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It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

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I wish I could have joined in.

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Total Members Voted: 28

[WillowLuman]

[You are speaking in DF Human with him. TGS does not speak English. His accent is roughly like a Lithuanian one.]

[wierd]

[I guess the necromantic connection fascilitates the communication barrier then? Sparrow might not understand other people, and when weird talks to sparrow, others would hear gibberish? Could lead to amusing situations.]

[OREOSOME]

[I was imagining it as if it was telepathic. After all, you summoned his spirit back from whatever necromancers go to when they die.]

[Gizogin]

[Obviously the two of you would be able to understand each other.  I guess you'd each hear the other in your respective language?  We'd understand your side of the conversation, but not necessarily TGS's.]

[wierd]

[The sense of "connectedness" is barely conciously registered. Sorta like the feeling of being watched. When weird is talking, he is really talking. Same with the ghost. Weird might be afforded a special exception to the language barrier, in that his new role he has assumed is like an abriter ot the dead.]

[WillowLuman]

[Well, English is a foreign language to people from these worlds. I assume that we speak dwarvish when talking to the dwarves, or they have learned English. Being from another land, and being from a time long before we showed up, TGS wouldn't have the slightest chance of being exposed to the language. I'm sure we, on the other hand, have picked up most of each of the DF languages in our time here.]

[wierd]

[Regardless of the means, I wanna know what's down the hole!]

[WillowLuman]

The floodlights filled the tunnel with harsh, white light. The path spiraled down about 30 feet, before opening into a medium, sized, square room. There seemed to be only one thing of interest in there; a large, sagging metal shape. "Is that... a vehicle?" said HugoLuman.

X walked over to the shape, looking at the sides of it. "There appear to be wheel wells on the side of it. Evidently it has been sitting unattended for a long time, and possibly incurred some damage."

Fwip. Everyone turned towards the sound. A small panel in the corner of the room had opened, and little trapezoidal boxes slid out. They were about the size of kittens, seeming to just slide over the floor, and made of metal. The boxes slid around the floor, over the footprints everyone had left, and when the footprints were eradicated, they slid back to the panel and into the wall.

[BRB after 20 minutes, dinner.]

[OREOSOME]

[Trapezoidal boxes the size of cats... OH HOLY ARMOK WE JUST FOUND THE DWARVERN DEATHSTAR! They at least sound as if they are mouse droids.]

[wierd]

[Sounds more like a 1970s rhoomba... wouldn't be too had to make one... but they would gobble down battery like no one's business.]

[Gizogin]

[Nah, mouse droids aren't that big.  Or are they?  According to the Star Wars wiki, they're 25 cm tall, so I guess that's about cat-size.  Yay for mouse droids!]

[WillowLuman]

[Oh, hadn't thought of that XD been a while since I've seen starwars.]
Everyone relaxed a little. "Janitorial bots," said Wierd. The panel snapped closed. With nothing more to see in the antechamber, the group took the passage going to the left, away from the center of the tower. Whatever needed adamantine rebar to protect it would have to wait. The hallway led, after about 50 feet, into a passage with 4 doors on each side. A metal sign in English on the ceiling marked the hallway as "Systems." The metal doors had various labels on them, such as "Water recycling and treatment," "Temperature control," and "Automaton center."

[wierd]

"Huh..." said weird to himself amusedly.

Despite the advanced delapidation of the above ground portions of the tower, the below ground parts appeared derelict, but otherwise in good working order.  The great sparrow was trying to catch one of the floor sweeping robots out of obcessive interest. Weird wondered what the hawk-nosed and greasy haired old spook would have done if he was shown the internet... the thought made him chuckle.

He had more pressing intrests himself, though. One of the doors was marked "power room". He was quite interested to know what was beating at the heart of this complex for it to stay operational for who knows how may decades... or centuries. 

[WillowLuman]

Gizogin X pushed open the door marked "Automaton center," and he and HugoLuman peeked in. Inside was a large room, about the size two of the home fort's dining halls put end to end, and filled with various manufacturing machinery. The little box-robots were coming into the room through large pipes, going about to the various machines, sliding across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Some were taken apart by the bigger machines, new parts swapped in, and reassembled. A few were disassembling one of the larger machines, replacing some of its parts. Several scuttled in from a vertical pipe going below, carrying various machine parts, and depositing them in large stockpile bins.

"Looks like the place is running itself," said HugoLuman.

"Yes. But are these systems doing anything other than basic day-to-day maintenance?"

[wierd]

Weird pushed open the door, and was somewhat let down.

It wasn't some exotic dark energy reactor, or even a nuke plant, or anything of the sort.

There in the room, stretching quite far, was little more than a series of color coded pipes leading into the floor, and a control kiosk with some old, calcium and rust stainded valves and pressure guages.

It was geothermal. Made sense in hindsight. Abundant, nearly inexhaustible. Keep the pipes clean and in good condition, and look after the generators, and it would supply power for aeons.

A freshwater aquifer fed by the nearby mountain peaks supplied fresh water on the input side, where it was subjected to deep heat in the earth's crust, and released up the red coded steam pipes. Pressure was regulated to avoid geological instabilities. He wondered if the recent earthquake had upset the complex's viability. He had no way of knowing. He had no part in the system's design, nor its implementation. Had not been involved in the planning, or seen the geological information prior to it being built. He didn't know what the proper system pressures or power output of this system was. Wisely, he decided to leave it alone, and walked back into the hall.