Metroid V Quest

[Leila Hann]

[x] Place radiation symbol marker on this room in the map.
[x] Fire missiles here and here, then climb vines.

...

New icon added to map.

You happily put some distance between yourself and the irradiated area, feeling much more comfortable once the iris door to the magazine storage has closed behind you. Looking up at the boring rockleeches that are devouring the wall they once sired, you take very careful aim...

Rolled 1d100=72

...and launch two missiles into the attachment points for the two longest and thickest creepers. Two splashes of gelatinous red. Two long, ropy creepers hang down to within jumping distance.

​

After taking a careful scan of your environment to make sure there are no unseen threats, you reformat your armcannon into a left gauntlet and begin the climb. If you can get up to near that gap in the ceiling, and swing over to it...

Rolled 1d100=57

Unfortunately, the top part of the wall has been shredded into a set of sharp spikes, and you can't find a way to grab that tiny ledge without catching yourself on the spikes. After a few minutes of futile swinging and reaching, you are forced to admit defeat. You manage to avoid spiking yourself, though, and you manage to recover a tiny bit of energy from the dead bits of vine.

(sequence break attempt failed. You came close though)


GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).



...

ENERGY:97/100

MISSILES: 8/10​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] See what the upper part of the polluted cavern is, then get back out of the radiation

...

You return to the magazine storage and stand by the crevice, and take a deep breath. Close your eyes for a moment and repeat one of the mind-excercises you were taught in your youth, preparing yourself for maximum speed and reaction time, clearing your head and your onboard computer alike of everything besides the task at hand and the tools available to do it with.

Then, you return to morph ball form and make your way through the little tunnel as quickly and efficiently as possible. On the far side, you stand up, crane your head up at the ceiling and look around, and then collapse back into the morph ball and return within the span of a second.

Rolled 1d100 = 41

You stand up again in the safety of the magazine room, down twelve energy units but with a better idea of what lies beyond.

​

The upper left part of the cave opens up into another passageway above that large outcropping, but you're not sure if you could climb that wall even if it weren't for the flood of exotic rays coming from the luminous puddle. You also are sure you saw something moving on the ceiling; there wasn't time to scan it, but you got the impression of a slick, legless, segmented body about as long as yours, and pincer-shaped insectile jaws.
​

Spoiler: Low quality combat visor snapshot

It would appear that the rockleeches aren't the only species on this planet with better radiation tolerance than your fusion suit.


GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).

...




ENERGY: 85/100

MISSILES: 8/10
​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Recharge at ship.
[x] Drop down the shaft in Facade.

...


For the fourth time, you backtrack across the landing shaft, after taking a moment to recharge and refill in your ship. With choices limited, you return to the Facade and roll into the pipe, passing under the higher branch and taking a leap of faith as you fall down the lower one. Twenty meters later, you bounce off a corner and roll out into a new room. Small and claustrophobic, with scaffolding rising to a metal corridor.

​

A brief scan visor episode reveals nothing of interest in here, and the lower pipe can't be navigated with your current morph ball loadout. Through the corridor, however...
​

​

An octogonal shaft, the walls a patchwork of stone and metal and silica crystal suckled from the surrounding earth and woven into a dazzling fractal arrangement. Arms of metal criss-cross the shaft, forming a winding staircase of platforms all the way to the bottom.

You are forced to let out a tiny gasp, as the images of Brinstar's main plaza return to you. Sitting on the lower platforms and watching the drones come and go across the shaft overhead, like giant, bio-mechanical bees moving through their hive. Then a tiny stab of pain in your eye, as you remember returning to that same plaza as an adult, and being forced to destroy those same drones.

You only reminisce for a brief half-second, of course. There is sound here, and motion. It doesn't take long for you to spot the creatures moving around the mess of worm-eaten stone and tattered rockleech vines on the ceiling, and only slightly longer to see that the upper half of the room is also crawling with them. Spiny, four-legged arthropods hauling their armored, thorny bodies across the walls and steps. Geemers, of course. The bane of at least twenty biospheres and counting across known space. Their hearts aren't bad, once they've been thoroughly cleaned, boiled, and salted, but the living creatures are nuisance personified at best, and an environmental and sophontarian catastrophe at worst. Of course, they evolve so quickly that each planet has at least two or three of its own species.
​

Spoiler: Local geemer variant

GO:
[] Write in.
-[] If you wish to proceed, you must have a plan for dealing with the geemers one way or another.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).


