Bay 12 Games Forum

If there's any chance I can make it to the police station with the bore or the crawler in time to help, then do so.
First order of business is supporting the police station so that it doesn't fall and kill everyone inside, if that's at all possible. Otherwise, help evacuate as many non-Ethral people as possible (or any Ethral that can't fly for whatever reason). Instruct the Ethral that can fly to jump out the windows and use their wings to get to safety.

Otherwise, I found some small colourful gems in the ruins that appeared interconnected somehow to Yagyu's sight.
See if there's anything about them in any of the tablets we got. If not, then find some remote place I could experiment without endangering others and with low likelihood of being mugged and experiment with them. Make shapes with them. Talk to them. Try putting them in as ammunition in the Crystal energy weapon. Throw one onto another. Lick them. Listen to them. Throw some gold at them. Will them to talk to me. Will them to fire lasers or explode.

I'm pretty sure they won't try to arrest us. If they had the possibility of arrest or that we were someone dangerous in their mind they'd have us follow them instead of telling us to wait there, away from the Outpost. Or they would have told another soldier to keep an eye on us. But right now we could just walk away. They're probably just going to ask us some questions.

Lets try workshop first, and then storage.  Tools, shinies, and might have valuables.

((Storage is the area you just came out of. Unless you want to take something specific or look for something specific or ask some question, I don't know what else to tell you.))

You jump across the gap and slip through the door to the Workshop. It's a somewhat cramped room, overturned shelves spilling small machines and electronics everywhere, the parts piling up onto a corner due to gravity. You know electronics and machines are somewhat valuable. If you gathered all the unbroken things in here you'd probably get a few hundred credits. Maybe more if there's something rare amongst them. Then again, taking all of the unbroken ones would take up all of the space in your pack, might even require multiple trips.

In the center of the room there's a large table. It's made out of a large flat surface and its underside is filled with machines and cables. Two panels emerge from it, each full of slots holding various tools and connectors, some of which you recognize, others completely unfamiliar. Some of the tools are connected via cables to the table, making you think they might require power to operate. There's a third panel that is the screen of some sort of computer console, but like everything else it has no power. Next to the table is a chair. What's weird about it is that both the table and chair are on the ceiling. Hmm. Maybe some way to try to save space?

On the chair are strapped the skeletal remains of a diminutive humanoid creature, its arms dangling down towards you. Its clothes look sturdy and comfortable, but apparently not sturdy enough to stop whatever crushed its chest. From its clothes dangle more tools as well as a datapad that appears to be in good condition. The ceiling isn't very high, you could easily jump up there and grab some tools or that datapad. You're not sure what some of those tools do, but you could probably figure it out with a bit of experimentation. And even if they're not useful to you right now, you could definitely sell them for a good price.

Further back there's the door leading to Droid Maintenance, but the edges of the door have been melted and fused with the metal surrounding it. You don't think you'll be getting through that door without some sort of tool or weapon that can cut through or melt it. Or magic.

Well, if they haven't shared that secret with anyone, I don't think they'll offer it to me. Still, they might be willing to at least point me in the right direction, so it might be worth a shot.

Leveled up
Strength goes up to 11 (Kara is becoming buff birb. Admire buff birb muscles.)
Endurance to 10
Nerve to 12
Spent 2 skill points to get Translate to 2.

A bit sad I didn't keep enough flame for Polyantha Ret to sell me the secret that would help me to regain my arm, but I think all the loot we got for trading it to the Ethral instead is worth it. Plus the potential future developments it might trigger or the things the Ethral might tell us about it.

Go through the Crystal People history/library tablets we acquired. First off see if I can discern anything about the antediluvians.

Do the statues of the Antediluvians I have look like the ones I saw building the messenger path?
Were they more of a "normal" race that traded, had culture and wanted things or were they always seemingly mindless servants of some unknown master that the Cthonics call The Dark Flame?
Did they still create messenger paths and cists so far into the past? Or did they build other kinds of megastructures, secret things we might have not yet found?
Did the Crystal overmind had any sort of relationship with them or did it just avoid them?

The tablets are supposed to be dry history but by reading between the lines I might be able to learn more about their character.

Lets go down the hallway.

If anything lived here, it would have cleaned up the corpse, so we should be in the clear.

You start walking forward, carefully stepping around the corpse. Walking is a bit uncomfortable, the inclination of the floor making it so that you have to keep leaning right to compensate. It doesn't take long for you to reach another door. This one is stuck half-open, it's edge looking like it had melted some time in the past.

You squeeze through the gap and find yourself in a small storage area. Some of the containers have been broken, their contents spilling out, piling up on one side of the room due to the affects of gravity. It's mostly pieces of metal in various shapes, from wall panels to pipes. There's even a table and a couple of chairs, though those might have been part of the room's furniture. The containers themselves haven't been spared either. Most appear to be upside down, judging by their labels. By reading some of the labels at random, you see they hold things like "lightbulbs", "cable" or "sanitizer packs". Maybe meant for replacing broken parts of the ship?

