Someplace in Time 21

 

Mission Log: The Deimos Showdown

Timeline: Deimos Moonbase, 2145 | Status: Final Anomaly Neutralized

🔥 Old-School Heavy Ballistics

Before stepping into the breach, the agents sweep the futuristic lounge. While Dr. Pfennig snatches the advanced medical kit to run a quick diagnostic scan on the squad, Corporal Morgan Osprey and Lucy head straight for the vintage weapon rack. Ignoring the high-tech, non-lethal equipment, Osprey structure-grips the classic sawed-off double-barreled shotgun in one hand and fires up an industrial gas-powered chainsaw with the other, the engine roaring to life in the thin 0.1 G atmosphere. Lucy lifts the massive BSG9000 "Big Splat Gun," locking a balloon-sized payload into the chamber with a satisfying mechanical clank.

They burst through the airlock door in a full-scale, synchronized frontal assault. The low gravity turns their advance into an incredible display of kinetic theater. Lucy fires the BSG9000, launching a massive, dense gel-pack that impacts CthulWho squarely in his octopoid chest, covering his striped shawl in heavy containment fluid and staggering him backward. Seizing the opening, Osprey leaps a full twenty feet through the air, bringing the roaring chainsaw down in a terrifying arc that cleaves straight through CthulWho’s overcoat, forcing the cosmic entity to drop his silver-tipped acoustic auger onto the grated metal floor with a resounding clang.

🌀 Portal Sabotage & Spatial Collapse

While CthulWho frantically flails against the roaring teeth of Osprey's chainsaw, Dr. Steven Stevens and Dr. Stella Pfennig sprint toward the primary power grid of the 15-foot magnetic donut-ring. Leveraging their deep expertise in temporal mechanics, they bypass the base’s fried mainframes and wire their electronic pads directly into the copper coils wrapping the portal framework.

"The frequency is fluctuating! We need a localized anchor!" Pfennig calls out over the din of battle. Stevens pulls the recovered golden thread spool and the double-bladed Minoan bronze axe from his tactical pack, placing the ancient, paradox-laden time tokens directly across the primary magnetic conductors. The raw, concentrated chronal energy bleeding from the artifacts creates an instantaneous technical feedback loop. The blinking lights on the magnetic ring flare into a violent, blinding violet spectrum. Instead of ripping open a tear to R’lyeh, the counter-hack forces a beautiful, contained spatial collapse. A localized prismatic singularity blooms right inside the ring, generating an inescapable gravitational suction field.

🎲 SYSTEM MECHANICS: THE FINAL TAKEDOWN (CR 50)

By masterfully coordinating a high-impact ballistics diversion with a precise quantum overload, the team crushes the final boss challenge on their first attempt.

Base Challenge Difficulty: CR 50

Frontline Strikers: Osprey & Lucy (+1 Heavy Weapon Boon)

Tech Hackers: Dr. Stevens & Dr. Pfennig (+1 System Boon)

Time Token Paradox Bonus: +2 Boons Applied (Thread & Bronze Axe)

Total Combined Strategy Roll: 54

Result: Absolute Success!

Outcome: CthulWho is ripped completely from his footing by the localized vortex. He does not die, but his 12-foot form stretches, distorts, and is cleanly sucked backward through the prismatic field, banishing him into a harmless alternate dimension for several centuries. The portal snaps shut with a quiet pop, leaving nothing behind but his floppy hat floating slowly down in the low gravity.

🛸 Mission Complete: Heading Back to Bergen

As the alarms across Area M23 gradually wind down to a steady, rhythmic hum, Sergeant Guy lowers his rifle and lets out a long whistle. He carefully retrieves the stasis equilibrator jars containing your collected biological samples, walking them over to a high-tech refrigeration unit labeled “Biological Specimens” and sliding them in alongside dozens of other jars filled with anomalous, multi-limbed creatures.

The square-jawed Marine turns around, extending a gloved hand to your squad. “You should probably head back to your timeline, it isn’t prudent to stay out of your spacetime for too long.” He smiles, pointing at the face of your wristbands. “Looks like your presets have kicked in.”

Glancing down at your spatiotemporal extrapolators, you see the blinking crimson warnings have completely cleared, replaced by an orderly, green-lit line of destination text:

“Bergen, 2026, unknown, unknown.”

With a sense of profound relief, you reach down and tap the flashing green 'GO' icon next to the prompt. Instantly, your knees go weak, a familiar, deep pulling sensation tugs at your core, and the rotating frame of the Deimos Moonbase blurs away into a warm, comfortable rush of chronological light.