...


ENERGY: 100/100

MISSILES: 10/10​

 

[Leila Hann]

[X] Go down to the bottom of the room and take the left passage, making sure to shoot all of the Geemers on the next platform before you jump to it.
[x] Scan off-color patch of wall about halfway down the right side of the shaft.

...


You eye the infestation coolly, assessing their positions and carapace strength, and then level your armcannon.

Rolled 1d100=38

A quick volley of bright yellow bolts, just as you're sure that most of the geemers on the platform below you are in view. The first two, you manage to hit in the head, killing them instantly. As the rest scatter away, you land another pair of shots in each of their spiky backs; the first cracking the shell, and the next pulverizing the tissues beneath. Before they can regroup, you leap down onto the cleared platform, run up to the side, and fire another volley onto the next one down. More cracked exoskeletons and retreating insects. Another leap downward, which now brings you within scanning range of a cracked and discolored section in the patchworked glass and metal wall.

Wall section is supported by a crystallized bendezium frame. This material is impervious to most infantry-scale weapons, but can be damaged by heavy ordinance.

Click to shrink...

More bendezium. Once again, you'll need something stronger than your current beam or missiles.

You remain aware of your surroundings, ready to counterattack if the geemers scuttle back onto this platform from the walls.

Rolled 1d100=68

Unfortunately, while scanning the wall you were unable to look upward and notice the pair of angry geemers emerging from on overgrown burrow or crevice in the ceiling above. Just as you finish reading the scan results, a geemer lands heavily on its crablike feet on either side of you and lunges with a rustling hiss, spiking you with their deadly thorns. You manage to dodge one in time, but the other hits you fully (energy 95/100). You leap back and fire a rapid barrage that relieves you of both attackers before handling the next platform down; unfortunately, you killed both of them too quickly and thoroughly to siphon any life energy from them (rolled 38, 17).

Once you reach the lower section of the room, the geemers disappear. However, circling slowly, almost predatorially, around the raised metal platform in the center of the floor you see something larger. A dome-shaped metallic body, supported by six robotic legs and waving two fanlike blade arms, makes its way in a slow circle. A single red eye peers ahead of it, casting a bloody-hued cone of sensor light on the gleaming honeycomb of the walls and floor. The robot masses about as much as you do, at a quick estimate.

​

The design looks vaguely familiar, though you can't quite put your finger on it. Scattered on the floor around it are several small piles of carbonized ash, some of which contain recognizable bits of geemer exoskeleton. You attempt to hail the robot with a standard chozo IFF signal, but it does not respond.

You will have to move past this drone to get to the door. The distress signal continues to rise from below the floor.

​

GO:
[] Leap down while the robot is on the opposite side of the central platform and try to run through the door before it notices you.
[] Destroy the robot before descending and using the door.
[] Write in.​

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).

...

ENERGY: 95/100

MISSILES: 10/10





...

AN: I'm in a very different time zone now, and have intermittent computer access, so updates will be at different times than before.

 

[Leila Hann]

[X] Destroy the robot before descending and using the door.
[X] Scan the robot before you kill it

...

After looking around to make sure that no more geemers are about to drop on you, you pull up the scan visor HUD again and lock your sensors onto the circling construct.

Target biomechanoid identified: Holtz-pattern facility management unit. While advanced Holtz units are typically equipped with contragrav units, thrusters, and extra armor or shield layers, the basic template is only lightly armored and relies on articulated limbs for ground-based locomotion. Armament includes galvanized wingblades and a point-blank plasma flamethrower designed for perimeter decontamination. Unit's onboard computer is too heavily shielded to interface with.

While the origin of the Holtz family of biomechanoid servitors is unknown, records indicate their usage in numerous chozo colonies during the Age of Proliferation. Units were typically programmed to act as the "arms" of high level management systems, responding to high risk bio-contamination or automated system failure events and neutralizing the offending elements. Most Holtz variants were also equipped with a plethora of constructor tools to repair facility damage in the wake of such incidents.

Click to shrink...

