No sooner were Enzo and Moghu returned to us than Kevin was abducted! Now the gang is on the hunt for a monster in hopes of finding their friend.
Since Jacob H was unable to make it to the session, we did a little bit of a play-by-post side story on Discord to cover Kevin’s missing time:
Bryan: While the paramedics are taking care of the campers, you’re wandering around outside playing with your walkie talkie, trying to see if you can pick up the dispatch radio. You sweep by a channel and hear a really strange sound. It almost sounds like speech, but as though it were being made by something that in no way resembles a human being.
Kevin: Exactly how close to the Alien in Alien does this sound?
I try hitting my ring button to ring whoever or whatever is on the other end
Bryan: Less screechy, more clicks and hiss, like the Predator. The buzz apparently startles whatever’s making the sound, and it stops momentarily, makes a few more sounds, and then the channel returns to the usual hiss of an empty frequency.
Kevin: I do a visual sweep of my immediate area for anything that seems unusual. While continuing to listen on my walkie.
If I don’t hear anything after a minute, I do a scan of the channels again, after noting the one I was on.
Bryan: After a couple of minutes of looking around and switching channels, you start to think it was your imagination. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see movement. You spin that direction to see what it was, and then something wraps around your waist and your head, covering your mouth, and yanks you off your feet. Moments later, whatever it is is sprinting away into the rocks with you.
It seems to carry you effortlessly, but there is moisture seeping into your clothes from where you’re pinned against its body, and you feel some kind of viscous fluid dripping down your cheek.
It runs for a few minutes, then half-slides, half-runs down a gravel hill into what looks like the remains of a campsite. There are two collapsed tents here, their poles bent. As the thing turns, you see what looks like a person face-down on the ground, a pool of blood spreading outward from it.
Kevin: I hit the ring button on my walkie talkies again
Bryan: Unfortunately, when you were snatched, you were on a random empty frequency, so the ring goes out to nobody. The creature removes its hand from your mouth, and while you still can’t see much of it, you can now see a muscular forearm, dripping with clear goo, and a hand clutching some kind of round, oblong device with buttons on it. The arm is a little extra muscular, in fact. By which I mean that the muscles seem to be exposed instead of being under skin. The ropy, fibrous masses are red in color, and they’re wrapped around a white surface of some kind. The fingers are long, have too many joints, and there are seven of them, tipped with sharp, hooked claws. The creature pushes a few buttons on the device, and you feel your teeth start to vibrate. The area around you seems to wobble, and you feel sick to your stomach. The world around you disappears, and you find yourself someplace else. The sky is the color of a healing bruise, and the ground is covered with some kind of vegetation, or possibly fungus, or maybe some other life form you have no reference for. Whatever it is, it looks a bit like coral, but with more blues and less reds. It’s colder here than it was in Nevada, but your jacket and the heat of the monster’s body help. It drops you on the ground, the flora cushioning your fall, and you can finally turn to see the thing. It is, at least, kind of human-shaped. The muscle fibers you saw on its arms cover its whole body, and it seems to excrete a clear slime or mucous from glands underneath the muscles. It’s tall, possibly seven feet, and its limbs, like its fingers and toes, have extra joints. It crouches down to study you. Its eyes have a milky film over them, and you wonder how well it can see. It opens it’s huge mouth, which is wedge-shaped and filled with many sharp, shark-like teeth. Its tongue dances around in its mouth as it makes the noises you heard on the walkie talkie using some kind of structure in the back of its throat.
Its jaws and lips don’t seem to be involved in its speech, if that’s what this is, at all.
Kevin: “Bogus”, I say, as I take it all in.
“I’m going to call you Steve for now”
I also try to take another look at the device it has
Bryan: It sees your interest in the gizmo and displays it to you. There are some markings on it, which mean nothing to you, and a few buttons. If you’d care to make a Calculate roll you might be able to come up with a theory.
Kevin [roll]: 1d6 = (6) = 1 success
Bryan: Nice!
Kevin: No way! air guitar
Bryan: About 20 feet away, there’s a structure of some kind with a dish pointed in your direction. At a guess, this is the alien’s version of the portal generator, and the device it’s holding is probably a remote to activate it.
It turns away from you and starts walking up a hill.
Kevin: Is the device hooked to a keyboard?
Bryan: It is not. You can’t see whether it has any kind of interface or controls from where you are, and it’s located in the opposite direction from where the alien is walking.
Kevin: I follow the alien, and do a quick scan of my walkie talkie again
Bryan: You find the channel where it was apparently talking to you again, and hear what sounds like at least dozens of voices all talking at once. The alien pauses and looks back at you, again vocalizing something. You hear what it ‘says’ simultaneously from its throat and from the radio.
