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Mission Log: Passing the Torch
🌐 Drop Zone: The Ruins of the World Unity Games
Our vision clears, and the crisp autumn air of nineteenth-century Crimea is instantly replaced by the stale, smog-choked warmth of a late summer sunset. The horizon tells a grim story: the submerged skyscrapers of what used to be downtown Los Angeles poke out of a greasy, yellow-green inland sea like jagged glass headstones. Beyond the toxic water, the garish neon lights of Hollywood cast an eerie glow against the Santa Monica mountains.
We are standing outside the towering World Unity Games Memorial Stadium. A massive, hand-painted banner over the entry archway proudly proclaims the event to be the "Inaugural World Unity Games," flanked by colorful, triangular star flags. The entire perimeter is sealed tight by a ten-foot steel mesh security fence humming with high-voltage electricity and topped with glinting razor wire.
Near the main gate, attendees are queuing under the watchful eyes of Reformed California Republic security guards armed with heavy shotguns. The crowd is a stark reflection of this fractured future—civilians, heavily armed mercenaries, and mutants sporting everything from glowing eyes and oversized ears to extra limbs. A nearby sign loudly proclaims: "Have your ticket ready – no concealed weapons – no zombies."
Speaking of which, standing about fifty feet from the line is a sentient, rather slick-looking zombie, openly scalping legitimate entry passes to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, our wristband trackers vibrate aggressively. The crimson arrow completely ignores the crowd and points dead-ahead, deep inside the stadium's western pavilions. The next time token is close.
The party needs to secure legitimate entry tickets from the zombie scalper to pass through the heavily armed security gate and scanner without raising an alarm.
Result: Normal Success. Lucy uses a combination of smooth talking and a minor trade of spare parts to easily acquire a full set of tickets from the zombie. Despite some nearby spectators muttering indignantly about "zombie rights," the team smoothly walks past the gate scanners and climbs the concrete stairs into the stadium interior.
🏛️ The Pentathlon Display
Entering the upper western pavilion, we find ourselves surrounded by hundreds of museum-goers exploring a broad exhibition on the history of sports. Intricate displays are cordoned off by velvet ropes, each watched over by an individual shotgun-wielding guard. We pass a pair of malfunctioning table-tennis robots and a row of vintage bicycles before our tracking matrices lock completely onto a central display.
There, posed grandly atop a skeletal horse, sits the mummified remains of Lord Cardigan. He is perfectly preserved, wearing the iconic blue cardigan vest we just saw him lose in 1854, and his desiccated hand tightly grips a gleaming, silver cavalry sword. Our wristbands flash: the sword is our next time token.
The team must retrieve the silver sword time token from the protected display without triggering a hostile response from the armed pavilion guards.
Result: Normal Success. Dr. Stevens confidently steps past the velvet rope, flashing a falsified ORUS academic clearance badge. He flawlessly convinces the guard that he is conducting an authorized temporal-integrity inspection of the artifact. The guard steps back with a respectful nod, allowing Dr. Stevens to lift the silver sword cleanly from the mummy's grip. The wristbands instantly reprogram: "Venice, 1348, Deep One, jewelry."
🏟️ Sky-High Sabotage
As the silver sword is secured, the team moves toward the eastern stairs overlooking the main field—a massive arena flooded with the overlapping scents of exhaust fumes, stadium grease, and sweat. Night completely falls, and seven colossal strobe lights bathe the arena in stark illumination as hundreds of international athletes march out, flags waving. The deafening roar of eighty thousand cheering fans drowns out the stadium announcers.
Down by the food trucks, a blockade of heavy tanks and armored vehicles separates the civilian concourse from the main field. At the far end, a massive stage stands where a heavy metal band called the "Untamed Stallions" is jamming at maximum volume, flanked by chrome-clad dancers and a stubby, blinking security robot named Rolla.
Suddenly, the celebration turns terrifying. A giant, neon pink-and-blue blimp hovering over the field releases a shimmering cloud of miniature helidrones. The three-foot autonomous helicopters begin firing unguided micro-missiles indiscriminately into the arena. Simultaneously, a horrific, subharmonic buzzing noise overrides the stadium's sound system. The metal band stops playing their song and begins to chant in a hollow, mechanical unison: "The mighty messenger approaches as the seven suns shine bright." Beside them, a cloned short-nosed dire bear goes wild, mauling the band's drummer.
Through the smoke, a gray-haired woman armed with a high-powered laser rifle leaps over the security blockade. It's Paula Trent, the Director of Ceremonies. She sprints onto the field entirely alone, systematically shooting helidrones out of the sky with unmatched athletic precision. But looking up at the stage, we see the real threat: a giant, five-foot-tall pink and blue fungoid monstrosity resembling an alien lobster with vestigial wings has dropped from the blimp. It is the Mi-Go, Swizzilizzti, and a wireless microphone is taped directly to its buzzing carapace as it prepares to open a cosmic gateway.
⏳ Ready to Alter the Fabric of History?
Enjoying the reality-bending exploits of our ORUS agents? You can jump into the timeline yourself! Gear up with your own spatiotemporal extrapolator, hunt down CthulWho's escaped anomalies, and protect the space-time continuum in this standalone Timepunk adventure.
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