After several long weeks of gathering salvage from the country side of Numeria, you have finally returned home to the rural town of Torch. Known for the always burning blue flame that stands upon a small hill at the centre of town. The flame burns so hot and yet so cool that allows for one of the only places in the world for skymetal to be melted and worked. This has caused Torch to be a small centre of trade for various blacksmiths and engineers looking to be free from the Technic League.
You begin to head to Khonnir's to sell your salvage. Khonnir Bane, one of the most learned engineers in town, as well as a councilmen for the town's politics, is your benefactor and to some of you, more of an adopted father. You've spent many a night at Khonnir's Forge, the aptly named workshop and tavern, either learning from Khonnir, or drinking to your hearts content.
As you enter town, you immediately feel an oppressive sadness in the air around you. Something feels heavy upon the conscious of those around you. It doesn't take you long to realise that the giant blue flame that gives Torch it's name, is currently silent. What could have caused the flame, which has burned for a thousand years, to suddenly go out?
Nevi returns to Torch with this ragtag group of salvagers he’s found himself growing a part of. With his blunderbuss hanging over his shoulder, he skipped along the long path they took back to Torch, with high hopes of selling some of their salvage so he can have some extra spending gold for the various girls and guys he has grown attracted to during his time in Torch.
Upon their return, he immediately notices the flame on Torch Hill has gone out. ”WHOA. That thing has been lit for as long as I can remember. I don’t know what’s going on but we should get to Khonnir quick!” With that he rushes his friends to quickly follow him as he makes a straight line for Khonnir’s establishment.
Only a few seconds after taking off, he stops in his tracks and ponders for a second. He starts patting himself down and finds a small bag of 20 gold coins in one of his pockets. ”WHEW! Almost forgot that!”
Jade had remained fairly silent on the journey back, mostly because she was pondering some piece of scrap covered in Androffan. But partially, she had been having a strange uneasy feeling that something was wrong. Reaching Torch solidified that fear.
"Truly an ill-omen from within the earth." She said in her resonating voice. "Let us do as Nevi suggests and make haste to Khonnir's, perhaps he shall have some answers."
Glancing up to the top of the hill, she added, "But I fear what portents this shall bring to the future of our home."
Given that her shorter legs mean harder work at keeping up with the group, Amisi is more than happy to enter the town and know that soon she can sit down and rest for a bit.
She is every bit as surprised as the other to see that the flame has gone out.
"Likely ill portents. Surely nothing good will come from this though."
Amisi follows the others to Konnir's.
"That...really does not bode especially well, does it?" Uthan Ironmind stared at the place where the brilliant torch should have been. Without it, he could see some of the details at the top that the blaze usually hid, the shape of the rim and the charred, blackened metal. It was...weird, like the sun rising purple.
He shook his head and checked the heavy axe handle slung over his shoulder. His nerves were twanging in suspense and he wanted to be sure he had his weapon close to hand if things went wrong. The light sound of metal scrapping metal as his metallic fingers touched the weapon was also comforting.
But it was worrying to hear a Cleric of Brigh suggesting it was an ill portent...
"Yes, let's check in with the Boss. If anyone has any idea as to what's going on it should be him."
You skirt through town quickly and come upon Khonnir's Foundry. The Foundry is split into three buildings, the foundry itself, the tavern, and Khonnir's place of residence. The closed sign is evident on the tavern door, which is not a usual occasion when Khonnir is stricken by a designing muse, but the foundry remains cold and silent....
You immediately here the piercing scream of a woman, followed by a crashing sound coming from Khonnir's house.
”A DAMSEL!” Nevi unslings his blunderbuss from his shoulder and stands it upright as he grabs a handful of pellets and shoves it down the open end. After loading his weapon, he starts to make a run towards Khonnir’s house with one hand gripping his gun tight as the other went to hold his hat tight against his head, making sure it doesn’t fly off as he races to try and save the screaming female. ”And here I thought I was going to have a relaxing eve at the brothel!”
Uthan broke into a run behind. What in the infernal realms is going on in town today?" Unslinging the less advanced but fairly efficient greataxe with a whirl of gears and click of clockwork, the Oracle considered his spells. Perhaps one of them would be more suited to the situation...once he knew what the situation was.
Jade drew her blade as she followed the other two towards Khonnir's place.
Trying to stay calm since they haven't seen any signs of violence in the town since their return, Amisi takes off after the others, expecting to just find someone who had an accident.
Opening the door, you see a small framed, but well toned woman holding a chair like some sort of lion tamer, aiming it towards an open door leading to the dining room. She looks over to you and you recognize her as Val Baine, Khonnir's adopted daughter.
