Kasimir

Day Four: Medic, Heal Thyself The same dream. The same room, still wrapped in shadow. Kesed started forward, heading for the doorway, but someone caught hold of his arm. That, at least, was new, he thought, with some surprise. He hadn’t thought that this dream could surprise him any longer. “Don’t move,” whispered that person. Kesed tried to turn about, to break free, but that person held him fast. The voice was maddeningly familiar, but Kesed couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. A few questions flashed through his head, but he asked the one that truly mattered. “Why?” There was a note in that person’s voice that Kesed identified as sadness. Perhaps some regret. “Because if you go into that room, there’s only one thing that you’ll find there. Pain.” It was the way he said it, matter-of-factly, echoing the dark, foreboding feeling in the pit of Kesed’s stomach that stopped him. Echoing the certainty that whatever lay before him in that room, it was important. And ugly. Did he want to see it? He didn’t know. Some nights, he badly wanted to. Knew he had to. It was the point of the sessions with the Heron psych, he figured. Sandhya’d taken interest in the dreams, the last he’d heard. He knew his evals were sent to her, but they’d always certified him as ready to perform what was needed of him. “Have you ever,” the psych’d once asked him, “Wondered about how thoroughly incurious you are?” “I know what I need to,” Kesed’d shrugged. Once, he’d’ve been on fire to know. But he’d learned that asking the right questions at the wrong time made him very dangerous. And sometimes, he’d learned there were questions you didn’t want to know the answer to. The trick was knowing what the right questions were, and when you needed answers. And when to ask them. Maybe he’d wondered a little, about why he was too tired to think too much about these matters. But it never really seemed to matter, not when Sandhya always had another task, another job. Not when everything led him further and further away from his past, and from Whyren and how everything had fallen apart, so he didn’t have to look at himself in the mirror in the morning and wonder when everything had changed so much. He swallowed. “I can deal with pain,” he said, roughly. Sometimes, you had to face pain. The pain of reps performed well, of eking out just that bit more from your body, no matter how much flesh and muscle screamed. The pain of struggling to grasp and understand new concepts, things that you couldn’t wrap your brain around. The pain of loss, of leaving. Of knowing that what had to happen had to happen, for a reason. Pain told you you were alive, that your body was healing, getting stronger. Pain, Kesed thought, in that moment, was the taskmaster; it cracked the whip and to live was to respond to pain. “Not like this,” said the other. A warning. “Not like this.” He pushed forward, and— “Do you think,” Kesed said, witheringly, “You could refrain from opening fire on another mistrunner without explicit orders to do so?” At least Jack Ladrian had had the good grace to look slightly abashed. Weasel simply shrugged. “You weren’t there,” he said. “Atari was ready to draw, and he’d been following me for the better part of the day. I was fairly certain he was preparing to murder me, and I’m not going to feel guilt for acting to save my life.” “Cody Eight,” Kesed said, evenly, counting the incidents off. “You were charged with securing the suspect. And then he escaped. And now you use lethal force on another mistrunner without proper provocation.” “I told you,” Weasel drawled. “Atari was preparing to kill me. I’m pretty damned sure about it. Jack and Vulture can back me up on this one. I’ll own up to slipping up with Cody, but Jack was there too, and we both thought we’d secured the suspect adequately.” “You chose not to stabilise Atari, even after you fired that first shot,” Kesed noted. “He was no longer a threat to you, but you continued to ensure he was dead. Why?” “I think,” Weasel said, meditatively, “I’ve had enough of your questions.” He grinned, teeth flashing. “I think I’d like to wear your bones. That should get me and the others out of here quite nicely, don’t you think?” Kesed shot first. He felt a hot shock of pain, as though he’d been punched. But it was only pain. Only ever the taskmaster, and he shot to kill. Two bullets right into centre-mass. And still Weasel stood, and laughed, blood leaking from his wounds. He staggered, but remained upright. “Did you think,” Weasel said, “That something like that could kill me, Arnkell?” Kesed supposed the worst of the pain would come later. His hand went to his shoulder and came away bloody. “I’ll give you this, I was meaning to kill you,” Weasel mused. “I don’t often miss. You’re fast, for someone getting on in years.” Kesed smiled, more a baring of teeth, and pulled free the combat knife. “Perhaps they’ve upgraded the model since, but I worked on the first iteration of Project Replicant, SynthKandra. I know how to take down your kind.” “My kind?” Weasel whispered. “Do you think you’re much better than us, Arnkell? Do you think we haven’t heard about you? The researcher turned Heron hound. You go where they tell you, kill whom they tell you.” His voice shifted subtly, between breaths, and then Kesed was hearing the voices of some of the security officers he’d worked with. Redan. Matesh. “You’re little better than Sandhya’s knife, Arnkell. The only difference is you’re afforded a longer leash than us.” “You killed them, then,” Kesed said. “Devoured them. Took their bones.” “If you could be free,” Weasel said, “Wouldn’t you take every single opportunity you were offered?” He cried out as someone slipped behind him and stabbed him in the back. Weasel jerked, flesh turning translucent for a moment, and Kesed caught sight of the Hemalurgic implants, all laced with red. The secret to keeping Harmony away and out of their creations had always been foreign Investiture, to guarantee independence. “Heal this,” Whyren hissed, and stabbed Weasel a few times for good measure. The SynthKandra toppled forward, and began to lose coherence, the outlines of his form wavering and uncertain. “The difference between you and me,” Kesed said dispassionately, “Is that I bring back-up.” The improvised shock knife had taken not-Weasel by surprise, but it hadn’t stopped the SynthKandra from shedding the mistrunner’s bones and escaping. He’d warned Kesed, Whyren thought. He paced the room as Snips undid the bandage and frowned severely at him. “You did a passable job, I suppose,” Snips growled, though his tone made it clear that he didn’t think highly of Whyren’s first aid skills. Kesed’s blood on his hands. Sticky, drying. Whyren wanted to escape and find some washroom or other, to scrub, and to scrub until his hands were clean again. The fact that he knew this was a bad idea, going it alone, and that, if he were perfectly honest, the natural instinct was to feel concern, was the only thing that kept him in this room as Kesed stared at the wall and let Snips treat and bandage the gunshot wound. At least he wasn’t going into shock, Whyren thought. Probably should have expected that. Kesed shrugged tiredly. “Better I take the risk,” he said, likely in response to getting chewed out by Snips for recklessness. Whyren wholeheartedly agreed with the medic there. “Whyren needs to lift the security lockdown. We need his access. And I’m not an easy target.” Of course he wasn’t, Whyren thought idly. Kesed’s blood on his hands, again. The pure, utter terror of discovering the work that would make their careers so nearly destroyed. The unreasoning anger. You stupid, bloody fool. He closed his eyes against the ache in his chest. Guilt, perhaps, after all these years. He didn’t have a word for it. Memory was strong here, like a fishhook lodged in his heart. You made what you thought was the best choice, at that time. We are as fishes, swimming in water. You could never leave the water, the current, the sediment, and make the decision detached from it all. Sometimes you regretted it, even if you knew it had been the best decision. Even if a selfish, sentimental part of you would have taken it all back. “What’s the plan now?” Snips was asking. “We go forwards,” Kesed said. “I think the SynthKandra are aware of us, and I don’t see any signs of hostile infiltration from another team. Solovey’s not located anything, which means that we’re primarily working against the SynthKandra here. We need to stop them, but we also need to end the security lockdown. We pursue both goals together. Solovey has access to the security feeds and has set alerts which should notify us if the system picks up any trace of a SynthKandra.” It was the perfectly reasonable response, Whyren thought. And then, once the lockdown was ended, they could worry about whatever was going to happen next. Whyren supposed it was time to discover if his utility to Heron Industries had sharply decreased. Indigo Weasel was killed! He was a Taken Combat Medic! The Day has begun! It will end on 6th May, at 0100hrs SGT [=GMT+8]! PMs remain open! May the Fourth be with you all! Please do not post until I have reserved the second post in this thread. Thanks to Kas for helping me close the last Turn. @Azure Mouse - If you fail to post by the end of this Turn, or communicate with the GM, you will be filter-killed or replaced.

