The Sacellum Of Ilum: Confessions Of Guilt

[The Storyteller]

[fancybox2]

ILUM : 1400 Hours

We sent a platoon of soldiers down into the planet's core to investigate where the connection to the Force is strongest. Communications with the platoon have ceased and their life readings have been cut off. Find out what went wrong.
---Be Warned: The Force can play tricks on the mind....

Mission Thread ; [URL='http://www.thestarwarsrp.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-sacellum-of-ilum-dice-thread.87611/']Dice Thread ; @EmilyHuene (Viewing)
@One For Sorrow ; @Herrith [/URL]http://www.thestarwarsrp.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-sacellum-of-ilum.87460/[/fancybox2]http://www.thestarwarsrp.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-sacellum-of-ilum.87460/

 

[Sylvie Corser]

THEME​

Sylvie tightened the strap of her rifle, looking out over the freezing cold landscape from underneath a helmet. She exhaled, the filters on the vents cycling out fog into the frigid air. Ilum. A mystery planet. Wild Space. She'd never been this far out in the galaxy, at least in not in recent memory. And it was cold. Very cold. Why exactly was a Core World agent shoved with stupid assignments like this? A Zeltron, no less? Wouldn't the Imperials think that a human would be better to look for a bunch of human soldiers? Apparently not. Humanoids would have to do.

She was supposed to head toward the core of the planet--with a partner coming along. Underground systems? Those were creepy. Sylvie looked down at her rifle and took another deep sigh, hopping off the transport and looking up toward the sky as it growled back into the atmosphere. Silence save for the wind, and a marker for the lost platoon to find its way through the snow in case of a blizzard. Evidently, you aren't going to be using this anytime soon. The Zeltron stepped through the snow, keeping her rifle at the ready as she waited for her partner.

The snow parted long enough to show the entrance to an underground cave, black against the white of the surroundings. Then it was gone again. Why'd I get shoved with the horror movie vibe? And where's Imperial Grunt #2 to help me out?

@One For Sorrow @EmilyHuene

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo looked out the viewport as the transport neared the ground, it had been a bit of a haul from Iktotch to here but he had made it. He saw the transport that his partner had no doubt used as it flew away. The pilot had told him that they wouldn't actually touch down, something about landing gear in the snow. He didn't care, it looked like a soft landing in the snow.

He pulled his scarf up and placed his goggles over his eyes, he figured the trip to the cave system would be short enough that he didn't need to suit up too heavily. Once inside he knew that he would be safe from the wind in this frozen wasteland.

The side door slid open and he dropped out, pulling his pistols out of their thigh holsters as the transport flew off. Keeping them ready in case anything came out of the snow at him.

He walked a ways in the direction that the cave systen was supposed to be in, he wasn't all that worried about going underground but between the deserts on Iktotch and the tundra here he really could not wait to get home to Coruscant.

Eventually he saw a shadow through the blizzard, as he got closer the shadow took the shape of an armored woman with a rifle, his partner on this mission. "Hello there!" he shouted to be heard over the wind "Agent Talo Geist! Good to be working with you! Have you spotted the caves yet?!" he really did want to get inside and out of the wind.

@EmilyHuene @Herrith

 

[Sylvie Corser]

Sylvie turned her head, as she saw someone approach. Not exactly in armor, but he was wearing layers. She sighed, slightly jealous that the man had been able to possess the brains to pack some warmer clothes. The uniform was alright, but her cheeks felt like they were about to freeze under the metal helmet. Her partner seemed to be a humanoid--interesting choice for a mission like this, as with her--but perhaps fate had deemed it so. The caves? Agent, look twenty feet in front of you and there's a massive mouth to a demon right here.

Sylvie merely pointed while he approached, stepping toward the cave at the same time, eager to get away from the wind chill. As he caught up and she stepped into the mouth of the cave, she smiled under her helmet and brought her blaster up to a more ready position. She bounced on her toes, trying to avoid shivering as the temperature changed from abso-kriffing-lutely mental to reasonably freezing. She inhaled while she looked into the darkness, clicking on a helmet light to see into the depths while she finally spoke to him.

