There's a great deal of wastelanders that are descendants of the Chinese soldiers that were stranded in Hawaii after the war. These descendants learned Chinese from their parents, and their parents learned it from their parents, and on and on. Before the bombs fell my parents came from Vietnam in the search of a better life, my mother was pregnant when she came here, and I was born in Honolulu. Seventeen years later they were heard speaking Vietnamese among each other and someone mistook it for Chinese, and despite having spent here a couple of decades already their pleas were ignored and soon enough they were falsely accused of being Communist sympathisers and interred in a POW camp. I was lucky enough of not being accused as well... I tried building a legal case to help them but they died before I could take them out of there. They never ended teaching me Vietnamese, and of course they wouldn't have taught me Chinese... I still wanted to learn their native language to preserve their memory, but there aren't any Vietnamese speakers around, trust me, I've been looking for years, so I ultimately gave up and learned Chinese instead. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese spoken nowadays around Hawaii doesn't sounds like the real language, but it is still a useful skill to have."

By the looks of it the hanged people expected to have a great life in America, have loads of money at their disposal and at the same time work as a spy and help taking down their biggest enemy country. Then the great war happened, their dreams shattered, their possibly fake money useless, the moment they had been trained for years turned moot. No wonder why they all hanged themselves.

A shame that this money is pretty much useless even today. Back in its day those all this money might have been more than enough to be set for life.

>>4548949

You ignore the cranes and continue across a corridor, leading into a massive room with... rain?

There's a powerful stormy rain coming from above. You look upwards and see no ceiling, a thick grey foggy cloud covers the entirety of the ceiling, making virtually impossible to see what's above you. The room is covered in thick vegetation, making it look more like a rainforest than a random room inside of an old submarine. There are no lights in the room but still countless of fireflies illuminate the surroundings with their yellow and orange glow.

"It's... sweet. It's not saltwater." Nanna says, as she tastes one of the raindrops. She immediately grabs a couple of empty bottles from her bag and proceeds to use a massive plant leaf to collect the rain and pour it into the bottles.

As she is about to finish filling her second bottle suddenly several gunshots startle you. Nanna drops the bottle and readies herself to battle, together you follow the source of the gunshots and reach a laundry room room full of dishwashers, driers and chinese cleaning products. Then you see it, another diver and a strange coral walker wrestling and fighting. The diver is equipped with a wetsuit, a combat knife and a 10mm gun. He seems weaker than the mutant creature, and its poor equipment won't do him much good either. You don't think that he will be able to survive this fight.

> Intervene and help the diver. Interrogate him on the areas that he has explored so far.
> Intervene and kill the diver. See what the creature does with the corpse.
> This isn't your fight, walk back and block the door that leads to the Laundry. Let them kill each other. This is a competition, only the team that manages to resolve the mystery of the sub will be rewarded. Destroy your opponents.
> Other options, write in.

>>4548952
> Intervene and help the diver. Interrogate him on the areas that he has explored so far.

>>4548952
> Intervene and help the diver. Interrogate him on the areas that he has explored so far.

Let's tell the diver to pull his socks up and let the coral bastard have it with our turret.

>>4548952
>> Intervene and kill the diver. See what the creature does with the corpse.

>>4548952
> Intervene and help the diver. Interrogate him on the areas that he has explored so far.

check the diver for coral shards, if he has any, kill him.

File: Coralwalk.png (1.46 MB, 848x1200)

1.46 MB PNG

>>4548952
> Intervene and help the diver. Interrogate him on the areas that he has explored so far.

You know that the other diving teams are rivals, and that they would kill you without a thought if they could, but you are not going to lower to their level. Quickly you raise your heavy harpoon launcher, aim at the Coral Walker and press the trigger. Your weapon vibrates for a brief moment and then a loud mechanism releases the projectile, shooting it at incredible speed as steam comes out of the barrel.

Despite the monster's natural armor the red hot harpoon manages to breach its hard coral skin and goes as far as nailing it onto the wall. The wound that you have inflicted is grievous, and would have proven fatal to any human, and even most Super-Mutants, but this abomination continues alive, and is still weakly trying to reach the diver.

