Thawn commits to killing the Kroll
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Thawn and his team assess the distance and size of the Kroll, determining it is nearly a mile across with a central mass a quarter of a mile in diameter.
Fenner enters and inquires about the status, learning that the Kroll still hasn't moved and that the pump chamber is clear.
Thawn decides to prioritize killing the Kroll and instructs Fenner to fix a pipeline while planning to use 35 depth charges in a cluster to kill the creature.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Anxious calculation masking fear of catastrophic miscalculation
Fenner re-enters the control centre and immediately grasps the grim reality of Kroll’s stillness. He challenges delivery logistics for the charges, proposing a remote-controlled tank delivery system over missile strikes. His tone alternates between anxious critique and pragmatic proposal, exposing the tension between Thawn’s urgency and his own risk assessment.
- • Achieve a viable delivery mechanism for the depth charges
- • Prevent the plan from spiraling into mutual annihilation
- • Safety and precision must guide deployment even in desperation
- • Thawn’s obsession with speed risks sacrificing personnel and infrastructure
Frustrated resolve masking underlying desperation to maintain control at all costs
Thawn commands the team with escalating urgency, pivoting from containment to extermination of Kroll after confirming its immobility. He pushes for violent solutions, dismissing evacuation or external aid, and insists on finding an immediate deployment method for the thirty-five depth charges.
- • Ensure Kroll’s immediate destruction regardless of risk to the team
- • Rapidly deploy a functional attack strategy using available resources
- • Indigenous life and colonial projects are expendable to achieve operational continuity
- • Immediate, decisive action is preferable to cautious planning when facing existential threats
Focused detachment masking creeping dread at the storm’s acceleration
Dugeen provides technical measurements of Kroll’s scale and offers situational updates, including data on the mega-head storm. He contributes technical feasibility insights to the depth-charge plan but surfaces practical liabilities, such as pressure detonators triggering premature detonation. His measured delivery belies the urgency pressing all three men.
- • Ensure the team considers environmental and structural constraints during planning
- • Provide accurate data to inform a survivable tactical response
- • Objective measurement is the only reliable guide in crisis
- • Kroll’s meteorological environment amplifies existential danger
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Thirty-five military-grade depth charges are selected as the primary destructive payload, their cylindrical casings bearing concentrated explosives repurposed from naval armaments. Thawn designates this number as sufficient to neutralize Kroll, yet the team immediately confronts the delivery problem—how to position such an explosive array precisely over the creature’s massive, segmented mass.
The Control Centre Radar serves as the team’s primary sensory tool for assessing Kroll’s size and movement—or lack thereof. Dugeen manipulates its analog dials, deriving Kroll’s mile-wide scale and thirty-tentacled morphology from flickering green contours. The radar’s limitations force the team away from precision detection and toward improvisation.
The massive Primary Life-Support Pipeline, already damaged and under repair, becomes part of the integrated response plan. Fenner orders its repair be expedited, recognizing that maintaining critical infrastructure is secondary to destroying Kroll. The pipeline’s reinforced gates are scrutinized for stability as the team navigates competing survival priorities.
A heavy industrial tank is hastily re-engineered as a mobile explosives carrier, its cylindrical hull repurposed to carry the depth charges to Kroll’s location. Fenner proposes fixing a small remote charge to the tank’s underside and firing it via remote control to achieve pinpoint targeting. This improvisation transforms the tank into a floating bomb symbolizing human desperation against a titanic foe.
The Planetary Storm Conductors are activated in response to the rapidly intensifying mega-head storm outside. Thrown into overdrive by panicked operators, the conductors begin to glow teal as they attempt to dissipate electrostatic energy. Their overloaded systems flicker and strain, underscoring the compounding nature of the dual crisis—Kroll and the storm.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The cramped, flickering control centre becomes the nucleus of desperate decision-making as the team scrambles to respond to an existential threat. Within its swaying deck and snarling cables, the air thickens with the scent of ozone and overheated wiring, while the dim blue radar glow casts long shadows over workstations bolted to the metal floor.
The settlement exit position lies beyond the refinery’s last barricade, where the canyon wall compresses space into a killing corridor. Dominated by the colossal, motionless Kroll, the terrain is reduced to a narrow chokepoint of flickering floodlight and torn meshes, all dwarfed by the creature’s segmented bulk blotting out the storm-wracked sky.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Thawn's decision to kill the creature after Harg's death (beat_edd1fe833e75c446) directly leads to his later instruction to Fenner to use 35 depth charges in a cluster to kill Kroll (beat_4f6e7399cd666abf). The beast's initial attack necessitates a technological solution, which Thawn pursues with increasing desperation."
Fenner halts station to combat beast"Thawn's decision to kill the creature after Harg's death (beat_edd1fe833e75c446) directly leads to his later instruction to Fenner to use 35 depth charges in a cluster to kill Kroll (beat_4f6e7399cd666abf). The beast's initial attack necessitates a technological solution, which Thawn pursues with increasing desperation."
Thawn defies orders to hunt the beast"Thawn's pragmatic adjustment to using a secondary pump (secondary line and half-capacity; beat_e251df46158a8aa2) mirrors his later willingness to consider alternative destructive methods (depth charge tank packing; beat_5f1375aaa33accc1). Both actions reflect Thawn's utilitarian approach to problem-solving, prioritizing project continuity over ethical or safety concerns."
Fenner halts station to combat beast"Thawn's pragmatic adjustment to using a secondary pump (secondary line and half-capacity; beat_e251df46158a8aa2) mirrors his later willingness to consider alternative destructive methods (depth charge tank packing; beat_5f1375aaa33accc1). Both actions reflect Thawn's utilitarian approach to problem-solving, prioritizing project continuity over ethical or safety concerns."
Thawn defies orders to hunt the beast"The preparation for the mega-head storm in the Control Centre (beat_2ba85940bd9968b0) directly precedes the Doctor's use of the storm's vibrations to shatter the temple window (beat_ff7aa7f6d3b4db69). The storm's setup enables the Doctor's escape by creating a circumstantial opportunity."
Doctor shatters temple glass with primal screamThemes This Exemplifies
Thematic resonance and meaning