Having decided to avoid this fight for now and move past the pirates, the group tells the pirates of their decision. The pirates stand to one side and the group, as well as their new robot, walk by. As the robot is walking by, one of the pirates says to the pirate leader, "How did they get a hold of our bot? I thought it was fried." The pirate leader doesn't answer.
Jim and Mykel bring up the rear as the group moves down the tunnel and they keep a constant watch behind them to make sure the pirates are not trying to sneak up and ambush them. At the same time, Ciara and Alzarix are in the front keeping an eye open for any nasty surprises the pirates may have left for them. After traveling for about 15 minutes, Ciara notes that someone passed this way recently in both directions. She makes this hypothesis based on disturbances to the fungi and rocks along the passage. She further surmises that it was likely the same group of pirates that they just encountered who passed this way recently and then, for some reason, turned around and came back. Perhaps they did set some sort of booby trap.
But no traps are found or triggered as the group travels for another hour and a half and then sees daylight up ahead - the first they have seen in many days. By Ciara's measure, the group has been underground for over 20 days.
Even more wary of traps than ever before, Ciara and Alzarix move carefully forward, with Mykel and Alyson backing them up. They reach the bend where they can see the end of the tunnel and bright daylight beyond. They continue to move forward carefully. When they get within 20 meters of the exit they can see a dead human body in the boulder-strewn clearing beyond the tunnel exit. The body is behind a large boulder but has two spears sticking out from its back at odd angles. It seems likely that he was killed by spears thrown from above the tunnel exit.
Alzarix quietly passes the word to have George come up to confirm if the spears look to be the same as the spears used by the Ul-Mor. When George arrives, he confirms that they are.
The group moves forward to the exit but stops short of the exit. Alzarix scans the visible terrain and spots five Ul-Mor warriors hidden among the distant rocks keeping watch on the tunnel exit.
George uses his nascent command of the Ul-Mor body language to signal to them. He also asks S'lch to have the Vizoldt chronocom at the ready so that he can communicate in their auditory language, which is at a frequency too high for human ears to hear.
One of the Ul-Mor departs and returns a few minutes later with the same tribal elder that George had communicated with previously. The Ul-Mor calls out and S'lch captures the inaudible communication and filters it down to a frequency audible for human ears. George listens carefully and then voices an audible response that S'lch records and then replays at the higher frequency.
This ungainly method of communication goes on for some minutes with George sweating a bit from the effort not just of communication but of persuasion as well. At one point, he says to the group, "they think that we attacked them a couple of days ago and I am trying to convince them that it was a different group that appear similar to us. I think this might be the trap that the pirates wanted us to blunder into."
It takes a good 30 to 40 minutes of back and forth before George is able to convince the Ul-Mor that they mean them no harm and are glad to encounter them again. George exits the tunnel first and the Ul-Mor do not attack. The rest of the group follows.
GM: I will stop here to allows other to interject.
ALYSON: Alyson says,"We could turn the tables on the pirate with our Ul-Mor friends. Plus maybe ask the elder if his people has seen the pirate's camp. Like to know if they have people from the ship there."
ALZARIX: "it sure is good to get out of those caves, but man I was forgetting just how cold this place is. Now I'm starting to remember." He says as he starts laying up again.
JIM JITSU: Jim shakes himself from the cold.
GM: I am going to put the Alpha Dawn game on hold for a bit. I am finding that I just don't have the time to try to run 3 campaigns simultaneously and when that happens it is always the Alpha Dawn game that suffers. What I may do is look for someone else to run the game and take us the rest of the way through the Volturnus models. If no here wants to volunteer, I will advertise on the Star Frontiers Facebook page and see if I can find someone who is interested.
JIM JITSU OOC: sorry for absence medical family issues and all, will try to keep up.
GM: Sorry to hear that Tom. Hopefully things are getting better.
CIARA: I've enjoyed the game and would love to see it continue. I can see that running 3 games at the same time would be too much in stretches.
GM: Yeah, I am enjoying it too and definitely don't want to stop. If I can't find someone to GM module two then I will start things back up again probably in a few weeks (maybe early December). I did advertise on the Star Frontiers list but no takers so far.
GM: If anyone here wants to GM part or all of Module 2 of the Volturnus series, let me know. |