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[IronyOwl]

((As for Faith... you mean besides her sitting in a mecha-suit previously occupied by a guy dead of the "plague"? The whole outside of her suit would be covered in this dust. Hell, Faith may have infected him, rather than the other way around.))

((But he's not infected (or doesn't look like it, at least), that's the problem. If she was going to get some dust from her suit to her skin, why wouldn't any at all have ended up on or in Sambo? She even treated him a second time and still no apparent results.

Mind you, we did find that the incubation and progression times vary wildly, so he could be infected but not showing it, but then that shifts the question to why incubation times would vary so heavily.))

[Parisbre56]

((Does nobody read my theories? It makes no difference whether or not there is air pressure. The macromist tunnels existed in the void. The morgue macromist existed in the atmosphere.

Facts: The morgue door was hot and vibrating. Morgue rooms are usually cold. When the morgue door was made cold the mist ate through it. When Milno turned his suit temperature up, he started feeling better. The infected miners in the hangar were wearing suits, so their bodies remained warm and pressurized after their death, unlike their victims who were flash frozen.

Theory: The macromist is like a computer. It produces heat when it operates. If the heat gets too much the mist will hibernate while it waits for the heat to dissipate. The mist will also begin vibrating anti-organic vibrations when hot or threatened. If the heat is extreme the bonds between the mist particles will begin to break down and then the mist particles will be destroyed. If however you cool down a computer you can overclock it, tremendously increasing its speed. Thus when the mist is cool, it can reproduce at an astonishing rate.

And what happens when an HMRC member temporarily kicks the bucket? They are put in a stasis chamber, essentially a supercool fridge. And when did the first HMRC member kicked the bucket? At the end of the exploration of level 3 courtesy to a monorazor to the gut. And when did we lose contact with command? During the exploration of level 4. And why am I talking in question and answer form? I don't know, I must be going crazy.

The only thing this theory doesn't explain is why a mist that hates heat would take up residence in a human body and whys some people get infected while others don't. Perhaps it needs slaves or perhaps it needs bodies to eat in order to reproduce. Or maybe it's a bioweapon, meant to exterminate all life on a planet. We'll know when the scientists analyze it back on ship.

Oh, and the guy who lost his leg had his MKII immediately ampute it, so the infection may have not had a chance to move in. And all people have slightly different internal body temperatures or immune response so that may explain the differences in incubation time. Or, since the mist is psychic, it may have something to do with the way each person thinks.))

"Uh, Apone, I want you to lay down a suppressing fire with the incinerators and fall back by squads to the APC."

Fire my jury rigged flamethrower, first at the hole and then at the mist through the hole, with the intent of making a safe area around the hole. If the flamethrower is empty, refill it from the barrel of booze that should be somewhere on the elevator.

[Sean Mirrsen]

((Wait, there was macromist in the morgue? I thought that's where you first saw the mist itself, and only encountered the static "plant" macromist down in the mining tunnels?

As for why it operates how it does - it obviously needs oxygen and warmth to function for some reason, but only to a point. It seems to require oxidation to work - perhaps of metal, like it takes over the lungs and the oxygen exchange system, using the hemoglobin in some way? And heat catalyses oxidation. But as any machine its performance is degraded when heated up, because the conductivity is lowered, and random molecule movements are especially bad for nanomachines. It could eat through a supercooled door faster, assuming that's what it did, because it can both operate faster when cold (superconductors), and a cold metal's molecular lattice doesn't move around nearly as much, making it more susceptible to nano-scale disassembly.

And Stasis isn't just a freezer - if it were, there would be no reason to worry about hauling severed heads back, we'd just have collapsible iceboxes filled with medifoam containers and an endothermic reactant. I might look into that in Tinker, actually, but it's definitely no permanent preservation method. No, my bet is still on the miners hauled out of their suits being the sources of the upper floor infestation.))

[Parisbre56]

((Wait, there was macromist in the morgue? I thought that's where you first saw the mist itself, and only encountered the static "plant" macromist down in the mining tunnels?))

((Whoops, my bad. Meant mist, not macromist.))

((And Stasis isn't just a freezer - if it were, there would be no reason to worry about hauling severed heads back, we'd just have collapsible iceboxes filled with medifoam containers and an endothermic reactant. I might look into that in Tinker, actually, but it's definitely no permanent preservation method.

((Well, if I remember correctly, stasis also has a bunch of tubes that go into you and a liquid that prevents cellular degradation, so yes, it's more than a simple freezer.))

((No, my bet is still on the miners hauled out of their suits being the sources of the upper floor infestation.))

