Stalkers RPG Main Action and Team Status [SEASON 5]

[C0L0R3D]

Misty shuffled a bit in place, seemingly bothered by something.
“Nico’s really unlucky, huh.. dying twice already. At least the second time was a Ghoul instead of Obscene.”
She sighs, eyeing his new form, an Alcremie, before looking back to the map.
“As for tonight... I’ll go check out (17) North Heights Storage (ABANDONED). Might just be something there.”
She says, still proud for getting Scarlet on their side last night.
“Stay safe out there guys.”

[Neo Emolga]

Investigate (20) Exacta City Police Precinct

As the sun begins to set, you decide to head out and explore the Exacta City Police Precinct. Following Rali’s lead, you decide to see what this head is about, something that Nico was going to do earlier, but didn’t quite make it. At the same time, you’re also thinking there may be a few valuable weapons or armor still lying around that might come in handy.

After leaving the steel mill, you head eastbound, keeping a watchful lookout as you cross into Northern Reach territory. Trying to make the best use of cover, you weave your way behind walls, abandoned vehicles, and piles of debris as you keep out of sight from the ghouls. Thankfully, you’re able to slip past their gazes despite being the Heatran that you are.

Once at the precinct, you start by investigating the exterior. The beige-colored building seems to be in relatively good shape, though dust and dirt has been thrown at it relentlessly by the wind storms for the past few years. The earthquakes have knocked a few things around, but it doesn’t seem like serious building damage has occurred. Still, around the building, you don’t find all too much besides a trash bin that’s been stuffed for years, two abandoned police vehicles, and collapsed cardboard boxes.

You decide to head inside through the double glass front doors that bear the police department’s insignia, though the glass could definitely use a wash and the insignia is barely legible. Still, the whole building definitely looks better than what some other structures just a few blocks away went through.

Once inside, you come across a vacant reception area where a receptionist’s desk and a few other desks have been abandoned. Unlike some other buildings, it doesn’t look like the commotion was too severe, though plenty of papers, writing utensils, and other office debris have been scattered about on the gray stone tiled floor. Surprisingly, some of the lights still work, but just barely. Many of them are extremely dim and a few of them flicker, creating seemingly moving, spidery-like shadows along the walls.

The officer desk area seems to be pretty similar in condition. It looks like no one’s been here for quite a while and a layer of dust has thoroughly coated everything including stacks of police reports, memos, correspondence and report letters, and the like. Occasionally, the lights on the ceiling flicker just a bit, but then go back to darkness. It makes you twitch a bit every now and then, making it feel like someone or something is in here with you…

You head over to the armory, which used to be behind two layers of barred steel doors, but those were undone rather recently. From the looks like things, quite a bit of it has been raided by scavengers. Still, you go through each of the weapon lockers, trying to see if anything usable is still around. Whoever was here last seemed to have been in a hurry, as you find cannon armament ammunition rounds scattered about on the floor. In one locker, you find what looks to be a fairly decent cloak armor, which you pull out and try on for yourself. It feels comfortable but also made of a rugged leather material, and might offer a little protection. You decide to keep it and continue looking.

[|DA| Renegade’s Cloak] (Reduces incoming Health damage by 1 point each time Health damage is taken) was equipped by Sacred.

You look through three more lockers all with nothing inside, but the fourth has something curious. At first it looks like just a normal black shawl was thrown in here, but you dig around a bit more and you find a black pouch that jingles a bit as you shake it, which immediately gets you thinking there’s money inside. You open it and you’re pleasantly surprised to see that you’re right, a bit amused how none of the scavengers that were previously here found this simply because of the shawl thrown on top of it.

You quickly take what’s there and add it to your own Pack.

$230 Sochas were added to Sacred’s Pack.

You don’t find too much of value in the other lockers, but then you get to a larger, heavily fortified security locker at the end of the row that looks to be about five feet tall by three feet wide, likely used to hold some of the more advanced weaponry and armor. It looks like quite a few Pokémon have tried to pick, force, and bash this particular locker to no end, but it has remained adamant in staying shut. Still, you can’t help but think maybe someone in the Emissary crew might want to take a swing at this to see if they can possibly crack it open.

{Reinforced Police Armory Locker: <Lockpick>} was noted in the Team Records.

