DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: Beneath an Endless Sky (5e quest!)

You gulp, then stand up straight. "Wait..." you say, while both Kels and Danse ready their hands, clearly just about to start blasting. You kneel down before the nearest of the...hands. And then you speak, clearly and firmly: "I am a guest to ClearQuix Chemical Factory, authorized by your shift manager." You nod, then hold out your hand. The first of the Handy Helpers hopped up onto your palm and you started to look them over. "Authorization code 998-112, emergency override."

The hands all paused, as if thinking.

Then they dropped from the ceiling.

THUMP THUMP THUMP!

The hatch continued to shudder as you smiled at the Hands, which arranged themselves into a row before you. You set down the one you were holding, then turned to the group, nodding. "All right!" you said, grinning as you did so. "We have some Handies!"

"Wow," Xan said, laughing. "How'd you know that would work?

"I didn't," you say, shrugging. "But most of the people I know who had these things for EVA work had the emergency override written on the wrists - like, making sure that they do what you say is way, way, way, way, way more important than worrying about if they're getting...like...stolen or something."

Xan chuckled.

"Okay, do you guys know your way through the base?" you asked, while Danse ruffles your hair.

THUMP THUMP.

"The hatch is good, guys!" Kels says, giving you a thumbs up - she had put her hand against it. "Not even budging that much."

The hands all tapped the ground once with their pointer fingers.

"That's a yes!" you say, your ears perking up. "Do you have access codes?"

Tap Tap.

No.

"Are there access codes?" you ask.

Tap tap.

No!

"Oh, keycards then?"

Tap.

"Dang," you say, then turn to the rest of the party. "They're only going to be a mild help then. But they can take us where we want to go."

THUMP.

"And...should...we deal with that?" you ask, jerking your thumb at the thumping door.

---
Hmm...do you want to deal with that?
[ ] Might as well. We can open it with mage hand after loosening the hatch slightly, then lure whatever is in there into a firing range and shoot the hell out of it with spells before Danse hacks it to bits, right?
[ ] Lets check first - try cracking the hatch, but be ready to slam if it's dangerous.
[ ] ...lets let sleeping creatures lie
[ ] Write In

And where do you ask the hands to lead you first? These are the only options, you cannot write in, a write in will get a confused "no" from the hands.
[ ] Administration
[ ] Stores
[ ] Oxygen Processing
[ ] Crew Quarters
[ ] The ding dang pirates!

"Lets let sleeping critters lie, agreed?" you say.

"Agreed," Danse, Kels and Xan all say at the same time.

"Okay, H2s, show us to..." You pause. "Admin?"

"Oxygen processing," Danse says, nodding slowly. "If there are pirates here, we can fiddle with the atmosphere and see if we can knock them out peacefully. And if there's going to be anywhere the stashed the Chuul's oxidizer..." He shook his head. "If they have the factor's OP working, though, why would they be stealing some poor isopod's stuff?"

"Simple," Xan says, ticking her fingers off. "Firstly, it was there and easy to nab. Secondly, it keeps the Chuuls from poking around their village and stumbling onto this place. And thirdly...it's entirely possible they don't have this place's OP on."

"Oh boy," Kels says, quietly. "I don't want to kill a bunch of people by taking their thing. Even if they stole it."

"They can evacuate if they don't want to be suffocated!" Xan said, chipper as ever.

THUMP THUMP THUMP!

"Can we continue this conversation not near the monster door?" she added, jerking her thumb at the hatch with the ominous warning written on it. You nod, then turn to the Handy Helpers. The severed hands cum remote drones had started bobbing impatiently on their fingers, the googly eyes on their knuckles and their wrists clattering in their plastic containers.

"Take us to Oxygen Processing," you say.

The course through the winding interstitial corridors is fast, thanks to the H2s leading you, their fingers clattering softly on the deck. Danse's flashlight shines around and you notice that the ceiling has an awful lot of mossy growth on it, spreading outwards in creeping green patterns. One door is almost entirely overgrown - and you jerk towards it, whispering to Kels. "At least something is thriving down here. Talk about a forward looking terraforming project."

