Heat Signature Created 7 years ago2017-09-22 19:54:45 UTC by monster_urby

Somewhere in deep space, there is a bar. Aboard a recently liberated space station, it attracts all manner of ne'er-do-wells and mercenaries.Magic Borealis
Like many that come through here, Magic Borealis is a drifter. He keeps to himself and will likely be gone by tomorrow.

Misty Excelsis
A former mechanic, turned mercenary ghost. She completes her missions quietly, with as little contact as possible. Armed with a wrench, she knocks her foes unconscious when necessary, but prefers to avoid trouble and gets around by hacking systems and using duplicated keycards. This has caused her to sway in the direction of taking bloodless contracts, where killing is actively punished. One of her more memorable missions was a bloodless contract, requiring her to steal a prototype weapon from an enemy ship. On docking with the ship, she found that the weapon was actually stored next to the airlock, possibly ready for unloading. She swiped it and left.

Her personal mission is to free her partner from Offworld Security custody.

Joss Gardener
The finest mercenary on the station. She solves missions by any means necessary with a 100% success rate. One such mission saw her using duplicate keycards to simply walk through the hallways of an enemy ship, assassinate a target in a heavily guarded area and walking back out without being spotted. She also recovered some intel from a terminal, which would lead her to Celestine Quigley. Quigley is a small time merc who was captured during one of her first missions. (I was still learning the game mechanics and may have messed up...)

Inna Fox
Fox is an aging space ninja. Armed with a katana and a variety of evasion tools, he strikes hard and fast... and dumb. Old age has not been kind to him and his current goal is to steal an enemy prototype, sell it and use the credits to finally retire. His missions are often met with catastrophe. One example was a bloodless contract, where he tripped an alarm and was forced to kill everyone on board a transport vessel. Another saw him attempt to capture an enemy officer. This ended badly when he discharged a concussion shotgun at his target, hitting them but also smashing the window to their quarters. The two of them were sucked out into space and while Fox was able to remote pilot his shuttle pod to pick him up, the target promptly suffocated and died.

What I'm trying to say is that this game is intense and hilarious and is definitely worth grabbing. The only you get for the randomly generated mercs is a name and a personal mission, everything else comes from how you play them. The above stories are all things that have happened in game.

Magic Borealis is simply a merc I've not used and a new one will be generated the next time I finish a mission with one of the others. Which, incidentally will be Joss Gardener's mission to rescue Quigley, my first merc who got captured because I didn't know what I was doing

I've seen a bit of this, it does look neat. Made by the creator of Gunpoint, for those who discovered that little gem.

Well... pretty disastrous series of events.

Joss Gardener went after Celestine Quigley and was shot by one of the guards. She was then promptly flushed out a nearby airlock. In an attempt to cause disruption and open up a new entrance for her shuttle, she attempted to steal another nearby ship to make use of it's weapon system. Unfortunately, as soon as her shuttle docked with the ship, it in turn docked at the enemy space station. Joss was taken into custody...

Misty Excelsis carried out a few more stealth missions, avoiding any killing. Finally, she got the intel on where her partner was being held. A ship bound for an enemy space station. Once it got there, her partner would be lost, giving her only a 4 minute window to get in and get her partner out. For this mission, she abandoned her morals and slaughtered everyone in her path.

However... it seems karma is a bitch with a twisted sense of humour. She was a few rooms away from her partner's cell, soaked in blood and sweat, when BOOM. A rival faction opened fire on the vessel. two rooms at the back of the ship were blown away, killing several guards and cutting Misty off from her friend. Quickly realising that she could now dock her shuttle right next to her partner's cell, she started to run back to the airlock when another barrage hit the ship. The holding cell was ground zero. Her partner was killed instantly and the rear half of the ship tore away. Her mission failed, she continued to run for the shuttle, the ship still taking fire all around her. Slicing through two panicked guards she leapt into the airlock and boosted away from the wreckage as fast as she could.

She retired from the mercenary life afterwards. No legendary deeds to add to the hall of fame. No victory. No custom named item for other players on steam to find. She simply faded away.

