ic Praetorians: Shards of Time (IC)

[Thevshi]

GM

Aboard the Lor Research Station

 

The robed figured remained still, showing no reaction to the statements or actions of the heroes in front of it. "I know well who you are Sitara Shashikala." It replied as Traveller introduced herself. "This station is inconsequential, I am here to obtain power I need to help me capture the key to defeating Collapse. I cannot allow you to interfere with this, and you Praetorians have already once prevented me from capturing the key."

 

As the figure finished speaking, it raised one arm, its hands lost within the long sleeves of its robe as it appeared to gesture. Before any of the gathered heroes could react, the area around them began to blur, as the space station and the figure began to fade from view.

 

Suddenly, the four found themselves standing underneath a dark night sky, standing on rocky ground. The sudden change of location was punctuated by the booming sound of several nearby explosions, flashes of light and smoke in the near distance marking the locations of those explosions. Several beams of energy flashed in the darkness above them, crisscrossing overhead before continuing on in two different directions.

The four heroes had somehow been transported into the middle of a battle. As Traveller looked at the chaos around her she began to recognize the battle. It was one in a war she had fought in over a thousand years before she had first joined the Praetorians during the height of the Delezatri Empire…

[Thevshi]

GM

Aboard the Devotion

 

The four Praetorians remaining aboard the Devotion had done their best to keep a sensor lock on and communication open with the group who had gone aboard the Lor research station. However, once the four had closed with the station, it became difficult to maintain the connections. The sensor locks and comm. line would fluctuate in and out, almost as if they ceased to exist and then returned.

 

However, shortly after the group had entered the station, there was a major increase in the quantum energy from the station, and the readings on the team became extremely faint. But Moon-Moth had little time to consider this development when a robed figure appeared on the bridge of the Praetorian spacecraft. The figure was tall, completely concealed within a tattered, hooded black robe. No face was visible within the hood of the robe, only a shadowy darkness.

 

As she saw the figure materialize, Paradigm rose quickly to her feet. "You!" She cried out as she took flight, starting across the bridge toward the robed figure.

 

However the Naram Praetorian did not make it very far before the robed figure raised one of its arms and began to gesture. "You Praetorians shall not interfere in my plans again."

 

Suddenly the area around the four Praetorians began to blur, as the bridge of the Devotion began to fade. Then the four found themselves in a rocky canyon, Paradigm smashing into one of the walls and creating a large crater from her impact. Dozens of red skinned Grue running past them in the canyon. There was the sound of faint explosions somewhere in the distance and they could feel the ground shake beneath them.

 

As Hazmat glanced around, she realized they were in the hive city on Kobalii. The chaos around them was consistent with the first true memories the independent Grue had when the Communion had attacked the Grue world and it had been cut off from the Meta-Mind. Sure enough, a trio of Communion needle fighters streaked overhead, firing their silvery energy blasts at some distant target as they went…  

[Azuth65]

Hazmat ducked under cover, hopefully before the Communion ships overhead spotted her.  Looking around, her first memories of free though and will threatened to overwhelm the shapeshifter.  Taking several deep breaths she relaxed her body and stood upright.  When she lived through this the first time, she had been scared and confused but if she was going to have to re-live the experience, she at least had more power than before.  Clenching her fists, now crackling with nuclear power, she took to the skies as she muttered, "Let's try something new you festering sacks of garbage."

[EternalPhoenix]

Queenie’s silvery hand was held up in a placating gesture. “We don’t even know what you’re doing. How do you know…” And then they were somewhere else. “…that we’d interfere at all.” The silvery hand made a very rude gesture and disappeared. “I really, really hate it when they refuse to even listen.” Explosions did not penetrate her ire. “Where in blazes are we now?” She flew high into the air, forcefield still on (she was aware this appeared to be a warzone, she just didn’t care at the moment) and consulted the Aura Compass effect of the Ring. It would tell her the direction and distance of their previous location. “Teleport me into a warzone, will he?” It also had date/time functionality, but she wasn’t looking at that. “Do something about the battle first, then back to give that jerk a piece of my mind.”

[Exaccus]

Moths eyes had been fixated on the sensor array when the stranger appeared and thus he had been woefully slow to react to the intrusion before the world around them had rippled and flung them though time and/or space.