She giggled as you rounded the corner to OP and then you grabbed onto Kels before she walked into the room. She blinked. "What?" she asked as Danse drew his sword. "The room's empty?"

Empty isn't exactly the right word for it. The room was once the oxygen processing center. It was built like most OPs you've seen on the vids - friendly plastic walls, lots of clear tubing so people could see the water coming in, the tanks for hydrogen storage and the vents for pushing the O2 into the system proper. There were a lot of corrugated ducts that ran along the ceiling. The chair next to the computer that managed the place sat empty, with a cup of sludgy coffee sitting on it. Someone had been here - and the machines were running quietly, buzzing softly as bubbles frothed through the water around the metal rods that ran into the water tanks.

"Kels..." Xan whispered. "Look again."

Kels blinked.

Then she saw what you'd seen - in the way the motes of light hung in the center of the room, the way the floor was just faintly discolored in a perfectly rectangular square in the middle of the room...and the faint, quiet slurping sound of movement as the gelatinous cube shifted forward. The cup seemed to move of its own accord - jerking through the air. The psuedopod was barely visible as it yanked the cup into the belly of the cube-beast. The cup floated there, and the liquid began to slowly siphon out of the cup, spreading into the transparent cube. You hissed, softly.

"Why. The. Fuck. Is. There. A. Gelatinous. Cube. In. This. Room?"

"T-This is a chemical plant," Kels whispered back, softly. Very softly. "They use GCs to break down byproducts, harvest them for the chemicals they can produce...recycling and processing and such. There might be a whole pen of them in here, and...this one just broke free."

"I don't see the Chuul's oxidizer," Xan whispered. "...think it has noticed- AUUUUUGH!"

Xan sprang backwards, jerking away just moments before something invisibly thin reached at her. The SPLAT of the pseudopod hitting the door frame is enough for you to know it's on. Xan hissed, her hands reaching down and drawing a pair of throwing knives from her belts. She tossed one with a flick of her wrist and it buried itself in the side of the cube. "Spiderspit!" She hissed, then sprang backwards, moving to the side of the door. "We flank it when it gets out, right?"

"Right," Danse said. He stepped up to the door, sword in his hand. "Boots!"

"On it!" You said, springing up to stand against the far side of the wall. You lifted your palm, feeling Slacks on your back and body - his presence as solid and comforting as the wall behind you. You speak a single word: "Vram!" And the spear of light explodes from your palm and smashes into the cube, which continues to slosh forward. Kels steps beside you, her tail gripping your ankle with a quick comforting squeeze you can barely feel through your boots. Her hand lifts and she closes her eyes, before holding up the abstract shape that the academics had figured was the most paradimensionally efficient at channeling Outer Planes energies. It looked kind of like a pinecone made of spiders.

The cube flickered with flames, which burst to life around it and flared.

"Whoa, watch the O2 content!" Xan hissed.

"It's magic fire, Xan!" Kels snapped.

"Look out Danse!" You shout - but the cube is nice and obvious thanks to the flames wreathing around it. It slams towards the door, swings around, and rushes for Danse, who springs backwards, using his longsword to slash psuedopods grasping towards him out of the way.

"Any second now, Xan!" Danse snarls through clenched teeth.

Xan nods, steps backwards, then runs forward. Her boots clank on the wall as she leaps onto a valve fixture, springs form it, snatches onto a hanging light fixture, then hooks her legs on a pipe and swings above the creature, catching and dragging her knife through the gelatinous cube, before flipping off, doing a triple summersault in the air, then landing behind Danse with a grin. "There," she said, playfully, as the cube sagged almost entirely sliced in half.

"That only worked because we're on Gallion, you know," Kels says.

"IT'S NOT DEAD!" You scream, your ears pinning back as the cube's psuedopods reach from the rent in the middle of it. Danse hacks through five at once with a swing from his sword, but you lean in...and spot a thick knot of almost invisible, glittering hardness at the center of the cube - then spread your palm and shout.

"VRAM!"

