Count Down To Doomsday (TMNR) - Episode 12 - Pirates and Loot

 Sleepily, some of the adventurers slowly woke to find themselves in cramped prison cells with little more than a special receptacle for bodily waste built directly into the wall. Taking stock of their surroundings and situation, they discovered that Seraphina, Carm and Alex had not woken. Their gear was gone and they had nothing more than their regular clothing on.

The cell doors were air permeable metal grating that would be perfectly acceptable on the set of a Silent Hill movie, but were obviously not penetrable with the use of only one’s hands. The cells were cramped and dirty allowing only for a person of average size to lay down on the floor or stand and extend their arms and legs to touch the door and the wall. One thing was very obvious, they were not on the Maelstrom Rider.

As the group talked to try and figure out what plan of action they had, Zaphod decided to make a nuisance of himself and stuffed his light jacket into the waste hole, jamming it up. When Zaphod then summoned the guard, the guard seemed not to care too much and commented on how Zaphod must enjoy stewing in his own refuse, before going back to his post. 

After some time, another guard entered the prison hallway. The new guard ordered the warden to open the prison cells and the two heavily armed and armored guards walked the conscious adventurers out of the prison hallway and into a large and dirty multipurpose room, full of assembled pirates.

As the adventurers were brought into the middle of the room, they saw a large command chair decorated with an archway of rib cages from all forms of humanoid creatures. On what could only be described as a throne, sat a man in modified Powered armor that did not have a helmet or Arm sections, so that the dark man with a scar over one eye and blades protruding from his forearms could easily show off his most gruesome features. 

The man on the throne addressed the adventurers, explaining that since they were not the crew of the Maelstrom rider, they were docked in his dock at the asteroid base and nothing on the Maelstrom Rider could be used to identify them, he had no choice but to assume they were also pirates with a legitimate claim to salvage. That being said, the lead pirate then offered them the option to present their best fighter to battle him in single combat for the right to their claim. 

Zaphod was incensed about this to say the least and instead of complying with the demand, decided instead to try and convince the large pirate that he was mistaken for his actions, attempting a “Do you know who I am?” tactic. The pirate identified himself as Talon, a pirate with a contract with RAM, who felt he was slighted recently and that RAM owed him restitution. 

Zaphod attempted to convince Talon that the adventurers were a group of “GS-213 Classified” RAm operatives, which is why they were not identifiable, and there was going to be hell to pay for Talon interfering with their mission. Zaphod attempted to use the writ that Jared had just provided them to lend credence to his claim, which Talon seemed to believe. 

Talon then explained that he was glad he intercepted whatever mission they were on, it meant a better ransom for the crew and the ship when they rendezvoused with his RAM contact. Understanding that the adventurers were not going to fight him, and he could potentially use them as leverage in his scheme to get restitution from RAM, Talon ordered the group back into the prison.

Back in the prison, the adventurers continued to worry about their still unconscious friends, but also continued to try and figure out what course of action they could use to escape. After another hour of incarceration, a pirate entered the prison and called out to the warden. The new pirate told the Warden that he was here to relieve the man; Talon was allowing the Warden to go enjoy the meal taking place in the galley. 

The Warden was very skeptical of this, but as the new pirate continued to try and convince the Warden, the new pirate made his way down the prison hall toward the Warden. Closing the distance between the two while they argued, the new pirate was close enough to assault the man and knock him out. After knocking the man out, the new pirate opened the prison cells and let everyone out. Max went to check on Seraphina and Carm, finding them alive but unconscious, while Buzz looked after Alex and the woman they rescued from the Asteroid base prison, finding them in the same state as Seraphina and Carm. 

Zaphod walked to the new Pirate and asked him what was going on. The pirate told Zaphod his name was Mourey Morainey and he was one of the prisoners that the adventurers had freed from the Asteroid prison. Talon had taken him and the others aboard probationary and was treating them poorly, making them do the jobs that the rest of the pirates did not want to. Mourey was ready for a move and when he was told to inventory the Maelstrom rider, he heard from their crew member Scott, who was still hiding on the ship. 

Scott had promised Mourey safe travel to a port of his choice and 1000 credits if he would turn on Talon and release the rest of the Maelstrom rider crew, while aiding them back to the ship. Mourey thought this was a good deal, and so here he was. 