 

He had been about to ask paradigm who the stranger was when the communion ships streaked over head and snatched his attention away from the task, anger and hatred for the soulless automotons seared in his mind like white hot nails through his brain and his hands and attena sparked to life with eldritch power.

 

It was a rare sight indeed to see a lanturnian so filled with the intent to destroy.

[olopi]

Barrier had spent the time since the others had left for the station in an uneasy quiet. While she did not doubt there abilities one bit, she also didn't know what to expect, and intel had been sparse at best. And that never was a good thing.

 

Before she had fully realized what was going on, the hooded figure had already appeared on the ship, and before she was able to really do anything, she found herself and the others inside  a canyon, with the familiar sound of a battlefield ringing in her ears. That, immediately, got her back into the mindset.

 

She spun her shield into place with one swift motion – much quicker than what people had come to expect of her, and began to shout. "Everybody form u-" and then, already, only her and the Imperatrix remained on the ground, the others having taken to the air already.  

 

So much for that then. Still, she could still see the others, and she could feel the powers bestowed to her by the Spirits. She would not let any Praetorian come to harm, ready to shield them from whatever may come their way.

[Supercape]

Flux

 

The shift was beyond anything Flux had encountered before, and he was pretty good at encountering strange anomalies. He could certainly sense something, but it was a jumbled mess of input. 

 

"Wait...is this real? Or a projection of some kind?"

 

Collapse. He knew the name.

 

He could hardly forget a figure from the future who was so powerful he forced dimensions to merge into one another. He thought about it everyday, and the potential was so worrisome he had many fretful sleepless nights. His only consolation was that Collapse existed somewhere in the future. Sort of. 

 

Now what was happening? Was the day drawing closer?

 

If the Robed figure was trying to stop Collapse, then he was doing the right thing. If it was possible to stop Collapse at all. 

 

"Collapse....he did say he was trying to stop Collapse, am I correct?" he half-muttered, his worlds as cold and clammy as his skin. 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Supercape

[Thevshi]

Paradigm

 

Planet Kobalii, During the Communion Incursion

 

The collision with the rockwall of the chasm was more an annoyance to Paradigm than it actually hurt the Naram. Stepping out of the large indention in the rock she had created, dust and bits of rocks dropping from her as she did so, the Praetorian took in the scene around them, spotting the Communion needle ships in the air as more zipped overhead. 

 

Hazmat quickly took to the sky, apparently ready to attack the Communion ships. Even Moon-Moth seemed ready to lash out at the enemy that had cost them so much. Paradigm could well understand the impulse, she herself wanted to fly up there and begin tearing into the Communion forces. But there as a bigger issue at hand, the entity that had brought them here, and what this pace was, exactly.

 

Looking about at the Grue drones running in panic around them, Paradigm suspected that this was one of the Grue worlds that had been taken by the Communion during the Incursion, or at least a very good temporal shadow of one. But given that everything around her looked as it would be expected to, rather than the slightly off appearance of the time shadows of the Deadly Dozen the robed entity had summoned during her initial encounter with the entity on CoVic Station the Naram suspected that they were actually in the past.

 

"Do not act on impulse Myothizar." She stated to her old friend. "We do not know where, or even when, we have been sent by that robed entity, but until we know more we should not just rush in conflict, even as deserving as the Communion may be."

[Tiffany Korta]

The Traveller

It was a given that after living so many centuries Sitara would have encountered time travel before, she once had to live the same year twice which wasn’t as fun as you’d expect. That was of course if it was the past which was something they’d need to discover.

 

“Welcome to the Great Space Empires of the past, true it’s not one of there best days, and we’re about a two or so thousand years from where were. Also a warzone so I suggest people keep their wits about them!”

 

There was a quick and easy way to gather information, she was, an earlier one, also here so she subtly tried to link the two suits to access it data core. The difference in data collected and other indicators should help determine if they were really in the past.

[Exaccus]

Moon moth flapped his antenna in irritaton as he broke his spell back down to harmless energies, tiny prismatic sparkles sprinkling from their thick white fur and twinkling out of existence as they fell like shooting stars.

 

"Very wells...." moon moth huffed as he turned his attention to other things happening around him curiously trying to get a better understanding of events as they were unfolding.

