Krizen will do all he can with the somewhat malfunctioning computers to scan the area. (It would never occur to him that the error could be organic in nature, naturally.)
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Soundbyte takes the time to read aloud from his holy scripture as they journey, voice low so as to not be too disruptive to the party. His words are accompanied by an electronic choir, though you get the impression they were recording alongside his sermon with the way it occasionally clips.
"...Down down down they went, led by the warmth from Ariel's lantern. The captured grace of their Lady pierced the veil , creatures of the deep shunning the purity of Her Light. It was only a few more paces until they'd find Titania, lost to the artic depths so many centuries ago. There they would find their goal, the ancient philactry of the dreaded litch Leonas Decradario."
He flips a page, and you can hear the ruffling paper echoed through his vocal speaker. "Yet the litch did not leave his most precious possession unguarded. Tiberius was the first of their number to sense something was amiss when a strange chill bit through the waters. 'Halt,' he called to his companions. 'We are not alone.'
"'Sarenrae guide me,' spoke the merfolk maiden. 'What horror lies just beyond the veil?'"
There was a pause, which continued to stretch for several seconds as the SRO acknowledged their surroundings. "What horror lies just beyond the veil?" The line repeated as he now shut his book and stowed it away.
Set finds himself curious about what led Leonas Decradario to his ignoble fate as a lich -- Probably some foolish organic notion about love -- but tries to focus on the matter at hand.
Soundbyte takes the time to read aloud from his holy scripture as they journey, voice low so as to not be too disruptive to the party. His words are accompanied by an electronic choir, though you get the impression they were recording alongside his sermon with the way it occasionally clips.
"...Down down down they went, led by the warmth from Ariel's lantern. The captured grace of their Lady pierced the veil , creatures of the deep shunning the purity of Her Light. It was only a few more paces until they'd find Titania, lost to the artic depths so many centuries ago. There they would find their goal, the ancient philactry of the dreaded litch Leonas Decradario."
He flips a page, and you can hear the ruffling paper echoed through his vocal speaker. "Yet the litch did not leave his most precious possession unguarded. Tiberius was the first of their number to sense something was amiss when a strange chill bit through the waters. 'Halt,' he called to his companions. 'We are not alone.'
"'Sarenrae guide me,' spoke the merfolk maiden. 'What horror lies just beyond the veil?'"
There was a pause, which continued to stretch for several seconds as the SRO acknowledged their surroundings. "What horror lies just beyond the veil?" The line repeated as he now shut his book and stowed it away.
"Spooky," Bravo comments.
The scanners are working just fine. No life signs, or at least nothing especially complex.
STEVE descends into the depths, and it's lights fall onto a large structure.
This is instantly recognizable to Krizen as the complex he saw in his vision. Metallic corridors cross between sturdy metal buildings, small windows dotting the outside. Several glass geodesic domes are seperate from the complex, all but one is smashed.
Flickering lights can be faintly seen inside the buildings, and two large, if dim, spotlights on one of the buildings seems to indicate an entrance.
"This is it! This is what I saw in my vision-trance-thing! It looks like there's still a front door... Do we knock? Or sneak around back?" Krizen is happy the computers seem to be in favor of working for him today, and is excited at the sight of the unknown structure he has somehow seen before. Obviously holographic representations of things are nothing new for him, but the vision he had was most certainly NOT a hologram - that was a new, and wondrous, experience to see his dream made into reality.
Set studies the tableau slowly revealed by the STEVE's lights and ponders. "Strange. The native organic warned there would be dangerous creatures down here and we haven't encountered anything... yet. Perhaps we take one loop around the main structure, a closer look at that one glass dome and, if we don't find anything interesting... go through the front door?"
"Sounds like a plan," Bravo replies, taking S.E.T.'s suggestion and preparing to drive STEVE around the complex.
The group pilots STEVE down towards the structure. As the vehicle makes a first pass around the complex, The two SROs notice several strange lights coming from within. Sounbyte speculates that these may be spectral in nature, though without a better look it's hard to tell.
The dome is a strange sight. Several cables and pipes leading to it appear deliberately cut, and the long-decayed remains of some sort of self-contained ecosystem languish within.
"Ghost light?" He contemplates, bringing a hand to his chinplates. "Be on your guard /we are haunted by the sins of our past."