Look miss The Turn is ended. Just because it came from Kas rather than myself doesn't mean I didn't duly deputise Kas with the authority to close the Turn. It is ended, stop posting before I strike you down with all my anger from having returned from dealing with a cockroach hostage situation >>

Clarification that if you are a Smoker, Smoking functions exactly like Tyrian rules except that Copperclouds can only be turned off or extended in the Day. This patches the nonsensical half-cycle rubbish we had ever since we changed Tyrian rules from having a N0 to starting on a Day Turn. This neither confirms nor denies any role or alignment claims that any player may have made: this is just so everyone is on the same page. Smoker decides in the Day -> Coppercloud decision lasts for the Day + Night (entire cycle) If the Smoker is executed, for instance, if you may have managed to exe a Village Smoker recently, then the effects of their Coppercloud will still last for the rest of the cycle. This should clear everything up I hope. Thank you >>

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Night Three: Swan Song Blue Team went deeper into the facility, with the mistrunner team scouting along the corridors of the building. Deeper in, the lights overhead cast hard-edged shadows on the flooring, and every shadow seemed to conceal a potential enemy. But there was no one there. Still, Kesed could not shake the pervasive feeling of being watched, that itchy prickling feeling between his shoulder-blades. Whyren’s lips were pressed in a tight line; he grimaced and started each time someone moved too quickly. The knowledge that they were moving deeper into the facility and didn’t know what they might find there had everyone on edge. They passed labs and meeting rooms and supply closets, all of which were hauntingly empty. Some fallen bodies; Kesed winced. All of them were security officers. One or two of them wore the patches that marked them as from Red Team. They’d all been cut down by gunfire. But they had to keep moving. There was no sight of what opposition Red Team or the other Heron security officers had met. Which meant that whatever had happened, Kesed thought, though he was already beginning to form a very clear picture of that ‘whatever’, it had taken everyone by surprise. There had been confusion. The security teams hadn’t been able to offer strong or concerted resistance. And all of that pointed to one likely inference, even though Kesed knew there wasn’t enough evidence—yet—to say for sure. SynthKandra. The containment breach had been one in a lethal chain of dominoes that had tipped over and led to the security lockdown, and the compromise of an entire Heron facility. Didn’t it make sense, though? They’d created the SynthKandra, Whyren and himself, a long time ago. An idea they’d nursed over drinks, with a touch of desperation: the need for a challenge, the need to prove themselves and to make their own names. You had to make something of yourself, if you wanted to survive in this world of profit-margins and numbers and board meetings and research funding. And this was what they’d decided on. They’d designed the perfect spies, the perfect saboteurs. In a way, Kesed was minded of the tale of the scorpion and the frog. Of course Project Replicant had backfired, in the end. Or perhaps it’d worked too well. They’d created the perfect saboteurs. And the saboteurs had acted to bring down the facility from within. After all, it was in their nature. You could never be more than you were. Whyren wanted a drink. Fallen bodies, here and there. Kesed had a pair of mistrunners tag them for the recovery teams, and pressed on. Labs empty, experiments and projects terminated abruptly. It was as though they were walking through a frozen slice of time: a moment caught in amber, one shining bead in a string of beads that made up a day in the Heron Industries research facility. But there were the bodies. Most of them fallen, blood drying in thick, sticky patches. Whyren walked around them. He’d lost any squeamishness he’d had over the course of Project Replicant. But there was something uncomfortable about seeing all that gore in a place that had become home to him. He tapped Kesed on the shoulder and started when he ended up on the floor, pinned, with the muzzle of a gun shoved against his back. “Fierfek,” Whyren managed. So damned fast. He wondered if that was how the others felt, betrayed and gunned down within their own labs. Within the facility. If they’d even had a chance at all. They hadn’t seen it coming, but even if they had, would they have had a chance? “Goddamnit, Whyren,” Kesed cursed, and then let up. “Don’t startle me like this. Not in here.” Painfully, feeling as though his arm had been wrenched out of its socket, Whyren staggered to his feet, eschewing the helping hand that Kesed offered. “The hell was that?” he managed. “When did you get so jumpy?” Kesed’s eyes hardened. “We’re walking through a facility under security lockdown with an unknown number of hostile infiltrators, Whyren. Do try to remember that.” “As if I could forget,” Whyren muttered. It was the only reason they were here, speaking. The only reason Whyren was confronted again and again with memories, and old sins long hidden. Staring him in the face with tired, dark eyes and that tight angry line of his mouth that Whyren knew too well from nights of