"It just came alive and started destroying the house!" She gestures to the dining room with her chair. Almost in answer to her statement, you here a loud crashing noise and wood splintering from the other room
"Val! Get to safety, we'll handle this." Nevi runs into the dining room in front of the group, not wanting to shoot them all in the ass with his wide-shooting blunderbuss. He has both hands around his weapon as he aims it towards the first moving thing, taking only a second to see what it is before firing off a group of pellets. Val's word is good enough for him to shoot without asking.
"Is anyone else in the house Val? Where's your father?"
Amisi is careful to remain behind Nevi while she still tries to peer into the other room to see what exactly has come alive and to make sure there isn't anyone injured in there.
"In fairness," Uthan added while hoping Nevi's weapon blast hadn't broken anything or anyone important, "I don't think this is the first time something odd has come to life in this house, but it's usually our fault."
Nevi turns the corner into the dining room and spots what looks like a three legged metal spider with glowing eyes. The creature appears to be systimatically tearing the house down, one brick at a time. One of Nevi's shots glance off the side of one of it's metal eyes with a loud clank sound. The creature stops its work, stares at Nevi for a moment before moving with superhuman speed towards the half-elf.
Jade had not wasted much time following Nevi around the corner. Without hesitation, she stabbed forward with her shortsword as soon as the thing got close.
Seeing the metallic creature turn towards him, he bolts for the other side of the room so he can get a better shot from behind the creature as the others pour in through the door he entered. He sticks his hand into his bag of pellets and grabs another handful to funnel into the end, getting ready for the next round so he can blast it again.
Amisi lets out a little "Eep!", as the mechanical creature begins charging and she throws a little bolt of fire at it.
Uthan swore. Mechanical three legged spiders weren't quite common enough to be simply shrugged off.
Moving fowards while trying to give Nevi and Amisi clear lines of fire, Uthan gripped the heavy axe in both hands and swung it in a ferocious over hand blow. Machines whirled and clockwork clicked as his enhanced arms added there power to the swing.
From all of the combined attacks, the metal creature jitters for a second before falling to the side. A plume of smoke rises from the corpse, and a few sparks of electricity burst from it's eye stock.
Val puts down the chair and sighs in exasperation. She turns to Amisi, "Father isn't here... he found an entrance under the lake to the north that leads into an underground passage that he believes leads to whatever powers the torch. He went searching after it went out about a week ago, he brought that thing back after the first day... " She gestures to the metal creature. "He went back to searching soon after, but hasn't returned yet, that was 6 days ago... the council has been sending out search parties to find him, but none of the teams have come back yet..."
"Did the Torch go out before he went to investigate, or after?" Uthan had a worrying feeling if it was after, the boss had tripped something. Something that needed the power from the Torch and could bring this weird machine back into operation.
Nevi kept his gun pointed at the mechanical creature as he stepped closer to get a better look.
”Any of you have any idea what this thing is?” He turns to Val and frowns. ”You should have contacted us immediately when things started going weird, you know we can handle ourselves in an expedition. Do you have any maps he drew up of the lake and where the entrance might be located?”
Val looks slightly confused at Uthan for a moment before responding, "The torch went out before he found the caves that enter Black Hill, he was actively looking for an entrance after it went out."
Val looks at the pile of metallic mess before addressing Nevi, "Dad has always been bringing home unusual things, so I didn't think anything about it. He brought it home in a bigger mess then it is now... but when it came crashing into the dinning room this morning and started to take everything apart, it looked like it had fixed itself or something... And any notes that father has would be with him, unfortunately..."
Uthan nodded, "That makes sense."
Looking over the construct, Uthan hefted the axe with a sigh. "As much as I hate to do it...if this thing has repaired once, we might want to cut it into smaller sections that can't repair themselves. Otherwise it might repeat the same trick." The Oracle hated the idea - a self repairing machine was fascinating! But it sounded like they wouldn't have time to study it and, as much as the idea of destroying the damage construct pained him, the idea of it hurting someone else because he didn't hurt more.
”WAIT! It seems harmless now, maybe we can bring it along and if it starts fixing itself, we can study it. I’m intrigued by these new metal creatures.” Nevi moves closer to keep inspecting it, poking around to see if it’ll fix itself again.
Nevi looks around nearby for a bag of tools in the salvager’s house. He attempts to find a hammer so he can pound away at the metal thing until he can rip its leg off, or something he can take with him to observe and tinker with. ”It looks to be too big to move, so I agree with the halfie, let’s scrap this thing and ensure it brings no harm to the townsfolk of Torch.”
"Well, if it fixes itself then we certainly just can't leave it here. It could just fix itself again and cause damage. We could drag it to the forges and have them begin to melt the pieces of it down. I doubt it could fix itself from that."
After looking at the thing for a bit, Amisi seems to come to a conclusion as to what it might be.
"I think that this thing is a repair drone. Not only can they self repair themselves over time, but their main job is to repair higher technology in their environment. I wonder if it could repair other mechanicals that we scavenge."