At the end of the prison hallway, Max discovered the personal belongings of the crew, their sidearms and space suits anyway, and so everyone armed themselves again before making a plan to get off the pirate ship. 

Mourey explained that the majority of the crew was in the galley having a party and the rest of the ship was very minimally populated; now would be a great time to try and get off the ship, but in order to do so, they would need to stop the ship’s engines, or the airlock would not be able to be opened without attempting to cut through it, which would alert all the pirates and likely lead to their deaths.

Everyone agreed that they should take Alex, Carm, Seraphina and the irradiated woman to the airlock and stash them there before attempting any action to stop the ship. Then they decided to look around.

Max wanted to recover their money and asked Mourey where that might be stashed. Mourey believed this was likely in Talon’s personal quarters. The group knew they needed to go to engineering to shut down the engines and so they planned to look around a bit, while heading toward engineering. 

They moved around the ship a bit, listening for the commotion in the galley. As they first arrived at engineering, they thought it may make more sense to see if they could get better weapons and armor before assaulting the controls, not knowing how many pirates would be holding the controls. 

As they moved around the ship, they felt cyclical firing of the engines, which increased the almost nonexistent gravity to micro gravity for a few minutes at a time. Doing some back of the envelope calculations, Buzz and Zaphod determined that the engines were course correcting because one of the ships engines must be damaged and so each time they corrected their course, it was not correcting properly. Filing this away for when they assaulted the engineering controls, they continued to head toward the armory. 

Once at the armory, the adventurers and Mourey stacked up along the wall where the Armory could be accessed. Zaphod then walked into the armory and pretended to be lost. The two pirates in the armory immediately began to try and subdue Zaphod, who had completely captured their attention. While the two men were distracted, Max, Buzz, and Mourey entered the room and shot the pirates to death. 

The group then put on pirate heavy armor and gathered up a bunch of weapons. Buzz found a laser rifle, while Max picked up a bandolero of stun grenades. Feeling much better prepared, the group headed back toward the engineering level, stopping back on the prison floor, where Mourey indicated he thought Talon’s personal quarters were.

Max made short work of the lock on Talon’s door and the group slipped inside, still listening to the pirates above enjoying their meal. Max realized that the “meal” was probably the nice food and ingredients that the group had gathered from the Asteroid base and made peace with the fact that they would not get to enjoy the eggs or milk they had procured.

Inside Talon’s room, they found a personal terminal, which Zaphod was unable to access, but Max easily hacked into. Buzz found two storage lockers and so while Zaphod removed the hard drive from the personal computer, Max unlocked a storage locker that contained their suitcase of money, along with some more assorted coinage. 

Zaphod looked in the other room that was off the back of Talon’s quarters, finding a large bathroom that had a dead body in it; It appeared that Talon liked to beat and butcher people in his leisure time.   

With their money in hand, the group decided to make their way to engineering, but as they were going to leave, Mourey jumped into the hallway to surprise three pirates that were coming out of the main corridor and a fire fight ensued. Mourey was the only person to take any significant damage, while Buzz fired his new rifle and learned it was not normal. When the pirates were dead, the adventures moved the bodies into the prison cells to hide them.

Max convinced Zaphod to patch up Mourey, while Buzz looked over his new weapon, determining it was an FIR laser rifle; a laser that fired on a spectrum of light that was not visible to any known naked eye. With everyone ready, the adventurers headed down to engineering. 

Once back in the engineering entryway, the group started to make a plan of action, but Zaphod was tired of waiting. While the others quietly discussed how they were going to enter the room and who might be waiting for them, Zaphod walked in and surprised the man at the primary control panel. Zaphod attempted to run the man through with his cutlass, but was not immediately successful. When Buzz and Mourey added their cutlasses to the fight, Zaphod was able to work his blade into a break in the man’s armor and kill him. With the fight over about as quickly as it started, they then took stock of the engines.

As they had determined earlier, it was found that Talon’s ship was indeed suffering from a damaged fuel rod, which was putting them off course and making the pilot have to direct frequent course corrections. Timing it out, the adventurers determined when the next correction was going to take place and before it did, changed the engine calibration so that when the engine fired, it would send the ship further off course instead of correcting it. 