The door leading out of this room leads to a wide yet short hallway that ends in an intersection. You find that the directions have been helpfully labeled with those weird double labels, one right way up, one inverted. The sign pointing towards where you came from says "Maintenance Airlock" and "Storage". Makes sense.

Right across from you, a short distance away behind a half-open door, the sign says there's "Workshop" and "Droid Maintenance". That could be interesting. There might be useful tools in there, things that could help you with your exploration or maybe just expensive things you could sell or pretty things you could keep to yourself.

To the right, towards the engine section, the sign says "Generator" and "Hyperdrive". There light from your flashlight is not enough to illuminate all the way to the door. You'd have to make your way there to even see if it's open and the ship's inclination means you'd be going uphill. But if you could turn on the generator that would mean this place has power again. With the power on you wouldn't need a flashlight to see what you could operate machines like doors or computer consoles. And a Hyperdrive is that device that lets ships fly to the stars... you think. Whatever it is, it's supposed to be very expensive. If you could get it out of here and find someone to sell it to... Of course, that assumes it's undamaged and nobody has already taken it. The same goes for the generator.

To the left, towards the front of the ship, the sign says "Break Room", "Missile Bay" and "Main Elevator". Due to the ship's inclination, you could just slide there. Hmm. You know missiles are supposed to be powerful weapons that move much more slowly than energy weapons but cause much more damage. You don't know what a "Bay" is, but you're going to guess it's where people keep their missiles.

...Let's just use the powered, open door.

You have plenty of choices, all of them with potential risks and benefits, some more obvious than others. In the end you decide to go with the one that is easiest to reach. With a few flaps of your wings you get up to the maintenance hatch. You smell around, trying to determine if anything was there, but once again you can't detect anything.

You very carefully reach out and press the button. For a moment there's nothing. Then there's a clang as something in the door unlocks. The door starts sliding open with the clicking of gears and the screeching of metal being dragged against metal. There's a hiss as the airtight seal breaks, letting fresh air in. Through the crack you can see only darkness. Shining the flashlight in, you see this is a rather small room, just enough to hold four or five people comfortably. It's empty save for a damaged control panel and another door leading further into the ship with a flashing yellow button next to it..

The door stops opening with a loud clang, stopping halfway before it is completely open. You wait a few seconds to see if anything else is going to happen and then, when nothing does, you take a few steps into the chamber. You shine your light at the sign over the panel. "airlock control." You look at the sign below it. "loɹʇuoɔ ʞɔolɹᴉɐ". The strange letters confuse you for a second until you realize what you're looking at. Huh. The same thing but upside down. Why would they do that? And what a strange name. It's probably not about a lock made of air, and yet... You lock rooms. You lock doors. You lock boxes. How can someone lock air? Does it somehow keep people from getting their air? Or maybe it keeps their air from getting out?

Well, either way, there's not much here except the pieces of the broken panel strewn all over the place. You see that the button for the other door has stopped flashing and is now a steady green. You go and press it, eager to find more. The button turns yellow and starts flashing again and then the door behind you starts sliding again. But it's not sliding open the rest of the way. It's closing. What? Why is it closing? You press the button again but they don't stop. They're already halfway closed. You swish your tail nervously and lower your body, getting ready to jump out. It's already halfway closed. If you're lucky you could make it. But what if you get trapped? What if the door crushes you? What if you have to leave your pack behind to fit? No. It's safest to wait. You'll just open the doors again if you have to.

As the door closes completely, it takes away all the noise and what little light came from outside, making the small room appear even smaller. The clang of the door locking into place echoes for a moment before it too is gone. You're left in near-total silence, with only the sound of your breathing echoing in this small chamber. It's disconcerting. You think this might be the first time you've ever felt such utter silence and desolation since you left the dark and silent confines of your egg. But unlike the egg it's cold and scary. There's no comfort here.

You're almost glad when another loud clang scares you out of your thoughts. The inner door starts sliding open, this one moving a bit more smoothly than the outer one. The first thing that hits you is the stench carried by the opening door. It's the stench of something rotten, something long dead. Then you see something moving on the other side. It's coming right at you! You dodge out of the way and the thing falls on the floor with a splat. It's a corpse. Must have been leaning against the door. Humanoid, looks like one of the ones that have the fleshy things hanging from their heads, though it's hard to tell due to how deteriorated it is. You think you can see things crawling inside the corpse, feeding on it. Some instinct fills you with disgust, tells you to stay away from it.

Further back you can see another body lying upside down through the broken door of a transparent closet. This one is weird in that it is not fleshy, at least not from what your can see. It's like a humanoid thing made of fabric and metal. And then there's just a transparent hole where the face would be, from which you can see its empty insides. Could this be some sort of clothing? You remember seeing people wear weird things like this in holovids about spaceships.

The door finishes opening and locks into place with another clang that echoes though the hallway beyond. There's one more of these transparent closets here, this one also broken but with nothing inside. Other than that, this section of the hallway is dark and barren.

