Saevus, After the End
A feeling that it may be important is better than nothing. Let's go. Be very vigilant.
You climb the road leading up to the artificial hill as it snakes around the stone walls holding it in place. You don't know what exactly this place was supposed to be, but it looks out of place. It could easily be converted to a castle-like fortification if the walls were a bit higher or it could turn into a park if it had some trees, but right now the only thing you could think of is that it is a monument or a temple. Or maybe a tomb.
When you reach the top, you find a single three storey building with a pyramid-shaped roof. This one appears to have been fortified, with floodlights, watchtowers and barbed wire set up around it. But all four watchtowers have been uprooted and flung around like sticks. The massive creature you assume caused all this has crashed through one of the walls of the building and is currently lying there, unmoving.
You slowly approach the beast. It kinda looks like a very pale fat man. It had a head once, but now its insides are splattered all over the surrounding area. You step through the hole and make your way inside. As you walk through the hallways you notice what looks like withered black roots covering the walls. They're coming out of vents and cracks on the walls, digging through machines and dead flesh. They cover lights and create curtains. It would be hard to see if it weren't for the light coming out of your runes. But then you notice that the light seems to linger on them far more than it should. In fact, looking behind you, you see that everywhere you've gone through has lit up like a christmas tree.
You finally reach the centre of the structure. This place is heavily covered in roots, although they easily snap under your weight, so they don't impede your progress very much. What does impede your progress is a giant reinforced metal door. Even with your strength, you think it might be difficult forcing it open.
WMD, After the End
If there's a dry dock, there has to be sea access somewhere. Transform, redress, and go see if I can find a launching dock, preferably one with a one-person operated vehicle. If I find such thing, hop in and make my escape.
You enter the area and look around for a bit. The room with the big cargo sub does not appear to contain anything useful to you. You quietly walk through the containers while scanning your surroundings. The tiny light coming from your helmet allows you to see some of the contents of the open ones. Most of them are empty but a few of them contain various things, from giant drills to clothes. Many of the more sensitive supplies haven't survived that well during their time here. The above average temperature in this room probably doesn't help.
As you walk around, you notice something glowing from the corner of your eye. You try to focus your eyes on it for a moment. There it is again. At irregular intervals, a light appears, like distant flashes of lightning partially obscured by rain. The lines come out of the dark maw of the sub's cargo door and disappear into the darkness below. You also notice a sound you've been hearing for quite some time. You didn't notice it before, your mind just ignored the flat sound, but now you can hear it. A constant quiet hum. It sounds like it's coming from within the sub.
You decide to leave that thing alone for now. Instead you approach the sides of the chamber and enter one of the corridors carved into the stone, now partially blocked by the vehicles that once traveled through it. As you move further down the hallway you start feeling a noise. Tremors in the ground. Something big is walking around, moving and then stopping at irregular intervals.
You keep walking, the noise getting louder as you do so. There's a flickering light at the end of the tunnel. You turn off your headlamp and approach while taking cover behind a nearby fuse-box. The signs in the wall say this is "Docking Area B2" This is a much smaller docking area, where a smaller sub was meant to emerge from below. Said sub is held by a crane right above the closed gates leading below. Despite the flickering lights, you can tell that this sub is does not look like a blimp made of metal, not like that giant inelegant thing in the other room. Instead it looks more like an underwater plane, its curved lines and shallow ridges reminding you of the shape of a dolphin crossed with a sports car. It looks like it was meant for quickly carrying a small group of people or a small amount of cargo long distances. There are several cables coming out of the crane and disappearing into the sub, so hopefully that means that it's charged up and ready to go.
Following the cables in the other direction, you see them leading into a control room on the right side of the room. You can see what look like monitors behind the thick glass. There's a simple metal stairway leading up there.
On the other side of the room there's a door leading into another room (the sign above it says "Supplies B4"), the room from which that thumping noise is coming. Whatever is moving around, it's in there and it's big. It's stopped moving for now but you bet it'll start up again in a minute or two.
John; After the End
Split the squad, half covering any entrances (sealed or no) and half covering that root. Not trustworthy.
Meanwhile, check the least broken computers. Can I technosense anything that pertains to the goal in the host's memories?
<It looks like John used root escalation to bypass security.>
((10/10))
You arrange your bots around the room in positions ready to fire. You order them to stand guard but you're not sure if they're smart enough to respond properly to anything that happens.
That done, you climb upstairs and start working on the computers. While you can't exactly sense their programming since it's too fast and complex for your mind to comprehend, you do make some progress. The first thing you do is work on repairing the damage the root has done to the screens. It seems to have targeted the heart of the machines but all other parts it touched were affected too, getting covered by it, becoming short-circuited or scrambled or whatever that thing does. All it takes is a quick application of your power and a few of the screens stabilize, the text on them becoming legible again.
Due to the peculiarities of your senses, that means you have to zoom way in to be able to read the text. At least you can use technomancy to type, otherwise this camera angle and this exoskeleton would make this impossible. All you have to do is maintain contact with the machine and watch as the keys move up and down seemingly on their own, like the keys of a player piano.
Luckily your host appears to have some knowledge of the systems so you are able to work this terminal. Now you need to find a way to operate the communication system. You go through the recent command history trying to find anything related, but it's really messed up. Like someone was throwing random characters at the input. There might be something interesting in there, maybe someone trying to hide something, but you decide to skip back to a more legible part of the history since you can't really process that much data right now. There you find some commands that set you on your path. Some poking around later you discover that the commands to operate the comm system are unlocked so that shouldn't be a problem. However the comm system itself is non-responsive. It might be just a connection issue, these roots have really messed up the electronics in this place. You really hope this is just a connection issue, because otherwise... Or is it your host feeling that? Well, no matter.