After they messed with the engine, Max helped Zaphod get the makeshift broadcaster they discovered in the Asteroid base, wired into the ship’s systems. Using that device, they were able to broadcast on all frequencies, obscuring where in the ship they were transmitting from. Zaphod taunted Talon and the pirates jumped into action shutting down the engines and beginning a compartment by compartment search of the ship. 

With the engines cut, the adventurers set Talon’s ships engines to overload in ten minutes, giving them more than enough time to escape, and distracting the pirates. They ran quickly to the airlock and moved their unconscious friends to the Maelstrom rider. Max rigged the boarding tube to have a stun grenade go off in the face of anyone that followed them, and they hurriedly prepared the Maelstrom rider to escape.

Scott.DOS explained to them that the pirate ship had significantly more firepower than them and it was best to run, so they did. As they threw the ship’s engines into a full burn, Buzz charted a course for Salvation III. After a few tense minutes, they determined that Talon was not following them and they had made an effective escape. 

Mourey asked to be paid, and so he was. Once the adventurers explained that they worked for NEO and were trying to stop RAM in any way, Mourey was happy enough to stay on with them while the pay was good. 

On the way to Salvation, Scott investigated the hard drive that they stole from Talon and discovered that Talon had a base hidden in the belt, but there were no details about where. Mourey said he could work his contacts in the belt to try and find out where the base was since Talon had implied he hid RAM assets there. 

Scott also fully digested the information the adventurers had stolen from the asteroid base and explained that if RAM managed to execute their plan and create a full scale weapon as described, it would be able to sterilize whole continents on Earth, with even underground shelters providing limited protection. Needless to say, this weapon system plan had to be stopped. Thankfully it seemed there was some time as the event at the Asteroid base may have set the development back some time.

Scott believed that RAM was close to operational, but from some of the documents he understood there were logistic issues at two facilities instrumental in the building of the device. One facility was in the Martian high desert and the other was somewhere in the Venusian lowlands. Scott’s estimate was about 1 month of time until the device would be ready to fire. 

Once back at Salvation III, the adventurers offloaded the information they had gathered and then looked to the various vendors to restock ammunition and purchase additional gear. Scott explained that it made sense to try and procure a ground vehicle since they were headed planet side. 

Max made a deal for a sealed transport that would hold the entire crew and some cargo for $75k credits which the group determined was a very good price, so they purchased it. Zaphod was looking for better cutlery and was directed to a vendor who had procured a small collection of Mercurian Short Swords. The ornate and well constructed blades were purchased for a mere $900 credits, so that Zaphod and Alex would be able to slice and dice with the best of them. 

Turning their eyes to the belt to try and get some more exotic gear before heading planet side, the next discussion focused on where to go.

Count Down To Doomsday (TMNR) - Episode 11 Finally Found the Kids

 Once everyone had gathered the things they decided they wanted, they headed south along the corridor. The next few doors they came to, Alex and Buzz entered first and they discovered a few labs that appeared to be tailor made to facilitate the design and creation of Gennies. 

The larger of the two labs held large floor to ceiling gestation containers. The containers appeared to have electromechanical locks that would be able to be triggered with specific FM frequencies. The tanks lacked the normal liquids and goose that would suggest they had been recently, or ever used. 

Zaphod and Max spent some time hacking the computers trying to find out what they could and found research notes. Here, a scientist had recorded information about three kinds of combat Gennies that were in development in the facility. Once was a large snake designed for camouflage and speed. Another was a large scorpion designed to incapacitate and consume, and a third was a large crab designed to breach and destroy. 

Having traveled through three corners of the facility so far, the group was certain they had already seen these three monstrosities, but that did not stop them from downloading the notes to make sure that they could prepare others in the organization if these things were to have been deployed anywhere. 

Continuing south, Alex and Buzz next opened a door into an unused containment area housing a number of large cages suitable for any kind of animal that may have been needed to experiment on. Across the hall was more gennie containment, but, as Buzz opened the door, he found that the place had fluids everywhere and no small quantity of large creatures were moving around in it among the opened gestation pods. 