The eldrich blast slammed home and the cube sloughed onto the ground with a hissing patter of smoke and steam. It slurched around your boots and you, Danse, Kels and Xan all groaned, stepping back and away.

"I'm so glad I'm in a spacesuit, ew..." Xan said, kicking at the goo, trying to get it off her boots.

"Think anyone heard that?" Danse asked.

You all quieted down.

Nothing but the very faint thumping from the door you had abandoned.

"Nope," you say, then walk over to the computer. You sit yourself down in the chair and find your eyes are at the level with the keyboard. You reach up and start to hunt and peck while sticking your nose over the edge of the plastic and metal table. Xan, sighing, reaches down and shoves the chair up along its pneumatic cylinder, until its at full extension and you can type like a real programmer. You flashed her a grin. "Thanks."

"Not the first pillar I've extended to full length," she murmured. Behind her, Kels choked.

The screen shows a black and green DAS boot option, with a blinking line for password input. "Oh, uh, you can hack this, right?" Kels asks. You turn in your seat to look at her.

"Kels, please, baby," you say, grinning at her, before gesturing at the computer. "Hackers can't just hack into a password without lots of advanced equipment and programs. Heck, even with that stuff, it can take ages, depending on how secure the password even is. The best way to do it is with what they call K-Int. Which is short for Kith Intelligence. While mildly racist and kind of oxymoronic, it does really kinda follow. Guessing a password is hard, hacking it is difficult, but tricking someone into giving it over, that's easy!" You sighed.

"So...we can't get in?" Danse asked, frowning.

"I said hackers. Not Boots. I happen..." you say, then turn and tap away. "To be a genius."

The screen flares to life, showing the OS for the oxygen system room.

"Whoa!" Kels whispered. "How?"

"This is a factory that makes chemical dyes," you say, dryly. "It's not run by people who give a shit about E-security. So, I just went with the most common password."

"Which is?" Kels asked.

"Password," you say.

"WHAT!?" Kels exploded.

"We live in a fallen world, sinful and vile, I know," you say, bringing up the diagonistic on the station. "Well, that's interesting."

Danse, who was looking flustered and thoughtful all at once, coughed and stammered. "W-What is it?"

"I mean, beyond the fact that our captain needs to change his freaking password," you say, scowling at him. "It's the...this." You point. "The OP is barely producing any oxygen. Well, I mean, it's producing it, but its not filtering it into the system - it's all going into the outflow tanks. I should turn that off before it, uh...gets...bad..." You turn the OP down and the bubbling slows. "That's weird. That's weird weird weird. About...two SOLs ago, they started lowering their OP's output by incremental steps, see?" You point.

"It looks like a percent every hour," Kels says. "But...the O2 detector is showing an increase?"

"Yeah, that's...weird," you say. "I think they were troubleshooting the OP - the computer says its making less, but the actual machinery is making more and more."

Danse nodded. "Then what?"

"Then, uh..." You bring up the diagnostics and find that about two minutes after the last lowering of OP production, the keyboard had registered an erratic command code that the computer had translated into bringing up the Paint function - the little crappy program that people used to make simple diagrams. You rubbed your cheek. "...I think...they started lowering two SOLs ago. But then one SOL ago, the tech working this computer keysmashed, then ran..." you looked at where the coffee cup had been. "And left his coffee."

"The cube?" Danse asked.

"I mean, yeah, but a single gelatinous cube can't take on a bunch of heroin dealers," you say. "Right?"

"They do tend to have guns, yes," Xan said, frowning.

Kels, though, pointed with her finger. "Whaaat the fuck!"

You look back at the screen - at all the little indicators and numbers.

"What the fuck," you whisper.

"Did the...did that..." Danse started.

"The O2 percentage just went up - we're still gaining oxygen!" you say. Slowly, everyone turns to look at the OP unit. The waters are still. Silent.

Dead.

---
113 XP for everyone! Now, what do you do...
[ ] Try and hack into more useful computer systems and see what you can see through cameras, logs, communications
[ ] Travel onto...
[ ] Write In