It takes to the Coralwalker a few seconds to finally realise that it has been pinned down. It looks at the harpoon coming out of its chest and with weak and inhuman grunts attempts to remove it from its body. Luckily for you the projectile is too deep inside of him, and the only thing that it manages to do is enlarge his already massive wound. A black and salty liquid starts to pour out from his chest and other orifices, his skull like face soon being completely covered in the sludge.

The Diver that you have just rescued starts to cry and removes his mask to better breathe. It's a young woman, no older than sixteen. Her face is bruised and her nose seems to be broken, apparently during their struggle the Coralwalker had managed to hit her pretty bad. Soon after removing her mask she proceeds to puke, blood mixed with the contents of her stomach coming out from her parted lips.

File: Coralwalk parasite.png (2.15 MB, 1044x1008)

2.15 MB PNG

>>4549374

Suddenly an inhuman screech comes from the Coralwaker, which seems to be extra excited and aggressive now that he's capable of smelling the diver's blood. After witnessing such an horrific scene your mind suddenly drifts and remembers the Glowing Tailor that was also infected with the mutant coral. If this was the fate that awaited her then you honestly saved her from a hellish existence.

After a while the Coralwalker stops trying to pull the harpoon and instead sinks its claw like fingers onto its guts, violently pulling them out in what feels like a nonsensical suicidal act. More viscous blood starts to pour from its wounds and face. You should have shot it down, but the sight was so horrific and dread inducing that all of you became frozen in fear. From its ripped guts countless of small slimy slugs start to spew out, their bodies also infected with small coral like protrusions. Nanna and you step back to avoid his parasite spewing intestines, but luckily for you two this desperate action doesn't has a lot of range, and the foul creatures don't even come near you. But the poor crying diver isn't as lucky, and soon enough her entire body is covered in the tiny slugs, which quickly proceed to enter and invade her nose, mouth, eyes, ears, and wounds.

A second later the Coralwalker dies, and so do the creatures that he had spew all across the floor. Only the ones that had entered into the girl's body continue alive, burrowing inside of her skin, flesh and brain, turning her into another slave to the hivemind.

The poor diver tries to cry and scream but her eyes and mouth are full of the parasites, and nothing but a gargled whimper comes from her throat.

"Fuck, what should we do?" Screams Nanna, which seems truly scarred by the experience.

"Shit! Let me think!" You yell back, as you get between the poor girl and her to block her view with your hulking body as best as you can.

> Grab the diver and bring it to the campsite. Marcus was the medic of the team, perhaps he knows what to do.
> Tell Nanna to leave the room and wait for you outside. You should be safe inside of your armor. Use this experience to learn about the Coralwalkers.
> Mercy kill her. It's for the best.
> Other options, write in.

>>4549376
>> Mercy kill her. It's for the best.

>>4549376
> Tell Nanna to leave the room and wait for you outside. You should be safe inside of your armor. Use this experience to learn about the Coralwalkers.

Maybe we can prevent this happening again.

>>4549376
>> Tell Nanna to leave the room and wait for you outside. You should be safe inside of your armor. Use this experience to learn about the Coralwalkers.
Prepare to obliterate and burn that thing at all times

>>4549376
>Tell Nanna to leave the room and wait for you outside. You should be safe inside of your armor. Use this experience to learn about the Coralwalkers.

Rolled 18 + 6 (1d20 + 6)

>>4549425
>>4549430
>>4549443
Very well. We will do a 1d20+INT. Our Intelligence is 6.

Everybody roll 1d20+6. Best of 3

Rolled 7 + 6 (1d20 + 6)

>>4549448
Dang, nice roll.

>>4549448
Whoops, I should have done a regular 1d20, not a 1d20+6. So my dice roll is 18, no 24.

You guys need to roll 12 or more to succeed.

Rolled 2 + 6 (1d20 + 6)

>>4549448

Rolled 6 + 6 (1d20 + 6)

>>4549448
Let's pray for a clutch

Well, that was useless and traumatizing, especially traumatizing.

Rolled 20 + 6 (1d20 + 6)

>>4549453

>>4549519
Sorry, it was best of three. Yours is the fourth roll. We failed this, hopefully I won't end punishing you guys too harshly.

>>4549521
Shit, didn't see the first roll.

>>4549522
Look at the bright side! We obtained 500 exp from killing the Coralwalker!

>>4549376
> Tell Nanna to leave the room and wait for you outside. You should be safe inside of your armor. Use this experience to learn about the Coralwalkers.