Buzz quickly shut the door and when Seraphina asked if he thought the children they were looking for could have been in there, Buzz adamantly asserted that there was no possible way, so they continued on down the corridor. 

Unused offices and more containment cages were found in the next few rooms, one set of cages contained large birds of some variety. As the birds in their cages were approached, they became vicious and launched themselves toward the doors of the cages, feathers unfurled and talons in front, giving all the evidence necessary for this to be one more room that no one had to spend any quantity of time in. 

Across the hall from the birds was another room with a large roll up door. Inside was a significant quantity of satellites mounted with reflectors. Between the collective knowledge of the group, it was determined that these kinds of satellites were used to target laser weapons systems from surface mounted facilities, however only one or two were ever needed and they tended to be much smaller. The reflectors of the DLSAT-X satellites were all broken, leading the adventurers to assume that the evacuating RAM scientists simply destroyed what they were unable to complete. 

In the final of the four corners of the facility, the adventurers discovered a waste water processing facility. Believing that the children easily could have found their way into it to hide, Buzz and Alex walked to the back of the room and opened a door into a smaller sequestration area, where a quantity of hyper snakes had been hiding. Buzz made a hasty retreat while Alex covered him, and they managed to get out of the room before the situation got especially dangerous. 

As the group rounded the corner, they decided that it would make more sense to head north once more and work backward toward the corner from the far wall of the facility. In doing so they happened upon another storage room containing precursor chemicals and another robotic vehicle loader. 

Buzz decided to take the robotic vehicle and with him and Seraphina walking around in one, Seraphina lost interest in hers and they were both soon abandoned in the corridor. As the adventurers continued, without the loaders, they eventually found another Gennie lab, this time it appeared to have been recently used, but did not contain any gennies. 

Max and Zaphod took to the computers, with Max finding a lot of information on how the gestation pods in this facility were constructed, including a schematic of the FM locks. Zaphod didn’t find much interesting information other than notes that would indicate that this was the primary lab where a majority of the research had been conducted. 

Seraphina found a door that appeared to lead into a different section of the lab, and when she attempted to open it, discovered it had been jammed rather succinctly. Buzz and Alex took a few minutes to try and open the door as well, but were unsuccessful. 

As Zaphod walked toward the group to see if he could do something about the door, he discovered a small radio transmitter, like the kind you would build as a science experiment while learning. A quick inspection showed that the device however was built poorly and so when it was switched on, it transmitted across the entire FM spectrum. Some audible clicks were heard from the gestation pod locks and Max, while downloading the schematics for the pods, was interrupted as the computer lost all connection to the mainframe and went a bit wonky for a moment; it appeared as though they found the reason for the accidental release of the gennies. 

Not wanting to leave a stone unturned in their continued search for the missing children, the adventurers turned their attention to the blocked door. Realizing no amount of prying or tinkering would make the door move, their attention turned to the satchel charges that Seraphina had been carrying around. 

Seraphina, with Zaphod’s help, rigged the door with a shaped charge so that only the door and its frame would suffer the blast, and everyone stood back while the timer ticked down. The explosion rocked the door and blew the metal and debris into the lab. When the smoke cleared, the adventurers stepped inside to find a group of children huddled in the corner.

As the adventurers cautiously made their way into the lab, as one of the children stepped forward saying, “Welcome, I am Milo Philips Junior. Thank you for coming to our aid. We should get to my father as soon as possible.” As Milo spoke, another young man whispered something about “DNA” which Max overheard, but Milo dismissed the boy saying “Never mind Jim, he wants us to confirm the password with you, but I don’t know that we need to do that right now”.  

The adventures did not know what to do with this pompous youth, and so began to take stock of the lab. Zaphod and Max started to look at the computers while Milo continued to tell them that they should not be wasting time in the lab. 

Seraphina was doing her best to convince Milo that they need to salvage the research as much as rescue the children, and Milo was not having it Eventually, Zaphod moved to put the child in his place, and everyone unanimously agreed that hitting the kid was a bad look and it should not happen. Zaphod went back to working on the computer with one of the young men following him. 

As Zaphod and Max worked, Jim sat next to him and watched. Jim casually said something about how it would be funny if the adventurers were not RAM rescue personnel and were instead NEO spies, and Zaphod told him to get lost.