arguments. “You’d better remember that,” Kesed snapped. It was cursedly unfair that Whyren still knew the anger for what it concealed: worry, fear, concern. “I’d rather not an accident happen to you.” “Will it?” Whyren challenged. And there, at last, they had come to the meat of it. Because if it wasn’t Kesed, it was someone on this team. Whyren had no doubt of that. Not when he was the only researcher out of the facility when the containment breach happened. Not when Sandhya had hinted as much, that there were questions to be answered. That this bloody foolhardy run was as much a test of his loyalties as anything else. That he suspected if he ran, here and now, Kesed or one of Blue Team or one of the mistrunners would put a bullet through him and end him, without remorse. Is it you, then? he wanted to ask. He thought to himself that such sentiment was beneath him. But there was that lingering promise of death, for that moment, in Kesed’s eyes. When he’d put Whyren down on the ground in that instant. Was that how the others had felt? Whyren didn’t know. But it was an uncomfortable thought, all the same. Weighing on his conscience like coins for the ferryman. Kesed frowned at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, tartly. “My job is to make sure the lockdown is terminated. This means keeping you safe.” But he never once denied it. “Look at this,” Vulture breathed. Bodies lay on the floor of the lab, and the workbenches were riddled with bullet holes. Debris was scattered all over the floor. Atari frowned down at the tableau. A firefight had occurred here. They’d picked up signs of resistance sporadically within the facility, but this was the biggest site they’d identified so far. He looked about the lab, but all was still. A quick infra-red scan showed no sign of life, or ambush, though he supposed that for all he knew, SynthKandra could control their core temperatures. His hand went to the hilt of the plasma blade holstered at his side. A curious choice that enough mistrunners had remarked on. Most people went monofilament these days. Plasma blades were only good for limited use, then you had to swap the cores out in order to get them to work again. Expensive. But useful when you needed to cauterise what you cut. Useful when dealing with opposition that could regenerate, or shapeshift. “Looks secure,” he said, aloud. Weasel was bent over the bodies, searching them. Thing was, Atari wasn’t sure about Weasel. Call it instinct, perhaps, but he’d learned that after years running the mists, instinct as powerful as this was something you didn’t ignore. Weasel had been…off. It was a nagging sensation that grew more and more insistent, the more Atari watched the mistrunner. The more he thought it over. Maybe it was the way Weasel moved. A quicksilver, feline grace that hadn’t been there before. Maybe it was the way Weasel had shifted, subtly. Weasel had become louder, more willing to make his opinion known. The edge of his harsh foreign accent had softened, in the wrong places. Or the right places, if you were thinking what Atari was. That one of them had been replaced. Atari knew all about killing. And getting into places he shouldn’t be. It was part of his core skill-set and what made him so valuable to prospective employers. He knew how to obscure data trails on the Cognitive Matrix and to fuzz identities and to create azbantium-solid cover identities within a couple of keystrokes. He had connections, people who could reach into secure databases, and quietly wipe or modify the information there, enough to be able to pass a deep background check. Everything about his instincts said there was something wrong with Weasel: that Weasel wasn’t who he said he was. Atari took a step forward, hand going to the hilt of his plasma blade. He weighed the consequences of striking here and now. He had to be certain. And if he did, he had to strike decisively. No holding back. Weasel had to be taken down. Someone’s hand closed about his wrist. Atari lashed out with his elbow, driving it behind him and hearing a muffled exclamation. He broke free of the hold and reached for his Penrod Silencer. A gunshot. Too fast, Atari thought. Too damned fast. Weasel’s eyes met his, mocking, knowing, even as the life bled from him in a rush of cold death. The gun was still in his hand. Another gunshot. And a third. “Sorry,” said the mistrunner who’d attacked him. Jack. Jack Ladrian, Atari thought, tiredly. Or maybe it was Vulture. “But I don’t for a second think there’s more than one infiltrator running on this crew.” He’d been on too many runs to count. Seen too many things. Liked running with Smokers. Good for hiding Allomancers on your crew. Thing was, sometimes, crews had a tendency to get jumpy around Smokers. Felt that too many Smokers meant that your crew was compromised. Foolishness, that. Might as well lie about facing koloss on a job. Wasn’t such a thing. Atari closed his eyes. The last of his copper faded to nothingness. Coral Swan was lynched! He was a Mistrunner Infiltrator! The Night has begun! It will end on 4th May, at 0100hrs SGT [=GMT+8]! PMs remain open! Please do not post until I have reserved the second post in this thread. @Azure Mouse, @Oxblood Beagle - inactivity warnings for both of you. Your last recorded post was on Day Two. Failure to post by Day Four means you will be filter-killed or replaced by a pinch-hitter Night Four.

