Final-%$&^*-ly Zolvi sighs, slumping against the wall. While John looks around, she tinkers with her scanner and waves it over her body. Nanites begin to fly out and towards her cuts, stitching them together at an accelerated rate as the specifically genetically attuned tech goes to work.
Slightly mended, the kasatha shifts over towards the fallen creatures and meticulously scans them. What exact augmentations do you think was done to these? And by who?
"Incredible..."
Looking around to see how its friends are doing, and seeing that resting will be taken - "No, don't sit on two-heads... oh, well, you're right, he is the only soft thing here!" - Pangea will take a few minutes to search, using his little sweeper.
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Pangea touches its throat-- choke point #1, it thinks.
When you scan the remains of the first individual, you instead get "[ERROR_INVALID_DATA (0xD)]".
When you scan the second individual, you get a "[ERROR_CRC (0x17)]".
Tinkering with your program, you eventually come up with an "[ERROR_CHIMERA]" for all of them, which you know means that each creature's DNA is a blend of two incompatible species.
The two-headed creature appears to be a blend of two Kish, and one unknown creature.
After the smoke dissipates you find nothing of value left in this room, or the room you came from.
Sheher is oblivious to the fact that the rest are talking about her when they're commenting on the lack of tactics!
The walls of these rooms, though dirty, are a soothing aquamarine color. The remnants of comfortable-looking furniture poke out from the rubble. The dusty floors and lack of murals hint that no one has stepped foot in here for some time.
There is an air of solemnity in this austere room. A five foot wide, eight foot tall capsule sits on a ten-foot square platform in the center of the room. It is made of some kind of shiny metal, and dozens of wires, cables, and tubes sprout from its surface. Many of the wires run to a freestanding wheeled console nearby. A six-foot-tall door opens into the capsule. A small shrine covered in dried flowers and small wooden icons stands against the western wall. Doors lead north and south out of this room.
It operates automatically when a creature steps inside and the door is closed. It scans the occupant to determine their malady and then bombards them with benign energies that alter their genes, enabling them to heal rapidly as per mystic cure III and remove affliction , although the chamber is not magical. The attached console can be used to adjust the treatment (or end it early) as necessary.
The capsule achieves this effect by replicating "perfect" kishalee biology, which is subtly different from kish physiology. You surmise that thousands of years of divergent evolution under harsh circumstances led to enough of a genomic difference to matter in this case. As a result, there is a chance that any Kish could be killed or horribly mutated as the chamber tries to remove its "foreign" DNA.
Using a DNA sample from another creature, you could even attempt another Computers check to add that species to the capsule’s database .
Apart from a collapsed ceiling, this room seems empty, though the thick layer of dust on the floor appears to be have been recently disturbed.
This room is choked with rubble, as most of the ceiling has collapsed, forming an impassible mound. Crushed office furniture poke out from under the debris, and the floor is thick with dust and grime. A door leads out to the north. Poking out of the rubble of a desk is another triangular datapad.
The voice in the message is deep and gravelly. “Greetings. This is…” *static* “…head of security at the Foundry. We recently had a few pieces of classified…” *static* “…and we are investigating the possible compromise of all methods of entry and exit in our facility. As far as I can tell, the series XLT-88 digital lock on our security entrance hasn’t been tampered with, but the manual I have here states that the lock can be placed in standby mode and accessed with an admin keycode. Of course…“ *static* “…but the director and I would like to know how many of your employees have access to this keycode. We are not accusing you of any misdoings, but we do need to leave no stone unturned. Please respond at your earliest convenience.”
Those trained in Computers notice the metadata of the message contains a router address and admin keycode. While the data is corrupted and incomplete, by overlapping this new information with the partial data you acquired earlier you are able to pinpoint the server exactly. Strangely, it lies north by northwest, whereas the Foundry lies due east.
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sigmus just shakes his head and moves into A10 to take a look at the computer
"Pup, interface with this system and see what you can do to repair the data"
"Hey Zolvi, does this look like a healing pod to you? I'm finding biological data in here and i think i might be able to reconfigure it to work for various species
Pangea looks over the capsule.
