Less Than Simple: Xelots undertake Chaos Shrine mission (19-11-2402)

After being held up for some time in the bureaucracy the Xelot squad had finally managed to secure the okay so that they could make their way towards the Chaos Shrine, where they hoped to find enough information to decode the cryptic glyphs which sustained the chaotic probability field at Stone Henge.  On bonus to the long wait was that it gave Johnny enough time to recover from his untimely reversion and join the team on their run.

As the entire squadron made their way towards the facility with three of their Droideka units, they all went over the finalised plan, bring Johnny up to speed on the specifics so that he would not be lost once things started getting hectic.  Upon arrival, they would each set their teleporters to Crydus’ ship so that they could be quickly extracted.  Once this was done, they made a general scan of the area at Johnny’s behest before they made their way towards the shrine.  As they moved closer, Nikolai would caution them against proceeding.  As the young Oyan paused now, he accustomed himself to the energetic field in the area before his brow fell, causing his eyes to focus.

“Something isn’t right here...”  Was all he needed to say before his team powered up and made themselves battle ready.

“Everyone stay here, I’ll breach the seal.”  Came the order from Deacon as he removed forward now, powering up his modifiers to maximum before he approached the building.  As he motioned towards the building, he was blocked by a powerful chaotic force, which instantly went to work attempting to corrupt Deacon’s form.

The experienced knight would frown on this energy greatly, utilising his Disca now to separate the energy from himself, before he used his potent control in an attempt to fashion a make shift door within the centre of the field.  Unfortunately for Deacon, he was simply one man, and it would appear that this facility was designed to guard against much more than a single boss tier channeler.  For this reason, Crydus would move forward to assist his Field Leader, but he would quickly find himself trapped in a chaos mine.  As the energy exploded, Crydus’ form was instantly thrown off of the ground, luckily his high deflective abilities and sturdy resilience prevented the energy from stunning him, allowing him to quickly active his Geon based powers to stabilise the chaotic force.  Nikolai would waste no time as he saw this, condensing a Synchros bolt to bind the energy to the ground, drawing it off of his teammate.

“So the area is booby trapped...”  Crydus stated, causing Nikolai to raise an eyebrow.

“It would seem so but the traps cannot be detected...”  Nikolai replied, leaving them all rather puzzled.  “The rest of you stay here, I will go and assist Deacon.”  Nikolai reasoned, moving towards the entrance unmolested by the traps.

As he made his way to the door, Nikolai now began to reinforce Deacon’s abilities, while utilising his Synchros to bind the energy which Deacon had managed to split from the centre of the door to the walls so that the hole would stay open.  This process would take a few minutes, but the two would eventually complete the task, signalling for the others to make their way towards the door as quickly as possible, while Nikolai attuned himself to the energy in the area once more.  The young Synchros guardian would do his best to zap the preset glyph traps with his Synchros bolts before they could explode, allowing Crydus, his subordinates and Bobby to make it safely to the facility.  Unfortunately, he would simply not have the scanning or multitasking ability to save them all.  Jubei and Johnny would both find themselves locked in chaotic fields, a fate they shared with the automated units which they brought.  The combined abilities of Deacon, Nikolai and Crydus would be able to free their teammates, but not before they each suffered considerable damage.  Being the most fragile of the group, Johnny would be saved first, leaving Jubei, who was by far more durable as the next one to be released, before they went to work despatching the traps around their mass produced units.

“Hmph, everyone into the shrine, before we are met with even more opposing force.” Deacon commanded, forcing them into the facility, with him and Nikolai entering last before dispelling the effects of their energies to conserve their stamina.

Once this was done, Crydus went to work setting up a small beacon, so that they could each locate the entrance once they were finished.  Just then, the team would split up into three groups, with Deacon, Raen and one of the Droidekas moving off down one corridor while Nikolai, Karl and another Droideka moved down another, leaving the rest of the field team and the one remaining Droideka to tread the central path.  Given the strengths and weaknesses of the team, the Xelot squad had devised a smart formation, with less durable damage dealers holding the rear, Crydus and his subordinates in the middle and Jubei taking point, while the Droideka moved forward some distance ahead of them to act as shielding.  Unfortunately for the main field team, and in fact all three teams, they would quickly learn that standard I-Type Zeta technology stood little chance against the reinforced anti-channeler defences which this facility sported.

Once again, the appearance of chaotic pockets would be to their detriment, however, these pockets more closely resembled the probability fields which existed around the magical amplification area at Stone Henge.  Being the furthest forward, the Droideka would be the first to be affected by this energy, allowing the field team to quickly back up in order to avoid further null effects while Crydus went to work attempting to stabilise the currently expanding rift, utilising Geon and the ability of Spazi’s Rune.  Unfortunately, with the rest of his team being primarily combat oriented, there was little that they could do, apart from attempting to supply Crydus with the energy that he would need to contain the rift.  Unfortunately, Crydus’ abilities would not be effective energy to stabilise the distortion before the Droideka unit was destroyed, being reduced to a pile of scrap as the field team now seriously pondered just how they would proceed.