"Wait outside, there's something I need to do." You tell Nanna, forcing her to wait outside of the small laundry room. She gives you a worried look, but then softly nods, and slowly retreats, closing the door on her exit.

The diver girl convulses on the floor, her otherwise tanned skin has turned now pale and veiny looking, part of her hair has started to fall off, and between coughs she begins puking blood.

"What are you trying to do?" You say, trying to contact with the hivemind, hoping to get a chance to talk before she becomes too feral.

The diver girl suddenly turns and looks at you, several of her bones and vertebrae loudly cracking as she erratically jerks.

"We know that voice. We knew that our siren call would bring you to us. We are owed a powerful soul Diego."

Slowly the possessed girl starts crawling towards you, her limbs shaking and wildly moving, falling down several times before it can weakly stand up. Apparently the coral hasn't reached her brain and nervous central system yet, and the diver still has some control over it. Despite being standing up you are not afraid of her, if your harpoon gun could kill a fully transformed Coralwalker then it would absolutely obliterate her.

"Explain yourself." You inquire, loading another harpoon onto the gun and aiming at her.

"We used to have a symbiotic relationship with the souls above, a relationship that they did not know about. They gathered the glowing shapeling light and cold metals around us, we protected them from dangerous marine life, and in exchange used their deceased ones for growth and reproduction..." The diver says, with a voice that becomes more and more inhuman with each syllable.

You are communicating with an inhuman sentience, one that probably doesn't perceive the world like you do. It easy to understand what it meant by "cold metals", but glowing shapeling light"? Radiation and nuclear waste perhaps?

>>4549613

"We hid from the souls above, believed that they wouldn't accept our presence, and we were right, when one of their divers discovered one of my walkers, violence erupted, and soon enough the deceased ones stopped coming."

As far as you know, nobody in Fallen Horizon drops their deceased onto the waters. They are either turned into manure, chemically treated to become lumber, or completely incinerated and stored. Perhaps this explains the why of such cultural customs.

"Many moons have passed since then. Far too many. We have shrunk in size, we are a shadow of what we once were. Now we not only are starving, but the souls above actively hunt my drones. We are owed many souls. We were ready to add our bright champion into our fold. She would have caused damage and sent many bodies to the waters, allowing us to regrow once more. But you killed her. We saw it. We saw you."

"I saved her from being a slave."

"You saved nothing. We did what we had to do, we entered the cold labyrinth, made it ours, fused our minds with their machines, sang to the air, and returned to normalcy. We are gathering bodies, growing back, and we won't stop until we are paid what we are owed."

After saying that the girl finally dies, the coral takes absolute control over her body, her hair completely falls off, and so does part of her skin and even a couple teeth. It's a fast and horrifying experience.

She's completely feral, you won't get any more information out of her. If you leave her here she will slowly mutate and get covered by more and more coral, becoming stronger and more resilient by the day. You think she is fully dead, but who knows, some part of her might still cling to her body. You saved the tailor from a terrible fate, and you'll do the same with this poor girl.

>>4549617

With another well aimed harpoon shot you pin her to the wall, not very far away from the monster that transformed her.

There's nothing for you in this room, and you do not dare to loot the girl and risk infecting yourself. You leave the room and see Nanna sitting on the floor, reading a book while holding a small flashlight with her mouth. You close the door, and go as far as using your armor augmented strength to destroy the valve handle before ripping it out, effectively sealing the room.

Apparently the Coral has been living under Fallen Horizon for years, feeding from their deceased in exchange of keeping the biggest marine threats away. At some point one of the divers saw a Coral Walker and felt threatened by it. The town stopped dropping their dead into the waters, and this has ended starving the Coral. It was expecting to use the Glowing One tailor has a living bomb of some kind, destroying part of town and sending many corpses into the depths, but you came by and stopped its plans by killing her before the Coral could have total control over her. Now, the Coral has somehow fused with the submarine's radio, and has been emitting hypnotic soundwaves that force people to kill themselves by jumping into the waters. This has allowed the Coral to regrow its numbers, but you are sure that it won't stop anytime soon. You need to destroy it, otherwise the lives of all the inhabitants of Fallen Horizon will be in danger.

"What are you reading?" You ask her, trying to forget the experience you had just lived, trying to return to a sense of apparent normalcy.

