Screenshot Let's Play - Thrixe ~ Pt 3 Updated!

Started by Harlequin, April 11, 2014, 05:37:29 PM

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Harlequin

Hi!
I've always been an avid fan of Let's Plays for Dwarf Fortress like Boatmurdered and fancy doing something pretty much the same for Rimworld.
An extensive screenshot-based tale, told entirely in character!

First things first, this is a NARRATIVE play. I'm not going to be a perfect player. I'd rather make decisions based on what I think is right for the story rather than 'game' the...um...game.

I'm playing on Cassandra Classic, I've done games on Randy (SO MUCH BLOOD. SO MUCH FIRE.) and on Phoebe (Have ALL of the people!) and they don't really work for me.

So without further blather, let's meet the original three and get into the tale of the settlement of Thrixe.

~ Harlequin
(P.S. There will be swearing. Personally I blame the parents.)


AYLANA COLDWATER

+-++-+ Begin Judicial Bulletin #180594 +-++-+

All agents be advised, suspect 'Ayla' believed to be on board the vessel DEMETER. Heading unknown.
Armed and Dangerous. Agents in pursuit. Deadly force is authorized.



Postscript - Agent 'Kyla'
Don't let her age fool you, Ayla's been able to afford the best Rejuvenates on offer in the Core Systems. She's 40 years of murderous experience in a 20 year old's body. We've had her on the run since the failed hit on Magliore and now is finally our chance to bring her down, but be careful agents. She's beautiful, wonderfully sophisticated and she can probably kill you with a potato.

+-++-+ End Judicial Bulletin #180594 +-++-+



DANIEL APOLLO

Advertising Pamphlet - 'Trouble in Terra'
He's hunted the Monheim Mongoloid! He's killed the Salubrian Saurus!
But the Hyperion Hunter is about to face his BIGGEST CHALLENGE YET.

TROUBLE IN TERRA - Coming soon to DVD!

Watch as he tracks his prey through the harsh wilderness where any mistake could be his last! Follow him as he finds himself in the lair of the beast, the feared TERRAX.
He'll lose friends. He may even lose himself.
Will he survive? Will it be with all his limbs?
Find out in... TROUBLE. IN. TERRA.



Max -
You HAVE to be kidding me! I swear to fucking god Max, you need to get a better guy to make these shitty pamphlets.
What the hell is all that about my limbs? What is this prick hoping for?
I used to be someone and now what? Some second-rate action hero?
I hope the tracker you found for this one will actually do his damn job. Get me there, I take the shot, we leave.
SIMPLE FUCKING THINGS MAX.
- Apollo



VERONICA LANG

Overheard on the Demeter:

"Hey, you seen that cutie in cabin #42? She'd be perfect for you!"
"I don't know, she's got that look. Y'know?"
"That look?"
"Yeah, something about the eyes I think. She just looks a little...obsessed."
"The hell? You think too much."



Dear Diary -
OH MY GOD. He's actually heerreee! I love him I love him I love him so much!
He's just so...heroic!
I've hidden all my pictures of him under my mining equipment! No-one will ever think to look under all of those heavy drills and dirty overalls.
One day he'll love me diary, you'll see!
XoXoXo
Lang



Phase One - The Landing.
Apollo descendant. The trio meets. Lay of the Land.

From the journal of Daniel Apollo - 'For the Autobiography'
The end began with a gunshot. Or, to be more accurate, enough gunshots to level a whole fucking army. I was in my cabin, sleeping off that potent cocktail of too much booze, pretty stewardesses and way too much time for my own good. Not to say I struggle in the bedroom department, on the contrary I still have more than enough energy to take some girls and...

...Anyway, the gunshots. They were bad enough, but whose idea was it to follow that up with alarms and flashing red lights? Didn't they know who I was?! I heard footsteps outside, someone sprinting past, followed by the shouts and calls of Shuttle Security. Naturally I assumed they were here for me and stood up, bleary-eyed, stumbling towards the door to tell them to shut the hell up and let me sleep.

The first explosion forced me to my knees, or at least it would have if the GravGen didn't fail and send me spinning weightlessly around the room. The explosions were getting louder, I could hear screaming now too. I cartwheeled chaotically off the walls, got my bearings and headed for my personal escape pod. I appreciate it might seem a little callous of me, but the bastard Captain outright refused me access to his Arkadian Whisky. So obviously he deserved it, Selfish pig.