"Sorry I'm not Zolvi. Oh, PANGEA is working on something like this..."
And goes on to explain what is understands.
"So, we can understand a bit more about the evolution, even track genetic differences between the kish and the kishalee..."
Pangea checks the computer out too--
--but not understanding much, listens to Sigmus.
"You'd go in that thing? Unless I want 2nd head, I'd not really try it... but, 4 arms, 2 heads, that makes sense."
Pangea looks at the face, and points the axe out to any who might want it.
Pangea looks at the datapad: "I'm going to redesign my comm' unit to be like this, by Triune it is stylish!"
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- I'm ok to wait a little. The next time I'll meet some big cosmo-snake, I want to be in perfect condition... Not like this two-headed monster. Real perfect, you know...
Varnais sits on a pile of garbage like on a chair.
- I envy these creatures. You take an axe like that. Then you go break the face of the enemy. Then you take her male as a prise and all goods and stuff. And then you go back to your village as a hero. This is life. Not like now. Computers. Blasters. Individual rights. Smart guys with glasses... Eh.
She makes a helpless gesture.
- No, I know it's illegal to break someone's face and take everything they've got. I respect laws. I AM THE LAW!... But 'before'... laws were easier and more honest. Laws of power... Eh!
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If you can just hold off one moment Sigmus Zolvi says as she tries to connect her own data pad to the device. Settings are right now set for ‘Kishalee’ right? But they don’t even exist anymore, or if so they are lost on some other world. This machine has the genetic information of an extinct unknown species - be a shame to wipe it before copying that information.
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"No worries. It would take over an hour to do the modifications anyways. just don't DELETE the data. I'm going to need it to adjust the DNA profile to make it work with the Kish."
he steps aside to let John and Zolvi work on the machine. he goes and sits next to Signifer
"The law is what we make it. I agree that things used to be easier."
he looks over the axe
"so uhhhh... you gonna make use of that thing?"
"On you? No..."
The team works together to download what data they can. It takes about an hour itself, given that most of it is corrupted. Sigmus simultaneously reconfigures the machine to work for Kish, ensuring no more "rebuilt" Kish will plague the region for at least another few millennia.
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Just knowing they are bound to show up sometime and obviously will jump into this thing and touch all the buttons, Pangea helps program this to accept skittermander DNA.
Pangea will help any other attemps.
Adding Skittermander DNA is surprisingly easy. It gets a little harder to add Androids. And Sigmus can just barely find enough virtual memory to insert Kasatha. The machine's damaged CPU probably can't hold too many more .
As for your next adventure, your options are:
• Return to Cloudside for a full rest
• Travel East to the Foundry
• Travel Northwest to the server address
• Explore the city for random encounters!
If there's a back way into this Foundry Zolvi says, sounding a bit more refreshed after a good bit of rest while Signmus had tinkered. May be best to know about it. Avoid any fun surprises the Cult may have left behind.
As you leave the House of Renewal, Sigmus's AI wirelessly hacks a nearby datapad to display an updated telemetric map of Istamak, including the regions you've explored thus far, and a couple nearby locations you haven't.
You get the foreboding sense that you'll have to do some climbing, jumping and flying to get to where the servers are located.
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Unable to resist, Pangea steps into the machine--
"Curiosity killed the C.A.T."
--and tests it.
"So... does it work?"
if it survives with a usable vocal apparatus, Pangea will wonder: "We should lay claim to some condos'... the prices must be low and bound to sky-rocket when we make our reports."
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1 - You are now Male.
2 - Your skin takes on a hue of purple, like a Drow.
3 - Your skin is lightly scaled, like a Vesk.
4 - Your eyes are veined with red circuitry.
5 - Your endoskeleton is now an exoskeleton.
6 - Your skin takes on a hue of green, and you appear more muscular.
Plotting a course of least resistance using Sigmus's AI, you skirt around an inland jungle and eventually make your way to the northwest "edge" of Istamak. From here you see a small chain of "islands" floating separate from the metropolis proper. Angry Kish faces have been drawn on several floating boulders, and the edge of the mainland harbors a small memorial of dried flowers and trinkets.