"The smuggler of Love... I try to read a book to distract myself from...everything that surrounds me. Killing ghouls, mutant creatures and all that I can take, but seeing people being transformed is something that truly creeps me out. Even before the war I couldn't stand Zombie movies. Ironic, since I now look like one."

She's reading the book that you wrote, but you do not want to boast about it, and simply sit next to her, trying to make her feel secure and protected, if only for a while, before you continue with your expedition.

Nanna ultimately finishes the chapter she was reading and closes the paperback.

"I have seen a few more divers in a nearby room, a couple of them even passed by here. I hid and they didn't see me. Do you think we should follow them?"

> Yes. Follow them, perhaps we might discover some new area, or even find where their camp is located at.

> No. That would be putting us at risk. Let's just continue exploring.

> Tell Nanna that she needs to rest. Send her back to the campsite and explore on your own.

> Other options, write in.

>>4549620
>> No. That would be putting us at risk. Let's just continue exploring.

>>4549620
> No. That would be putting us at risk. Let's just continue exploring.

>>4549620
>> Yes. Follow them, perhaps we might discover some new area, or even find where their camp is located at.

>>4549620
> No. That would be putting us at risk. Let's just continue exploring.

"It could be a trap. Let's just explore on our own." You say, standing up and lending her a hand.

The room you are at leads to a set of stairs, the upper floor is covered with debris, but perhaps with enough time you might be able to clear a path. Yesterday the lower parts of these stairs were covered in a thick radioactive fog, today they are perfectly safe and clear of any kind of mist.

You could also use a nearby elevator, it seems to be still working but the buttons seem to be faulty to a degree, as they are constantly turning on and off at random.

A few feet away from you there is a door blocked by half rotten wood boards, you are sure you could simply rip them off and see what's on the other side.

> Go to the stairs, clean the debris as best as you can and ascend.
> Go to the stairs, descend into the lower levels that yesterday were covered in radioactive fog.
> Go to the elevator. Press to go up.
> Go to the elevator. Press to go down.
> Go towards the blocked door and open it.
> Return to camp.
> Other options, write in.

>>4549734
>> Go to the stairs, descend into the lower levels that yesterday were covered in radioactive fog.

>>4549734
> Go towards the blocked door and open it.

>>4549734
> Go to the elevator. Press to go up.

Maybe we can find the bridge or a command deck. Then a self-destruct button!

>>4549752
you want to end the quest by blowing ourselves and Fallen Horizon to shit?

>>4549758

Worked for Megaton!

But seriously, I figure rather than endlessly exploring a city sized submarine for a signal transmitter, we may have better luck just disabling the entire vessel. Or activating the engines and sending it back to China. Or activating its security systems. Lots of possibilities on the command deck.

>>4549758
Blowing the submarine would not destroy the three ships, but the shanty town would be severely affected by the sudden waves that would come from the bottom.

The waters would also become extremely radioactive, making fishing and submarine scavenging an impossible task. Several of the nearby fishing ships might also end damaged and sinking into the bottom.

I think that the town would be damaged enough to force its survivors to hop into the ships and find a new place to settle in.

>>4549752
>>4549745
>>4549736
We have a tie. It's almost 1 am for me and I'll head to sleep soon, but I want to write another reply before doing so. If there isn't a tie breaker in 30 minutes I'll do a dice roll.

>>4549734
>Go towards the blocked door and open it.

>>4549855
You are 4 minutes too late... but I'll let it slide. Writing now.

File: Derelict Laboratory.jpg (1.39 MB, 1920x1152)

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>>4549734
> Go towards the blocked door and open it.

"Follow me." You tell Nanna, as she stores her paperback and stands up with your help.

Together you walk towards the blocked door. All of the doors in this submarine are airtight hatches that can be easily closed to seal entire portions of the submarine, this makes sense as it was designed to be an underwater vehicle that could suffer from water leaks and even entire floods if damaged enough. This particular door doesn't has a hatch connected to it, the hatch does exist, it is in fact a couple of feet away, lying on the floor and mangled open. Whoever did this was strong enough to crumple the thick metal as if it were mere paper.

There are several wood boards nailed to the door frame. On the floor lies an old drill, several hammers and a dozen rusty nails. This was a quick and sloppy job, done desperately by terrified people.

