Grapples! Give them all grapples so they can pull each other up (and maybe the first couple cling on to me. And ideally incorporate them into close range combat routines.
If the hole needs to be bigger, manually control one of the robots to use its laser to widen the hole. Should be able to technosense control it and borrow some sensors, right?
You give all your robots grappling hooks and winches. They can't use them automatically as part of their normal combat routines though, you have to order them to activate it. They'll need a bit of micromanaging to use them effectively in combat.
Now I'm imagining mini-tanks yelling "Get over here!"
You order your tanks to grapple the tank in front of them and have the lead tank grapple you. You're not sure if this is the most effective strategy but it sure looks fun. That done you start climbing the "root". Touching it feels very strange. The overall... "smell" once could say of the feeling kinda reminds you of how your spear feels, but the feelings you get from it are much fainter and don't translate into anything you can understand. It feels corrupted. Wrong. Being so close to it is starting to feel like a bad idea. But you're already halfway up now. Too late to go back.
You make it the rest of the way up. You inspect the room while your bots drag themselves up, using their wheels to aid their winch. The current room appears to have once served as secure storage but was latter converted for other uses, such as sleeping in and storing food and water in sizable containers.
There was definitely some sort of fight here. Or maybe slaughter is the correct term. There are corpses torn in half or have had their heads torn apart, blood spattered on the walls and pooling on the floor, bodies impaled on and partially absorbed by the "branches" of the root... It's like the aftermath of a splatter film in here. There are very few shell casings on the ground. Whatever did this either worked quickly or chose its targets well.
All the doors out of the room are thick metal things that are sealed shut. So whatever did all this must have come from outside. And could still be here. However a quick scan of this and the nearby rooms reveals nothing moving. Just more corpses and more branches that have wormed their way through the walls and vents. Well, at least it looks like going through the tunnel was the right choice since it let you bypass these doors.
<It looks like John used root escalation to bypass security.><Haha! Oh, nice one!><Please stop corrupting the boy with your lame sense of humor.>The room you're looking for is probably the one right above this one. It looks like it was the target of the root. There are banks and banks of humming machinery in there. You've never seen so many knobs. There are rows of computer screens and workstations at one edge that remind you of pictures you've seen of the NASA control centre in the old Apollo program days. The roots have breached the plastic cases around the workstations and most of their screens have gone dark or display only static. The root has wrapped itself around the metal stairway leading up into the room as if to anchor itself, deforming it slightly.
Saevus, After the End
No reason not to continue. Onwards!
Your journey through the buildings is surprisingly uneventful. You do not know if it is luck or something else helping you, but you do not encounter a single soul on your journey. Despite that, you keep getting the feeling that you're being watched, as if there's someone following you.
You reach the edge of the residential area and find yourself facing the aftermath of some sort of magical disaster. A large raincloud is hanging in the air, illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning surging inside it. It is constantly feeding water into an overflowing crater on the ground and it's showing no signs of dissipating. The boiling water escapes the crater burning everything in its path, while clouds of steam escaping from it reduce visibility. If this continues, this place will slowly but surely perish.
You feel yourself drawn to a building atop a nearby artificial hill that has not yet been reached by the boiling lake. You feel like going there might be important.
WMD, After the End
Try to figure out why I'm not charging. Smash a small hole into the smaller gate. See if anything comes out of the hole, or if it aggravates anything on the other side. If seawater starts coming through, shift back and evacuate the tunnel, grabbing my suit on the way out. Or evacuate first, then shift back and redress if I can't shift back before I need to evacuate.
You don't know why you're not charging. It feels like you're missing something. There's just this emptiness.
You punch the door. Perhaps you punched it a bit too hard or maybe not hard enough, for it flies away, taking part of the wall with it. Luckily, no water or monstrous screams come through the gap in response. You move one of your sensing appendage thingies close to the hole and investigate inside. This is a gigantic dry-dock, housing a submarine. You can't see its end due to the darkness, but judging from the part of it that you can see, it must be the size of a cargo freighter. It looks like this part of the facility was meant to unload and temporarily store things unloaded from a giant loading ramp on its back.
The facility extends on either direction.
Then feed him love and other plant-essential things in non-lethal amounts! Bug various townspeople (if we got out of the well, I'm slightly unsure about that) until they point me to a gardener to pester for advice.