On the edges of the facility, Deacon and Nikolai were getting by slightly better, being slightly more equipped to deal with these magical defensive due to their unique energy types.  Their progress through these initial parts of the facility was a testament to this fact, allowing the two to make it into the more central rooms of the Shrine where they would first discover the etchings of the ancient clans.  As they made it into corresponding rooms on either side of the facility, each of the two teams would discover cryptic symbols.  From what they could interpret, it seemed that this facility had been a temple of some sort, a place of worship to a god or goddess of chaos who had once inhabited this land.  As they continued to interpret the etchings, they deduced that it was this being that he aided them in the construction of the facility and its unique defences, and this being had also been the one to motivate them to build the Stone Henge structure before imbuing it with its uniquely coded abilities.  Deacon nodded now, relaying this information to the rest of the team via his communications link, warning them to be on the alert for this deity or any other surprises that he may have left behind.

Deacon’s words would be headed greatly by the now huddled together field team as they proceeded through the facility with extra caution, finally making their way out of the long set of snaking corridors and into what seemed like a ceremonial room.  From the second that they made their way into the room, Jubei could tell that something was off, but before he could even say a word, the walls would slam shut behind them before the room began to glow with a series of complex magical glyphs.

Back on the edges of the facility, Deacon and Nikolai had come to the end of the road, realising that the paths lead through the facility towards the living quarters of the acolytes who were in charge of maintaining the shrine.  These acolytes, now long dead, still occupied these quarters, but now as little more than an assemblage of bones.  Deacon entered the room with reverence, before he and Raen split up to search the room for anything useful, an action that was mirrored on the other edge of the facility by Nikolai and Karl.  As the two peripheral teams now searched the living quarters, the facility’s main defense would come online.  In total synchrony, the facility would undergo an advanced and bizarre warping effect.  Oddly enough, the deflective abilities of the channeler’s present would act to counteract the immediate effects of the field, but everything else would shift uncontrollably.

In the centre room, the main field team would be forced to power up their speed enhancing abilities and their various transportation techniques as they did their best to avoid the protrusions of the shifting walls which slammed together in an attempt to crush them.  On the peripherals, Deacon and Nikolai’s already heavily damaged Droideka’s would become tools of the facility, forcing them to dispatch them with haste, before they all found themselves under attack by everything from the walls of the facility to the reanimated skeletons within the room.  Deacon would waste no time powering up his Retribution summons to cover him while Raen went to work with his Levin ability, keeping their attacker at bay while Deacon did his best to continue searching the room.  On the other hand, Nikolai would simply fully release the tethers on Karl, allowing him to become Bruiser and go to work on the reanimated corpses while he used his luck to aid him in locating something of use.

Back in the central room, Bobby, Johnny and Jubei had taken to blasting the walls of the facility as they warped, aiming for the thinned weak spots in an attempt to dislodge the masses, and give the facility less weapons to use against them.  Unfortunately, even after they were dislodged, the team still found that these walls could be dangerous, being warped into golems that were set to assault them.  Luckily, with them no longer being reinforced, Crydus and his subordinates could easily use their Earth manipulation abilities to affect these golems, while Bobby’s Celestial Judgement made quick work of any that would attempt to make further nuisances of themselves.

By now, those on the periphery had completed the sanitisation and the search of the living quarters of the now dispatched acolytes, having collected and made scans of the artefacts that they deemed to be useful before they made their way back towards the entrance, where the three corridors were joined.

The back in the centre room, it would seem that the Xelot field team proved to be more than enough to overpower the facility’s primary defences, exhausting the glyph until it eventually broke down, leaving the massive room in darkness.  The team would fumble around in darkness momentarily while the facility recharged its energy for a few seconds, before once again attempting to summon the destructive glyph that they had just delt with.  Luckily for them all, Johnny’s superior sensory abilities would allow him to find the facilities power core, disabling it before the glyph could be fully reactivated.  The field team would spend the next few minutes combing the facility for artefacts and clues before they eventually left, disconnecting the facility’s odd core and taking it with them.

Outcome: The Xelots have fully explored the small ruin and have retrieved a number of interesting artefacts.  Three of these artefacts are of particular interest due to the fact that they are actually ethereally powered unlike the rest.  Xelot scientists are currently examining all of these artefacts along with the odd core and the scanned etchings and information acquired by the field team in an attempt to decipher the odd code surrounding Stone Henge.

Mission Status: Complete

Bobby: 198 Exp (-232HP)
Crydus: 222 Exp (-565HP)
  Aurianni: 145 Exp (-402HP)
  Gale: 145 Exp (-399HP)
Johnny: 202 Exp (-529HP)
Jubei:  189 Exp (-349HP)