[Thevshi]

GM

 

Circa Three Thousand Years Ago

 

Unfortunately for Queenie, while her ring could tell her the direction of true north, that feature keyed to the planet she was currently on, so it provided little information about where she was in relation to where they had previously been. Any measure of distance from their previous location was unavailable as well, as the ring could not perceive their original position currently. Nor was the ring able to track the path that had brought them here, given it there had not been a path per se.

 

Sitara took a different approach, using her suit’s systems to try to connect to the data core of her past self's suit, assuming they were indeed in the past as they appeared to be. It took a few moments as a few explosions detonated not too far in the distance, but soon she was connected. The initial stream of data confirmed what she had expected. They appeared to be about three thousand years in the past, in the middle of a battle against an encroachment of Andromedans on the far side of the galaxy from where they had previously been.

 

As she quickly studied the data, Sitara realized something else. She and her companions were currently standing in a section of the battlefield that a large force of Andromedans was currently advancing on and was about to become the target of a massive orbital bombardment…

 

Planet Kobalii, During the Communion Incursion

 

As Paradigm managed to stop Moon-Moth from rushing off to fight the Communion forces assailing the planet, Hazmat had rose up into the air, looking out at the scene of chaos in front of her. It took only a moment to confirm what her realization that she was back on Kobalii. The scene before her coming back to her as one of her first independent memories as she managed to leave the planet on a spacecraft before it was completely overrun.

 

Some Grue forces were trying to fight against the Communion, but cut off from the Meta-Grue and the hive mind, most were unable to react and those that could were disorganized, making their efforts mostly ineffective. As Hazmat hovered in the air, she noted a trio of the Communion needle ships heading in her direction at high speed…

[Tiffany Korta]

The Traveller

Sitara took a few moments to examine the data her suit(s) had gathered for her, it had all the right readings to suggest it was correct. But it was also possible that whoever had constructed this had taken all this from her memories, but with what was going to happen she had to act as if it was really happening.

 

“Okay bad news is as far as I can tell we’re really in the past.” she gently began to hustle them to move to a safe distance, a clock ominously counting down in the corner of her HUD

 

“Now I suggest we move with some speed, as this area is due to come under orbital bombardment very, very soon...”

[Azuth65]

Hovering high above the surface, radioactive energy crackling around her fists she spotted the Needle Fighters approaching her position.  Raising both fists she unleashed volley after volley of orbs of her energy.  "You know, on the one hand I should be thanking you things for freeing my mind.  On the other hand, said freedom came at the cost of literally millions of lives!" she snarled as the ship she had targeted dodged her bombardment.

[EternalPhoenix]

Queenie snorted in very unladylike fashion. “Oh, fine.” She dropped out of the sky, annoyance etched into her features. Silvery energy lent gentle force to the Traveller’s words. “I don’t feel like being blown up today and neither do you. Let’s go.” They were so far in the past humanity hadn’t finished using swords yet. It was a pretty effective way of getting rid of them. This was not improving her mood, but at the same time anger wasn’t going to be of any use here. She sighed. There was out of her depth (the usual state of affairs), and being thrown literal millennia into the past with no current way to get back.

[Thevshi]

GM

 

Planet Kobalii, During the Communion Incursion

 

As Hazmat fired a barrage of pulsing orbs of radiation, the three approaching Communion needle fighters agilely banked and avoided the attack. Having drawn the attention of the fast attack craft, Hazmat saw the three needle fighters turning her direction, aiming their sharp points at her and speeding up slightly.

 

A burst of green energy erupted from each of the needle fighters as they opened fire, with Hazmat flying out of the path of several of the bursts. However, she was not quick enough for the third attack, the bright energy streaking toward her. But even as Hazmat braced from the impact from the attack, there was a WOOSH of air as Paradigm moved between the free Grue and the attack. The green energy struck harmlessly against the Naram paragon, as she focused her gaze on the approaching ships.

[Ecalsneerg]

Galvanic took flight, following after the group. "Is there nearby civilisation?" she asked, spinning in the air to get her bearings, electricity coruscating around her. She pivoted her head from side to side, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings. But then, everything seemed strange after leaving Tempest. 

 

"We could returnget home, if we found advanced enough technology. Otherwise..." she trailed off, letting the implication of a 3000 year wait sink in.