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[TheBiggerFish]

==Back A Bit From The FB==
"What."
"And if you're talking about the ambient thaumic field, yeah probably."
"Just wish I had thought of..."
"Hang on a second."
I pull out the thaumic rotary force engine and see if it's turning again yet.
If so, I attempt to rig it to one of the pulleys.
For reference, this was designed to move, in some form, the finished elevator.

[Amperzand]

It slowly, hesitantly, turns. A few rotations, perhaps twice a minute, then shuts down again. The field is recovering, but it will likely take months to return to its prior level, whatever jerkass out east who's draining it is making this really hard.

"If I may suggest, Sarvesh can go grab a few squaddies to add any more strength we need, but we'll still have to make this looser, I don't think the beast will put up with us further perforating its internal functions. Any ideas?"

"...Does the energy for a spell need to come from the Geothaumic Field? Couldn't we, say, pour a half-dozen military illumination flares in a bowl and draw the power from that?"

{I'm going to say that the {Geo?} Thaumic Field is something similar to the Geomagnetic Field. Most planets make their own, and it takes skilled operators to use it for anything. It also does some very important things when left to itself, and which it cannot do when going all screwy or being drained heavily. Do try to think stuff into this, because Out East fully intends to do [REDACTED] and other bad things using every aspect of the system I can think of.}

[TheBiggerFish]

((Replace geo with ambient, but yes, that about covers it.))
"Ambient, but yeah.  We could do that."
"Need some way to..."
"Hmh."
I pull out a chisel and pick up a convenient bowl-shaped rock.
==About Fifteen Minutes Later==
A rudimentary localized EMF-to-mana system has been rigged up.
"If I..."
"No, that would..."
I pull out my PEA and look something up.
"No, that would be..."
"If this cleaves along the right angle relative to the wound, I could probably just...Heck, if I just convince it to..."
"Amp, any ideas on how to make this an easier job?"
"Because I am not, amongst many things, an expert in crystals.  Or molten steel.  ...Molten steel.  We could melt just enough to clear the wound, then bind the wound and feed it some steel...  Of course, I doubt that this thing will fully understand what we're trying to do..."
"Also, the meta says whatever is sapping the ambient this much is coming from the east, and the field itself will take months to fully recover.  Figured that would be noteworthy."

[Amperzand]

{I was replacing ambient with geo. Basically rather than the field being some kinda of thing that exists everywhere- though it does in some capacity -it, or the part stronk enough to use, is being actively generated by some part of the planet's core. Keeping in mind that this planet is partially hollow, has an interior shell composed of what appears to be stable neutronium, and said hollow bit seems to be literal Hell, I feel this is quite reasonable.}

"That sounds like about what I thought we could do."

"Hmm. It got a lot hotter when it was mad at us, I bet if something ticked it off again this would be a lot easier."

{Also, you don't even need meta-knowledge to be able to tell the drain's coming from the east. I'm now going to start spoilering things that count as metaknowledge, these are things you're supposed to know but not necessarily tell other people about.

Spoiler: FishNet Metaknowledge; (click to show/hide)

I'm going to say that it's super obvious to anyone who knows how to look, but this world has very few geothaumic field users. Making who{what}ever is out there draining this much of the field pretty damn worrying. Even what you just did wasn't anywhere near enough to drain the GTF on a global scale, if it was at full strength, though anyone who can notice such things on the planet will have felt the waves you made, and that was a one-shot spell. Out East has been doing this for at least a few years straight, 24/7.

}

[Dustan Hache]

(Hello, permission to join in and antagonise with undead?)

[Amperzand]

{You want to help fight undead, or you want to be a necromancer? We don't have an undead problem yet, though there will be one. If, however, you want to be the necromancer or whatever, you certainly may. I will attempt to be impartial, but I will limit you to reasonable possibility. You may also have a "Friendly" character if you wish, though s/he won't be as effective.}

{TL;DR, yes, very much yes, but I'll limit your ability to cause apocalypses for now.}

[Dustan Hache]

*a undead crawling eye would be watching the scene, taking in information for it's as-of-yet unknown master. Oddly enough, it would be radiating thaumic energy in a dark, twisted way. It would then start scuttling off into the nearby mess of troglodyte corpses to hide itself, as more of this dark energy starts to flood the room*

[Amperzand]

{The spell they just cast will likely have- temporarily -disabled any undead and long-term spells in the area. That said, you can certainly have a scoutzed or ten in the vicinity, and you'll have been able to tell a lot about us from the afterwaves of said recently-cast spell.}

[Dustan Hache]

(Actually, think of it as a siphon. Someone is draining energy that they stored up and pouring it into the area to prepare an attack. Also, its not normal thaumic energy. It is tainted and distorted to the point of being somewhat harmful.)

[Amperzand]

{Yes. However, all spare energy in the area just got eaten by the partially-failed, partially-warped-by-an-eldritch-horror uberspell they just performed, to the point of extinguishing torches. Necromantic capacitors would certainly have been suckled before things like open flame. If you're using it from outside, power transmitted from your as-yet-unconfirmed base to the last known location of your- currently offline -scoutzed, this is acceptable, necromantic energy being capable of ambient functionality in canon.}

[Dustan Hache]

{If you're using it from outside, power transmitted from your as-yet-unconfirmed base to the last known location of your- currently offline -scoutzed, this is acceptable, necromantic energy being capable of ambient functionality in canon.}

(Nailed it right on the head, with a bit of thaumic latency. Some of the energy diffusing from the long distance travel over the northeast part of the base, but nothing superserious like what is being poured into the cave.)

[Amperzand]

{I'm not entirely sure I fully understand what you just said, but suffice it to say that you now have a considerable necromantic field built up in our area of the caverns, and are not currently living in the fortress, we would have detected and hired you by now, or failing that simply had you executed with an incendiary howitzer. If you need to say anything else OOC, there's a thread for that; http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152112.0 }

[TheBiggerFish]

I detect searching necromantic tendrils, looking for a zombie.
"Dammit, we have a necro about."
And start tracing them.

[Amperzand]

{I'm going to let Hache decide what he does about that/what you see/where the spell tells you he is.}

[Dustan Hache]

*it would remain active for quite a while, filling the cavern with enough necromantic energy to start reanimating, but only bits and pieces, before cutting off with a vague northeastern source. On the same note, there would now be a army of partially reanimated troglodytes shambling, rolling, and crawling their way twoards the dwarves trying to heal the forgotten beast, some with weapons still in the grip of rigor mortis*