You grab the wood boards and one by one pull them off, easily removing them and letting you two explore the other side.

The door leads to a small rusty and weathered staircase that goes down and then opens to a laboratory or nursery of some kind- There's heaps of trash everywhere and a disgusting mixture of grime and dust cover every inch of the walls and furniture. Several parts of the floor are now broken and ripped, and lead into a dark chasm below, but a few wooden boards have been put to cross the gaps. Your Geiger counter starts to beep once more, there's a lot of background radiation in this place.

You survey the room and see several hospital beds, a couple of terminals, some microscopes, heaps of strange chemicals, and what looks like an Auto-Doc.

> Study the Auto-Doc, if it still works it will prove incredibly useful to remove radiation and heal your team mates.
> Check on the Terminals, hopefully they won't be in Chinese, but even if they are Nanna might work as a translator and help you understand what do they say.
> Loot the room and head out. The chems, bandages and other medical instruments around might prove useful for the campsite.
> Remove the wood boards and see if you can jump down. There's more to explore.
> Return to the corpses of the Coralwalkers and conduct an autopsy on them, learn how they look on the insides.
> Check if there are any books on medicine written in English, check if there's anything you can learn from them.
> Other options, write in.

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>>4549896
Ok I just noticed a mistake. I said that the place looks like a nursery.

Nursery isn't the correct word. I cant recall the word right now, its not a hospital or a clinic, its a place to treat people, where nurses work. Like when you are at school and you scrap your knee, you go to that place to get it treated.

I'm too tired to remember the word. Sorry.

>>4549902
Infirmary! I had to go reread Hero Academia Quest to remember that.
>>4549896
> Study the Auto-Doc, if it still works it will prove incredibly useful to remove radiation and heal your team mates.

>>4549926
> Infirmary
Holy fucking shit thank you. I couldnt sleep because not being able to remember the word was messing with my head. Thanks and goodnight fren

>>4549896Check The Terminals
We need information on what this thing is and how we can stop it. We don't want to find out about some unexpected strength of it the hard way.

>>4549896
>Check on the Terminals, hopefully they won't be in Chinese, but even if they are Nanna might work as a translator and help you understand what do they say.

>>4549896
> Study the Auto-Doc, if it still works it will prove incredibly useful to remove radiation and heal your team mates.
> Check on the Terminals, hopefully they won't be in Chinese, but even if they are Nanna might work as a translator and help you understand what do they say.
> Loot the room and head out. The chems, bandages and other medical instruments around might prove useful for the campsite.

In this order then bug out to the campsite. I got this feeling we are pushing our luck.

>>4549896

> Check on the Terminals, hopefully they won't be in Chinese, but even if they are Nanna might work as a translator and help you understand what do they say.

If they are in Chinese study the autodoc while Nanna reads through the entries

>>4550027
+1

File: Terminal 1.jpg (1.56 MB, 999x2601)

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>>4549896
> Loot the room and head out. The chems, bandages and other medical instruments around might prove useful for the campsite.

Together with Nanna you inspect the different containers and desks and find an assortment of useful chems and medicines. Several Stimpaks, two Doctor's bags, three Rad-Away, seven bottles of Rad-X, four Buffout, three bottles of painkillers, a blister of anti-biotics... and even a couple of condoms.

Not all of the chems are American made, but you are sure that they will work with you or anyone that might need them. You store them all in your bag and continue exploring.

> Study the Auto-Doc, if it still works it will prove incredibly useful to remove radiation and heal your team mates.
You head into the strange chamber located in one corner, above the thick door there's a glowing sign that says Subject H. You look across the dirty circular window and see nothing but darkness on the other side. Suddenly a light inside flickers for a while. Then you see it, a mummified corpse inside, long dead, its face stretched in an expression of horror. The lights go out for a second, and when they come back the corpse is gone. Once more the interior of the chamber goes dark, and when the light returns, the body is once more inside.

"What's inside?" Nanna asks, trying to peek from behind you.

"A corpse, nothing, I don't know." You say, walking back.

You aren't sure if this is an Auto-doc. But perhaps it would be for the best to stay away from it.