So there it was. Me swearing and pissing myself with fear in a cramped tube as it rocketed down towards an uncharted planet. That was the sum success of my bloody 'Comeback Tour'.
I knew I shouldn't have trusted Max.

>:( >:( >:(

By the time the landing-rockets fired, a last desperate attempt to slow my descent, I was a wreck. The pod hit the ground and practically fell apart around me. For a moment, perhaps two, I truly believed I had died.
I was in hell. It was raining fire.

Huge chunks of debris were falling from the sky, twisted metal burying itself in the dirt around me. Another pod had landed nearby and I ran for it, screaming for help or cover or mother or anything to just save me! A third, final escape pod slammed itself down, flinging me back with its shockwave.

I wasn't to realize it at the time of course, but the fact that these two pods landed here, with their passengers intact, would change my life.



The pod that had nearly killed me opened first, the woman it contained leaping lightly out of it. She was beautiful, perfect olive skin and flowing raven-hair. I've seen black hair before of course, but I remember thinking that hers was definitely raven, somehow familiar and yet completely unknown to me all at once. She carried herself with a confident strength, ready to spring into action. With not a little pang of fear, I realized she was deciding whether to kill me right then and there.
Fuck, it was sexy.

I looked around for something to defend myself with. There was Vera, my hunting rifle! Gods know why I put my gun in my escape pod, but I hazily recall those stewardesses from earlier taking some kind of issue with it being in the bedroom. At any rate, she was here with me and must have been thrown clear in the blast! I instinctively took a step towards her, to take her back into my arms.

"Don't."

I turned back to see the mysterious woman pointing a pistol at my face. Her body language still cool and controlled, but her trigger-finger was tensed and ready.

"I just...It's my..." I said, lamely.

"Who are you and how did your people find me?" Her voice was clipped and professional, with a soft accent I was to later learn was Elysian.

"AAAAAAHHHHHHEEEEEIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE" The noise came from nowhere, instantly the woman twisted and dived for cover, I just stood there in dumb shock.

"YOU'RE HIMMMMMMM! APOLLO!!" From behind the third pod, a small and disheveled woman had appeared. She pointed at me with a small piglike finger. Then promptly passed out.

:o :o :o

"You're Daniel Apollo?" The scary lady had appeared again, she holstered her gun. "The hunter?"

"I..uh..yes?"
Look, it had been a really long day.

"Then I guess we'll be able to work together." She said, with a wry smile that sent shivers through my body. "Name's Ayla." She shook my hand.  "You can go and do some scouting for us, right?"

"Um...I normally have a team who..."

"Excuse me?" She said, with a scary smile that took those shivers and stabbed me all over. "Are you the famous hunter or not?"

Well, I've never been a gentlemen to turn down a challenge. This was my moment! I straightened up, Vera in hand and set off across the trackless wastes. To scout in the name of adventure! To glory and stuff!

Who knew? Scouting is HARD.  :'(

After a while, I gave up and just sat down by the cliff. Out of sight of the landing site. It was pretty smooth as sheer cliff faces go and I was pretty comfortable.
Took me ten damn minutes to realize it was a wall. An old wall, sure. But a wall.

I called Ayla over, she brought a godsdamn sledgehammer from somewhere.



She broke through the wall in three strikes. Three strikes.

"It's warm, defensible...This could work as a campsite!" She announced, seeing the space beyond.

"Wait, we're planning on staying here?"

"Yes. There are people coming here. When they find us they're going to kill us all. I sure want to die comfy, don't you?" She flashed me another gorgeous smile, I decided she was utterly insane.

"You're utterly insane." I said.

"Hah! Go and try getting metal from that big rock by the landing site with this sledgehammer, then tell me who's the crazy one around here."



Huh. Point taken.

The rest of the valley was reasonably uninteresting, though I found some crates of food that'd survived the fall from the stratosphere. Packaging is AWESOME nowadays!



Oh and I found this! There's only one of them, so I guessed it must be pretty damn special. That's how geology works, right?



By nightfall Ayla and the other woman, whose name was Veronica, had managed to set up a basic camp, the doorway covered with a metal sheet to keep the animals out. They'd even begun to plant potatoes from some seeds they'd found among the wreckage.
Ayla volunteered to keep watch overnight. I argued but she pointed a gun at me.
I think I'm in love...






Phase Two - Visitors.
Argetlam. Girl Talk. The Naming of Thrixe.