You concentrate on sensing the machine and extend your consciousness through it, trying to feel every part of it and its connections. It's hard to focus on the specifics, it feels fuzzy, as if there's a fog surrounding you. But the wires leading away from here are few and easy to focus on. No, those join up with the rest of the grid, that won't do... Those are... temperature? Who put the thermostat in the same computer as the big red button? Eh, anyway, let's keep going, maybe if you're lucky you'll discover one leading to a coffee maker. These are severed! ...but they lead in the wrong direction. Probably used to operate the doors on the floor below. Not that big of an issue, you can just use your ability on them directly. But this one... this looks promising. It goes to the next room and then two floors down before getting severed. That's probably it. Phew. Did it. It would had been a lot easier if there wasn't that glare on the screen distracting you from-
Wait a second. Where
is that light coming from?
You zoom out and notice that the root has started lighting up, multicoloured lights appearing all over its surface, spreading to all parts of the room.
The bots are just staring at it.
"Why didn't you warn me? You guys are the worst minions ever!"The bots continue staring at their assigned positions, doing nothing.
"On second thought, I've seen worse. At least you're not shooting each other.""It is my belief that no physical sacrifice of self, up to and including death, matters when death is only temporary. I can finally be free of fear."
"Exactly! Well done man, you really get what I'm saying."
"Ah, but what good is a victory if you're not around to see it? If you can't enjoy it? If it's more trouble than it's worth?"
"A victory is a victory. You sacrifice everything to win. Otherwise you're just a loser."
"And where do the sacrifices stop? If you're ok with your death and you're OK with the deaths of others, then how far would you go for victory? Your friends? Your mind? Your soul? Your happiness? Everything until you end up as a victory seeking machine like him?"
"Well, that's why you try to be good at what you do. If you're good enough you won't have to make sacrifices. Besides, as long as things can be fixed, they're not really broken, so there's no reason to bitch about them."
"Even so, you cannot be fearless. There are things worse than death."
"Eh, probably. But as long as you're alive, it means that you can deal with your problems and have a chance to fix them."
"But isn't the same true for losing? Even if you lose, you might still have a chance to try again, to make things right."
"Victory isn't everything. I understand that. I fought a bronze colossus one time. Bloody tough. After the fifth time I got slammed into a wall, I realized I wasn't hurting it at all and fled. I never fought a bronze colossus again after that. Far too hard for my fists. It was better to preserve myself and go onto other fights than fight a fight I knew I could not win. Now, though? What is a loss when a death means nothing?"
"Things worse than death, though. Perhaps. Living on when one's entire nation has been massacred by a zombie army. Becoming a vampire, or a thrall. I can see that. But does that sort of thing really apply to me now?"
"No, not now.""But the games won't go on forever. One day you will be free again. You will have more power than when you first arrived here, yes, but power can bring with it a host of other things, good or bad. So it pays to think forward, on what kind of man you wish to be when that day comes. And what kind of man you can be.""I think he will be the kind of man that goes to that bronze colossus and shows it who's boss now that he levelled up.""Maybe. Maybe he will. Is that all you want? To get the best ale, the best women and the best fights? Do you want to win? To be known to all as the very best? Because I can see that perhaps you are the kind of man that is wise enough to know not to keep on punching an unbreakable wall. In my opinion, a man with that sort of wisdom has taken the first step on the path to freedom.""If you ask me, there's no unbreakable walls. Only walls that haven't had sufficient force applied to them yet."Alan, plant helper extraordinaire!
"Kay. How can I find out what type of magician Bill And Ted is? If he's my magic thing, I think he'd be ... what did the general say ... clutter? Yeah, clutter magic!"
Alan hums in thought.
"How do I find a magician tester ... maybe Ike would know! His ears can surely hear the resonance of a wizard's moustache on the desert winds!"
Off to find Ike again! Pester him about where I could find a magician tester to figure out what Hogwarts house magic type Bill And Ted is.
Oh, and ask Rickman too, if I happen by him.
Rickman's reply is that it's Alan magic. Also food magic. Also not ripe.
Well, you're not really sure what that means, but you thank him anyway and leave him to watch over your eggs.
Campaign, Ike!
Listen for the resonance of a wizard's mustache on the desert winds once Alan asks me to assist.
If that doesn't work, look around for somebody who knows a thing or two about what these element things are and where you can find some.
Hmm... You think that if you focus really hard, you can pick up something. It's like there's
something in the wind...
No, on second thought, that's probably just the wind. Or rats. It's always rats.
Ah, well, best not to dwell on that. Anyway, asking around, you find out that the healer, Ghios Oftaia, knows a thing or two about magic, so he might be able to answer a few questions. He's probably the most knowledgeable person on the subject around. The only one who would know more would be the local priest and he's probably been eaten and/or vaporized, so not much chance of speaking with him unless his ghost suddenly materializes. So perhaps the correct term would be "the most knowledgeable one left".
You could also pester Irine and her sword once she's done posing ethical dilemmas to other foxgirls, it might also know a thing or two about magic, it being a magical item.
<I was afraid of that. Well, you know it's an issue. We'll deal with it best as we can.>
response to the sword
<We understand. We have seen similar things before. Souls are resilient things. Like springs, they have a tendency to return to their natural state. They may bend, they can break, they might rarely even change on their own, but truly shaping them requires the power of the gods. However, put two souls together, merge them and tangle them and you can get something new as the two adjust, a change without a change, a new natural state.>
<The soul that was inhabiting you must have been very twisted indeed. Maybe as twisted as the soul of the dark one. Perhaps that is why it twisted your soul in turn as it unraveled.>
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