Planet #2

Name: Michelangelo
Description: Water world covered in reefs and coral islands.
Alien: Reptiles/Amphibians- Eel like Amphibians filled with a strange
Bio-plasma.
Ability: Exploding Corpses
AA: 5
Mission: Locate source of the strange energy readings and report back.

The second mission opens up much like the first with the squad waiting
in the briefing room along with the rest of their platoon. The squad
has received a few transfers very recently to replace the casualties
sustained on planet Whistler. Among them is a large ornery fellow
named Greene.

Trooper Greene- FA: 8 NFA: 2- Goon

The young Trooper Hall (the young idealistic trooper who lost his
lunch at the beginning of the last mission and who somehow
miraculously survived the fighting on Whistler) tries to greet him,
"Hiya! I'm Hall. How's everything going so far? I was the newest guy
around here before you came along, so if you've got any questions feel
free to ask." He adds a friendly shoulder pat. Trooper Greene
responds by giving him a mean stare. Trooper Hall thinks he isn't
being friendly enough with the new guy so he tries to put his arm
around Greene. Greene flings him off and punches him right in the
mouth. The room roars with laugher. Hall is stunned and looks up at
Greene wide-eyed. Suddenly he laughs "Oh I get it!" He stands up and
punches Greene on the arm playfully, and adds with a smile "Male
bonding right?" Greene just grunts and stares at him. "Well, uh, um,
if, uh, if you, need any...thing, just let me know. Bye." He scurries
off. Laughter erupts again.

Soon enough Lt. Sallens enters the room along with his aid and rudely
quiets everyone. The holo-display crackles to life and he explains to
the platoon the nature of the planet they are currently orbiting and
their mission. The platoon is to investigate the source of strange
energy readings. The ships sensors cannot get a clear indication of
what the source of the energy, thus they've elected to send in a
platoon for reconnaissance.

The drop ship ride down to the planets surface is turbulent but
otherwise uneventful when the drops ships get close to the planet's
surface the pilot opens the viewing ports. Sunlight floods the inside
of the bay. The troopers looking out see sparkling blue ocean water
as far as the horizon. Soon enough it's apparent that the drop ships
are headed toward a small island. The coral has formed a rather
uneven, dense landmass. Cheers go up as thoughts of vacation run
through the marines' minds. The drop ships set down on a decent sized
island. The Lt.'s angry voice interrupts the commotion as he orders
everyone to get their asses off the drop ships, double-time. The
ground is pinkish-orange and slightly squishy, like damp earth. The
Lt. barks orders at each of the squads in the platoon and as the drop
ships shoot back to orbit. Soon enough the squads are moving off in
the direction indicated by a sensor that Lt. Sallens is carrying. The
player characters squad is bringing up the rear.

Soon enough the platoon finds a natural cave-like formation in the
coral island and without hesitation the Lt. leads them through the
narrow opening and into the darkness. After a dozen yards or so the
cave is utterly black. The lights and Nightvision systems on the
Mandelbrite suits kick on automatically. The passage through which
the group is traveling is barely wide enough for two men to walk
abreast, but it seems to widen a bit as the move down it. Soon
weapons fire is heard from farther up the passage. The IFF indicators
for the first squad in the platoon flash yellow, indicating engagement
in combat. The squad hurries as fast as the passage will allow to
reach the other squads. They a wide chamber with a few inches of water
on the floor. The Lt is standing with his foot on some strange eel/
snake-like creature. "What the hell's up?" Nightshade asks one of them
members of another squad. "Some #$%^in' worm thing came out of
nowhere and we swissed it." Lt. Sallens orders his aid to pull out a
holo-vid camera and take pictures while he posses heroically over the
corpse of the creature. After a few seconds the creature corpse starts
twitching and then it turns into a more violent spasm as it begins to
emit a purple glow which grows brighter by the second. Sallens is so
engrossed in his posing that he doesn't seem to notice. One of the
troopers speaks up, "Hey El-Tee something's going with tha-" "Can't
you see I'm busy? How bout you shut the $%^# up until I'm finis—"The
creature's corpse erupts into a ball of purple flame. The closest
troopers are thrown a short distance and everybody in the room is
blinded by the light because the explosion happened too suddenly for
the visor light-filter to compensate. When everybody regains their
bearings they find the Lt.'s charred corpse about ten feet away from
the explosion missing a good deal of itself. A lucky few troopers get
to wipe Sallens and eel guts from their armor. Baird speaks up "And
that men is why we listen when somebody is trying to tell us
something. Oorah?" "Oorah!" The platoon intones. At Baird's feet lies
the detector that Sallens carried miraculously intact. "We aren't
getting a ride home until we find what we're looking for so we best
get moving."