"Sylvie Corser. Nice to meet'cha. As for the caves...here they lie."

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo was actually a little shocked at where the caves had been, though he was glad to get inside them. His partner clicked on a helmet light, he was pretty happy about that. He pulled out a small headband flashlight and put it on, adding to the light from his partner's helmet.

She introduced herself once they had illuminated their surroundings. "Nice weather eh?" he chuckled, offering a brief handshake before pulling his pistols out.

He didn't know what they were going to find in here, but he had a feeling they weren't going to like it.

@Herrith

 

[Sylvie Corser]

"Nice weather, eh?"

Sylvie rolled her eyes and sent a reassuring fist to knock him on the chest before proceeding into the cave. She hadn't returned the handshake, and thought it best to just get this job over with. Damn, her Sith friends must have been rubbing off on her. Unless she was just grumpy because she was cold. A very likely theory for both of those. She checked her blaster before shining her head lamp back down the cave again, ignoring the fact that her partner was going full space cowboy with his dual pistols.

"You're lucky that you have a scarf. I'm about to freeze my arse off in this damned cloak. Glad that we're inside."

Sylvie continued, hoping to spot something out of the darkness. Anything. Because the feeling she had was dreadful. It was all too quiet. Too, too, too quiet.

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo's little joke didn't go over quite how he had expected, but that didn't matter much he guessed. They weren't here to get chummy, they were here for answers.

"I promise you, it's not doing much." he chuckled in response, "And I am too. Takes the wind out of the equasion at the very least."

As he followed Sylvie into the tunnels he looked back over his shoulder, hearing the wind begin howling in the tunnel mouth.

At least...he hoped it was the wind.

 

[Sylvie Corser]

Sylvie sighed, continuing down the cavern and putting down a glowstick to mark her path. They wouldn't want to get lost down here, especially when the system started to divert and split. She looked around at the walls, spotting signs of activity and maybe a few blasters burns while her partner muttered onward about something to do with the wind. The Zeltron looked back toward the deeper tunnels and continued walking, lowering her rifle while keeping it welded to her shoulder. If the Imperial group sent down here got into trouble, they'd have stayed together and emerged out of the cavern. That is, if they encountered resistance. But whatever happened here seemed to have been something else.

A feeling weighed down on her, something she couldn't quite place. A shiver came down her spine and she flicked her coat, readjusting it once more. Something was off about this place, and it wasn't just the context. She inhaled and froze to listen for something that had caught her ears. She'd barely picked it up. Sylvie signaled for Talo to follow suit and stayed perfectly still. There it was again. Almost like...a yell? A voice? Maybe there'd be answers.

She pulled off her helmet and listened again, confirming the noise before pulling it back on and running.

"This way! I think..."

OOC: Roll for this one I think.

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo ran after Syvie through the tunnels, they must have been going the right way because the voice -whatever it was- was certainly getting louder.

He had to admit, the farther they went through the tunnels the more his head started to feel...odd. Like there was a slight tugging in the back of his skull. Whatever caused it he shook his head and kept running, the sooner they found the missing troops the sooner they could get out of there.

And the idea of getting out of these caves made Talo a very happy Nagai.

 

[Sylvie Corser]

Sylvie slowed her run to a jog and then to a cautious step as the commotion got louder. The weird feeling she got was getting worse. She rounded a corner and found herself face to face with a soldier lacking a helmet and freaking the hell out. She grabbed his shoulder and looked into his eyes through her visor. He was panicking. Big time.

"Talo! Can you--"

Sylvie was suddenly alone. She wasn't in the cave anymore. At least, that's what she thought. And then she was falling. A heavy feeling of vertigo came into her mind as she lost balance and dropped to a knee. That seemed to snap her out of whatever had just happened and she blinked, shaking her head to clear her thoughts. Once her bearings were regained, the woman stood, a little dizzy still, and tried to spot the two people she had been near as her eyes readjusted.

