“Here we are again, on this rust-bucket of a boat.” thought James, as he looked around at the poorly supplied vessel he found himself on. Hardly any ammunition, a single torpedo, practically defenceless. “It’s a good thing I’ve got Wren to look out for me…”. James, and two other mercenaries were contracted by a ships captain that they’ve worked with in the past, to investigate a distress call that was received from one of the oil rigs still in operation off of the gulf coast. They were en-route. James was accompanied by his usual companions, Bob Lee, a slightly delusional ex navy seal who firmly believed that humanity’s salvation lay in rebuilding commerce after the serpent fall, and Kjell, a Norwegian pacifist who carries a large knife on his belt, and a magnum. James himself wasn’t exactly normal him self. The serpent fall took its toll on him, he hasn’t been quite right since.

A storm was brewing, and night was quickly on its way. James wasn’t worried, after all that he’d seen, what he’d been through, nothing could surprise him any more. The three of us spoke with the captain, worked out a plan. He gave us a flare gun, and a few flares. “We’ll drop you off, and then get a safe distance and circle with the boat. You fire off a flare when all’s clear, and we’ll come back. Fire off two if you’re needin a hasty evac.” the captain said. Bob took the flare gun.

Night’s here, and we’re docking with the oil rig. The storm’s kicked up as well. We’re standing on the boat, at the base of a ladder which takes us up to the deck of the rig. Bob decides to go first, the wind is rocking the boat, the ladder is soaked. Bob takes one step on to the ladder and slips! Luckily Kjell and I were able to grab him and pull him back to safety. “What a piss poor navy seal!” I hear inside my head, I feel compelled to chuckle, “Heh, Wren says you’re a piss poor navy seal!”, Bob gets defensive, “I’m trained to get the job done! Not necessarily get myself there…”, Bob shouted, and climbed up the ladder. Once we were all on deck, we started to cautiously explore. No one’s quite sure what happened here, just a distress call, and then a loss of contact. “Look over there!” Wren blurts at me as he darts over to a set of scaffolding. “I think there’s something up here!”, he says. “Wren says there’s something up there!”, I say to the group as I point. I head over, and have a look. Wren must have better eyes than I, because I don’t see a thing….

We continued searching. I came across a pile of what looked like singed bodies, near the rig’s helipad. “Look over here, I found something”, I called to my fellow mercenaries. We inspected the bodies, they appeared humanoid, but different, mis-shapen maybe, and they seem to have claws. Its difficult to say in the dark, and they’re badly burned. Are these creatures what attacked the rig? Regardless, they’re not what we’ve come for. We need to find survivors, not corpses. Bob, and Kjell continued looking around, while I focused on the area by the helipad. “Hey, I found a door! It seems to be stuck!”, I hear Bob shout from around the the corner of the central structure. I found another similar door on the side by the helipad, “There’s another one over here! It’s jammed too!”. We both set at attempting to open our respective doors. My experience with not being kept out of places I wasn’t supposed to be in allowed me to open my door. The thing had been welded shut! Poorly I might add, Bob had similar luck with his door, by the time I’d gotten mine open, I heard Bob hurriedly letting us know that he’d found what attacked the rig! A battle ensued. Bob wasted a lot of ammo, Kjell took care of business with his colt, and I put some steel to flesh. These things are killed easily enough, fill them with enough holes, and they die like any thing else. Sea creatures as best we can tell, greyish flesh, with a translucent complexion. I could almost see their internal organs.

“We might try looking for the radio room.”, Kjell suggested. Seemed like as good a plan as any, The last anyone had heard from the workers here was over the wireless, stands to reason that they must have had access to the radio room when they were still alive. Anyone with intelligence would hole up near their only means of communication. Down we headed, we were met almost immediately with an obstacle, the hatchway to the lower level seems to be locked. Bob was the first to attempt to clear the path, he successfully dismantled the door, pulling apart the mechanism which held the door closed. Wren started going crazy, he does this from time to time, usually followed immediately by lots of pain, suffering, or other bad things. I was about to mention it when.. “Hold on, what’s this?” Bob said. He’d found a thin metal chain leading from inside the locking mechanism, out the other side of the door. “This could be a trap…” he muttered, and disconnected it. The chain fell slack, wren calmed down. Kjell and Bob started talking about what to do next. Could there be another trap? Who set the trap? Why are they setting traps?! I worked my way around them and pushed the door open… “Wren said it was safe…”, I said calmly. The chain was laying there slack, it lead up to a shotgun which had been hurriedly welded to the bulkhead, the chain was meant to pull the trigger, surprising anything that came through the door. Kjell took a look at the weapon, and removed it from the wall with great skill. It was practically new once he’d recovered it.

We continued down the corridor, and were presented with another locked door. This time I dismantled the door, and this time there were two chains, I disconnected them as well. After opening the door we found that the chains were this time connected to two pistols. Bob decided to scavenge those. This lead us to a series of dark corridors. The power to the rig was out, only the glow of red emergency lights lit the hallways. Visibility was.. difficult, but we found our way, and eventually found a group of survivors. The were shaken, scared. Bob and I stayed in the hall, watching out escape route. Kjell went in to help get the survivors ready to move. Bob and I headed back to the base of the stairs we’d come down. The survivors were very concerned about us disabling their traps and barricades. Bob noticed some movement coming from the room at the top of the stairs. Some more of those things had shown up. Bob wasted some more ammo, and I got to put my favourite battleaxe to use.

We lead the survivors back to the deck, and were greeted with yet another group of fish people. After taking care of them, we called the captain using the flare gun. He returned with the boat, and we headed back to New Galviston.