Well, alright, folks, here's the lowdown.
You should be dead right now.
But Wes and I had a Talk, and the trousers of time, well, we've decided to send you all down the wrong pants-leg. Because the plot must go on, and we're merciful.
Me, personally, I think that you deserve to know exactly what happened, here. In the CORRECT pants-leg, the pants-leg that makes sense, and the pants-leg that would have happened if this situation had occured in real life - as it very well did (Chyrnobel, for instance) - there's no doubt in my mind right now that the Eucharis should have just gone up in a nice little mushroom cloud of antimatter-matter contact, the likes of which probably havn't been cateloged on any discernable modern scale.
I am a DM. I set up challenges for the players to overcome, because I view this as a game - which you, as the players, should be winning. I set up a scenario, and then I let you go at it, because that's what is supposed to happen. The scenario was challenging, but the scenario was overcomable.
The only actual enemy was yourselves. Paranoia. It SPANKED you.
The Mishhu? Well, you were supposed to lose a couple of ships running the damn gauntlet getting in here, but I got told, politely, that you could all spin on a dime and shoot out a bunch of missiles in flight in less than a trillisecond. Ok, fine. I ran with it. I created some nice persistant enemies that chased you around, but still didn't do much damage. Then you pulled that holographic move, and I was like, OK, sounds good to me. No reason to believe you're in this here forest of ships anymore, goodbye.
And they sped off into the distance. Because they weren't even supposed to be there in the beginning, anyway.
The bugs? They don't do anything. They're a great, grand farce. They weren't even supposed to be on -your ship-, but a series of unfortunate events happened. You sat around unshielded. A lot of ships were being blown apart - ships with these bugs on them. Your shuttle bay door got stuck open. Suddenly, you had a small handful of bugs crawling into the ship from the shuttlebay, and reproducing like... well, Chirpbugs. Chirp chirp.
Still, this was scary, but it wasn't a HUGE PROBLEM - they eat silicon, but you were all given multiple, blatently obvious indications that they weren't actually doing it at the moment. Instead of finding out why, the order was given to send an EMP surge through the entire system. Junko fought against it. Really hard. Good on you, Sean. I'm sorry it turned out like that.
I think he's the only one that read the writing on the wall, and was in a position to do anything about it. I was rooting for you really really hard. ;-;
The Antimatter Reactors were idling. The containment array was held on emergency power - capacitors. Capacitors, I'm sorry, are extremely succeptable to power surges. But merrily, we have the captain's word that it's all right and all good.
Right?
Wrong. I like that the captain knows about the systems, and I can definately buy into the idea that the Antimatter system is more or less self-contained. The problem was the emergency power. And the fact that someone - Junko - noticed that there would be a problem with overloading the system (even if Junko didn't notice the antimatter reactors), and was repeatedly, blatently ignored.
There's a PAGE AND A HALF of it.
Seeing someone GET IT, and then watching everyone else ignore them... especially on something that you had to, hint hint, have a captain's authorization for, bypass so many safety measures for, destabalize everything for...
It just wasn't thought out. It just wasn't responsible. I gave too many red flags, more help than I've ever given ANY of my players before, and they were repeatedly tossed aside like they were just so much prattling. I can't in good conscience justify letting /anyone/ live. And that makes me very, very sad. I tried to throw the breaks. I really, really tried.
Now here's what should have happened, just in case anyone is curious.
1) Right now, the Eucharis - and several ships around it - should be radioactive dust. And as if this weren't enough, I can go on;
2) The EMP signature that you just sent off, unshielded, uncloaked, with all of your holographic systems having just been shot with too much power, should have sent off a huge "FUCK ME" beacon to anything with a sensor array that's been made in the last thirty years,
As I said, I set up a challenge. I gave you a rusty old door, with a crappy and easily pickable lock that you could probably force. Now, I knew you had a rogue along with you who knew how to pick locks, but you all had some dynamite on you and were in a hurry, since you'd just ducked away from the maze's resident minotaur and kind of wanted to get through the door quickly.
So you took the dynamite and strapped it to the door. While I said, well, this is a six hundred year old castle - the walls are kind of crumbly. I bet they're fragile.
The rogue said, "Hey, um, the walls look kind of..."
But you'd already lit the fuse, and put your fingers in your ears. The door explodes. The castle crumbles. The whole party dies.
Or at least, the whole party should have.
The point is; I failed. You failed. And it feels like shit.
I commend the players. You're excellent writers. I apologize especially to Nashoba, and Scribbles, for creating a somewhat dull away team. Really, the thing you were supposed to discover were the bugs, and the secret behind them. I tried to spice it up there near the end and put some focus on it, hoping that Engineering would stall Hanako, but it didn't work out that way.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I resign. I sincerely apologize for any inconveniance I may have caused Wes, or any of the players here, who are staffing the crew.
Hamada will, of course, stay. But I give up attempting to DM with my teeth pulled.
This is the end of the plot. You were either supposed to figure it out, or die trying, and you died. Or at least, should have died. But since that has been sidestepped, I can come up with nothing else for you to overcome. I am through.
This is the end of the adventure.
Wes, you'll be getting my Chirpbug writeup here soon.
The rest of you?
Final Destination is only a movie, after all.