"Tried to grow their own food down here, maybe?" Bravo wonders aloud. "Given the cut cables and pipes it looks like they wanted to trap whatever was in there...starve 'em of air and food. Certainly the kind of thing that makes ghosts."
"Be on your guard /we are haunted by the sins of our past."
"Spooks and spectres are nothing new to sea and spacefarers... This one's supposed sins would be irrelevant." It then seems compelled to add, "Not that this one has any sins for which to be haunted."
When Bravo offers an interpretation of the situation, Set adds, "Ah! Yes, their sins. Of course." It ponders the situation for a moment. "If those are spirits and they are hostile to us, our weapons will be less effective. But it seems there is nothing to be done about it."
"Shall we see about docking?"
Bravo rolls his eyes at S.E.T.'s continual assumption that he's with the Stewards, but doesn't say anything as he's driving.
No other entrance seems suitable.
The docking bay is dark, with several ports for vehicles to dock.
Bravo steers STEVE into one of the empty ports.
Krizen looks around, then flips on the exterior lights once they are docked. "Let's see what's out there... before we go see what's out there... He smiles wryly at his half joke, slightly nervous about being so far underwater. Underground was a different story - lots of firm support, even if the earth danced now and then. Underwater.... A being could die down there. Even one of the SRO's could rust and get algea-encrusted... ugh.He does a second check on his suits enviro protections - the third one so far - just to be safe.
"Deep, crushing darkness, restless spirits, and ancient booty. All the things that make existence exciting."
Set unbuckles itself and joins Krizen in a quick inspection of the area outside the ship. It seems to trust its concealed weapons will be there when it needs them, leaving them unchecked, though it does grab its empty backpack from its chair.
STEVE sets to the ground outside of the docking bay. The protracted amount of time spent underwater without maintenance has made the door almost inoperable.
Barnacles and other bivalves cling to the hull of the compound, with parts heavily encrusted. Filaments of black, organic material extrude from the door, swaying slightly in the current.
He first takes a look around STEVE's interior, seeing if there is anything that can be used to pry the door open if it prooves too difficult.
Bravo strokes his chin.
"Maybe I can rig up a waterproof grenade to blow the door open?"
”Nobody is wondering what the black stuff is? Is that normal, like seaweed? Or just this one is wondering? Just normal organic... tendrils.” Set looks about the crew in curiosity, then tries to study the door. If necessary, he goes outside the STEVE to inspect it and examines it to see if it can be opened without an explosive.
"I'm wondering, alright. I just don't trust them enough to risk coming into physical contact with them."
"Dammit Jim, I'm a /Priest of the Light /not a scientist!" He commented, glancing out the windsheled to the strange tendrils. They did worry him, but he knew as much about biology as he did about machines. Which was, shockingly, little.
S.E.T. is able to clear away a substantial chunk of algae and barnacles and find what appears to be a manual override switch. The doors open and water rushes into a dark room, partially illuminated by lethargically flashing red lights.
A flashing display inside the room depicts a red slash through a drop of water.
Seeing S.E.T. open the door, Bravo activates his armor's enviro-protections and exits STEVE to join him in the room.
"Display probably indicates this is an 'airlock.' Once we're all in, we can see about shutting the door and draining the room to proceed."
Set stares at the display for a moment before concurring with Bravo. "That seems reasonable," it replied through its comm unit. "Come on through."
While Set waited, it let the glamer drop from the sidearm slung across its chest and took it in hand.
Krizen walks in behind Bravo, kicking his feet to clear off any organic detritus from the tendrils. "Ugh. Underwater. Dirty algae tentacles. Barnacles. When this is over, I don't want to go near this planet again... Krizen's grumbles fill the background, but he makes sure to stay off of the radio communications - only those nearby have to endure the complaints.
The party files in, and another override switch on the inside of the door shuts it tight.
Several minutes later the water has drained from the room, and the icon stops flashing. The room is dim, with red alarm lights that flash slowly and unpredictably. Two heavy doors slide open, revealing passages to the left and right. Smaller secondary doors stand closed at the end of the passageways, blocking the rooms from view.
Even with the water drained, there are a few inches of standing water on the floor of the room. The tendrils partially cover the right side of the floor, with odd chitinous growths almost resembling stalagmites jutting up in places.
Set holds up a hand with an upraised finger, then proceeds into the room as quietly as the layer of water allows.