And now the Day is done. But have you chosen wisely?

Just to clarify: Smoking works like a Tyrian Smoker. You can switch that coppercloud off, or extend it to someone else. There is no Smoking someone else without Smoking yourself. Thank you.

Write-up edited in. Slightly over forty minutes left in the cycle.

Hi all, I'm aware some players have gotten rather confused about when the cycle ends. As the last Turn ended and this Day Turn began on 1st May at 0100hrs, it will be ending on 3rd May at 0100hrs SGT [=GMT+8] - i.e. in under two hours. The only situation in which I will accept and grant an extension is if I have made a mistake in calculating the Turn's end. Otherwise, you all get forty-eight hours: no more, no less. Get those votes and orders in!

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Day Three: Worth A Shot Cody Eight and Scorpion had been left in the charge of Weasel and Jack Ladrian. Kesed had figured that with enough eyes on them, they could sort out the matter of Albatross for once and for all. Albatross though, had proven an unfortunate casualty: a mistrunner through and through. Which meant that one of Cody Eight or Scorpion was lying. “At least one,” Whyren said, though he struggled to keep pace with him. Kesed hadn’t realised he’d said that aloud. “Risky for two SynthKandra to lie in concert.” “Do you think you have a good idea of what a SynthKandra’s risk appetite is like?” Whyren asked sardonically, one eyebrow raised lightly. “No,” Kesed admitted. “I haven’t even worked out what their plan is. Someone turned them against Heron Industries?” He glanced over at Whyren. Of all people, Whyren should’ve known, should’ve had some inkling. After all, he was the senior researcher working on the project. Kesed had his shot at such responsibilities, years ago. He’d said no. Whyren laughed, bitterly. “You think another corporation could break their conditioning just like that?” He shook his head. “Project Replicant is extremely valuable. You know this. If some other megacorp—for Penrod Ventures or some other megacorp to have discovered the existence of Project Replicant and managed to so thoroughly sabotage it, it would have to be a colossal failure of security at all levels in this facility. Heads would roll.” That, his tone suggested, would be an understatement. “What then?” “You’re the lapsed Pathian,” Whyren shrugged, and looked away, but Kesed could tell the movement was not at all natural. There was something here, buried, and for a moment, he almost thought Whyren was resentful. But how could that be right? “You tell me what they want.” It was an answer that seemed so easy. Far too easy, Kesed thought. “Freedom?” Whyren shrugged. “They’re synthetic life-forms, Kesed. We agreed years ago that this is what they were designed for.” His voice had the air of an old argument, one left unfinished. Kesed frowned. He remembered the arguments, but… But there were gaps. Things he didn’t recall so clearly now, things faded to irrelevance after all these years. He hesitated. Didn’t know if he wanted to remember, or to press on. “If it were enough, then we wouldn’t be looking at a containment breach, and SynthKandra murdering the teams sent in to secure the facility,” Kesed said. Whyren shrugged again. “True,” he said. They lapsed into an uneasy silence for the rest of the walk. Cody Eight hadn’t been much of a meal. The SynthKandra that had ambushed Cody Eight had taken the mistrunner as he strayed from the group. Cody Eight had drifted around a corner, and the SynthKandra had seen weakness, and had struck. Cody Eight emerged, hid the bones the SynthKandra had been wearing before that—a security officer, a jailer, no one of note—processed Cody Eight’s memories and Identity in its memory banks, and then strolled out to join the others, tugging the Heron hoodie just so. Cody Eight would’ve worn it with a sloppy devil-may-care attitude, so that was what the SynthKandra-who-was-now-Cody-Eight did, hood slipped over his head. Cody Eight, the SynthKandra was beginning to learn, had definite ideas about how a professional mistrunner looked and behaved, and the SynthKandra slouched and spun his pistols about in his hands just so. It was laughable, how a little lying here and there confused the mistrunners enough, and left an opening for him to fire the fatal shot. He knew what he was doing, even if Cody Eight hadn’t. It was a single shot, fired straight from the hip, and it took Albatross precisely in the head. After that, Kesed’d ordered someone to keep watch over him, and that someone apparently meant both Weasel and Jack Ladrian. “Don’t move,” Jack Ladrian ordered. “Or—” “Or what, you’ll shoot me?” Cody Eight asked, wryly. He injected just the right amount of confusion into his voice. “C’mon man, you gotta believe me. Seriously, Scorpion told me that this Albatross guy was seriously suspicious. Hit him with a shock knife, even.” “He’s lying,” Scorpion said, flatly. Scorpion’d agreed to be manacled, and Cody smiled—just ever so slightly—as the electro-cuffs slipped on over his wrists and both mistrunners relaxed visibly. Never show weakness, thought the SynthKandra. “Am I?” he asked, lightly. “Funny, that. You told me that you’d checked Albatross out and you thought it was really important that everyone else knew that too.” “You know,” Scorpion said, “It’s entertaining how much you lie. As though telling them all again and again that I supposedly made you shoot Albatross is supposed to make you look anything other than a filthy SynthKandra—and me look anything but a mistrunner.” Cody glanced at the timepiece on his wrist and smiled inwardly. Well, then. “Well,” said the SynthKandra-who-was-Cody-Eight, “I suppose this was worth a shot. Tell me though—what did you think electro-cuffs would do against a shapeshifter?” In that moment, the SynthKandra-who-had-been-Cody-Eight moved. He’d’ve preferred not to lose the bones but there were always ways to improvise. He melted, synthetic flesh peeling back from bone, the manacles dropping to the ground as all of a sudden, they weren’t holding on to anything at all. The smoke grenade was hooked onto Jack Ladrian’s belt, in plain sight. All the SynthKandra-who-had-been-Cody-Eight needed was one free hand. He lunged, yanked off the smoke grenade, pulled the pin, counted, and lobbed it. Darkness. Everyone coughing in the thick, obscuring smoke. “Shoot him!” someone shouted, and then was rewarded for it by more coughing in the chemical fog. A gunshot, but no sign of whether they’d hit him. To add insult to injury, the SynthKandra-that-had-been-Cody-Eight left the bones behind, and slipped away, to find another temporary body to wear, another identity to don. Perhaps, mused the SynthKandra, the new identity would be…less flamboyant. “He took a smoke grenade,” Jack Ladrian finished, “And then we lost him.” Kesed stared at both of the mistrunners and took a deep breath. And then another. They’d had one of the SynthKandra in custody. And then they’d lost him. So much for that. Scorpion said, witheringly, “Seeing as I’m not in fact capable of slipping my restraints, unlike that SynthKandra, do you think it’s about time you let me go?” “Let Scorpion go,” Kesed ordered, and Weasel moved to unlock the electro-cuffs. “Ladrian, comm Atari and Snips. Tell them they won’t be needed here after all, now that the SynthKandra has escaped.” “At last,” Scorpion muttered, shaking her wrists out and rubbing at them. “It looks like the SynthKandra are as tenacious as designed,” Whyren said, as though he was commenting on the performance of a research subject, rather than a potential danger to everyone in the facility. “Not the time, Whyren,” Kesed said, flatly. “You don’t find it fascinating?” “My job right now is to keep everyone alive and to end the lockdown. Knowing that we have a containment breach and hostile SynthKandra on hand doesn’t help.” Kesed pinched at the bridge of his nose and tried to think. “We can’t afford to keep losing mistrunners to trying to find shock knives. We’ll have to make do without them and go further in.” There had to be other caches. Kesed didn’t expect the armoury here to be the only place where shock knives could be obtained. Whyren shrugged. “You’re in charge, Kesed. I’m just here because I’m supposed to be, apparently.” “You think I want to be here?” “I think you’ll do your duty,” Whyren said, as his gaze fixed Kesed in the eye. “Even if it kills you. And I’ll do mine, because it’s where I want to be, and we know how Sandhya and Heron Industries takes to being told no.” Which was not very well at all. Fuchsia Ostrich was killed! He was a SynthKandra Hacker! Found pinned to a bulletin board near one of the labs: The Day has begun! It will end on 3rd May, Tuesday, at 0100hrs SGT (GMT+8)! PMs remain open!