Max determined that there was still more to be done in the base, noticing that there was some kind of weapons system lab on premises, so the adventures gathered the four children and headed into the corridor on the opposite side of the lab, which ended up taking them right out next to the elevator they made their way down here in. 

Also right next to the elevator, was the door to another lab, which contained a large workshop and many computers. Inside, the group once again began to collect information and Jim continued to talk at Zaphod, saying this time that it was fun to watch spies, and said something about how Milo constantly bad-mouthed Buck Rogers. 

In the lab, the group found schematics and plans for a laser of unprecedented power. Apparently, the scientists here were working with special lenses made on Venus that collected power as a beam was focused through them. A laser made with these lenses would be far more powerful than anything anyone had seen to date, but would require specific materials with a long build time. 

Letting curiosity win, the group then moved into a secondary room off the side of the laser lab. Here was a rough hewn rock chamber that housed a scale model of the weapon that was described in the documents they had discovered. The weapon was as large as a ground vehicle and hummed with power.

Milo stepped up and as they all looked on, started a speech in honor of RAM’s dominance and continued pursuit of science in the name of the Martian People. As the adventures looked on, listening to Milo pontificate and discussing whether or not they should turn on the device, Jim walked over to it and casually pressed a combination of buttons. 

The machine got louder and then a blinding light was emitted from the end with a deafening sound as the laser instantly ignited the oxygen in the air as it traveled to the far wall vaporizing a section of rock the size of a twin bed. The rock and the smoke from the instant ignition made the children cough and spit while the adventurers, wearing their space helmets, struggled to see for a moment. The whole affair was as instant as it was terrifying. Following the demonstration, the group quickly understood that a full size weapon would be able to destroy something like the Moon or a large portion of the Earth easily. This was truly a doomsday device. 

With everything in hand, the adventurers decided that it was a good idea to continue to take the children back to their parents and aid the evacuation of the facility. As they walked, Jim offered up that the base administrator was afraid of some man who had knives in his arm and talked briefly about how Bobby had to spend time at a dusty base in the Martian high desert a few months ago. Heading to the elevator that remained in operation, they discovered that the primary power for the facility was not on so the elevator was not running. 

Without missing a step, Milo withdrew a rope from his pack and with the aid of the other boy Bobby, he attached it to the bottom of the elevator car and they began their ascent. The adventurers felt this was a risky and unwise thing to do, but in the end all was well as a few minutes later, the whole group found themselves entering the elevator car from the bottom through the maintenance hatch.

Entering the main corridor once more, Milo said they should go through the Worker quarters to the West, as it was the fastest way to get back to the administration offices. As they entered the worker quarters, they found a large number of worker Gennies dying in the room. Jim looked very upset but Milo was trudging right along as if he was walking through a field of dying vegetables. 

Jim convinced the adventurers to stop and do something about the worker’s condition, and Zaphod determined they had too much nitrogen in their system, which was what was likely killing them. Seraphina found some controls on the exterior of the room to adjust the oxygen ration, almost as if this was always something that was potentially going to happen, and so she adjusted the air to be proper for the creatures survival. Milo was bothered by this, but as he saw them become revived, said something about since they salvage these RAM assets, they should attempt to get them on a rescue vessel, before convincing Bobby and Sissy to follow him toward the administration offices.  

Max followed the children to the point that they could be seen near the administration offices and then returned with the rest of the group, who had decided they would accompany Jim to the evacuation vessel so that no ill fate would befall him. 

As they walked toward the dock where the evacuation vessel was, Jim asked if he could stop and pick up some of his belongings. They group agreed this was a good idea and so they approached a living area. As they opened the door to go in, an elderly man was in the hallway pointing an antiquated slug thrower at them. When the man saw Jim, he dropped the gun and ran to him, elated that he was OK. 

The man ended up being Jared Robak, a RAM official of decent social standing. Jared thanked them profusely and then provided them with an official digital document that declared that if it was presented, the individual presenting it had Jared’s approval and was allowed to do whatever it was they were doing in the name of RAM. Basically he provided them with a permission slip to act on his behalf in RAM matters.