Lastly, you decide to check the holding area, the place where Rali reported to have seen the severed head. You make sure you watch your back the entire way, hoping no ghouls might have slipped in while you weren’t looking or were residing here long before you came. Still, the holding and criminal processing area is rather dark and you can see why visibility was an issue for Rali. When you come to the room, you see the head she’s talking about hanging from a dusty ceiling fan by a bloody rope, only you’re facing it from the back. You walk in closer to get a better look at who must have been the decapitated victim here…

#Macabre Discovery (8 Sanity Damage)# Trap 30% Evasion Test: 79 out of 100: Successful!

It… can’t be.

As if on defensive impulse, you do a double take, quickly grab a nearby duffle bag that was used for a now-missing shoulder-mounted cannon armament, and rapidly pull it over the head as if trying to cover and trap a vicious blood-thirsty insect. And then with one quick tug, you free it from the bloody rope.

Because there’s something very, very wrong with this head.

It’s your own head…

…

#[Head of Sacred the Heatran] Macabre Presence – (3 Sanity Damage)# was added to the Team Inventory.

Dark temptation attempts to nip at you to look it over in full for dark curiosity and validity’s sake, but you know better. It reeks with Stalker presence and it wouldn’t surprise you to discover they’ve done something heinously wicked and disturbing like this. But really, without a doubt, you’re convinced the gray, steel skull-shaped head that you hold in that duffle bag is exactly your own without even questioning it enough to look it over, but you know to do so would just eat away at your mind beholding your own severed head in your grasp.

Despite the morbidity of it, you decide to take your head with you, feeling there’s some dark and wicked intention behind this and you’re going to get to the bottom of it. You decide to look around the rest of the police precinct for any last remaining items of value that might still be around, but most of it just seems to be everyday objects and things that don’t seem like the kind of thing you need to take along with you.

You decide to head back, instantly noticing the sun has long set by now and the night sky hangs above you. There’s an eerie feeling of quiet stillness as you head back to base, and it seems like not even the ghouls are around for some odd reason.

You just hope it’s a coincidence and not because of something else…

Sacred the Heatran (M: Fire/Steel)

Health: 20/20 | Sanity: 20/20 | Purity: 20/20
Battle Stance: Heroic
Perk: Seinaru | Abilities:
EQUIPMENT:
Attack Weapon: <Empty>
Defense Armor: [|DA| Renegade’s Cloak] (Reduces incoming Health damage by 1 point each time Health damage is taken)
Jewelry: <Empty>
Utopian Aspect: <Empty>
MERCENARIES:
#1: <Empty>
#2: <Empty>
PACK:

• $408 Sochas$

[Neo Emolga]

Misty shuffled a bit in place, seemingly bothered by something.
“Nico’s really unlucky, huh.. dying twice already. At least the second time was a Ghoul instead of Obscene.”
She sighs, eyeing his new form, an Alcremie, before looking back to the map.
“As for tonight... I’ll go check out (17) North Heights Storage (ABANDONED). Might just be something there.”
She says, still proud for getting Scarlet on their side last night.
“Stay safe out there guys.”

You decide to head due east this evening, deciding to investigate the small North Heights Storage building to see if anything suspicious has been happening in there, lately. After walking past the north side of the Redstone Motel and across the dusty train tracks, eventually you find the small storage facility. From the outside, it looks to have been abandoned for quite a while. The old red bricks have been battered by dust and sand for years even before OMEN, but at least the building is still intact.

Around the outside, you find a few abandoned wheelbarrows, a broken-down fertilizer machine, and other farming and gardening tools that have become degraded due to being left out in the elements. However, underneath an old vehicle tire that looks like it doesn’t quite belong with the other pieces of equipment, you see something out of the ordinary. A bit of dusty ground seems to be displaced here, and when you dig a little, you find a dusty ammunition crate. You brush it off, undo the latch, and then wrestle to open it up.

On the top, you see a dirty, hand-written note. You unfold it and read it silently.

Jureg,

All yours. I threw in a bonus for the heck of a fine job you did making her death look like she got drunk and fell off herself. I got a kick out of that and it perfectly fits her dumb drunkard persona. She deserved it, one less dumb degenerate tramp infesting this world and I don’t have to worry about her crap ever again.