I'm afraid I don't remember names or anything, but I can recount the key points of one of my tales thus far.
So, my character's mission was to catch a fellow who killed their mother. (I will heretofore refer to my character in the first person.) The ship he was on was guarded entirely by both guards with electronic shields blocking all direct damage, and guards with heavy armour blocking all but explosives and armour-piercing weaponry (which I didn't have). My target was one of the latter. Before setting off, I stocked up on explosives and ways to disrupt or subvert the shields. I also took along a device effectively allowing me to slow time for everyone else. All of these things had limited uses, 3 each.
Fast forward some time, my attempts to get deeper into the ship had gone awry. Guards had seen me and I used most of my devices up to get to the captain of the ship and take him out to prevent the ship from flying to a space station in response to the intruder. I was standing safely at the back end of the ship, but my target had seen me along with about ten other guards, and they were all clustered in one big group comprised of two armoured guards (including the target) and far too many shielded guards. I had about one use of each device left, so taking out a useful number of the shielded guards was impossible. I couldn't use my explosives as I needed the target alive.
Weighing up my options, I decided there was only one way I might be able to pull off this escapade, though it was a long shot: lure the target into a room with a window, and break it, blowing him, me and any of his buddies out into space where I could remote-control the pod I had boarded the ship with to pick us both up. I gathered my courage (or possibly foolhardiness), triggered my time-slowing device, and ran past all the guards, letting them see me without giving them time to shoot at me. As I turned the corner into the room with a window and they lost sight of me, I fired my last grenade into the room to make them run for the sound. I took aim at the window and waited for the right moment...
Alas, my target was near the back of the pack, and the other armoured guard was the first to enter the room. His shotgun in those close quarters was impossible to dodge, and I had no tricks left up my sleeve. I'd already taken too many shots, and being hit again was certain death. So I fired at the window anyway as the shots were about to hit me, determined that if I couldn't finish my mission, I'd at least take some of my foes with me.

Ha! Awesome.

I've had some real crazy missions in the last couple of days, but neglected to take down any major details. Some of these can be summarised as follows:

• Accepted a GHOST clause (do not get seen, attack no-one) mission and nailed it.
• A defector had to rescue a prisoner from an enormous, heavily guarded ship with only two self-charging teleportation devices (A sidewinder and a swapper)
• Assassinated a target on a heavily guarded ship with a 30 second alarm by hijacking another ship and blasting the whole thing to oblivion.

I may chronicle the adventures of the next random merc I choose, detailing everything as a journal.

Also: You may come across some legendary weapons of mine. There are a couple out there.

Also x2: I have a merc with the personal mission to rescue one of Archie's captured mercs. That should be fun.

I've seen some of my folks with a personal mission to rescue Archie's characters, but I've not followed any of them. Depending on how it surfaces them, I don't doubt mine will start to show up. I'm, uh, not great at this videogame, it turns out.

Am I the only one who gets Freelancer vibes from this game?

Hahaha. I have so many captured characters.
The most painful was Babu Manifold... If any of you find him... Please.

Babu was an expert of stealth and infiltration. He'd be in and out without anyone having the faintest idea; never using lethal methods unless absolutely required. A reputation for stealing some of the galaxy's most sought-after tech was building up under him, but he had never been about the fame. Yes, it was a nice reward when stations were named from the Manifold banner, but really Babu just wanted to find the corrupt bastard who tortured his partner.

It all went wrong on a seemingly normal mission. To be fair, it was one of the largest ships Babu had ever infiltrated. Countless rooms and hallways each contained their own set of challenges, but Babu was in his element.

Suddenly, a ship opened fire upon the very ship that was being infiltrated. Babu had been considering his options, eyeing an officer who held the only level 4 keycard on the ship, and therefore the only clean way into the cockpit.

The first volley cut off a hallway back to Babu's pod. The second tore through the hull and vapourised the officer along with his level 4 key. Babu was trapped. A third volley hit Babu's pod and a briefly considered plan to dive into space and pick himself up before he suffocated was quickly abandoned. No, if he was to survive he had to get into the cockpit and outmaneuver the attacking ship.

Fortuitously, at this moment a panicked guard from deeper within the ship ran into the cockpit and provided a Swapper target for Babu - a gadget that allows you to instantaneously swap places with another person. He swapped mere seconds before the section of ship he had previously occupied was blasted into space dust.