After Jim had gathered a few of his things, Jim and Jarred headed to the dock. As Jim left, he mentioned to the adventurers that he saw a woman wearing an NEO uniform being taken into the prison the other day. He then told the adventurers where the prison was and wished them luck on their journey.

The group decided to find the prison and rescue the woman. Traveling through the middle of the facility Seraphina managed to disable the RAM security robots and they found some more administrative offices. Eventually they found a lounge and the prison. As they arrived, they also found that a number of people were imprisoned in the facility that did not belong to NEO. Zaphod convinced everyone that whoever they were, it was better to release them than let them rot in the ells with no one to provide their basic needs, so they let what was assumed to be a number of pirates go. The pirates wasted no time leaving the prison and the adventurers followed shortly after.

Buzz carried the woman, who Zaphod had determined was suffering advanced radiation sickness, as they found their way to the communications room. In the communications room they discovered a priority message to Milo about a facility on Mars and learned that the base was broadcasting a warning message. They also heard from Scott.dos who was informing them that he had finally gained access to the base’s system and was starting to sift the information and steal anything he could. 

As they walked back toward their dock, they heard Milo Junior loudly complaining about how his father left them and he was very upset about it. Zaphod and Buzz walked back to the ship, while Max and Seraphina decided to make sure that the kids made it to the evacuation vessel. 

At the evacuation vessel, the guards there handed Max a large case that Milo Senior instructed them to give to the rescue force when his son arrived. Inside the case Max found 100k credits worth of Grandrubles. As Seraphina and Max headed back toward their ship, Max decided to stop and inspect the armory, discovering that nothing very useful had been left behind, but did take a laser rifle for Buzz. 

This was when Zaphod and Buzz had radioed to them and said that they were having trouble getting on the ship. Apparently there were some kind of electrical problems and Carm was not answering. Seraphina and Max made haste back to the ship and when they arrived, Seraphina was able to get the door open. 

Stepping inside the airlock, and then into the main entry, they were immediately attacked with sonic stunners. With their eyes closing, they saw a man in powered armor with large blades sticking out of his arms, telling them to sleep tight, he would speak to them again soon.

Count Down To Doomsday (TMNR) - Episode 10 Secret Facilities and Evil Gennies

 The adventurers spoke a bit more with the base administrator, asking for a map of the facility and any other information that may help them navigate. Milo assured them that no such things existed and slightly rebuked them for asking such questions about a secret facility that they should have been briefed on. 

Milo indicated that the adventurers should be heading to the West and then to the South and so the adventurers headed that direction following Milo and his guards. As they passed through a sentry check point, the guards nodded to the administrator and acknowledged the adventurers. 

Shortly after passing through the security check point, Milo told the adventurers that they should head south to the end of the long corridor and there would be an elevator. The only other explanation the adventurers received from Milo was that the elevator would take them to the lower level where the labs were, and where the children had been lost. After that, Milo and his guards headed into some offices, leaving the adventurers to their task.

Starring down the large corridor, the adventurers took in the construction of the facility. The asteroid was large enough in diameter that, though it was spinning along its axis, the gravity was that of Earth and no sideways motion was detectable. The rough hewn walls made it appear as though it had been blasted out of the rock and the structure that was put in place to keep the rock from moving further was made of smooth steel and plastic. No small amount of RAM engineering went into the place. 

The corridor was nearly 20 feet across and tall enough that even standing on a vehicle that could pass through it, would not allow one to touch the ceiling. As the adventurers passed door ways, they saw that the doors were large blast doors like those that would be found facing the exterior of a facility designed to keep the vacuum of space from removing the fragile atmosphere required to sustain life. 

Passing through two more security check points staffed by a soldier and two security robots, the adventurers continued their journey south. As they passed a set of doors closely grouped together, a frantic woman wearing a space suit accosted them, obviously not realizing that the adventurers were not base personnel. The woman asked if the children had been found yet and looked ready to bolt if anyone moved too quickly. 

The adventurers exchanged looks, not exactly sure what to tell the mother, and Zaphod stepped forward, assuring her with lies that the children had been found safe and were already on the evacuation ship awaiting departure. Visibly, the woman relaxed and composed herself a bit, thanking the adventurers while explaining she would head to the evacuation ship as well. 