The squad continues through the large chamber and the farther the go
the deeper the water seems to very gradually become. Several platoon
members step in holes, and it soon becomes apparent that the floor
here is rather porous. Without warning two eel creatures shoot up
through the holes in the floor. There is a tense moments as the eels
and the platoon size each other up. Suddenly one eel creature snaps
out grabs a trooper and pulls him under the now ankle high water. The
platoon opens fire The other eel begins to glow purple, opens its
mouth, and belches forth a ball of purple plasma which catches a
trooper in the arm and burns it completely off in less that a second.
He falls to the ground screaming. The squads fight off the eels but
soon enough more appear. These surround the squad and begin to bite
at them using their bio-plasma to rip clean through the Mandelbrite
armor. Greene manages to throw a grenade into one of their maws
causing the whole eel to explode. Nightshade decides that plasma is
best fought with plasma and unleashes his E-cannon on the eels.
Simmons subscribes to the spray and pray method unloads an entire
magazine into one of the eels which fails over, spasms violently, then
soon explodes. The squad is pretty charred from the exploding corpses
of their assailants. They manage to extricate themselves from the
tangled mess of corpses and entrails. This begins a running firefight
with the creatures as the move deeper and deeper into the cavern
complex. The advantage proves to be with the eel creatures as the
water gets deeper and deeper hindering the marines of the 3:16th and
allowing the Eels snag their prey. The next several minutes are a
symphony of grenade explosions, rifle rapports, and plasma fireworks
as the platoon loses more troopers despite the amount of carnage they
inflict upon the enemy. Soon enough the water is slightly higher than
the troopers waists. As the squad fights to survive the energy
signature tracking device lets out a heavy chime to announce that the
location of the energy source has been found. But nothing is here. A
trooper notices small worm like things floating in the water. The
sergeant looks down and realizes that they aren't worms but young eel
creatures. Still, this many of them wouldn't give of an energy
signature that can be detected from space…

Suddenly the ground begins to shake as though there is an earthquake
and up through the ground erupts a giant version of the eel creatures.
It's almost 80 feet long, angry, and judging by the overwhelming
radiance about to rain down purple bio-plasma death on the remnants of
the platoon. The entire squad is crippled at this point in the
combat. Sergeant Baird declares that he will use a Strength. He
remembers back to his days on earth when he was a biology student. He
once took a marine science course in school and they dissected
electric eels. The creatures seem somewhat similar, so perhaps, he
reasons, their plasma generating organs are in a similar location. He
orders the entire squad to take aim at a specific location on the
queen eel and open fire. Most of the squad opens up with rifles, but
nightshade opens up with his rocket pod. As luck would have it
Baird's plan succeeds and soon the queen is glowing brilliant shade of
fluorescent purple. "Haul ass!" the Sergeant screams and the remaining
troops move as quickly as possible to get away from the explosion. It
takes about 20 seconds for the queen to build up to "Critical Mass"
giving the squad just enough time to get clear of the kill zone,
though they are still flung about from the force of the explosion.
The explosion was so powerful that it destabilized the coral structure
and chunks fall from the ceiling. The walls start to crack open and
water begins pouring in at an alarming rater.

The troopers move as fast as possible out the way they came, though
they are occasionally harassed by the remaining eel creatures that
were killed in the explosion. A few well place grenades and rockets
take care of them. When the squad finally reaches the narrow passage
that they came down they hear the voice of the comms officer of the
Unrepentant "Come..in…Delta Platoon…over." Baird answers saying that
the mission is complete and that they require immediate evac.

Nightshade is the final trooper to go up the passageway and the fires
his rocketpod once he's far enough up the tunnel and collapses it
behind him so that no more plasma eels can follow. Just over half of
the troopers that went down into the coral caves come out of it and
all of those are badly wounded. It's an amazing relief when the drop
ship touches down and the marines climb aboard. Greene captures the
feeling of the moment best when he says "This vacation sucked."

Post Mission: Nightshade levels up due to having the most kills. The
Sgt. Baird levels up due to having the highest d10 roll. Sgt. Baird
succeeds at his development roll to be promoted and he becomes the new
Lieutenant of the platoon replacing Sallens. He also ups his slug
rifle at far. Nightshade succeeds at a development roll and ups both
his E-cannon (bringing it to d100 at near) and his rocketpod at far.
Simmons ups his rifle at far and requisitions a flamer. Greene fails
his development roll so he ups his grenades at close.


Hope you guys like it.