You return to the combat visor and stare down at the thing with a mix of fascination and apprehension. The only holtzes you've seen before were the handful of keepsakes on Zebes. They had been precious historical artifacts, until Mother reactivated them and sent them down to Norfair to guard the ancient temple that Ridley had rededicated to himself. You remember the priceless artifacts screaming madly as they divebombed you through the blazing hot air, forcing you to destroy them all.

You blink away the traumatic memory. Fortunately, this Holtz variant can't fly, and doesn't appear to be as armored. Unfortunately, it doesn't look any more friendly. Unwilling to take chances, you level your weapon and begin firing.

Rolled: 1d100=20

Three power beam shots hammer into the dome shaped body, leaving crack-covered dents. With a familiar, high pitched mechanical scream, the holtz cranes its body up at you, bends its six knees, and leaps onto the next platform up, latching onto the side and beginning to climb. toward you. You don't give it the chance, though; your next trio of shots hammer its legs, breaking one of them off at the joint. It tries to keep its purchase, but your next shot pushes it back, leaving it dangling from the platform by just two legs as it screams and scrambles to get back up, and your next penetrates its unarmored belly and fries the thing's internals. The holtz drops back to the floor, a uselessly twitching wreck.

You fire a few more shots to make sure before dropping down and bending over it, sticking your armcannon into the hole you blasted in its belly and probing its bioengineered internal organs. The Metroid organelles throughout your body give a sickly little tingle, and you feel the familiar, uncomfortably primal sensation of your suit draining what remains of its life. The damage you took from the geemer is restored (rolled 82).

Through the iris door on the left, you enter a small, circular room with a vaulted, tapering ceiling. There is a platform in the center of it, hanging like a chandelier from the ceiling, but another force field like the one in the Facade prevents you from climbing onto it. You look around for something to scan, but there's nothing in the lower half of the room, and the upper half is blocked by the shield.

​

Beyond the other iris door on its far side, you discover what was once probably a corridor before rampant rockleech growths triggered its collapse. An entire mass of metal ceiling and the rock behind it has caved in, and a section of the floor hideously eroded and worm-eaten by the red creepers.

​

There are no other exits, as far as you can see.

​

GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).


...


ENERGY: 100/100

MISSILES: 10/10
​

 

[Leila Hann]

[X] Scan the eroded floor
[x] Fire missile at eroded floor.

...

From what radar and sonar can detect, the floor has lost more than fifty percent of its mass, and is being held together more by the mass of rockleeches than anything else. Beneath it, according to your scans, there is a network of tunnels bored into the rock, and there's something moving down there.

Taking a step back, you fire a missile. Shrapnel flies, following a splash of red rockleesh gel. Thanks to your scans, you are not remotely surprised when a spiky, juice-splattered geemer erupts from the crater, and quickly kill it with a pair of power beam shots. Beneath the hole you've made is a tunnel entrance, the rockleeches that once filled it all gnawed away by the razor sharp spines and mandibles of geemers. It is with great caution that you roll into the morph ball and drop down, standing up again as soon as there is room to do so.

Rolled 1d100-20 = -13

You see the next three geemers before they can react, and kill them before they can even begin to charge.

​

You are standing, a bit hunched over, in a warren-like cave. The rockleech vines have been gradually eaten away to nothing, and their tunnels significantly expanded. To your left, the tunnel rises up, and you can see a faint light from above. To your right, a narrow burrow - just wide enough for a geemer, or for your morph ball - leads away. Attached to the walls, there are several...well, they look like geemers, but are a dark metallic color with crystalline barbs, and their legs and heads are retracted, leaving nothing but a sea-urchin like ball of spiky death hunkered down and attached to the rock. When you approach one, it shivers and extends its spikes toward you. They don't seem to be attacking, though.



GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text or icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).


...


ENERGY: 100/100

MISSILES: 9/10





....


AN: you received a substantial bonus to that combat roll for scanning the floor section before entering. You would have aced it anyway in this case, but still, good thinking.

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] [Scan] Black Geemer
[x] Left and up

...


The quivering, encrusted mass of spikes gives you the following:

Geemer species closely related to previous variant genetically, but highly phenotypically divergent. Exoskeleton consists of magnetized iron-silicon plates, with traces of more exotic bonding agents ingested from the surrounding rock. Due to the weight of this exoskeleton, the organism spends most of its time asleep to conserve energy, pneumatically adhered to its rocky substrate.