Strapping into the pilot's seat, Babu picked a course and gunned the throttle. Nothing.
With a mounting sense of dread, a quick overview of the ship revealed that it was in much worse condition than he'd realised. The engines were gone. Hell, everything was gone. Volley after volley of torpedoes smashed into the ship as room by room it was reduced to pieces.

In a panic (and not knowing what my screenshot button on my laptop was), I managed to capture this final moment before Babu was thrown from the once mighty ship into space.Hurtling through the debris field, Babu prepared to take his final breaths. His biggest regret that he never avenged his partner...

***

But wait!
The pod that he'd thought destroyed was still sending a signal. It was still out there!
Grasping at the remote control, he hurriedly guided it towards his position. There was so little oxygen left in his suit, but he just... might... make it...

Salvation! Strapped into his familiar and trusty pod, remarkably unscathed from the battle, Babu took a moment to reflect on what had just happened. The emotion surfacing? Pure anger. He'd so meticulously approached the mission. It had been going so perfectly. He hadn't put a foot wrong, and yet he almost lost his life.

Extending his sensor range, he quickly located the attacking ship that had so carelessly endangered him. They were heading back to their home station; satisfied at a successful reduction of their enemy's fleet. Babu set course to follow and quickly caught up:All semblence of stealth was gone. Babu wanted revenge. Babu wanted blood. He picked up a longblade and got to work.Before long they were all dead. Babu breathed heavily as he piloted the attacking ship back to his base to be reduced to parts. He had crossed a threshold, but he didn't hate who he had become... What worried him was that he loved it. He loved the blood. He loved their screams.

Every mission from that moment was a bloodbath.With a killcount approaching a hundred, he eventually got careless and failed to notice how close a target ship was to its home station. Captured and tortured, Babu currently resides in a cell plotting his vengeance.

You know, I've seen characters looking to rescue Babu Manifold. I'll keep an eye out for them next time, and see what I can do.

The chronicles of Benetto Chatelier
Prologue

I power down my Breacher and step out into the pod bay. Walking to the elevator, I see a hastily prepared banner covering the station’s original livery. I remember thinking that the station coordinates seemed familiar, but the last time I was out this way it belonged to the Glitchers and was known by a different name.

The elevator comes to a stop and opens into the recreational area. The Glitcher influence is undeniable. Countless holographic displays in various bright hues, an eclectic selection of furniture from across the galaxy and the constant hum of neon and fluorescent lighting. Looking to the bar, I see three of the four stools are already occupied. These people are certainly not Glitchers. Their outfits are dark and muddled, comprised of various grades of leather and steel. Nothing you would see among the four factions controlling the majority of the galaxy I take a seat at the end of the bar and order a coffee, earning a sideways glance from the guy next to me. I avoid direct eye contact.My name is Benetto Chatelier. I am an experienced, freelance engineer and I am in deep shit. Over the years I have worked with each of the factions on a temporary basis, and this is seemingly how I came to be in this situation. After a fairly standard job repairing the primary control terminal aboard a Foundry ship, I returned to my home to find it ransacked and my wife and son missing. The only thing that remained untouched was my datapad, which contained a simple proposition. Acquire the Asante Mark II or never see my family again. I do not know who took my family and I have no idea what the Asante Mark II is, or where I would find it. To that end, I was also provided with a set of coordinates and a name. Sader Fiasco.

I down the last of my coffee and scan the bar. In one corner of the room, an elderly woman sits and idly tabs at a datapad. I stand up, look around one last time, and with a heavy sigh I step over to her table. I slide into the seat opposite her and she looks up.

“Hey, you need something?”

“I… I want... to steal the Asante Mark II,” I stammer awkwardly “Can you help me… steal the Asante Mark II?”

“Probably,” she says “Send me the details. I’ll put some feelers out.”

I’m almost stumbled at how casually she says it. This woman looks old enough to be my grandmother. I notice she is giving me a quizzical look and I quickly fumble for my own datapad, pulling up the data and hand it over. She taps it a couple of times, then hers before handing it back to me. I look at the pad and see she has returned it to the home screen. I wait a moment, but she doesn’t say anything. “What happens next?”

“My rate’s two hundred credits,” she says. “I’ll start now. Come back when you have the money and I’ll start telling you where to look.”