🎉 CHRONO-STABILIZATION ARCHIVED: Reality preserved. Earth saved from millennia of misery.
Current Coordinate: Bergen, 2026

The End ... Someplace In Time ...

⏳ 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.

If you're interested in playing this RPG, you can find it here.

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Someplace in Time 20

 

Epilogue: Mayhem on the Moonbase

Timeline: Deimos Moonbase (Area M23), 2145 | Current Objective: Thwart CthulWho

“Your vision clears and you see that you are in a futuristic lounge dominated by a panoramic window. You are momentarily disoriented as a huge red planet slides across the window, followed by a speedier bright light. The structure you are in is rotating like a giant Ferris wheel, and you are slightly nauseated by the very low gravity.”

🔴 The Red Planet's Shadow

The crushing weight of the Theran ash cloud vanishes instantly. You materialize into a world of sterile steel and slow, rotating momentum. Out the panoramic viewport, the colossal, rust-colored mass of Mars fills your vision, flanked by the swift, bright streak of its sister moon, Phobos. Area M23 is a highly classified ORUS facility tucked away on this lumpy chunk of space rock. Because the station loops like an enormous, 100-yard-wide Ferris wheel, you are left adjusting to a disorienting, feather-light 0.1 G gravity environment.

Through an open airlock at the end of the lounge, tactical yells shatter the hum of the life support systems. A half-dozen ORUS Mars Marines clad in heavy ballistic armor are desperately taking cover. They are unleashing barrages from non-lethal splat rifles—designed to protect the station's delicate hull from decompression—while screaming commands into the adjacent chamber: “Game over!” “Go to hell!” “Stand down!”

📦 LOUNGE INVESTIGATION (CR 20)

Before leaping through the airlock into active combat, the squad has an immediate opportunity to scour the futuristic lounge area for hardware.

Success Rewards (No Check Required for Retrieval):

• Futuristic First Aid Kit: A single-use medical pack that automatically removes a -1 injury penalty from one agent's trait or attribute.
• The Heavy Weapons Rack: Contains a raw, vintage sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, an industrial-grade chainsaw, and the devastating BSG9000 "Big Splat Gun" capable of launching balloon-sized containment gel-packs.

🐙 Hell on Mars

Stepping through the airlock, you enter a massive, 20-foot-high control hub lined with flickering server banks and heavy structural beams. Crouched behind the consoles are the battered remnants of the defense squad. Standing in the center of the destruction is a towering, 12-foot-tall octopoid-faced humanoid wearing a tailored overcoat, a striped wool shawl, and an absurdly floppy hat. It is CthulWho, the erratic, reality-hopping cosmic lord of time and space.

CthulWho is currently braced inside a 15-foot magnetic donut-ring wrapped in thick copper coils and pulsing temporal lights—the base’s experimental dimensional portal. He is aggressively tuning the portal framework with a sleek, black acoustic auger topped with silver.

A grizzled, square-jawed soldier with three chevrons stitched to his chest—Sergeant Guy—spots your arrival. "Did the Magister send you? Are you here to help? He's disintegrated half my team with that damned rod! Our splat guns aren't doing jack against him... we need something with actual kick!"

Hearing your boots click in the low gravity, CthulWho turns his bulbous, ancient eyes toward you, his tentacles twitching with amusement. “I’ve been anticipating you, my clock-crossing ill-wishers. I sense my minions are near … but there is something else … a disturbance in the force … of spacetime … objects out of space and time. You must leave, now. Do not dare oppose my merry mayhem!”

📋 Final Challenge: Defeating CthulWho (CR 50)

If the entity completes his calculations, he will open a prismatic tear in reality oozing red ichor, reclaim his lost city of R’lyeh, and flood Earth with millenniums of demonic misery. He must be banished back into the deep void right now.

Climactic Encounter Modifiers:

• Time Token Paradox Boons: Brandishing your recovered historic artifacts (the golden thread reel and the double-bladed bronze axe) disrupts his connection to reality, granting a +1 Boon per token (+2 Total) to the squad's actions.
• Strategic Mechanics: The base difficulty is a steep CR 50. Every failed assault inflicts a standard trait injury but systematically unravels his focus, lowering the difficulty of the next attempt by 5 points.

How will the ORUS Agents end this chronological nightmare?

⏳ 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.

If you're interested in playing this RPG, you can find it here.

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