What the hell.

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo kept up relatively well with Sylvie in their mad dash through the tunnels, he just heard her call his name when suddenly he was very very alone.

It was silent, so silent he almost tripped over himself with how suddenly it came on. He stopped moving and looked around, no one in sight as far as he could see in either direction. "SYLVIE!" he called out, surprised at how scared he was right now.

He kept walking and shouting his partner's name, getting more and more unnerved at the sound of his voice echoing back at him.

Suddenly he was back, right beside Sylvie and the man she had found. This time the sudden onrush of noise and reality itself caused him to trip up and fall to one knee. He shook his head and rose slowly.

He was beginning to regret accepting this mission.

@Herrith

 

[Sylvie Corser]

Sylvie winced as Talo yelled her name, clearly being affected by something as well. Their friend didn't fare any better, as he was now cowered against a rock wall, fending off something that didn't exist. Talo came back first, and she knelt down to put a hand on the survivor, who immediately came to the moment she touched him. His hand squeezed her arm in a remarkably tight grip as he regained his breath. She rose her blaster again, scanninf forward and back down the tunnel, looking for something, anything that may have caused their disorientation. No dice. Maybe some kind of trap?

She'd heard ghost stories about Ilum. Were they true? No, of course not...right? Sylvie cleared her mind as it wandered back to her hallucination. Maybe there was something in the air. But then her sensors would have picked up something. Talo was on his feet again. She turned her head, still keeping a hand on their newfound Imperial, who was still shaking.

"That wasn't just me...right?"

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo was still panting lightly, punching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes again to try and stop the world from spinning around him. It helped a little. "No...no it was not." he said eventually in response to Sylvie's question.

The trooper she had found didn't look so hot, though if what they had just experienced had been affectimg the man for this long it wasn't surprising in the least.

Talo knew from the stories that Illum was supposedly haunted by the spirits of force users who had died in some calamity during the Jedi's big war with the Exiles, But that was all he had ever read on the subject. He had been entirely uninterested in the mystic energies before meeting Eriana, now he wished that he had done more research on the subject.

He turned to the trooper, trying to stay calm and focused on the mission. "Trooper, what the kriff happened down here?" he asked in the most authoritative voice he could muster.

 

[Sylvie Corser]

So Sylvie wasn't the only one having crazy hallucinations. Surprise, surprise. She already liked this less. Talo had recovered enough to start questioning the soldier, and she took this as a time to tag herself out. The Imperial stood and pulled out another glowstick, snapping it and tossing it down the tunnel they were going to enter before their little episode.

The trooper was still shaken and so was she. Sylvie pulled off her helmet, brushing her hair over her head with a shake of her head.

"What the hell is this place...."

OOC: Sorry for short post. I need a hand directing the story forward, if ya could do a favor.

 

[Talo Geist]

This was decidedly not Talo's favourite place to be.

Sylvie went about lighting the tunnel, she looked about as rough as Talo felt. At least the soldier had calmed down at least a little bit. Enough to speak coherently.

"I...I dunno sir. We were all down here...why were we down here? I...I don't know why we were down here...but...but there were voices...whispers...Jenkins, he went crazy first...don't know what he saw...what her heard...he just.. I.. he..." at that moment the trooper let out a low moan and grabbed his ears. Talo noticed a patch on his chest. A patch that said Jenkins.

The Nagai agent sighed and stood, walking away from the maddened soldier to join Sylvie. "Well. His brain is fried. Let's get this figured out before ours go the same way." He was trying to keep the mood light, or at least break some of the stress up.

Then, as the buzzing started in his skull again, a thought occurred to him. This was like Iktotch. "This must be one of those force anomalies."

The buzzing grew and Talo scrunched his eyes shut, after a few moments the buzzing faded. He sighed in relief and reopened his eyes.