And time's up. Please have some soothing AoE2 music while waiting. Will Ostrich live? Will someone become an unwilling co-inhabitant? Find out after the commercial break!

all write-ups have been edited in i am a god amongst men i may sleep now

technically they have this game is a rerun of lg8 kas bro tried to fix the game it just meant he had to throw out 90% of the rules and insanity with the kandra mechanic but the underlying idea is there idk i guess u can get philosophical if 90% of a game is changed at what point is it the same game still

Perfect Mimicry occurs simultaneously on the OoA with the NK and Sharpshooter kill. I'm not a fan of mid-game rule changes unless strictly-speaking necessary so while I would flag Perfect Mimicry as something I'd potentially like to shove later on OoA in future runs of the game (not that I would run this again, and this is not a gamestate comment, just a 'for Kas bro to take note' comment), I would rule that I'd have to flip a coin as to whether the Kandra gets killed or successfully bodyhops.

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Night Two: Terminally Wrong Kesed found himself in that room again. The same dream. Sometimes, he thought he had it more when he was working in the facility. As though it had taken on some sort of urgency: the same dream, over and over. The same sterile containment room, to the point that Kesed thought he’d be able to recognise it if he ever saw it. The same deep dark instinct that told him this was going to be ugly. Brutal. He hesitated. He always walked forward, eventually. Always had. He knew this was important, knew with a deep certainty that this was something he had to see. At the same time, part of him felt a powerful sense of fear, as though he was trapped. As though all he wanted to do was to break free, to run away. Tonight, Kesed couldn’t make himself face the room. He found himself turning around, heading back for the door. But there was no door. His grasping fingers brushed against only cold hard wall, reinforced. No way out. No way back. Only one way forward. He turned about again. He didn’t want to keep on going forwards. Harmony, he was tired of this dream. Did he have to? Years later, and Kesed couldn’t even remember what’d happened to his earring. Sometimes he’d left it in his pocket. Do good, they’d said, as though it was that easy. He’d believed it, once. He didn’t know now. The shadows bled into the room, staining everything. One of the figures looked at Kesed. He’d never done that before. It was Whyren, and he looked grimmer, more determined than Kesed’d ever seen before. He looked like he was being forced to do something, like he was being backed into a corner. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his jaw was set. He said, “You bloody idiot.” Kesed woke up to the sound of his alarm going off. He’d set it so it’d only sound off on his personal channel. It was his turn to stand watch, and to make sure that no one on Blue Team or among the mistrunners was getting into trouble. Whyren was sitting cross-legged and adjusting a meter, with a scowl on his face. He shoved the meter into a bag as Kesed blinked awake and sat up. Different Whyren, Kesed thought. Years later, now, and grey in both their hair. Difficult to measure the passage of time. But he’d been younger in the dream and Kesed couldn’t for the life of him work out why Whyren’d shown up in there. He got to his feet, and checked to make sure he was still armed. Whyren got up, but not without complaint. “Bloody floors,” Whyren muttered. “What I wouldn’t give for a decent chair around here…” “So raid one of the offices,” Kesed said. “And go it alone?” “You’re the one discovering problems, Whyren. I’m just offering you solutions.” It wasn’t the same, though. Not now. Whyren simply raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes, and I have no intention of allowing myself to be killed and eaten and replaced by a SynthKandra by doing something so bloody stupid as going it alone.” Which Kesed had to concede was a fair point. His attitude was less positive when Whyren fell into step next to him. “I wasn’t aware I’d invited you to follow me around.” Not now, not with the dream so raw, and weighing on his mind. Whyren shrugged. “Think of it this way,” he offered. “Someone has to make sure that you aren’t taken, and I don’t see anyone else volunteering for the job.” “That’s what Blue Team is for,” Kesed replied. “And moreover,” said Whyren, pushing on with the same dogged determination with which he’d bulldozed past three different challengers when they were both young researchers starting together, before Kesed had lost that fire and drive, before Kesed had found himself doing work he wasn’t sure how he felt about, “You get to make sure I’m not taken, which means that we keep each other safe. A circle of accountability, just the way Heron Industries likes it.” “And you get the better end of that deal, don’t you?” “You’re the one discovering problems, Kesed. I’m just offering you solutions.” Even if they were, apparently, solutions that Kesed didn’t quite care for. He drew in a deep breath, released it slowly. “Fine,” he said, abruptly. “As long as you follow my instructions and don’t get in my way.” Whyren smiled, cold and cutting. “I promise you, I have no intention of getting between you and anything dangerous. That’s your job, not mine. I’m very fond of staying alive and in good health.” “Good,” said Kesed. “Keep it that way.” He stalked off to seek out the others. They only had so much time. As much as Kesed wanted adequate preparations to be made, they could not afford to linger out here, and had to press further on and farther in. “Status?” Kesed asked. Whyren didn’t know the employee he was talking to, but figured that was normal: her gear was Heron Industries-issued, with a blue patch on the right shoulder, whatever that meant. Right now, Whyren supposed it at least meant she wasn’t one of the mistrunners that Sandhya had hired. Mistrunners. The problem of what they would do, and how they would keep