Can we give that a shot and then back date it that we did that before venturing out on this little wilderness scavenger hunt? It honestly would have been the smart thing to do, not that I've ever claimed to be intelligent. :oops: Anyway, the Gate explanation is fine, I just wanted to make sure we weren't messing with the mission by constanly being on the phone home.
Jeebus. I'm gone one afternoon and you guys already leave the hapless anthropologist to defend herself. There's going to be hell to pay if she gets hurt.
Jeebus. I'm gone one afternoon and you guys already leave the hapless anthropologist to defend herself. There's going to be hell to pay if she gets hurt.
Uhm... She has two armed soldiers with her. That hardly qualifies as left to defend herself.
Jeebus. I'm gone one afternoon and you guys already leave the hapless anthropologist to defend herself. There's going to be hell to pay if she gets hurt.
Uhm... She has two armed soldiers with her. That hardly qualifies as left to defend herself.
Err...I initially posted the above prior to reading the part about Semo joining the guard detail. :o
Letting Semo run off to join the Doc was a bad move - the team should have been recalled, paired with Semo and sent off again. You've just seen one of the rare moments where Hugh was complacent.
You can be sure that that's not happening again.
Total perimeter defense. Everything that tries to get close to us catches bullets.
Yikes. No kidding. I've seen the skeleton of something like this size, they're pretty dang scary dead, much less alive. As I mentioned in the other thread, I appologise for the delay of game. What's the penalty, five yards or so?
Unless you mean to interrupt them for anything, the sentients will leave. The bleeding, torn-up Jaws-thing is leaking into the river, and it's apparent that some of the avians are gathering for a meal. The last time you got lots of avians in one place, you got the big flying predator.
Just saying.
If you mean to follow them back to wherever they came from, I heartily recommend Angel's expertise. If you're going back to camp, you'll have a portal opening before you get there. It'll take 20 minutes or so, more if you want to haul any big carrion back with you. Kitty doesn't care at this point, she's a little traumatized.
It'll be the last morning portal by Max's calculations. Humidity should drop slightly, but the heat should increase a little more. 108-110 degrees. Command can easily keep you supplied with food and water.
Unless you mean to interrupt them for anything, the sentients will leave. The bleeding, torn-up Jaws-thing is leaking into the river, and it's apparent that some of the avians are gathering for a meal. The last time you got lots of avians in one place, you got the big flying predator.
Just saying.
If you mean to follow them back to wherever they came from, I heartily recommend Angel's expertise. If you're going back to camp, you'll have a portal opening before you get there. It'll take 20 minutes or so, more if you want to haul any big carrion back with you. Kitty doesn't care at this point, she's a little traumatized.
It'll be the last morning portal by Max's calculations. Humidity should drop slightly, but the heat should increase a little more. 108-110 degrees. Command can easily keep you supplied with food and water.
I vote for getting Kitty back to the Gate and to less dangerous surroundings. We won't be able to function that well in the kind of heat we're going to have, so it's probably best we keep to the Site until the late afternoon. Let's fall back to Fargate Command and see what they want us to do given the latest developments and First Contact.
Also, Max has had a breakthrough with "Translate Ugly Space Yeti." He rolls his Talk+Languages with his Quick Learner Aspect and gets an 8. I set the difficulty for learning the basics of an inhuman culture and its mostly nonverbal language at 2d12 and get a whopping 3.
1. Their chameleonic hair is part of their language. You can't duplicate this, so even at your best, you'll be speaking like 4Chan or WoW forum members.
2. It's mostly sign language. The sounds are used to communicate emphasis or proper names mostly.
3. I don't have to make up tha actual alien sign language. Yay. If you encounter them again and Max is present, I can write what they "say" like "Welcome human. Happy follow camp there meal." I can adjust the gibberish based on your rolls.
4. I will assume that Max will give everyone a crash course on Yeti-speak. None of you have the languages specialization, so it'll be rough if Max isn't there, but everyone can have a crack at it.