While the organism is hunkered down within its shell, only explosives will damage it. Multiple hits from light ordinance may be required.

Click to shrink...

Fortunately, the way to the left is unblocked by the hunkered spikeballs. Carefully stepping around the meteemers, you climb up the left passage and emerge on the far side of the obstruction.

​

Above your head you see the cause of the cave-in; a massive tunnel eaten out through the ceiling by rockleech and geemer activity, with a tangle of thick red vines covering the gaping hole. In front of you, the corridor leads into the side of a tall, circular shaft with a bit of scaffolding on the walls, too high for you to jump to. Above the higher scaffold platform is a red blast shield.

You hear faint scuttling noises from the burrow over your head.




GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text or icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).


...


ENERGY: 100/100

MISSILES: 9/10​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x]. Scan the discolored spot on the wall to the left.
[x] giving the noises, and our history of how these things go, mentally prepare ourself for a (BOSS) fight.
[x]. When mentally ready, blast the two vines and accend to the room above us to the right, ready for a fight.
[x] immediately scan any foe encountered

...

Your sensors have had enough experience with these wall panels by now that the results come up instantly.

Wall section is supported by a crystallized bendezium frame. This material is impervious to most infantry-scale weapons, but can be damaged by heavy ordinance.

Click to shrink...

With no heavy ordinance to your name yet, and the ominous sounds coming from above, you follow the only course you can see. A missile shreds the hanging tangle of rockleeches, some of which are thick enough to climb now that they're hanging down. You rise slowly, warily, armcannon still deployed as you climb with just your feet and one hand. Its something you've gotten better at, even without your full suit musculature.


Rolled 1d100-10 = -7
Rolled 1d100 = 27

Even one handed. you carefully avoid knocking into the pair of meteemers adhered to either side of the tunnel, even as they chitter and rustle their metal and crystalline spines at you. Once you've planted your feet on the stone lip above the entrance, you don't proceed until you've fired a volley of shots through the next narrow passageway and heard the satisfying CRUNCH of geemer exoskeleton. You quickly roll through, stand up, and kill the next pair before they can attack, gracefully avoiding another hunkered meteemer.

​

As with the burrows below the corridor, the rockleeches have been chewed away to almost nothing, and their tunnels expanded significantly by the rock-grinding mandibles of the geemer genus. You still hear a bit of scuffling from behind the walls, especially from along the two narrow tunnels to the upper right. Unfortunately, the one on top is too steep for your morph ball to climb, and the one on the right, you can tell by the noises, has a meteemer hunkered down just above the slight incline, outside of your line of fire for a missile.

That leaves the tunnel on the left. You attempt to roll through it, but natural stone turns into a techno-organic webwork of gray and black, and then hit a metal wall that the creatures hadn't quite finished corrupting their way through. Its thin and weak, you're sure, but unfortunately the tunnel leading to it is far too narrow for you to unfurl and fire a missile in.




GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).


...

ENERGY: 100/100

MISSILES: 8/10​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Try getting through the damaged section of the wall at the bottom right of the industrial shaft.

...

You decide to try the other direction, and climb back around through the burrows, nimbly avoiding the meteemers (rolled 1d100-20 = -6), until you're back at the bottom of the shaft where you destroyed the unresponsive holtz. On the far side of the octagonal floor with its raised mechanical platform, there is a damaged section of wall.

​

Behind the massive gauge, another pipe has been exposed. Unfortunately, there are some sharp inclines only a few meters in that your morph ball cannot climb.


GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.

MAP:
[] You may choose to set a new type of marker - text of icon - on the map to mark the position of any type of environmental feature that you have seen so far (specify).


...

ENERGY: 100/100

MISSILES: 8/10

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Scan the forcefield in the save room

I don't think we ever checked what we'd need to get through those.

Click to shrink...

Analysis complete. Starship-grade energy field is being powered via trans-dimensional conduit from a remote source on this planet. Power source is not within scanning range. Overwhelming the shield is impossible with current weaponry; either seek additional weaponry, or locate the shield's power source to bring it down.

Click to shrink...