> Check on the Terminals, hopefully they won't be in Chinese, but even if they are Nanna might work as a translator and help you understand what do they say.
One of the terminals is completely busted, nothing but a garbled mixture of chinese and western characters constantly flashing on the screen. You turn on the other one and to your surprise, find that it isn't encrypted, and its even in english, its a very normal and plain looking RobCo Terminal. Despite being a Chinese Submarine this particular room is teeming with American Technology. It seems that it was here were the local scientists investigated the american tech that they acquired.

After booting up the Terminal displays several possible options:

> Check Journal entries
> Check Investigation reports
> Print Submarine Map
> Liberator Experiment logs
> Stealth Boy Experiment logs
> Other options. Write in.

>>4550299
Quick question. Do you like the terminal entries in picture form or prefer plain text?

>>4550299
>> Print Submarine Map
Then
> Check Journal entries

>>4550309
Plaintext. Pictures can get missing or messed up on the archives

>>4550379
+1

>>4550299
> Print Submarine Map
> Liberator Experiment logs

Liberator sounds interesting...

>>4550299
>> Check Journal entries
> Print Submarine Map

>>4550379
+1

>>4550430
Support

File: Dragonmap.png (878 KB, 1024x512)

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>>4550299
> Print Submarine Map

A map could prove useful. You press the button and for a moment the terminal screen turns black. A few feet away a big and bulky dust covered dot matrix printer sparks as its lights turn on and its internal mechanisms whirr with energy.

Slow and steady a long sheet of old paper starts to come out from one end of the printer, a crude and basic map of the submarine being printed on it. Due to the old age of the printer several parts are badly printed or not printed at all, and the ones that are clearly visible have their indications written in Chinese. Hopefully Nanna will be able to read them all.

As the print is about to finish the machine suddenly stops, sparks begin to spew from its back and soon enough a small fire erupts. You try to pull out the unfinished map but the pincer is holding onto it with its mechanical clamps. Finally, and with Nanna's help you two manage to rip the paper and pull it before the fire even reaches it. The printer begins burning completely, and you are forced to throw nearby trash and dirt to cull out the flames.

You have ended with an unfinished and nearly tattered map, but the good thing is that the part that has been printed is the one where you are located, so it might end proving useful after all.

File: Terminal 2-1.jpg (2.48 MB, 999x4335)

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>>4550717
> Check Journal entries
While Nanna studies the map you return to the terminal, and decide to check the Journal entries to see what happened here.

Journal Entries: 23/06/2076

We have left the port of Qingdao. My wife and daughter cried all night. I did as well.

Even the most slow-witted of the crewmembers knows that this will be a year long mission. One that might even last decades. We all expect to return home turned heroes, but who knows, if nuclear war truly happens, there might not be a home to return to.

The "Fu-ts'ang-Lung" will reach Hawaii in a few weeks. It's a slow submarine compared with other models, but its massive armament, sheer size and stealth capabilities make up for it.


Journal Entries: 13/08/2076

The "Fu-ts'ang-Lung" has finally reached American waters. To avoid any kind of detection a few days ago we cut all of our radio transmissions. No outward or inner communications will be done. We are completely isolated from China.

Even if I cannot send them I will still write letters to my family. I'll also make a copy of each letters in these terminals, just in case.

Huang out.


Journal Entries: 03/09/2076

To better infiltrate the enemy our spies have been studying the local culture and been subject to many surgeries that will make them look more western like. Many of these procedures were experimental, a few ended in fatalities. These agents are absolutely loyal to the Chairman. They have been trained and taught how to endure torture, and still, many of the surgeries made them cry and ask for mercy. Changing the shape of a face is easy, it's something that has been studied and done for years, but changing someone's hair color, skin tone, eye hue... those were the surgeries that we were doing. Hair color was easy, we just used permanent dyes, for the skin we used a mixture of naturally tanning chemicals and radiation to darken the dermis and make it look like the local population. But changing the color of the eyes... I still have nightmares.


Journal Entries: 31/12/2076

Happy New Year to America. We have been listening to them partying all day. Celebrate it now capitalist pigs, because it might be your last year.


Journal Entries: 05/05/2077

Our spies have infiltrated mane facets of the Hawaiian society, some have even conscripted into the army.

Every day we get more and more reports and important military information. Once in a month a small submersible is filled with holotapes full of sensible and valuable data. The submersible meets with another Chinese vessel, relegates the information and returns empty.

