Run Synopsis
The Major has his team investigating the other caves up and down this mountain, to establish security. And to maintain cover: his geologist is doing what would normally be done in an exploration job. Meanwhile, our team heads into the main cave. Gear is carried on a "mule" [Tensor's floating disk] which follows the "carrot," a control gadget that Lyle carries.
Steady downward trek. Opens into large cave. Bipedal creature rises near right hand wall of the room and amid reflective noise says, essentially, "Earthlings, go home" which Chantal hears in Japanese, Teresa in English, Boris in Russian, etc.. Robert, on point and partway into the room (heading left) turns towards the creature just in time to see some sort of flash in another opening. Then the ceiling seems to start collapsing. The rest of the party pulls back into the passageway to escape the falling rocks. When rocks cease dropping, visibility continues to be limited by the amount of dust suspended in lo-grav.
Robert, in fact, was sheltered by a large rock and proceeds towards the opening he'd seen a glint in, albeit hampered by the low visibility. Eventually determining that further rock-falls were not in the offing and hypothesizing that "The Martian" was a projection of some kind (and the speech a multi-lingual recording), Lyle follows Robert and the Party eventually follows the mule.
Robert and Lyle do preliminary exploration: the passage ends in another room. A man-built rock fall hides a closed entrance but no means of easily levering it is in evidence. The room has more algae/mold growing than is normal. Meanwhile (a) we collect some rocks and use the hatbox spectro-analyzer to detect explosives, (b) Teresa finds a sliver of glass that we conclude was part of a flash bulb. (Hypothesis: original room's rock-fall was generated by placed explosives triggered by some light/photo sensor.) After exploring beyond the room for a few hours, the Party decides to consider this a dead end, it being nigh impossible to move crates of stores through this way. We returned to the vehicles top-side for the night.
The geologist with the Major's team reports that the liquefying sands of the Martian basin respond in somewise to tidal pull (albeit Deimos and Phobos are a bit small to generate the sort of pull the Luna does). And that at some subterranean level, there is an anomaly lying at the base of this mountain chain.
Traveling with the Martian military the next day, further exploration of the main rock-fall room finds another passage which, after we use an anti-sensor tarp to get past another detector, eventually opens into a broken dome: one of the Lost cities of Mars! Apparently the subterranean tidal pull has "beached it." This is the point at which it has cracked against the mountain and an entrance has been built here. We use mirrors to bypass sensors at the entrance and the Major sets up his first line for our invasion force in a nearby building.
The Major seems nonplussed the "Miss Ishida's Lost Cities of Mars" expedition has actually found one. He asks, "Do you by any chance have maps?" Chantal pulls out the set of maps she purchased at the antique bookstore and, with a little searching, the identity of the city and their current site is established.
It is clear from the light reflecting in the dome that this is, as well, the secret base that we are searching for. Although the area we are in (and most of the perimeter) is dark and shows the destruction of 40 years ago, there is a central area, around some of the former government buildings, that is lit. Near the edge of the lit area is the former military base.
Time to reconnoiter.
EPs: 1+1.
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