I gulp and get to my feet quickly, wandering over to the other side of the rec room which is relatively empty. I back into a wall and slide down until I am seated on the floor. Two hundred credits? I’m a mechanic! I check my utility belt. All I have on my is my wrench and five credits. I also have a disposable device that can be used to disable electrical equipment from a distance, which the mercenary types refer to as a crash beam. I have no doubt that it would be useful to somebody, but I don’t think I would get more than 6 credits if I sold it to one of the vendors on this station.

Then I spot it. A few feet away from me is a database terminal, with another hastily prepared sign which reads: Jobs. I step over to it and activate the panel. Hoping to find some requests for repairs, installation assistance or salvage operations I am quite taken aback by the list that appears on the screen. Assassinations, rescue missions, hostage taking. This is insane! I almost walk away before I think about my family. Where are they? What is happening to them?

I take another look at the list and one of the jobs catches my eye above all others. Steal the Fiasco-Hardcastle Device. The ship that it is aboard has gone rogue and is manned by a skeleton crew of mostly mechanics. No guns, no backup and no killing. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, before accepting the job.

I know if I did something like what you're endeavoring to do, I'd be captured immediately.

As my pod approaches the Foundry ship, I almost feel pretty confident. One of the benefits of my years of freelance maintenance work aboard the various faction ships means that I have a good idea of how the ships are laid out, and how their crew operate.The Fiasco-Hardcastle device is being transported aboard a relatively small Glitcher ship. I dock my pod and board the ship. As the airlock slides open, the gravity of the situation hits me. In the comfort of my pod, I knew that I was safe. Practically undetectable to these larger ships unless I hovered right outside one of the windows. But now I am in the ship. I am an intruder. The feeling hits me in the gut like a sledgehammer as I notice one of the crew enter the corridor ahead of me. Fortunately, he turns away from the airlock and heads for the control room. I quickly dash down the hall and into a side room, a large window looks out into the deep black abyss of space and set in one wall is a terminal.

The standard practice aboard these ships is that the crew act as both guards and general workers. They tend to gather in one of the larger rooms and talk shop, taking it in turns to run errands and tending to the various checks and tasks that keep the ship operational. I know for a fact that sooner or later, somebody is going to come and check this terminal. If I’m lucky, they’ll be carrying a keycard.

A few minutes later I hear footsteps approaching. My heart leaps into my throat as I press myself into corner, willing my body to merge with the wall. The worker passes by, focused on the task at hand. Hanging around his neck is a level one security card. He approaches the terminal and checks the readings on a console on the wall. I know for a fact that these checks do not take long at all, so I have to act fast. I pull out my wrench and squat down, slowly crossing the room towards him. Close enough to see over his shoulder, I see that he is entering the reading from the wall monitor. He’s nearly done here. I let him punch in the last two digits and submit the entry and then bring my wrench down on his head with a thud.

Slipping the card from around his neck, I then lift his unconscious body up onto my shoulder and, spotting a storage room down a long hallway, carry him over to the door. It detects the keycard and slides open. I dump the body to the ground next to a large orange crate. Curious, I decide to take a peek. Lifting the lid, I see that it is not the device that I was looking for, but rather a useful little tool called a Subverter. This beam allows you to turn enemy shields and turrets against them, should you have the ability to stomach the moral implications of such an act. Hoping it won’t come to that, I pocket the gadget regardless.Leaving the sleeping crewman in the storage area, I make my way to the second storage room which is located in the rear of the ship. Passing the hallway to the control room, I know that the pilot will be of no threat to me while he is connected to the ship’s controls. I spot the third and final crewman working on another terminal and I slip by without any trouble.

Reaching the final door, I slip into the storage room and open the crate. There is is. The Fiasco-Hardcastle Device. I have no idea what it does, and I don’t intend to find out. I can slip out before the other crew member returns to his post. Sprinting through the hallways to the airlock, I enter the pod, dropping the device to the ground with a heavy thud and uncoupling the pod. I quickly turn and run. I did it. I just did that. I breath a sigh of relief, but I still check the monitors multiple times to ensure I’m not being followed.

Finally docking at the Cuba Hub, I return to the recreation room and drop the device into a pod, which then shoots off to… frankly I neither know nor care. I need a drink.