((Yes, but something would have to act as a trigger. There were many bodies in the entertainment district. There were whole mountains of infected bodies in the graveyard. None of these had any sign of the mist, even though they died from the disease. Only the zombie miner on level 6 had his body taken over by mist and that probably was just a result of close proximity to the macromist. Thus the bodies on their own cannot act as a source for the mist. (Maybe the mist tries to remain within the confines of a body for some reason.) The bodies in the morgue however would be cold, something that would trigger the growth of the mist. And for some reason, when the mist escapes the confines of a body in a large enough amount (let's name this the "sludge" form) it seems to react differently from the "disease" form or "dust" form and attempt to reproduce and either rejoin with the "macro" form or become a new "macro" mist seed.

EDIT: Just remembered. The excess dead bodies were dumped in the tunnels. So maybe the tunnels were not naturally covered by macromist, but became covered in it after the bodies got exposed to vacuum.))

[Sean Mirrsen]

((Let's take it from a xenobiology standpoint. The mist can't actually base its growth off the human body, since it only encountered humans after the humans discovered it, and it has existed and grown at some point before. This means that some natural, breathing-related process of the human body matches the kind of mechanic the mist uses to reproduce. Presumably the host body is not intended to die after being infested - as the living infested miner in the tunnels demonstrated - but most do. This unintended consequence, the death of the host body, may be interrupting the process the mist needs to complete the cycle. In most cases, a dead body rapidly cools down, likely preventing the oxidation process from continuing, and generally stopping fluid exchange, cutting off the mist's access to material - unless it's advanced sufficiently at that point, it will not be able to keep functioning.

The Hangar was depressurized, as we have seen, likely by the miners leaving the area after killing everyone attempting to escape. The two miners you have found were both definitely killed by the mist rather than anything else, and you left both of them open, since you examined them for cause of death. It's possible that in them specifically, who were not only tough (being miners), but also infected by the original strain of the mist, or perhaps the macromist itself, the cycle was able to be completed sufficiently that just restoring access to oxygen allowed the machines to start growing again. They obviously took a while to warm up and start spreading, which is why contact was only cut off after a significant time. It's even entirely possible that Command did nothing to cut off the communications - the mist has been shown to be able to control machinery, and it's probably more than capable of jamming comms by itself. The Command may very well be completely in the dark about what happened and just locked down the colony after both losing contact and seeing signs of mist activity on the hangar level.

Of course, it's also entirely possible that this whole thing is just one big xenoweapon testing ground, and the Command actually just wanted you to kill everyone below who knew of it, and then die yourselves. You never know with PW at the helm. ))

[Toaster]

((Us being intentionally exposed to sharkmist or not, my money is on Command being long gone.))

"O Brothers, now is the time to trust in our divine masters!  O Cog-azaon, grant us understanding of this sharkmist! O Pathmas, may we be in your favor!"


Pray more.  Attempt to use divine knowledge and blessings to understand the best way out of this.  Also don't touch the falling sharkmist.


"Can we go around?"

[Sean Mirrsen]

((You can only go around once you're on Level 2, and it involves going through the Sterilization area - the one with enough radiation to sterilize you inside of your suits.))

[Toaster]

((We have chisels, space magic, and the will of Dwarves.  We can always make another path.))

[Sean Mirrsen]

((What you really need is an industrial fan.
Or failing that, vacuum cleaner. ))

[Radio Controlled]

((Another possibility is that the mist is more intelligent than we think, and the reason it started spreading only now is because it is attempting to trap us, maybe in an effort to have more 'vessels' to infect, after which these can be used to infect other planets. Just thinking out loud here.))

Keep on truckin'.

(but not, you know, if the mist is still there.)

[Harry Baldman]

"Oh, mist, how unfortunate! Really, I think we might be better off digging an escape tunnel from the third level rather than go through all that. Who knows how it might react to melting. Though we could always find out, of course."

Stand along the edge of the elevator. Get to Level 3 if possible. If mist is encroaching fast enough to pose a very real, immediate threat to me, try melting it with the MFM. Only a last ditch solution, mind you.

[Pancaek]

"Oh sweet mercy, It's tasted blood, it wants more!"

avoid the falling sharkmist. If I see an opening to shoot my flamethrower through (eg. when no-one is in the way) the hole, do so.

[Toaster]

((What's with the popularity of ~5000 Kelvin?))

[Harry Baldman]

((What's with the popularity of ~5000 Kelvin?))

((Well, it is halfway to an even rounder number than itself while also being completely ridiculously hot. That's all the reason I need to choose it.))

[Pancaek]

((What's with the popularity of ~5000 Kelvin?))

((Well, it is halfway to an even rounder number than itself while also being completely ridiculously hot. That's all the reason I need to choose it.))

((and I just copied you, because I am unimaginative like that))