After some time, he’d lost track, Leon was let out of convalescence. He was not the same as he was when he was put in, nor had he been since he woken up in the first place; his hands would still sometimes shake involuntarily—an after effect of the electrical torture he had endured when he was initially taken prisoner. Pain would randomly shock his body for a moment, and then suddenly pass. His eyes were deepened into their sockets, and cheeks bony and gaunt. He felt as he thought he probably looked; a member of the living dead. After a few more days of observation in a separate cell, which he figured was for checking if he had any sort of communicable diseases, he was released into general population. The prison here, less than a formal penitentiary, was a work camp of some sort. It’s primary purpose was the refinement of various ores mined up by prisoners sent to the mines as a form of execution. Thankfully, although that is only said relatively, Leon had been plac

      Leon roared in agony as the smell of burnt chlorine filled the small dank room, the electrical system for his chair restraint powering down. "I'll ask once more; where are you from, and why have you come to Rygaard?" The uniformed officer droned on for what could have been the hundredth time. "I am Leon Hakim, warrant officer in the Interstell--" he began before being cut off again "And I keep telling you" the officer spoke, before then switching on the chair again, producing the same sickening scent and sounds "I do not believe you are a time traveler." The officer sighed, "You two" he spoke to the guards behind him without turning around, "Soften up our guest here, until he's ready to talk". Wordlessly, they began to beat the restrained man. The world once again begins to fade in and out, with fog and muted colors, and sounds becoming distant in his mind. Leon thinks he hears a woman talking about trauma, but h

      Leon awoke in a fog, pierced only by the bleating alarms from the escape pod. The last he could recall was the escape pod [PAINTED] alert going off, and then the bursts began. In a daze, he managed to ignite the door charge, blowing the sealed hatch off, in addition to his eardrums. He slowly began to drag and lift himself out of the crashed pod when an intense pain shocked through him-- a piece of metal from the console was lodged in his abdomen, and had hit the frame of the blown hatch while he exited.     He tumbled out of the pod, and into the small crater of his entry; at first belly-down, to which he mustered what little strength he had left to flip himself. The pain was nothing he had felt in years. Not since he crashed his first suit when he began his test pilot career, but how long ago was that even? He thought about these things as he stared at the snow falling down on him from the very heavens he just fell from.     He began to fade in and out of awareness, half-dreami

      The pod hissed open, and the cold, dry gas poured out from the capsule into the dark corridor. A lone figure gracelessly fell out onto the floor; dark skin in a pale jumpsuit. He shakily came to his feet, a drowsy fear consumed his expression. When he was put into suspension, it was aboard a state-of-the-art facility, buzzing with activity and experts, not a stripped bare... whatever this was. The dark metal frame frame exposed like bones; piping and electrical running to and from like blood vessels. It was like he had been swallowed whole by some metal monstrosity while he slumbered.     He looked out a nearby porthole, attempting to get some idea of where he had ended up. Outside, he saw a pale world, probably rather cold; seas of white, broken by only mottled greens, grays, and blacks, and a swath of blue-- a small ocean. He did not recognize the planet, and the light refracting off the atmosphere was too bright to allow viewing most of the stars to use as reference. He turned

    Mass Effect was an sci-fi action RPG developed in by BioWare and published by Microsoft Game Studios on the Xbox 360, and EA on the PC and PlayStation 3. It's sequel, Mass Effect 2, was released in 2010, and was also developed by BioWare, and published by EA for the PC and Xbox 360, and later ported to the PlayStation 3 in 2011.      When I first played Mass Effect 1, first released on November 20th, 2007, it was a few years past that. The game had come out, received some good attention, but it had just passed me by. It was not until '08 or '09 that I finally could be bothered to pick it up. But when I did, it quickly become my biggest time sink; cruising the Milky Way in the SR1 Normandy with friends and crew alike filled the bulk of my days, such a luxury was for a fourteen-year-old dropout. But those days are ones I look back fondly on, driving around in the Mako, clunky and awkward as it was, or fighting my way through the worlds that were plot critical; saving or d

     With nowhere else to go, Harah begun a cautious walk down the emergency-lit corridor from Port-3. The Roux was gone, and so the only way off Folban Station was to find either another ship, or smaller launch. After the recent events, it was clear that either this station was experiencing the worst ever recorded incident of system control error, or something was very intent on killing him. He had no desire to find out which one.     The sound of his steps echoed dully, then the PA system cracked on: "...twelve-million dead in the Asovel, and the resignation of Frontier Marshall Reidt to his Majesty for the disgraceful defeat at the hands of the genocidal rebels."      "We weren't the only ones" Harah growled back in his mind, recalling what he had seen planet side on Asovel; aftermaths of civilian executions by Imperial forces as retribution for aiding the "rebels". That was one the images that kept him fighting. It was one of the reasons he did w

      " Folban Station , MPV Roux , requesting permission to land" Harah droned once again to no reply. He had already tried the radio a number of times to no effect. He wasn't sure what would be worse-- continuing to get nothing back, or having to explain why he was coming back in their patrol craft. It is not like he had much choice; when the Roux "detained" him, they only had enough fuel for the return trip which had already been punched into the navigation. Where else could he have gone? He looked out the porthole in the cockpit, and saw that one of the docking stations, Port-3, was open.      "It's not like anyone is telling me no" he justified to himself, and slowly brought in the Roux . Besides, he wanted to see what was going on-- stations don't typically go silent for no reason, and he was just unwise enough to be curious.     As the Roux drifted in, he soon regretted his choice; the landing lights on the ship revealed a scene of mass

  “ I’m going to hang them by their tool s , and beat them with sticks! ” Harah roared in the cramped compartment. The fuel gauge read empty, which was why his small freighter dropped out of phase so violently. So much so, that Harah had been ejected from his cot, hitting his head against the bulkhead. He could still feel his skull ringing. Staring at the gauge, he theorized that the shady roustabouts at Port Lancel siphoned fuel-- not a surprising act in more remote areas that don’t produce much of their own. They would fill your reserves with inert liquid with the same density, leaving just enough actual go-juice in the line to get you off and running into phase, and leave you stranded far enough away to where you couldn’t sub-light back. Harah stood there in his impotent anger, alone, with just the subtle hum of shipboard electrical to keep him company. Thankfully, his arcanite generator would power that indefinitely as far as he knew. At least, longer than what probably remai