Chapter 17: They're coming out of the goddamn floors.
5th of Septober 5509 - 10th of Decembrary 5510.
There are those moments when you just instantly realise you've fucked up.
So, I reformed our ideoligion and added another relic, which we've been hunting down clues for. The last quest is to investigate this ancient complex, where we've been sent sent by shuttle to hack some terminals. We've done plenty of these and they've mostly been a cakewalk. I did wonder why they asked for a whole 11 colonists, but they've asked for overkill before. I accidentally put little Satsuki on the shuttle, but no biggie, she can just wait there.
We walk into a side room and the ground starts cracking and rumbling as an insectoid infestation starts. Usually not a problem, two or three hives, maybe a dozen bugs. Well, as they start bursting through the floors it's definitely a problem. There's a *lot* of bugs. Chakotay and Barclay are immediately swarmed, and the others have to do what they can to block the doors as they start pouring in from the side rooms.
Shit! I brought Skulk because she's our best hacker, but she's not much of a fighter and I left her close to the entrance to keep her safe. A megaspider and some spelopedes snuck around and went for her, and knocked her down before I even noticed. I can't get anyone else to her now, but she's only downed and we have 11 hours before she bleeds out. It should be fine.
What? No! We had 11 hours! What the hell?
![](https://i.imgur.com/tOfzxRA.jpeg)
No time for that. The main team are hanging on, but there are even hives spawning outdoors and insects streaming in from outside.
When they finally stop coming we're surrounded by the corpses of 41 megaspiders, 50 spelopedes and 66 megascarabs. And we've suffered our first colonist death. I should have sent everyone back on the shuttle and abandoned this mission right here, but sunk costs...
Oh of course there are mechanoids.
Of course there are centipedes with inferno cannons! We've been using choke point tactics so much, but now we're the ones unable to get at their dangerous ranged units.
Oh sweet mother of f...
...uck!
Okay, they're still alive. I'm so glad I gave everyone the fire resistant gene and made them devilstrand underpants, or they'd all be incapacitated from being on fire and about to be very dead right now.
They're not immune to fire and heat damage though, and this is an enclosed space.
It's already an oven and they're getting heatstroked.
I get Wesley to break down the walls to the outside. Opening the doors won't drop the temperature fast enough - it has to be a breach. We're almost through the last of them.
They're still alive. Night is falling and they're all hurt, exhausted, hungry and in a foul mood. I set down a few sleeping spots so Troi and Pansy can patch them (and each other) up, and I dump the food and drugs we brought on the floor so they can ease the hunger and misery. But I can't let them rest. The colony is almost completely undefended and Satsuki is still waiting alone in the shuttle. We have to move.
The rest of the complex is empty, and everyone fans out to hack the terminals and open containers.
As the last hack completes another infestation triggers down by the mech ambush, but it's just one hive and a few bugs.
Outside though, a raid of 85 impids is coming for us.
After what we've been through today some tribals seem like the least of our troubles, even if they outnumber us 8:1. Troi has recharged enough to throw out a few berserk pulses, and while they're busy puking fire at each other the team lays waste to them from range.
Only a handful of them make it to Worf and Chakotay before they break ranks and flee. Taking out the last few insectoids is almost an afterthought, and we can finally get in the shuttle and leave this place.
We've located our last relic and we got some good loot from the complex, but it wasn't worth the cost.
Wyll buries Skulk in one of the sarcophagi in our ritual room. We never converted her to our ideoligion so we can't hold a proper "To absent friends" burial for her, but she gets a place of honour and we'll remember her fondly. I suppose I should be relieved it was Skulk. She came to us unbidden and she was a creepy weirdo, but she also saved us and got us back on track with her amazing research skills, and I was starting to warm to her mad ramblings.
We almost made it ten years without a colonist death and I was starting to entertain the idea that maybe I could get everyone through to the end.
It also cost us materially. Everyone's gear got absolutely shredded - Chakotay's power armour literally fell apart just as we came back home. You can't repair equipment in Rimworld, so we have to make new kit for everyone, and cataphract armour is hideously expensive.
A few days later Satsuki turns 13 and has her last growth moment. She's probably the most ridiculous kid we've raised yet, with the possible exception of Wyll. She's getting double passions in both shooting and melee. Her traits are "tough", which I've already gone on about, "sanguine" giving a permanent +12 mood offset, and "nimble" which gives her +15% dodge chance in melee.
Once I get her some xenogenes, a suit of power armour and train her skills up she'll be a second Chakotay. But also good with guns. I'm getting her a few psy-powers too, because why not?
It's time to call in the next mech boss - the war queen.
Again, the escort is pitiful. I think I figured out why, though.
The chips they drop when they die are used to research more advanced mech tech and build some gear and other mechanoids. If you want to unluck everything you have to summon them multiple times, and each time they get more powerful. So, instead of scaling to your colony progress like everything else, these scale to your mechanitor's progress, and I've been leaving it until end game.
Just a moment later, as if to prove my theory, the game sends a random mech assault at us...
Yeah, two war queens, thirteen centipedes and a handful of other fodder. That's more like the raids I expect at this point in the game.
And we take out the third boss, the apocriton, which unlocks the last of the mech tech.
I'm not building a mechanoid army, but I do want to figure out how it works. All mechs need a "subcore" as a brain. The little cleaners and haulers just need a small one you can craft with regular components. The bigger combat mechs require a "high subcore", for which you have to scoop out someone's brain in this ripscanner.
We're obviously using prisoners for this.
You can even make your own war queens and diaboli, though I'm not sure how useful they'd actually be.
I ended up making two of these legionaries, mid-sized mechs that provide a shield. The shields are very weak and they can't do much damage, but I figure they might be a bit useful for point defence and soaking a few hits.
I was going to test them against this mech raid, but then our "allies" from the Empire turned up to "help" us. Their idea of "helping" is apparently to all run into the killbox maze and block the exit for Labrador retriever 65, so now the mechs have set our dog on fire and he's definitely going to die.
![:(](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/sad.png)
Yeah, have fun charging bravely at flame thrower mechs in single file through a tight corridor. Pricks.
Half of them decide to go outside and get annihilated by centipedes instead.
We dig a grave for Labrador retreiver 65 and bury him by the tree grove behind the throne room.
Here's the kryptonite to high level psykers. Negative effects get multiplied by their psychic sensitivity, and Wyll's is at almost 500% now.
-157 mood. Even with all the positive moodlets we have stacked she'll go mad and start chaining major mental breaks within an hour. I have her strip off all her eltex caster gear, put on a tinfoil hat (it reduces sensitivity by 90%) and tell her to raid the entire drugs cabinet. Even then she's just barely out of major break risk. She won't be much use, but it's that or have her anaesthetised for several days. Or take off her legs and let her suffer I suppose, but we're definitely not doing that.
We haven't seen these assholes for years. Last time they almost killed Worf and could have wiped us all out. Want to abduct someone, do they? Sorry Neelix, but we're going to kill your sister today.
That's a nice little ritual circle you have there. Looks to be about the radius of a doomsday rocket explosion. Let's send InvisiWyll out to test that hypothesis.
Slightly too large to get all of them, but it certainly stopped their ritual. I get Troi and Scotty to daisy-chain invisibilities so Wyll can spend all her psyfocus on driving them mad.
Refuse all you like, but you're going right back to killing your friends.
Little Wesley Crusher only just turned 17 and already charmed his way into Pansy's heart. Far better pickup lines than Chekov.
It's nice to be able to end on a sweet note, and I hope this one lasts.