At the end of the corridor, there was a final security check point. Here the group of adventurers found another guard and a few more security robots. The guard addressed the adventurers., explaining that Milo had sent word ahead they would be coming through. The guard then opened a storage room that had spare laser capacitor clips and armor enough for everyone to claim a suit. After collecting a few demolition charges, the adventurers were shown to the elevator. 

As the doors to the massive elevator were slowly closing, the guard told them that they would need to head to the Eastern elevator once on the lower level, as this elevator was going to be destroyed to keep the gennies that had escaped containment from using it as a way to get to the upper level. When the lift came to a stop, explosions could be heard above and a large quantity of debris landed on the top of the elevator car. With nowhere else to go but forward, the adventurers opened the elevator doors and stepped out. 

In the new corridor, the lighting was the same as it was on the floor above, but something strange was in the air. More like a dirty mist than a smoke, filled the corridor and made it more challenging to see. Seraphina, and Zaphod worried that this could potentially harm them, so Zaphod analyzed the material and discovered that it was an enzyme based chemical that was biological in nature. 

Not sure where to start looking, the adventurers decided to head to the West and begin working their way around the outside of the facility. When they reached the end of the corridor, they began to head North.

The first door they came across was a large roll up door, which concealed a large storage room full of chemicals used in the creation of gennies. Inside there was a large bipedal robotic vehicle designed to lift and move freight. Seraphina was excited about this and immediately checked the machine to see if it was operable, and then began moving around inside it. The rest of the adventurers easily out paced Seraphina in her new piece of equipment. 

The next room that Alex found, since he was leading the group and doing the door kicking, was full of equipment that hummed with power. Once in the room, Seraphina and Max determined that the equipment was power control, but from this terminal, nothing could really be controlled, just monitored; this room seemed to be the secondary power generation room. 

As Seraphina and Max worked on the computer, Buzz and Alex noticed that some very large snakes were coming out from under the generators and heading toward the adventurers. Zaphod took a number of steps back, and there was a lot of laser fire. One of the snakes managed to slither out into the hall after Max and wrap themselves around Max, hurting them badly. Stuck in place while it attempted to squeeze Max to death, the others shot the creature giving Zaphod a chance to patch Max back up. 

The group continued their trek North, next encountering a room that had bio-hazard warnings all over the doorway. Stepping into the lab, they discovered that there was an entry chamber along with a sealed door. Here, a number of bio-hazard suits were on the shelves, but they all seemed to be accounted for. Deciding this meant that the room could not contain the children, Alex began to move on and everyone followed. The next lab again contained an entry with no missing suits and so the adventurers moved on quickly.

At the end of the corridor to the North, the adventurers found a collection of offices. The offices seemed to have been in use very recently so Max and Zaphod attempted to infiltrate the computers here to try and get some of the information they were after. They were not immediately successful, so Seraphina disabled a computer and took the hard drive out of it. Eventually Max was able to infiltrate one of the computers and found that these were just thin clients which contained no local information. After collecting some information about contracts with mercenaries that could embarrass RAM if sold to the right people in the Belt, the group moved on. 

In the next room over, the adventurers discovered the facility's mainframe. Once Max hacked into this, they discovered a list of passwords that would provide access to a facility on Mariposa 3 for a clandestine RAM operation. Recognizing that there was too much information here to sift through easily, the group decided it was a good idea to move on and come back to this later. 

When they stepped out of the room back into the corridor, they were attacked by a group of overly large scorpion gennies. The creatures were fast and dangerous, but with Alex at the front, the group made short work of them.

Continuing to go in each room in the corridor as they found them, the Adventurers retrieved eggs from a small farm enclosure housing chickens and goats as well as a gallon of milk from an enclosure that housed cows. When they reached the end of the corridor, they happened upon a group of massive and well armored crabs, which made attempts to pinch everyone to death, almost succeeding, but ultimately being killed with the laser fire from the adventurers. 

The last room in the corridor contained a vast quantity of consumer goods. The storage room was a veritable department store. Zaphod picked up some chemicals to unclog drains, while the others browsed the pre-packaged foods and other goods. As they continued their ransacking, Alex watched their backs, ready to move on.