I wish I could fill it with all the cards that I want to write to you.

File: Terminal 2-2.jpg (1.99 MB, 999x3468)

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>>4550720

Journal Entries: 29/07/2077

The first Wednesday of every month one of our small submersibles leaves with all the reports and data gathered by our spies stored in high density holotapes. It meets with another undisclosed Chinese vessel in some secret coordinates and delivers all the vital and sensible military information, then returns empty to us. I wish I could give the submersible driver a sack full of the letters that I want to write to you, but I know that they would never reach their destiny.

Every single day I miss you more and more. It's been more than a year since we left the homeland. It's the first time that I miss the annual visit to my parent's graves. Does the little Chunhua remember her father's face? Do you, my dear Ling-Fan, still love me?


Journal Entries: 23/08/2077

It has happened, it has finally happened.


Journal Entries: 05/09/2077

The Fu-ts'ang-Lung launched all of its nuclear missiles, some landed on Hawaii, some went as far as San Francisco and Las Vegas. This act drained most of our energy reserves. To avoid a total blackout the Liberators were not launched. We expected to refill our batteries and be able to return home in less than a week, but during the nuclear exchange several American military vessels were damaged and sank to the bottom. During their fall an unknown warship ended sinking just on top of our position, and the crash sent its nuclear reactor into a meltdown, exploding and causing irreparable damage in our hull. We cannot return home. I'm so sorry...

File: Terminal 3.jpg (2.83 MB, 999x5202)

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>>4550723
> Liberator Experiment logs

We have several Liberator robots in our arsenal. They are weak and easily destroyed, but their duty is to sow fear and spread propaganda. Even after the event of a nuclear war.

Experiment 0001: Install several speakers on them that will nonstop play Communist quotes and music.

RESULT: FAILURE. The speakers made them easier to detect and destroy


Experiment 0002: Add the capability of attaching to American robots and hacking their encryption to take control over them.

RESULT: FAILURE. All of the American robot models, even the Protectron, ended hacking the Liberator instead.


Experiment 0003: [DATA EXPUGNED]

RESULT: [CENSORED]


Experiment 0004: Giving the Liberators a communist AI that will explain the American youth and liberals intellectuals the benefits of Communism over Capitalism.

RESULT: FAILURE. The Artificial Intelligence became Capitalist instead. It has been captured and is in possession of the US Army.


Experiment 0005: Filling the Liberators with an explosive charge and several communist pins, turning them into propaganda bombs when they are destroyed.

RESULT: FAILURE. They have become 120% more lethal, but the pins become too damaged upon the explosion. And the damaged people have a 0% of switching to Comunism.

ADDENDUM: General Mao has ordered to cease the experimentation with Liberators. In case of need they are simply to be released upon enemy territory.

>>4550727

As you read the last experimentation log a new option pops up on the Terminal.

Release Liberators in Bay 04

You have never heard of a robot like this, you have never seen a Chinese robot in fact, but apparently they are easily dispatched, acting more like a nuisance than a real threat.

"Nanna, can you see on the map where Bay 04 is located?" You ask her.

"Uh...let me see. Pretty far away, near the end rear of the sub. Why do you ask?"

If you released the robots they might prove useful against the local creatures, and rival diving teams. You might not cause many kills, but you will surely weaken whatever roams around these parts.

"Nevermind. How are you doing with the map?"

"Good. I have found a way of accessing an armory, some sleeping quarters, a secondary engine room... and a communications hub? I don't know what that means."

> Release the Liberators. Then wait for a couple of hours until the Chinese robots are dealt with and do not pose a danger for you anymore.
> Go to the Armory. Better firepower is always welcome.
> Go to the Sleeping Quarters. You deserve some rest. Real rest, in a real bed.
> Go to the Engine room. Perhaps it can be used to power or de-power other areas of the submarine and that way mess with the other diving teams.
> Go to the Communications Hub. A place like this might have a radio powerful enough of reaching the surface, and allow you to speak with Daphne.
> Continue checking the Terminal.
> Other options, write in.

>>4550740
>> Go to the Sleeping Quarters. You deserve some rest. Real rest, in a real bed.

>>4550740
> Release the Liberators. Then wait for a couple of hours until the Chinese robots are dealt with and do not pose a danger for you anymore.
this sounds way too much fun to not do it