How exactly do you feed a plant love? Kiss it? Kill people that are in love and extract their love essence?
Sword got all of you out.
The people around here have no use for gardeners, but there are lots of farmers around. None of them know what this plant is though. They suggest watering it just enough to keep its core moist and keeping it out of direct sunlight during midday to avoid having its leaves get damaged by the heat. They also suggest that if this is a magical plant and you can figure out what kind of element it belongs to, then you should probably plant it in an area where that element is strong to get the fastest growth and the best produce possible out of it.
Looking super important is part of the job as a serious adventurer! Break the armor in a little. See if I can get some assistance in fitting it and such. Practice my moves with my sword in the armor until the rest of these fools are ready to roll!
EDIT: Though also, if possible, listen in on my surroundings as I do so. Anything ominous now that we're in a slightly less disorganized shape?
The local blacksmith tries to help you with the armour but he soon comes to the conclusion that it cannot be altered. It can certainly bend, it's not completely rigid, but it cannot bend permanently. He says it's most likely enchanted armour crafted made out of some probably magical material. He has no idea what it is or how to work it though. It could have more enchantments protecting it that activate under certain conditions. He knows that protection from fire is a common one, but that's as far as his knowledge about magical armour goes. Still, he does manage to attach some pieces of leather and cloth to it that make it a lot more comfortable to wear. You comment that you'd expect magical armour to automatically fit the wearer. He responds that maybe it does but you simply lack the knowledge of how to activate that function. Or perhaps its user didn't believe that they could die and that someone else could wear their armour. After all, mages do tend to have an overinflated ego. He suggest you best be careful with it. He doesn't trust metal that has been altered by magic, because you never know what it might do. Even fine, legendary metal such as this.
While practicing with your armour, you discover one such hidden function. When something is coming towards you or you're running towards something, you can flex your left hand in the right gesture while bringing it close to your chest and what looks like a shield made of glass will form in front of it for about half a second. It seems pretty sturdy and good for parrying or maybe bashing things. While it does well against most physical attacks, your sword is able to shred it into tiny fragments very quickly.
There's nothing terribly ominous around. Things certainly seem a bit darker around here, the mood worse than it was a few days ago as people realise things won't get better any time soon. But there does not appear to be anything downright concerning about this. People are still holding on, working hard, trying to get their lives back in order one piece at a time, even though they know it will be slow and hard work. Because really, what else can they do? Give up and die?
Maybe the weather is getting to them. Today has been a bit gloomy. Some distant wind has filled the sky with dust, creating a giant layer of dust where the clouds would normally be. The diffuse light coming through the layer of dust has turned the sky into a mostly uniform greybrown sheet. The almost omnidirectional light blurs shadows, causing them to almost disappear. It's enough to make even you feel a bit uneasy. But your keen senses reveal no danger to you. No distant screams, no clatter of arms, no rumbling of the ground, no unearthly shrieks, no shadows in the sky. Just this feeling.
"I won't take you if you don't want to--but put in mind that your family such as your dad will always be looking for you. I could also tell my companions about your concern and we can head out to find them; did either of you talk on where to meet or what plans you have in mind if you were both separated? Any landmarks or otherwise? I forgot where we were going (I'll ask them later when they come back)--but we plan to leave this area if everything is alright in the coming week.
"Is there anything else worrying you or anything you might need?"
Attempt to conduct PFA! Also continue chatting.
in which psychological first aid is a thing. Haa!
"Well, if you are leaving soon... Then maybe you can help me find my father? He said he would be going to the Hills of Midnight to join the other soldiers. If I could find him there then I would not have to be alone.""Hunuh? How?"
talking to the sword here, which I assume I'm keeping with me everywhere I go.
<Are you able to tell the difference between me and the remnant of D speaking through me?>
((note: in case it wasn't clear, although D was welcome, D's remanant is not. It is taking control and isn't really him, isn't really a person like D was, and as such cannot be trusted. D earned Irine's trust, D's remnant has only expressed itself by taking control of bits of her speech, making her say things she wouldn't. To her that is a VERY hostile act. She considers it an enemy until proven otherwise.))
<We cannot. We sense no change currently occurring within you that we can reverse, no physical disease that we could heal and no outside influence that we can protect you from. We can strengthen your soul or parts of it but that would almost certainly not help. Whatever happened to you, whatever changed occurred to you, it happened in your past and is part of you now.>
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Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1148354 times)