Here's an Interesting Story

[Comrade Corwin]

I'm running some sort of hippie space communist colony where they will eat anything (insect, mushroom, nutrient paste, even human), but think all life is essentially sacred (human, animal, even trees). Thought it would be a challenge to have a people who would hate to harm anything and always help people, while creating a group that could also survive anywhere.

Anyway, because charity is essential to these people, we rescued a paralyzed man who we cared for going on half a year. This 65-year-old man, unfortunately, has a Luciferium addiction. He arrived with quite a number of Luciferium pills, which we eventually had to loot him for, and we slowly fed them to him. He finally survived his paralysis and contributed to the colony and even went on a date with a much younger Comrade (title of a follower); very scandalous. Every few days, he'd take a pill. Eventually, however, the day arrived that I saw he was dying and no more Luciferium remained.

Up until this point, these peaceniks had been pretty isolationist. Trying to be self-sufficient and never having yet left The Commune (colony name). However, they had known for some time about an ancient facility nearby that contained many valuable things, supposedly, thanks to a tip from a local friendly chieftain. We were not well equipped. Though our ideology was complex, our technological understanding was pretty limited. We had acquired two firearms, a bolt-rifle (arrived with) and submachinegun (arrived later), and the rest had good quality recurve bows. They were decent combatants as a group, but faring against a dormant high-tech facility known to contain ancient uncollected treasure and to be dangerous? Sounded like too much for my bunch, at the time. We'd taken on a couple raiders before easily, but it was mostly peaceful. That seemed out of our league and not an option, until now.

I suited everyone up the best I could and sent our four best militia folks, our dying man among them, to the facility. Upon arriving, we noticed ancient hospital beds and equipment out in the parking lot, but no enemies or defenses. We found a door and it was unlocked, however, upon entering a sound was heard. Good thing we left, because the unknown sparking device in the middle of a hospital room ignited, sending fire everywhere. We took a look inside after things died down and found a large hermetically sealed container in the room, the only object that seemed of any importance. The room was still blazing nearby, but we sent someone in to quickly open it and get out. Inside found a bunch of silver (money for the poor!), which we pocketed and went outside to safety.  Almost everything was steel, but the heat inside quickly grew to thousands of degrees and the furniture and building began to buckle at an alarming rate.

We surmised that there was likely two more rooms in the west wing of the building, but the only access was a door in the burning room, which was unreachable for several reasons. So, we gathered in the proximity of the closest room to the one on fire and we were able to deconstruct the metal wall outside which revealed an old, looted warehouse. However, it also revealed a door. When we entered, the scene was terrifying. An enormous room, filled with ancient broken down reactors and corpses. The last part shook me for a bit, actually. Roughly twenty bodies of differing sizes and shapes. Having all died here or had their bodies dragged here for some unknown reason. There was, also, one large container of the same type, in the middle of the room. I sent in one of our colonists (shame we left the creepy psycho) into the room of ancient corpses and opened the container. Inside was something I had hoped for, but did not expect at this point: Luciferium. More than the old man had arrived with. He could live for almost a year!

We left the hospital, the now not dying man having already taken the first pill. Now, I just have to worry about when we run out next time. Luciferium is a rare commodity these days. Will we get so lucky twice?

[Interstellar50]

It's something I didn't even know that something like this could happen.

[kclace]

Sounds like the new events from ideology are pretty cool!

That's kind of your colonists to do that. Whenever I get a pawn with luciferum addiction I throw them at the first riaders I come across so the pawn dies quickly...for the greater good of course.

[Samapple31]

Haha! I like this story!