A lance of red and black light emerges from some distant part of the forest, obliterating the head of one Parasite Droid in the instant before Mom has the others move toward cover. Its disconnected legs begin to glow orange with heat before bursting apart, showering the surrounding area with molten metal. You didn't even know Parasites
had a self-destruct mechanism, let alone one on a dead man's switch.
Loudspeakers at each corner of the prison crackle and come to life almost exactly two seconds after your first Parasite is destroyed.
"You know, I think that's the first time I've ever gotten to shoot a robot spider. I don't suppose you have more — you do! What fun. And here I'd thought you were all out of tricks."
A second beam of light kills another Parasite Droid just before the survivors can dive back behind the prison wall. If you weren't safely seated inside a stealthed stalker, the Chosen Hunter's rasping voice would probably make you at least a
little worried for your safety. Since you're the closest thing to completely undetectable right now, you're comfortable just using one hand to cover your face.
(Chosen Hunter Territory Found: South America)
Oh, hey, we found my favorite canonical Chosen first. That's pretty cool. Seriously, the Warlock and the Assassin were very predictable and bland in their dialog, IMO, whereas this guy is at least a sarcastic smart-ass.
I feel as if I should point out exactly what the hunter says to open things up.
I don't care how insane you are, if you see a robotic kill spider wandering around, your first assumption should not be that more of them = not a one trick pony.
This either indicates the hunter is aware of more than just the predator drones, or that the people he's been hunting till now have been significantly more clever than their current situation would lead us to believe.
I suspect it's the latter. That makes the most sense.
As for right now, I don't see any terrible issues with tossing spiders at him, though I'd rather not do telepathy with the psionic Chosen of the psionic d00ds. He might not manage to get past our starfire defense, but I don't really want to chance that without more, proper, mental defense training.
If the Chosen Hunter is a soul mage, you think it'd be for something subtle like personal enhancement. You know he has a pistol, sniper rifle, stun grenades, and a grappling hook, but unlike some of his siblings, you don't think he's ever used any sort of direct "psionic" attack.
^This. The closest the Hunter ever got to psionics was if he gained the ability summoning ADVENT soldiers or mechs to back him up. His abilities focus very heavily on deadly accuracy and mobility.
I vote we play for time and try to trace where his consciousness is housed, then drop a KKV on it from orbit.
Even if on-site defenses can keep that from outright killing him, I'm willing to bet this "Hunter" will piss himself and run the moment he realizes that his life is actually in danger, especially if we throw a handful of disposable bots in afterward to make it look like a concerted effort to assassinate him. Best case scenario, they don't have beefy enough shields to stop a makeshift rod from God, and all of their "Chosen" are kept in one place, so the attack goes through and sends the lot of them straight to Hell.
The Ethereals won't be happy, but that's not really our problem. Their entire ideology hinges on the idea that spiritual strength is equivalent to morality - they've butchered entire civilizations without a moment's hesitation because of how utterly secure they are in their own perceived superiority.
I see no reason not to show them what the headsman's axe feels like when you're not the one wielding it.
Assuming we can find the base. The Chosen don't exactly advertise the locations of their strongholds.
The Chosen are going to be appearing fairly often if you regularly head into combat scenarios while also providing them enough time to show up. This time, you had the slight misfortune to stumble across an ongoing hunt, but you're still safely stealthed. The set of probabilities was also dramatically narrowed by the Hunter's current actions and the fact that you're searching for a specific target that overlaps with those actions. In other words, this wasn't a random encounter roll (I don't think I've done any of those in a while). It was a modified search results roll.
Sounds about right. Those teleporters of theirs let them respond to combat breaking out really damn fast.
Playing nice? We're backing off without revealing any of our capabilities so that we can come back in force and kill them harder next time.
Also, not sure if you've ever played XCOM. Yes, one side definitely started it. By now it really is a "both sides" situation. We do in fact need to purge this entire plane's political situation with fire and install ourselves as a benevolent goddess.
I am still less than convinced we need to go quite that far. Even violent revolutions where both sides have done horrible things can end in a stable, well-run, functioning government, you know. Not always, by any means. But it does happen. I'm not entirely sure what makes this situation distinct from such cases. Revolutions are rarely pretty, and both sides usually end up committing atrocities.
I kinda assume they would know we were here regardless.
I mean, how would they not, spider bots are new, nobody else has them, and this group of rebels does not look like they have the capacity to fabricate something like that. Now, if we had the means to kill the Hunter, to a point where they can be resurrected with any memories, that would be different, but i am not sure we have that capability.
As for killing Chosen, the moment we take out a chosen, alarms will go off. Every Chosen is going to use every detection resource they have to find who ever it was who killed one of them.
Not really. It's rare, but it happens, and, given their personalities, I think the Chosen killed is far more likely to call dibs and actively try to keep the others from interfering in their "rematch".
Many of the Chosen like fighting, like a challenge. Killing them is the fastest way to earn their respect, as well as to make them consider you interesting. The others usually have big enough egos to not want anyone else to steal their "prey", or to have another Chosen show them up by killing the person who killed them.
So yeah, killing them doesn't usually bring down all of them onto your head. Which would be of questionable efficacy anyways, since the Chosen hate each other, and that may impede cooperation on the battlefield (off it is another matter). Kind of a safeguard against any rebellion on their part, I think.