Bravo checks both doors to see if there's anything lurking ahead in either of them.
Krizen is amazed at how well the small SRO can sneak around... Maybe some of those "jokes" about pirates sneaking around places weren't actually jokes? He readies his longarm, but stays in the airlock. SET? What do you see out there? More than ever Krizen is glad he decided to get the technopathy node - silent communications are proving to come quite in handy!
Something had gotten stuck between one of the folds of his armor plating, causing the foreign containment sensory inputs to spike his mind with notifications every few pico-seconds. Futility filled him as he tried to reach it with his fine manipulators only to discover they weren't thin enough to get a good hold of whatever was in there. Notifications didn't stop pinging the back of his mind, trying to dislodge whatever material it was only netted him new notifications that he was in danger of damaging himself further.
Soundbyte tried his best to mute the notifications to instead focus on the task at hand, and ask Krizen for maintenance later when they were back on the ship.
"To the left we have death and destruction. Towards the right we are faced with destruction and a chance of death." He mused aloud, tapping his staff and willing its patterns to come awash with his light.
Not seeing any immediate threats, Bravo waves the group over to the left door.
Krizen will follow Bravo, keeping his eyes focused on movement and his weapon readied to cover those ahead of him.
The door slides open slowly, stopping about three quarters of the way open.
It's a bit of a squeeze, and the party finds themselves in a large room. The tendrils cover the ground, thick and slippery. Six vaguely coffin-shaped structures occupy one side of the room, while a hallway leads further into the complex on the other side of the room.
The tendrils cover the structures, though not completely.
Set peers at the coffins and comments, "This one has never understood why organics don't repurpose their dead instead of entombing their bodies in crude memorials. Still, these are likely containers of loot... we should just be careful of traps." Set moves closer to the "coffins," looking for traps and seeing if he can discern anything about the coffins without touching them or the tendrils.
Set is too excited about the possibility of loot to pay much attention to what is surely about to destroy him.
"You'd have to ask a Pharasmin," Bravo replies. He joins S.E.T. in examining the room.
"This isn't a mine.... It's a tomb." Soundbyte mutters offhandedly while examining the coffin-lookalikes. He gives the entire room a glance over, subconsciously activating the arcano-receptors in his optics to get a more complete view of his surroundings.
Krizen shakes his head, regarding the loot-happy SRO with a slight, fond smile. "Oh captain, our captain, may you ever have your sensor on the prize... the rest of us shall watch your feet." Krizen will also look around, looking less for actual signs of traps and more for areas that a trap would make sense.
There don't seem to be any traps when the party begins to inspect the structures. They are neither lockers nor coffins. Rather, they're tanks full of a murky amber liquid. Most details are hard to make out, however, as the tendrils crisscross across most of the surface.
Set pauses after looking at a couple of the tanks and trills dejectedly. "Nothing but this amber liquid in them. If they once contained loot, it has... liquefied." Set's vision shifts slightly to one of the tendrils, and...
...pokes it.
"CAP!" Bravo barks, worry clear in his voice.
Poking the tank, nothing happens at first.
Some of the tendrils retract, revealing a strange sight. A withered, atrophied human body floats inside the tank, it's face contorted in agony.
"Is that... Was that... a person?" Krizen's voice is filled with horror as he moves close enough to see the figure in front of S.E.T.
It remains stationary, much to Krizen’s relief.
Set seems more curious than bothered. Assuming it was a corpse in a coffin-like container, the body did exactly what they should do: nothing. And, while it was not programmed for bio-sciences, the fact the tendrils seemed to sense and react to the SRO's touch was more interesting than the fact that a dead body was in the "coffin".
So, Set moved to the next tank and prodded the tendrils there, too, to see if they had a similar reaction and if a body was still inside this tank as well.
Set will then try to get a better look at a corpse and more closely examine the tank, pushing the tendrils away if it needs to.
"SKOR!" Bravo swears when the dead person is revealed. He keeps an eye on their flank while Krizen and S.E.T. examine it.
"And 'lo, it was the knight of Absalom who was first to fall, recklessly leaving the light of Ariel's lantern. Dread creeping through his heart as the dark abyss swallowed him, and deeper and deeper he did sink." Soundbyte continued from earlier, laying a hand atop the coffin-like object which housed the long dead human.