I do hate bureaucracy and it would be no shock if dealing with Terrormorph would bring up a whole lot of it. Even worse everything we needed to truly understand what was going on was hidden behind layers of it. The government's secrets were about to start coming out.
I headed back to New Atlantis with quite a case I had to plead. Not only had I to tell them that there were no communication repairs required but instead there was a Terrormorph attack. On top of that, I ran into someone I'd learned was discharged from services.
What I was not expecting was how easy it was going to be. I simply had to state the name Hadrian and anything I said after that was accepted as fact. If only the rest of it was that easy.
To better understand the sample, I gathered from the Terrormorph I needed Dr. Percival’s help who is a scientist of sorts. The issue is he's not exactly an easy person to find. It also turns out he owed some debts as well. Which they expected me to cover.
Now when it comes to spending credits, I'm cheap enough of a person to walk uphill both ways to avoid doing so if needed. While upfront the easy way would have been to just pay off the debt the route, I ended up going seemed like one I would have needed to have gone anyway. So I'm glad I did otherwise I would have wasted a bunch of credits for nothing.
I ended up asking around for Dr. Percival on Mars and it turns out some miners were hiding him away. They, however, wanted the debt settled before they would give up his whereabouts. Thankfully he was already conducting a lot of research so that if it could be proven correct the discovery would more than cover his debts.
The issue was they needed a sample from some rocks in a closed-down mine that was also on Mars. It has since been taken over by space pirates who were using a building inside that we later would need anyway.
I was more than thrilled once I got to the topside of the mine to find it just covered in pirates. It had been too long since I'd gone on a killing spree and the amount of energy ammo, I was starting to stockpile for my sniper rifle was starting to twitch my trigger finger and not in a good way.
While clearing out the building so I could go down into the mine itself I discovered a high-level named pirate. He ended up dropping a legendary space helmet. It was quite a massive upgrade from reduced damage from alien enemies to lots of resistance. I was also an idiot and accidentally sold it a few days later when trying to quickly clear out my inventory. The number of credits the vendor wanted back for it made it, not even a thought in my mind to get it back.
At least I got some quick credits out of the day. I’m somewhat shocked the helmet was not worth so much that it was more than the vendor would have had. That would have at least promoted a pop-up asking me if I was sure I wanted to sell for less than the item was worth. It was a hard lesson to learn and since then I've been a bit slower to sell off items to any vendor, never wanting to repeat this mistake.
I’m rather glad I enjoy using ranged weapons in this game. There were lots of sniping opportunities and just long-ranged combat in general. Sure, once in a while I'd turn around a corner and need to switch quickly to my pistol. For the most part inside this place, there were lots of open wide areas across rooms that had been massive mining pits.
I’m just glad I had so much ammo lying around for this one. I recall during the early days needing to carry every type of gun for all the different ammo types I could find. As I would run out of ammo for one, I'd switch to the next gun and just keep going down the line. Since I now had stashes of items to sell dropped at different vendors that sold ammo that was no longer a thing I need to worry about.
Along the way clearing out the different rooms I even found an epic heavy weapon. This gun was crazy I was more or less shooting anything with it. Those 40 MM XPL rounds are massive. I might even take this gun back to one of my outposts and try crafting some mods for it at some point.
After what felt like forever, I managed to secure the sample needed to prove his research for a new product would in fact work. While I'm not thrilled with trading something to the greedy mining company that controls Mars. At least in exchange for the proof and the research they forgave the debt and will be reopening parts of that mine in the future since they now need to mine the ore in it.
As far as what the research was for. It was using Aqueous Hematite as a stimulation that allowed miners to be a lot better at their jobs. Who knows what kind of abuse and addiction such a thing could lead to? All I do know is I tend to keep those kinds of stimulates and I've looted many interesting different kinds unused in my inventory and sell them when I can.
After that, I was informed of where I could find Dr. Percival’s. He was held up in a hidden laboratory that was left unfound by the pirates in the very mine I had to clear out anyway. This lab had the proper equipment to analyze the sample I had. It turns out it would not be the lab's first time looking at Terrormorph samples.
Dr. Percival was able to confirm everyone's worst fear. The Terrormorph I had killed was not just any old Terrormorph. It had traits leading back to a place called Londinion. Which as it turns out was a planet that became overrun by Terrormorph and extreme measures had to be taken to deal with it.
With that new information at hand, it was taken along with Dr. Percival to our meeting locations. It turns out Percival and Hadrian not only know each other they have even worked with each other in the past. The meeting itself was rather funny, taking place in what I could only describe as a broom closet in the back of a bar.
Final Thoughts
After that, it was time yet again to head back to New Atlantis. As if I had not done enough already. Next, I would need to convince not only the cabinet that this is all going on. Along with the fact that these people want access to their old research which is locked away and can only be accessed if the three major factions all agree to permitting it.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Starfield.
Disclosure: Starfield received for free through AMD rewards from the graphics card I purchased.