Ayla - Logbook



The excavations continue on into the mountain. That idiot Apollo was horrified at the idea that we might sleep in the caves and, truth be told, it's not an idea that I particularly look forward to. But what else are we going to do? Sleep outside, with the rabid squirrels and the boomrats?



Tribesmen appeared today, trying to hide their movements in the muffalo herds. They seemed content to watch us for now, keeping their curiosity fed. Lang and Apollo are completely oblivious, but then if the tribe wanted us dead we would be by now. There's no point in worrying them.

Apollo was supposed to keep watch, he's already snoring away.
I can hear them outside, scratching at the walls.



They were still here in the morning, talking to each other in guttural clicks and grunts.
I told the others to wait inside and, checking my pistol was loaded, went out to talk to them.

I'd barely passed through the door when one of them pressed a cold stone knife up to my neck. He was holding it wrong, across the windpipe rather than behind it. He'd need twice the strength to cut through the bone and vocal cords that were in the way.

I'd be able to kill him before he killed me.

"I want to talk to your leader." I said, ignoring the knife.

"Quotzata Argentum? Kakarra meop lowingua?" One of the tribesmen, with swirling tattoo patterns across his chest, moved towards me.

"Your leader?" I pointed at the tribesmen. They moved back, forcing me to talk to the tattooed man. The knife still pricked my skin. "My name..." I pointed at myself. "Is Ay-la-na? Okay?"

The tribesman grinned. "Ahlama!"

"No. Ayla, say it like spider."

The tribesmen all let out a series of high-pitched clicks. Was it laughter?
I slowly rested a hand on my gun.

The tattooed man pointed to himself, still clicking happily.

"Jokora Riesling"



We talked for another hour, but we struggled to really get anywhere productive. Before long they left, waving and chirruping away over the horizon.



Lang seems convinced she can build a power generator around the Steam Vent. She asked me specifically to help, as it turned out it so she could have a 'Girl Talk' with me.

"He's just so AWESOME!"

"I don't know Veronica... I don't think he's the same guy you see on the screens."

She shot me a look like I'd just murdered her entire family... I know that look, trust me.

"But he's found this place and kept us safe and oh! What would we do without him?"

"Live happily in prosperity?" I was rewarded with an impressive pout. She'd been practicing.

"I love him though. You wouldn't know what love even feels like. Would you?"

"Sure I do." I said, entirely serious. Veronica looked up, surprised, momentarily forgetting the Bitransitional fuse plate she was building from electronic scraps. "I was in love once. My bosses found out; ordered me to terminate her..."

"What did you do?"

"Put a bullet through her skull."

Veronica's face ran through an entire spectrum of emotions, from outrage through to sadness through to suspicion. I was saved from any more of this 'Girl Talk' business by Apollo, who had started screaming.




"I am fucking DONE with pods from the sky trying to kill me!"

The way he tells the story, he saw the capsule falling and ran over to investigate it. Once it landed he sat tight behind some rocks and waited to see if the person inside would be hostile.
The way I tell the story, he was nearly crushed by the pod and ran away screaming. Then decided to cower behind some rocks until I turned up.

The man inside was not friendly. He was shirtless, armed with a pistol and utterly huge, his colossal biceps detailed with all sorts of gang-signs and iconography. He took some shots at me as I ran to the sliver of cover that Daniel had found.



"What the hell do I do?"

"SHOOT HIM!" I shouted, moving behind a stone just as it exploded into shards. I began firing off shots of my own, my gun a sharp retort against the solid-CRACK of Apollo's gun.



I hit him in the shoulder, spinning him into the undergrowth.

"Did you get him?" Daniel asked. The man's cries of pain answered his question.

"I'll finish him off." I stood up and began to walk towards the grass where we'd seen him fall.

"You can't kill him!" I turned, genuinely confused.

"Why not? He tried to kill us." I responded. Daniel's brow was wrinkled in worry. The coward.

"Haven't you heard of mercy? Compassion? We don't know anything about this guy!"

"So? I don't need his life story to put bullets in him. What would you suggest we do with him?"

"Lock him up? We've got the rooms for it now. Maybe he'll even agree to join us!"

I considered it. I've spent all my life killing, enjoyed it too. But Apollo, damn him, had a point. We were never going to grow if it was just us three. Maybe this man had information we needed, or knew about the planet we were on.
My mind made up, I continued towards the wounded man.

"I'm going to kill him."

"No!" Daniel shouted in desperation, I smiled.