"Sadly, that could never be. I am a singular being, sovereign mind which shall abide no others. You would be come me, as all others do, either immediately or in time."

That makes sense. Lack of genuine human interaction will turn anyone into an uncaring self-absorbed cynic. Except me. I'm awesome like that.

"Aww. That sounds kinda lonely. You know what you should do? You should get a pet. I once trapped a murderous artificial intelligence in a coffee pot. It was good company. Too bad it died (along with my previous body and that janitor). At least that asshole janitor's ghost still haunts me from time to time. He's cool."

Keep talking and helping with computer stuff like opening doors.

Quote from: Devastator on March 27, 2020, 12:04:24 am

Lets try brute forcing one of the topside entrances.  We are really strong after all.

+1

If we do decide to swim we should leave our pack somewhere dry, as there are some things in it that might die if they get wet.

You try your best to pry the door open. It's not an easy task. It's hard to find leverage, the seam is too small. What's worse, the more you manage to pry it open, the more the force pushing against you increases. Your strength alone is not enough to let you fully open it. You might be able to open it just enough to squeeze through, using your body to keep it open, if you don't mind risking your more sensitive body parts like your wings and tail getting crushed. Alternatively you could try using magic to boost your strength to easily force the doors open, if you're quick and manage to maintain control you might be able to get through without burning too much of yourself.

That sounds like a good way to hurt ourself, to be honest.

Try swimming.

You hide your pack under a loose sheet of metal, some instinct telling you it's good to hide your things when you're not around to protect them, for you never know who might try to take it. You only take your flashlight with you and jump into the hole, diving in the water with a splash. The first thing that hits you is the coldness of the water. The second is the foul taste. The third is how murky this pool is. Dust and dirt and something else you don't know how to describe. Strands of oily dark miasma are spread all around you, your every motion further stirring it up, combining it with the other detritus, breaking it into thick droplets and spreading it everywhere, making the view even worse. Even with the flashlight you can barely see in front of you.

You explore more via touch than sight, occasionally coming back up to the surface to refill your lungs with air. From your exploration you discover that the front of the ship is a large crescent-shaped vertical section, with the tower you saw emerging from the water actually being the top of the crescent. Combined with the large horizontal engine block on its back, this vertical section would probably make the ship look very much like a cross if viewed from the front. There are small tubes and antennas coming out of the back of the crescent, though you can't tell if they're engines, weapons or something else entirely. The front of the crescent looks very solid, despite the large number of scratches and dents on it, probably from when the ship crashed through the ground and made the hole. About half of the bottom part of the crescent is clearly missing but is nowhere to be found. Maybe it broke off and landed somewhere else?

You manage to squeeze through the hole at the bottom and find yourself in a cramped dark shaft with a ladder in it, however your progress is immediately halted by a closed door. There's something weird with it, as if the two halves that make up the door have melted and joined together. You're not certain you could open it, both due to lack of strength and due to the fact that you're almost out of breath by the time you reach it. Hmm. Maybe if you had some sort of weapon that could blast through it? Or you could try using magic to breathe underwater, maybe that's a thing it can do for you. Or just use magic to boost your strength and punch a hole through it, maybe.

Near the center of the crescent there's a large mirror-like section that somehow manages to remain mostly clean despite all the dirt. If you press the flashlight against it and get one of your eyes really close to it, you can almost see what's inside. You can make out parts of machines, dark screens and complicated controls and you think you even caught glimpses of humanoid figures. However, if there are people in there, they don't appear to be reacting to your presence. Maybe they're sleeping? Maybe they died when the ship crashed? Or maybe whoever installed those power cells to the maintenance hatch so it would open entered the ship and killed everyone.

Further back from the crescent there are two more of those dome-shaped things with the two pipes, one on either side of the ship. Further back still you can see that part of the ship has broken open, allowing water to flood its insides. This section houses two smaller, bullet shaped ships, both of them badly damaged. From what's left, you can tell there was a seat in the front that was surrounded by machines, probably meant for controlling it, while the back had a few more bulky-looking seats. Maybe meant for carrying people? There probably was a third ship here once but it must have been destroyed or maybe moved somewhere. What blocks your entry to the ship here is not a door but the fact that this section has been twisted and squeezed, probably by the force of the impact. There are holes full of loose cables, bent beams and twisted pipes that could lead further inside the ship, or they could be dead ends. You could try squeezing through them, but if you push too far into what turns out to be a dead end you risk running out of air. What's worse, this section doesn't look entirely stable. If you push too hard and a collapse occurs you could end up getting crushed or it could trap you in a dead end with no air and no way out.

When you're done you climb out of the water, shake yourself and do your best to dry yourself before flying back out of the hole. However, no matter how hard you shake limbs and rub yourself on the cleaner parts of the floor, some of that gunk is still clinging on your scales. Ugh. You're going to need a nice shower when you're done with this. You can't let your beautiful scales be tarnished by this muck.

Status gained: dirty dragon