I had never heard of 4Chan, so I went and looked it up. Almost wish I hadn't. At least now I'll know if I see that my son Taylor has been surfing there. (He seems to have a thing for hentai... )
1) There's another species out there. They look human, and they've been on this planet before.
2) They take tribute payments in the form of slaves.
I'm actually genuinely conflicted here. On one hand, the ethical route would be to refuse to accept the slaves and try to explain our situation. On the other hand, I can see a few reasons why we don't want to do that:
1) We don't know anything about their culture. Refusing the tribute might insult them.
2) We don't know how they'll react when we tell them we're not the people they've dealt with. They may think we're lying to trick them, or they may decide that, if we're not the mighty people they pay tribute to, they should just get rid of us. Worst case, they think we're enemies of their masters and try to attack or capture us for xeno-humans.
3) The xeno-humans either know how to use the gates or have spaceships, possibly both. They've probably got a significant technological edge, not to speak of numbers. If they find us, they can crush us - and the fact that they practice slavery doesn't bode well for cultural enlightenment.
I'm very, very tempted to accept the slaves, pack up and return home. Then, we can try to explain things to them - if they believe us, we've got spokespeople, if they don't, well, they're three guys on our turf - easy to contain. Also, we could grab a lot more data on their physiology in a proper lab.
All that said, it is of course morally shady and we're supposed to be the good guys, but if you'll excuse me playing devil's advocate here, we shouldn't be stupid about this.
1) There's another species out there. They look human, and they've been on this planet before.
2) They take tribute payments in the form of slaves.
I'm actually genuinely conflicted here. On one hand, the ethical route would be to refuse to accept the slaves and try to explain our situation. On the other hand, I can see a few reasons why we don't want to do that:
1) We don't know anything about their culture. Refusing the tribute might insult them.
2) We don't know how they'll react when we tell them we're not the people they've dealt with. They may think we're lying to trick them, or they may decide that, if we're not the mighty people they pay tribute to, they should just get rid of us. Worst case, they think we're enemies of their masters and try to attack or capture us for xeno-humans.
3) The xeno-humans either know how to use the gates or have spaceships, possibly both. They've probably got a significant technological edge, not to speak of numbers. If they find us, they can crush us - and the fact that they practice slavery doesn't bode well for cultural enlightenment.
I'm very, very tempted to accept the slaves, pack up and return home. Then, we can try to explain things to them - if they believe us, we've got spokespeople, if they don't, well, they're three guys on our turf - easy to contain. Also, we could grab a lot more data on their physiology in a proper lab.
All that said, it is of course morally shady and we're supposed to be the good guys, but if you'll excuse me playing devil's advocate here, we shouldn't be stupid about this.
Gatac
Hmmm....some very good points, Gatac. Not really sure here, either. It'd be a lot easier to try and explain the misunderstanding to a few individuals than to try to do it ourselves all at once, so having the individuals hang around a bit might be a good plan, at least to start. We've got six hours until the Gate's powered, unless we use both trucks, so we've got some time anyway. I'm going to think more on this and come back with my thoughts.
On some reflection, I think my recomendation is to accept the "tribute," let the other aliens go away, then tell the ones that will stay that we're not who they think we are. Give them a speech along the lines of "Sorry, bad translation. We're not the evil xenoaliens, just some travelers taking a look around." If necesary, and things go sour, it'll be easier to handle three than ten or fifteen, and this gives us an oppertunity to test their reaction.
Basically what I wanted to do anyway after taking them through the Gateway. The problem with doing it now is that we don't know if their friends are really all gone. It's a jungle, they've got camouflage...there could be dozens of them right around our camp and we wouldn't know until it's too late.
Detailed plan: explain situation to HQ. With approval, they send over a quarantine unit so we can test that they can breathe Earth atmo safely. At the same time, they set up another quarantine on the Earth side of the gate. When we've tested what we could and believe that our "tribute" will survive on Earth, we pack up the camp, wait until the gateway is charged and leave. When we're on Earth, give our shaggy friends the truth - as backed up by the entire Gateway facility's complement of soldiers, should they go frenzied berserker on our asses.
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Dieter
Admiral Duck Sauce
Gatac
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