I wasn't going to kill him. But I wasn't about to let Apollo think he'd won.

Bastard still made me carry him.



As much as I think I might have to shoot one of them before long, Daniel and Veronica are pretty useful. At least they're both so flawed they look up to me to lead them. Which suits me just fine. I was doing well before Magliore, top of my profession. I'll be back there before long, I just know it.

In the meantime, I think it's probably best to name our small beginnings. After all, if they are going to find me, they'll need an address!

What to call it though? DoOmHallOW? HappyYayVillage? Aylana's place?
There are three of us...Thrice? Thrax?

Thrixe?

Huh. That's not all that bad. I'm sure Apollo and Lang will be alright with it, especially because Apollo is convinced I'll murder him if he pisses me off or something.
Not that he's wrong...

Let this place be named Thrixe then. To be spoken of across the galaxy in the times to come.






Phase Three - Prisoner.
The Emperor Protects. Skirmish. The Offer.

Tac-Report ~ Scout-Sergeant Kasper 'Keezly' Johansson
4th Company - Cyma Squad - 0822406.M41
Authenticate:
Desiderata

Only in death does duty end.



I have been taken prisoner. I was barely minutes into my mission, to scout this uncharted world and assess its likelihood of compliance. They shot me, incapacitated me and have dropped me into this godforsaken room.
I shall not break. I shall not talk.

These heretics will regret the day they captured a marine of the Flood Angels Legion!
Death comes in waves!



I'm not sure how much time has passed. I have no sense of time in this darkness, fevered days and torturous nights flowing together. My Battle-Brothers are out there somewhere, searching for me. My sub-dermal implants sending out distress signals into the vastness of space.

One of the heretics brings me food. She is attractive, by mortal standards at least. She promises independence from the Imperium of man, damning herself with her words! I have tried to fight her, to snap her impudent neck and escape, but she moves like mist through the darkness of the room. How do I kill what I can not see?

She tells me of the outside world, of the birth of her colony and of raider incursions.
They were attacked recently, spread across the valley when he arrived, gun in hand.



They immediately moved to engage, keeping him pinned.



At that point, it was a simple matter. Flank him...



...and kill him.



I assumed she was trying to intimidate me, unaware of the futility of trying to scare a Spacemarine of the Adeptus Astartes. Except...she was equally happy to detail the weaknesses of the base, like an external power supply that could easily be cut or damaged to take out any automated defences and plunge the colony into darkness.

Today she offered to free me, make me part of the colony.

I accepted without hesitation.



I have not forgotten my oaths. I will not forsake my geneseed for these mere mortals.
I will do my part for this settlement, watch and wait. Build up a picture of the situation on this world and decide whether this planet can be brought into compliance...
...or if the heretics must burn.

For the Emperor!



This cave is becoming habitable. The other colonists have claimed the first bedrooms to be built, pointing out that while they kept me imprisoned indoors they were forced to sleep on the dirt.

"Besides, you have the look of a Spartan!"
Daniel Apollo made a joke at my expense. I did not laugh.





NEXT TIME: The Assault.

Written from Lang's perspective!


TimMartland

Lang = Yuno Gasai

Cool idea with the logs, can't wait to see what you do with this one.
'Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying'
-Arthur C. Clarke'
'Needs moar boosters!'
-Jebadiah Kerman

Harlequin

Phase 1 now out!
I'd never even heard of Yuno until just now. I've googled her and she seems EVEN CRAZIER.
Thanks! I'll keep trying to be reasonably prompt with updates. Each one is a few hours work, so enjoy!

iame6162013

Linus Torvalds: "But it clearly is the only right way. The fact that everybody else does it some other way only means that they are wrong"
Robert J. Hanlon: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Harlequin

I had to cut that last section short, seems I've hit a 20,000 character ceiling I had no idea existed. I'll see about either putting this somewhere else, or just keep updating here for now.

Quasarrgames

On the right path, but the wrong medication.

I like how there's a thing that displays how long you've logged in to the forums. It shows just how many hours you've spent here, never to get back...

Celthric Aysen

My DeviantART|E-Vehicles|Flebe's  Channel
"♫"Every people that i see i will never understand"♪"

iame6162013

Linus Torvalds: "But it clearly is the only right way. The fact that everybody else does it some other way only means that they are wrong"
Robert J. Hanlon: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Celthric Aysen

My DeviantART|E-Vehicles|Flebe's  Channel
"♫"Every people that i see i will never understand"♪"