At some point in his bumbling pursuits, Inna Fox (see first post) got captured by Glitchers. Kells Morgana wasn't happy with this. More out of a sense of obligation than any real desire to get him back, she set about gathering the funds to find and rescue him.
Kells thought she was stealthy. She was not. She accepted several Ghost Clause missions where the goal was to not be seen and not harm anyone, and ended up dealing with every crew member nearly every time. Her inability to fulfill clients' requests made gathering funds a slow process, but eventually she was ready.
Her first attempt was cut very short. Shortly after boarding the ship Inna was housed in, the ship came under fire. The very first shot on the ship blew apart the room Kells was standing in, setting off the alarm and sending her off out into space. By the time she'd caught herself in her pod, the ship was nearing a station. She attempted to board through a hole made deeper into the ship, but locked doors and lack of keycards blocked her path. She cut her losses and left, waiting for another opportunity.
After a brief assassination mission wherein she abandoned all semblance of stealth and ran about the ship lobbing grenades and firing concussive shotgun blasts into rooms full of guards, Inna resurfaced. The ship was much like the last, except not likely to get blown apart this time. The guards were all armoured, and some were shielded as well. Kells only had a smattering of covert devices, and next to nothing that could actually take out the guards. Considering her previous attempts at stealth, she decided that maybe the best option would be speed. Using a combination of slipstreams to slow down time and stealth shields to slip past guards unnoticed, she ran through corridor after corridor, stealing keycards off of belts and ignoring all contact with guards as they set off the alarms and tried in vain to follow this blur. Reaching the heart of the ship, she picked up the unconscious Inna and, rather than try and take the gauntlet again with no items, took him to the nearest window and blew it out. As long as they were out of the ship, right?
Her job done, she promptly retired, and promised Inna that if he got his stupid ass captured again, she wouldn't go through all this trouble again. Inna Fox's story continues.

Archie, Babu Manifold will be back before you know it.

I have faith. Earnest Desforge is good people.

Also, many thanks for saving Inna Fox's old dumb ass.

EDIT: Earnest Desforge was able to get Babu Manifold back into the fo-... rescue Babu Manifold, but got himself caught as he took on odd jobs afterwards for the money. Be sure to rescue him if you see him. He's got some good shit, stuff I was looking forward to creating a legacy with.

I've still not seen any of the retirement items yet. But then, I've still only seen a single automatic weapon and a single self-charging item (for sale).
I did get my hands on the timed unique item??? I don't know if it's the same for everyone. (Didn't seem that useful, in all honesty.)

Here's a problem for y'all to solve.Come up with a plan to finish this mission without failing the Ghost Clause. (I came up with something, but failed to execute successfully. EDIT: And now that I'm thinking about it, it probably would have failed it anyway.)

It would be pretty tricky, and would require a lot of instant pausing between steps.

I know that the ghost claus isn't fault until an enemy specifically identifies you as an intruder. They can catch a glimpse of you, but if their exclamation mark fills your out.

So... Move down far enough to open the door below you, pause. Sidewind directly next to the crate, pause. Unpause, E, take item, pause. Sidewind again, into the righthand corridor as far as you can. Run to the room at the end and shoot out the window with the silenced shotgun.

Bingo... you probably failed. I would have.

That's... more straightforward and... plausible than my solution =P My idea was to wait for the lone guard to walk back to the group, then visitor-teleport to the S-shaped corridor. Shoot the explosive section with the shotgun, then when everyone gets sucked out into space, go and steal the item then throw myself out as well. Then pick everyone up with the pod.

It's a flawed idea, looking back on it, for several reasons. One, even if it all worked, they would be on the pod unconscious, which violates the clause. Two, I'm now pretty sure you can't pick up random guards with your pod. Three, as I discovered, they get sucked out really fast and you may not be able to find them out there in time, or at all.

So all I ended up doing was killing them all in the vacuum of space.

I should check this game out. Sounds like an amazing breeding ground for emergent stories.

Gunpoint was brilliant, too.

You should, it is and I'll take your word for it.

In other news, when attempting to take a target alive, be sure to check the room for fuel cells before discharging your shotgun.The word I'm looking for here, is "bollocks!"