those mercenary operatives quiet about Project Replicant weighed on his mind. Those mistrunners had to know, surely. It was a thought that haunted Whyren, although there was no way of broaching the subject with Kesed in privacy just yet. How was Heron Industries going to do damage control for the fallout? One answer was to find a scapegoat. As the senior researcher taking the lead on Project Replicant, Whyren was a natural answer and he wondered if Sandhya had given Kesed other instructions pertaining to him. And then there was the mistrunner—he’d overheard her name, Vel. Something about how she moved, something about her seemed familiar, but Whyren didn’t know what it was or why. Too many people weaving plots, and not always in the same direction. “I’ve got that foothold in the local Cognitive Matrix that you wanted,” she said. Whyren could almost hear the biting comment that was swallowed back—probably something like, “Not that it was easy.” She added, “If they try to use the facility’s systems against us, I can probably shut those down.” “Good work,” Kesed said, and the hacker scoffed. “Excellent work, considering the conditions I was operating under.” Kesed acknowledged that with a nod and moved on to the next pair: Jack Ladrian and Vulture, both of whom were confirming that all known repositories for the shock knives had been cleared out of stock. “Good,” Kesed was saying, when they heard the sound of a gun discharging. Loud. Shattering. Whyren threw himself down to the ground at once. Kesed, Jack Ladrian and Vulture all dropped reflexively, or dove for cover, whichever was nearer. “What the hell was that?” Kesed demanded, hand going to his shoulder. He glanced over at Whyren, and then Vulture and Jack Ladrian, as though checking to make sure they were all okay. “Vulture, can you keep an eye on Whyren? I’m going to assess the situation.” “Are you insane?” Whyren demanded, and then reflected that he, too, had likely gone insane. “I’m not staying here, with a pair of potentially-compromised mistrunners!” “I’m not taking you into a live incident,” Kesed snapped back, stubbornly, but then relented. “Vulture, Jack, on me. Whyren, stay the hell out of the way, and if you get your damnfool self killed, I’m not responsible.” “So noted,” Whyren said, dryly. He supposed it wasn’t the best time to remind Kesed that he had no intention of being killed whatsoever. “Let’s move.” “I swear Scorpion saw Albatross shift,” Cody Eight said, seeming to radiate genuine confusion and contrition. The offending gun had been confiscated and was currently in Atari’s charge. At least someone had the sense to disarm Cody after that lethal shot. Apparently, Cody had claimed over the public channel that Albatross was a SynthKandra imposter. Albatross lay on the ground. Snips had done a quick examination and pronounced Albatross dead on the spot. “Could a SynthKandra feign death?” Hauer wanted to know. The taciturn mistrunner was scowling at the body as though it presented to him a particular analytical puzzle he could not so easily resolve. “Possibly,” Kesed admitted, when he saw Whyren’s nod. Which just made matters worse as everyone present began glaring at Albatross’s body as though Albatross might come back to life and suddenly devour one of them. “They can be killed,” Whyren said, haltingly. “But how,” Scorpion pressed. “I think you owe us an answer,” Kesed said, when he saw that Whyren had clammed up. “Our lives are on the line here, and this means so is yours. Corporate secrecy is one thing, but if we can’t figure out how to kill a SynthKandra, then we’re in trouble when we run into the one that did for Falcon. Or any of its friends.” Whyren ground his teeth together. “Grenade, maybe,” Vulture mused aloud. “Imagine it’d struggle to reconstitute if you blew it up. Or maybe a huge fire.” “Most of the Hemalurgic implants are delicate,” Whyren finally said, “And the SynthKandra’s systems depend on the Hemalurgic implants functioning as they should. A repeated shock delivered by the shock knife should immobilise the kandra enough for capture or a lethal blow. It should be possible to adjust the shock to letha; levels as well.” He steepled his fingers. “Alternatively—as you suggested, fire. A disabling shot to enough of its Hermalurgic implants. Destroying the identity chip should render the kandra inert.” More quietly, Whyren grabbed at Kesed’s bicep, tugged him closer, and hissed into his ear, “I should not be telling you this. Do you understand what you’re asking for? Do you know what Heron Industries will likely do to us, or to them?” “We have to survive right now,” Kesed said, evenly. “Everything else can wait.” Something about those words struck Whyren hard. He let go of Kesed, and stepped back, shock written into his features. “Where is the chip?” Atari asked. “Less helpful than you might imagine,” Kesed said, when it became clear Whyren was not going to answer that. “The SynthKandra are building bodies for themselves. Shifting the location of the implants or reinforcing them is easy enough.” “So we cremate him, then,” Vulture said, with cold practicality. “Unless your medic feels up to rooting around for the chips.” “Takes a cold fish to keep playing dead while someone searches for the implants,” Atari stated. “Especially with the rest of us here.” Snips performed the autopsy with swift efficiency, as Atari and Vulture stood ready in case Albatross was really a SynthKandra biding its time to strike. Kesed watched as Snips clinically went over the cadaver, and Albatross remained dead. “No implants,” Snips said, at last. “I’d ask some hard questions of Scorpion and Cody Eight, if I were you. An ostensibly experienced mistrunner getting jumpy and shooting another mistrunner to death. Doesn’t that sound odd to you?” Kesed said, softly, “That’s what I was afraid of.” Magenta Albatross was executed! They were a Mistrunner Infiltrator! The Night has begun! It will end on 1st May at 0100hrs SGT (GMT+8)! PMs remain open! As always, please wait for me to reserve the second post before posting. Thank you.