"Alright. The force has driven them all mad. I doubt the others are alive, let's grab jenkins and get out of here before we end up like him."

There was nothing the two of them could do, their job was to learn what happened, they had done so as best they could.

 

[Sylvie Corser]

Sylvie nodded toward Talo, clipping her helmet to her belt in order to get a better breath. She wanted to shudder, but urged herself not to, instead turning the motion into a half shrug. Force anomalies. Myths and tall tales from agents sent far out. At least, until she experienced them firsthand. Thank the Force they weren't severe. She was about to agree, but then the presence that had caused her to experience a major spell of vertigo came back. She thought she could fight it, somehow, and it seemed to be working rather well.

At least until it didn't. Her pupils dilated and she was without a weapon. No armor, no blaster, nothing. Footsteps down the cavern. They certainly didn't sound like Talo's. Or the soldier's. She began to back away, expecting to see the two of them, but there was nobody. The familiar sound of a lightsaber activating reached her from the tunnel. Blue light highlighted a shadowed figure that didn't quite seem solid. Sylvie began to back away but found herself at a dead end created by her mind, falling to her back and covering her head as she felt the presence grow once more.

All this done in real time, invisible to all but her.

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo was between Jenkins and Sylvie when her latest episode hit, it seemed like a nasty one. So, he did the only thing he could think of. He walked over to his partner, hauled her up to her feet and -reluctantly- gave her a slap in the face. "Snap out of it Sylvie!" he said, his raised voice echoing through the caves.

Once she was back with them Talo would go back to Jenkins and haul him to his feet, taking charge in this moment of clarity he had. "Follow the glowsticks, double time. MOVE!" he barked, relying on any training the two with him had to perhaps get them into a mindset to just get out.

Feeling the buzzing build in his skull again he knew they needed to be out of there soon before they ended up like the rest of Jenkins' team.

@Herrith

 

[Sylvie Corser]

And then Sylvie was back.

A sting bit into her cheek as she came back to her senses. First irritation, then gratitude flooded her brain as she blinked and brought her palms to her temples, a pounding headache ensuing from whatever the hell she had just seen. Her heart was still pumping unreasonably fast and her hands shook. She rolled over onto her hands and knees, then picked herself up with a shake of her head. Her knees wobbled, but she managed to get moving as soon as Talo screamed for them to go. Trusting that Jenkins was ahead of her, she stumbled forward through the darkness, wiping her eyes and continously holding her head as it throbbed from pain.

The glowsticks came in handy, to say the least. Sylvie stumbled through the tunnels, barely keeping up as hallucinations flickered in and out of her vision. Random things, mostly. Terrifying things. Then the light at the end of the tunnel.

And she was outside.

And it was cold.

 

[Talo Geist]

Talo took in a deep, freezing cold breath as he burst out of the tunnel mouth. The dash out had been like running through a thousand nightmares, and as he dropped to his knees in the snow he found himself thanking the force that he made it out.

Jenkins and Sylvie were out with him, his partner on this mission looking like she had the worst headache one could have. Their rescued soldier, he seemed the same as he had been in the caves. Talo hoped the man would recover, but he really didn't think that it was going to happen.

After a few moments Talo brought his hand up to his ear and activated his comm unit to contact their transport. "Extraction for three at my location, now." he ordered the pilot.

Shortly after the sound of engines could be heard, and moments after that their extraction was hovering a few feet in front of them with the door open and a ladder hanging down for them. Talo made jenkins go up first, then he would wait for Sylvie to go up into the transport before going up himself.

Once the door closed and the transport was flying off away Talo sighed, taking off his goggles amd scarf. "What a karkshow." he muttered to himself.

Jenkins would be debriefed on what exactly happened with the rest of his squad, Talo had a feeling the story wouldn't be pretty. He found himself oddly looking forward to sitting at his desk and writing up his report, between deserts and tundra he was so tired of extreme weather.

/end thread