Now burn this note and let’s act like we never met.

~KT

You’re not sure what happened or even how long ago it was, but it definitely sounds extremely dark and nefarious and easily sounds like someone paid to hire a hitman. However, it looks like whoever this Jureg is, they never came by to find this reward cache. You toss the note aside and you notice there’s quite a few stacks of money bills tucked away in here.

You decide to collect it and keep it for yourself, thinking there’s bound to be a better way to make use of this blood money.

$600 Sochas$ were added to Misty’s Pack.

You don’t find anything else that seems out of place outside, so you decide to head into the storage area itself.

Inside, its dark, musty, dust is constantly floating in the air, and the air feels hot and stuffy. Meanwhile, there’s no lighting and there aren’t too many windows, so you pull out a flashlight and try your best to see if there’s anything among the piles of tools, wooden crates, and boxes that might be valuable.

Most of it seems to be very old industrial farming equipment that probably wouldn’t last five minutes if someone attempted to make use of it. Meanwhile, the cabinets aren’t any better. Cans, jugs, and pouches of pesticides and herbicides are here, though they’ve expired decides ago and most of them are dried up. The fuel canisters have also gone bad over time, though there’s quite a rancid stink coming from them.

In another pile are a few black plastic trash bags filled with filthy clothing and coverings. Many of them have dirty blotches from either oil, grease, or mud, and a lot of these are torn as well, leaving not much else besides dirty rags. However, you come across one filthy and dirty gown that seems to have something firm and hard in one of the pouches on the side. You dig around for it and manage to pull it out.

It looks to be an amulet with five overlapping triangles as the emblem. It seems to be very old, but still in good condition. Though there’s something about it that seems different. As you hold it in your hands, it seems to radiate with an unusual reassuring aura and it suddenly occurs to you that some kind of ethereal blessing was performed on this amulet, but it’s been forgotten and lost in this pile of dirty clothing for all these many years.

You decide to wear it around your neck, and almost immediately it feels as though you’ve become a bit more resilient against the forces of corruption and darkness…

[|JY| Gold Triad Amulet] (Reduces incoming Sanity damage by 2 points each time Sanity damage is taken and reduces incoming Purity damage by 2 points each time Purity damage is taken) was equipped by Misty.

Toward the back of the storage area, you see something out of place, and it looks like a few boxes and trash bags were thrown aside. It seems as though someone else has been here not too long ago, and after checking around, you find an unusual Wall Vault safe was installed here not too long ago. Oddly enough, there’s even power going to it, all sourced from a single wire emerging from the back and going into the ground.

You take a look at the safe and it looks like the back was opened and some of the circuity was removed while the safe firmware itself was corrupted. In order to open this, you figure someone’s going to need to reconfigure the hardware, put the circuitry back in, and then on top of that, you’re going to need an 8-digit code to undo the lock.

{“Wall Vault” Safe: Missing Circuit Board AND <Technical> AND <8-Digit Passcode>} was noted in the Team Records.

The odd thing is that it looks like someone really wanted to make sure whatever is in here is kept locked and stashed away for good, and they only wanted to retrieve it if it was absolutely dire and necessary. But you wonder… why would someone lock something up like this so tight and not just destroy it? What stopped them from doing that?

You can only wonder about what kind of a thing could fit that description, but at the moment, you’ll have to set it aside for now as you just don’t have the means to address what this safe needs to be opened.

After having searched around one last time, you decide to head back and you arrive back at the steel mill just in time before the windstorms start to pick up again.

Misty the Palpitoad (M: Water/Ground)

Health: 20/20 | Sanity: 20/20 | Purity: 20/20
Battle Stance: Flee
Perk: Medicine | Abilities:
EQUIPMENT:
Attack Weapon: [|AW| Utility Sledgehammer] (Adds 3 damage to successful attack rolls)
Defense Armor: <Empty>
Jewelry: [|JY| Gold Triad Amulet] (Reduces incoming Sanity damage by 2 points each time Sanity damage is taken and reduces incoming Purity damage by 2 points each time Purity damage is taken)
Utopian Aspect: <Empty>
MERCENARIES:
#1: <Empty>
#2: <Empty>
PACK:

• $650 Sochas