It again turns away and starts down the other side of the hill. When you reach the crest, you see that the weird growths continue in every direction, with some patches of color variation. About a mile away, there is what appears to be maybe a city, or a hive, or something. Bulbous, brown shapes are clustered together, pierced with openings—large ones at ground level and smaller ones above. There is what you take to be a street nearby, and weird four-wheeled vehicles travel along it. They’re hinged in the middle and seem very sturdily built.
Kevin: I guess it’s time to keep following Steve.
Bryan: You continue following Steve down to the city-hive and into one of the buildings. It leads you up a helical ramp into a room with more odd equipment similar to the device you saw when you first arrived. There are two more of the aliens here. Steve gargles something at them, pointing at you, and they gargle back. One of them darts forward and grasps you by both shoulders, lifting you into the air.
It smells quite bad in here, by the way, and it’s humid and still much colder than you’re accustomed to.
Kevin: “Hey, what!”
“Are you guys filming a Christmas movie? Turn off the A/C!”
Does the new device look like it is open, ala the Time Portal?
Bryan: It says something else at you, which is echoed by the walkie talkie. It turns its attention to that device, drops you, and snatches it out of your hand.
No, there is no active portal here at the moment, although you feel a little nauseous, and the air seems to be vibrating, much like it was in the campsite before.
Kevin: “Hey! Give that back!”
Bryan: It pushes the talk button, and the scritch noise causes it to flinch. It says something else, still holding the button down, and whatever feedback it gets as a result seems to disturb it greatly. It throws the radio at the wall, breaking it open so the batteries fall out. It then turns to the one that brought you and says something. It’s hard to tell, but you somehow get the feeling that it’s scolding Steve.
Kevin: “Excuse me. Where am I?”
I pull out my .25 Beretta and let Steve’s boss have it
Bryan: That is not a thing you have.
Kevin: I pull out my water gun and let Steve’s boss have it.
Bryan: I’ll allow it. Steve’s boss takes the water gun gratefully.
Kevin: How many times do I manage to shoot him first?
Is he on the ropes?
In my best Arnold, I say “Let me know what’s going on if you want to live”
Bryan: lol. j/k. You squirt the alien with the water pistol, which seems to puzzle it. It stops its tirade, turns toward you, and grabs you by the face.
Kevin: Again with the grabbing!
Bryan: Aliens. No sense of personal boundaries.
At least you haven’t been probed yet.
Kevin: I try to say the phrase or two of Klingon I know
Something about “it’s a good day to die”
In my best Klingon accent
I fling a little spit on him
Bryan: It’s easy to spit on him, since your face is in his palm, but he doesn’t appear to notice it, being already pretty slimy.
The apparent boss alien says something else, and the third one, which has remained still and silent, starts moving around the room, doing something with the machines. A few moments later, you can feel the portal opening.
Kevin: I bite him then run for the portal.
Bryan: It’s not necessary to run for the portal because the boss alien actually drags you through it. You again feel a lurch in your stomach and pain in your teeth. Your new environment is warm once again, and when the alien drops you, you can see that you’re in some kind of laboratory that looks much more human-like. The alien goes to one of the machines in the room, and in spite of it being human technology, it seems to know how to operate it. It fiddles with a few controls, and the portal closes.
Kevin: This is the third alien?
While it’s looking at the tools, I scope the room for an exit
Bryan: It’s still the second (boss, maybe) alien. You see two doors on one wall, interior types—not likely to lead directly outside—and what looks to be a boarded-over window on another.
Kevin: I sneakily moonwalk to the double door
Bryan: Make a Sneak roll—5d6
Kevin [roll]: 5d6 = (4+1+1+4+1) = 0 successes
Bryan: The alien sees you trying to creep away, and as soon as you reach the door you’re aiming for, it comes for you. You have just enough time to get through and see that the next room is full of lab coats and lockers before the monster’s hand clamps down on the back of your neck. It hauls you fully into that next room and around the corner through another door. The new room has more electronic equipment, but some of this you actually recognize—there’s one of those brain scan machines and a couple of what look like dentist’s chairs with some kind of weird colander-type gizmo connected to the top. The alien puts you into one of the chairs and straps you into it, lowering the collander onto your head.
Kevin: “Do you expect me to talk?”
Bryan: It ignores you and goes over to some kind of monitoring station, powering it up and scrutinizing the screen. It looks at you and says something in its incomprehensible language, then looks back at the screen. After a few more moments, it shuts everything down, unstraps you, and lifts you by your shoulders again, looking into your eyes. It’s big, toothy maw is uncomfortably close to your face, and you can’t help thinking “Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water.” It flexes its chest weirdly, and a fine spray of that goop from its body coats you. It burns a little at first, but it becomes a little pleasant as the world fades away.
fin.
Kevin: Oh
The Hong Kong Cavaliers tour with Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension
Tales From the Loop is a tabletop roleplaying game, published by Free League and based on the retro-futuristic artwork of Simon Stålenhag.
“A Rising Wave” by Jeremy Blake is generously provided by the YouTube No Copyright Audio Library.
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