Four minutes to rollover. Here's your official votecount. I regret this comes fairly late, but in my defence, I was shaming Wyrm and Orlok. I'm sure everyone can appreciate that this was vastly more important than delivering a timely and accurate votecount which demonstrates how much of a landslide Albatross is currently being hit by

*laughs in kel* Two more reminders: First, please do not delete all your PMs. I know PM spam can be annoying, but I will say that deleting your account's access to PMs is not allowed. Second, please be reminded to include the GM and the IM @Elbereth in all PMs. I know you guys like to torture Araris, but he's not the IM you're looking for Apologies as the write-up was supposed to give you this information all along but I was dead tired so no write-up: I can confirm the N1 kill was a NK rather than a sharpshooter kill. I'm waiting for mod rescue to be able to edit in the write-ups as we speak.

im on painkillers rn y'all do it yourself i'll help tomorrow pls let me rest if this is not urgent

sure, if they have infinite conversions i feel like im channelling kas bro's TA mode rn 'it's on the syllabus i stg' 'hwhy u no read the syllabus' yes, they can both kill and convert and the conversion requires a successful kill on the same Night.

Please be reminded that you are not allowed to continue using PMs if there is a dead player in them. You are required to make a new PM to talk to the player you want to. This particular point is a deviation from Tyrian rules.

