Director's note
Chieftess is tall, lusciously muscular, and with spiky long hair
Byron remains beside the stabilized bypass, one gloved hand gripping the improvised conduit brace as the eastern projector cools under steady rain. Mara Venn approaches with her scarred tablet, while settlement technicians stay at the barricade to monitor the furnace and shield.
Mara Venn
The evidence is secured, Blackwell. The ministry file now has enough to establish a deliberate protocol breach.
A tall, lusciously muscular woman emerges from the settlement perimeter. Chief Taina Aru, an Amazonian chieftess, a young adult, wears layered field armor and copper utility bands; her long, spiky hair frames a watchful face.
Chief Taina Aru
Your failure of their advance revealed something beneath this zone. A concealed corporate relay is buried below the old industrial conduits.
Chief Taina Aru
My guides know the access routes. Our technicians can interface with the relay before its network purges the tycoon’s records.
Byron
The bypass housing is warm, but its pressure readings remain stable.
Mara Venn
If the relay still holds command traffic, it could connect the assault to the ministry violations. Taina, show us where the descent begins.
✓ Quest Accepted
Extract the corporate relay's command traffic
“"That's right. I'll be sure to help, Chieftess. Lead the way, and I'll follow." Byron calmly expressed.”
SUCCESS (Good Diplomacy, rolled +3)
Byron
That’s right. I’ll be sure to help, Chieftess. Lead the way, and I’ll follow.
Chief Taina Aru
Then stay close. The descent begins beneath the old cooling galleries, where corporate maps show nothing.
Chief Taina Aru turns toward the settlement, tall and lusciously muscular beneath layered field armor. Her long, spiky hair shifts as she strides through rain-darkened machinery.
Byron follows with Mara and two settlement technicians, a young woman with tightly braided black hair and a compact build, and a middle-aged man with broad shoulders, a shaved head, and a patched gray work coat. Taina guides them past collapsed conduits to a sealed service slab concealed beneath woven fiber and rusted plating.
Chief Taina Aru
The access control still recognizes maintenance credentials. The relay was hidden, not abandoned.
Taina presses a copper-banded wrist against the slab. Its dormant surface wakes, verifies her authorization, and retracts into the floor, exposing a lit metal stairwell.
Mara Venn
Excellent. If that interface is live, we may retrieve the command archive before the purge cycle completes.