Nevi has a scavenged hammer raised high up and stops when Amisi starts explaining the odd creature's business. Still a little worried, he hesitates putting the hammer down and thinks about smashing it a little, but trusts Amisi's knowledge and waits for the group to come up with ideas. "I'm just worried it's going to keep tearing down stuff and make something bigger and scarier. What do you think it was repairing?" He takes a seat pretty far away from the thing, since Amisi seems to be the expert on those types of things, and keeps a firm grip around the base of the hammer, ready to pounce on it if he needs to.
Jade had been carefully looking the metal being since it fell. After a moment, she asked, "Amisi, would there perchance be a procedure that would neutralize this Repair Drone to prevent it from attempting to repair itself, yet keep it intact for further examination?"
"Uhm, I've heard that removing the eye stock from the body will prevent it from self repairing. I've no first hand experience of that though."
"As for what it was repairing, maybe it wasn't. It might not have recognized anything in here and may have been searching for something familiar and gathering up raw materials to do it's job with."
"That certainly seems plausible, if you were to awaken in a strange land, would not your first instinct be gathering materials to build that which is familiar? I am confident that would be my first inclination."
Moving to the drone, Jade examined the eye stock for the best way to remove it without causing too much damage. After all, one never knew what could become useful later on.
Nodding, Uthan lowered the axe. "Best if we can keep it whole...or as whole as it currently is. If we could divine the secrets to self repairing technology, we could start thinking of machines that could build themselves from seeds. Arms or legs grown onto people as needed, buildings that repaired there own damage...it would be amazing. Trust the boss to find a drone like that while looking for something else entirely."
Val looks like she suddenly remembered something and turns to the group . "I almost forgot, Councilwoman Freddert stopped by yesterday and wanted to talk to all of you. She seemed rather persistent."
"Hmmm, I believe I can remove the eye stock with little difficulty. Give me but a few moments to accomplish this." Jade states as she flicks her left wrist bringing out a small latched box. Opening it with her right hand, she carefully selects the correct tools for the job, closes and latches the box, shoves it back up her sleeve, and begins working.
Nevi pouts in the corner with his hammer while the Technologists study the specimen, as he sits completely clueless to how it works. "You guys done playing with that stupid thing? Councilwoman Freddert sounds way more important and urgent!" He feigned the importance of the Councilwoman in hopes they'd choose to do that instead, since he felt sad and left out of the cool Technologist kids group. He dropped the hammer on the floor and walked over to watch Jade remove the eye stock, bouncing on the balls of his feet, Hurry hurry hurry hurry, we need to see the councilwomannnn.
"Well, after we see to the removal of the eye stock, we can go and see what it is she wants from us. I'm sure she would like us to deal with a rampaging robot before looking for her."
"We should be sure to keep the eye stock stored separately from the rest of the mech. Just in case, you know."
"Take it with us?" Uthan glanced at the disabled machine again. "We can store this one in the forge, chained up and down so even if something does let it reactivate it'll never break free, and if the eye stalk is the key to there activation taking one with us might be a good idea. Once we're done we can go visit the councilwoman."
Amisis nods in agreement with Uthan. "I was thinking pretty much the same thing."
Amisi will do what she can to help with the plan, though due to her size, she isn't much use when it comes to actually moving the machines body.
Jade, as you work to remove the eye stock, you notice that not only are two of the bolts stuck and covered in rust, but the wires leading to the body are massively tangled, making the job a lot more difficult. You realise that an easy job at first glance is going to take considerable time
Shaking her head, Jade turned and asked, "Nevi, can I possibly call upon your expertise with devices that explode to dislodge the rust upon these bolts securing the Eye Socket? If you can, then I can slice through these wires at this juncture, and then remove it for further study upon a future date."
Uthan rubbed his temple with the hand not holding his greataxe. Something felt...wrong. "Can we keep the wire intact? And does anyone else hear that kinda...buzzing noise? Except it's not quite a buzzing noise."
Nevi puts his hand to the side of his head and pulls his hat off to the side just a little. "Yeah maybe we should... not mess with it. How long do you think it'll take? I'm not sure I can put up with this the whole time..."
"If we do not remove the Eye Socket, this drone will once more repair itself and begin its cycle of gathering materials to fulfill its programming. I can attempt to keep the wires intact, however it will take significantly longer to accomplish, and I am unsure of what or where that sound is emanating from."
"Alright, let's give it a shot!" Nevi moves in to assist Jade with the removal of the eye stock by working to try and break the rusted bolts with his gunsmithing tools by hammering away at them. "Work on those... eye vein things..." he motions a screwdriver towards the wires and then goes back to barbarically hammering at the rusted bolts.
Jade pops her tools out once more tools out once more and pulls out her wire cutters while replacing one of the other tools. After pushing the box back up her sleeve, she begins cutting into the wires, trying to save as much as she can while also working as quickly as possible.