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Day Two: Body of Lies As far as he could tell, the evidence was clear. And Kesed didn’t like it one bit. “Traces of gas residue in the vents, Arnkell,” Solovey reported. n3oN shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t access the systems from here. I’ve tried but it’s locked down tight. I’d need physical access through one of the security consoles, and Solovey hasn’t been able to find me one at this point of the facility.” She brushed hair away from her eyes. “Probably further in. Segmentation is a pain. If I had more time, I could maybe try to run the local Cognitive Matrix here, see if I can cobble together access into the deeper parts of the overall Cognitive Matrix for this facility, but…” she shrugged. “Do your best with what you can,” Kesed said, at last. “I think we’ll be here some time yet.” He didn’t want to advance deeper into the facility with the teams this separated. The fate of Red Team, at least, had become grimly clear. “They flooded the vents,” Kesed grunted. This was part of Red Team, crumpled on the floor, and the traces of a firefight pointed to confusion. They’d started firing on each other. He knelt by the bodies, examining security tags, and swallowing down the pain. They hadn’t been close, but those were all people Kesed had known, had worked with, had lunch with. Talin liked his games of chance. You never threw down with Balog in cards. And so on, each body a face with a history, someone Kesed knew once. All of them gone now, and they’d never stood a chance. Behind the forensic calm and the flash of grief was anger like glowing embers. The SynthKandra had infiltrated Red Team, probably somewhere deeper in the facility. He tried to understand their thought process. They were likely retreating—they’d failed to lift the security lockdown, then. Were they trying to call for help? What was deeper in the facility? Perhaps it wasn’t the gas. Perhaps they had been trying to hit the SynthKandra. What were the SynthKandra’s combat capabilities? The last he’d worked on Project Replicant, they’d only imagined spies, but Kesed thought to himself that an entity that could assume another person’s form could just as easily shape itself to be lethal. Or difficult to shoot. Still, the use of the gas vents meant that they were up against an adversary that had access to at least part of the facility’s security systems. “Do what it takes to gain that foothold in the local Matrix,” Kesed told n3oN. “I don’t want us dealing with nasty surprises from the building’s systems as we go further in.” Unhappiness was written all over her features, but n3oN only nodded tersely and got to work after conferring with Solovey and some of the remaining mistrunners who specialised in hacking systems. “You three, help me,” Kesed called out. The mistrunners he’d singled out looked at each other, seemingly poleaxed. “They shouldn’t lie there like this,” Kesed insisted. “Let’s at least get them elsewhere, for the recovery team later on.” He didn’t add that he’d privately hoped at least one of them carried a shock knife. Whyren was squatting by one of the bodies, and Kesed thought he saw Whyren pocket something, but then Whyren was standing up and walking away before Kesed had the chance to call him on it. Did he want to confront Whyren on that right now? No, Kesed decided. There was little enough he could do for the dead at this point, until the lockdown was lifted and Sandhya could get a recovery team into the facility without further concerns, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least grant the remnants of Red Team what dignity he could. Sometimes, you didn’t do things because they were the pragmatic thing to do. You did them because they were right. It was one thing knowing how much potential Project Replicant had. After all, he’d seen it firsthand, all those years ago. It was another thing, years later, watching the results of Project Replicant litter the floor of his workplace. Whyren squeezed his eyes shut. He’d like to think he was a pragmatist, and he certainly wasn’t squeamish. But the idea of the research facility turning into a charnel-house, death and gunfire leaking into the place he’d spent years of his life working and researching on various corporate projects—it threatened to turn his stomach. He stepped away from the bodies, and tried not to think too hard about the new weight in his pocket. He felt no guilt at all about palming it, and no guilt at all about saying nothing. Whyren knew all about secrets, and knew that some secrets had to be kept. No matter the cost. And if it came down to it? It was always best to have an ace up your sleeve. Whyren wasn’t so dedicated to his work for Heron Industries that he’d gladly die for them. A man had to have his limits, and whatever Kesed was up to, however angry Sandhya would be at him afterwards, Whyren preferred being alive and dealing with the fallout later. There was a loud outcry from the returning mistrunner team, and Kesed sighed quietly and strode over to see what the new problem was. Bones clattered onto the floor, and Kesed raised an eyebrow at them. “You want to tell me what’s going on here?” he asked the mistrunners. “Do you want to start?” Jack Ladrian asked Vulture, and Kesed didn’t know how someone could be so eager to explain the grisly find. “Well, alright, I’ll do it. See, we think that’s Falcon. Or what’s left of Falcon. We found the bones and what was left of Falcon’s gear. He was supposed to be looking for a way to get us into the armoury, not that we needed his help in the end.” Kesed was beginning to understand why Vulture seemed so done-in. “And you found the bones. Just like that.” “Yes,” Jack Ladrian said, cheerfully, as though he didn’t at all understand the implications. “Maybe he ate them!” Crocodile said, just as cheerfully. “First finder first keeper, easy to lie, easy to say he saw it when he murdered Falcon and then murdered Jack, naughty boy Jack, shouldn’t have gone off aloneeeee…” “Of course I didn’t!” Jack protested. “I just found them, and—” “And we specifically told you not to go off alone,” Vulture stated, flatly. “It’s too dangerous, in a facility with unknown opposition, and now with this business with the SynthKandra.” “Falcon wasn’t checking in. What did you want me to do? I saved us time.” “When was Falcon replaced?” Atari wanted to know. A good question, Kesed thought. It was important they worked out when there had been time for a replacement to happen. He did not doubt the SynthKandra were capable of ambushing and replacing their prey discreetly, but instinct told him they were likely seizing opportunities to strike. What did they want, though? He filed that question away to be considered later. Failure to consider the opposition’s goals and desires was always dangerous, but right here, right now, that line of thought was a distraction from the problem at hand. “This means than the SynthKandra who replaced Falcon could have hijacked one of the returning mistrunners,” Kesed said, flatly. “Or it could be currently monitoring us, and making plans to strike when we are vulnerable. I don’t want anyone going alone from here on out. It’s too risky.” “And if both of a pair are replaced?” Scorpion challenged him. “Well,” said Kesed. “Then they’re at least not interfering with other pairs or replacing them. This should keep them out of trouble.” He frowned down at the bones, and hunkered down to take a closer look. He lifted one of them to the light and called up the magnification function on the HUD. He was right, then. If you looked at them carefully, in the right light, you could see small scratches. Not knife marks. Knife cuts were cleaner than that. But Falcon had been devoured. Tooth marks. He hid his shiver from the others. As Blue Lead, the last thing he needed was for them to sense he was starting to have his misgivings about the operation. It was one thing to deal with a strike team from another megacorp. He’d tangled with a group from Tekiel Enterprises before; it wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t clean, but he’d walked away from the fight with a limp that had healed after months, which was more than some of the other Heron employees could say. This though? The idea of being devoured and replaced, with no one the wiser, by the very creation a foolish young Kesed and Whyren had proposed a long time ago… Was it something like justice? Kesed didn’t know. The corridors of the installation seemed to narrow, throttling him, caging him in. He took in a deep breath, and let it out. And then another. And then another. The dream remained a hazy, ill-defined threat in the confines of his head. But he had a job to do, here and now. What a world, Kesed thought idly, if Whyren of all people had been devoured and replaced by a SynthKandra. But no, he’d had his eye on Whyren most of the time. More likely for it to be one of the mistrunners, if at all. Or Blue Team—with a pang, Kesed realised that even Blue Team was not above trust. “What about the shock knives?” he asked, aloud. Jack Ladrian shook his head solemnly. “Weren’t any left. Armoury had been cleaned out.” None of the others contradicted him, at least, so he wasn’t lying. Had Red Team taken the knives? But it hadn’t been found on them. No, Kesed thought: the SynthKandra had likely come by and destroyed the knives, or taken them elsewhere. Perhaps they’d known of the knives, and disposed of them. “Whyren,” he said. “I’m not familiar with SynthKandra biology. Do you know if there’s a way we can improvise a shock knife, if we give you the right materials?” The look Whyren shot him—bemused, condescending, interest—brought back more memories than Kesed’d wanted. “Possibly,” Whyren said. “At least, we won’t know if we don’t try.” That Kesed could work with. “What do you need?” Emerald Falcon was killed! Falcon was a SynthKandra Field Operative! Found pinned to a bulletin board near one of the labs: The Day has begun! It will end at 0100hrs SGT (GMT+8) on the 30th April! PMs continue to remain open! As always, please do not post until I have reserved the second post.

And now the Night has ended. Have some soothing music while I work out the results...