Fortunately, you can see what appears to be an office building on one of the larger islands, and a number of small, rocky islets lead up to it. Ropes and cables, presumably left by foolhardy or adventurous Kish youth, are already tied to anchors on each of these islets, while some dangle unattached .
You eventually land on a floating mass with a dilapidated building occupying most of the stable ground.
A smooth path runs past an overgrown lawn to the entrance of this drab building. The knee-high blue-and-green grass smells sweet, like honey warming in the sun. The structure’s walls are shot through with barely perceptible white filaments webbing across the entire surface.
Several windows are covered by grime, but wiping them clear provides a view into a couple rooms:
Except for a carpet of pale white mold covering everything, this room appears to have been untouched for millennia. Five heavily padded chairs sit against the western and southern walls. A bed of mushrooms grows on a large, four-foot-high, L-shaped desk across from the main entrance, next to a small cabinet. Double doors lead outside to the south, and another door leads north.
Each of these rooms is occupied by an oval table surrounded by six chairs. The dilapidated remains of audiovisual equipment lie on each table, coated in a thin film of mildew. Light filters in through large, south-facing windows covered in fibrous white tendrils.
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Pangea plods along through the jungle, laughing and thumping his chest: "I'm the King of the Jungle!"
He swoops around with the jetpack, having fun, and taking some risks just for the heck of it, as the group move across the rocky islands.
Pangea checks out the white filaments, scratching his head.
It's a colonial organism consisting of thousands of pale white fungal filaments that wave slowly back and forth, as if swaying in a light breeze. This mobile mold creeps its way through even the narrowest of crevices to infest a building and slowly digests all the organic matter within, whether discarded food, flesh, or wood. A writher mold leaves behind only ceramic, concrete, metal, plastic, and stone, making them less of a threat in large urban centers where structures are largely composed of such materials, but potentially devastating to less advanced settlements.
A single spore of a writher mold can lie dormant for as long as several centuries, whether as a passenger on a meteor or in a cavern deep below the ground. Under the right conditions, that spore can attach to a modicum of organic material, such as a stale piece of bread or the rotting corpse of a tiny animal, after which it quickly begins growing and multiplying. If it is not eradicated, a writher mold eventually becomes fully mobile, essentially becoming a writher "swarm", and can actually become aware enough to seek out new sources of nourishment.
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John raises a cautioning hand, as his tricorder custom scanner lets out a warning beep.
"Careful - that looks like writher mold; a colonial organism consisting of thousands of pale white fungal filaments that wave slowly back and forth, as if swaying in a light breeze. If left alone for centuries, it eventually becomes fully mobile, essentially becoming a writher "swarm", and can actually become aware enough to seek out new sources of nourishment..."
So saying, John pointedly ejects the darts from his gun, and starts loading explosive rounds, just to be on the safe side.
- How dangerous is it, Jonh? I can just burn it in Hellfire! If it's not too tenacious, of course.
The entire building is infested with the stuff. Luckily, judging by the patches you can see, it's not currently mobile.
- Oh, you mean the whole thing? Sadly. It's too much even for me.
We can destroy this place from orbit after we are done. It would be the only way to be sure.
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Pangea claps John on the back: "Good eyes, dude!"
Switching ammunition and loading explosive darts into his rifle, he nods to Sheher: "Yah! Right on, sister! We can take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. But it's not the only way to be sure... I'm sure Sigmus'll have fun with the flamethrower."
Great. Let's just move carefully and hope the walls don't get hungry then. Zolvi says, not thrilled about how this place is looking.
Just as you are about to enter the building, a pair of strange winged creatures fly up from a roost underneath the island. Judging by the arrows lodged in their thick hides, they must be used to humanoid visitors. They swoop down and hungrily attack!
ROUND 1
BOLD MAY ACT!!
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Sigmus
Yellow
John
Green
Pangea
Zolvi
Sheher
Varnais
They are currently 20 feet up in the air
N Large animal
Senses low-light vision
Speed 15 ft. fly 80 ft. (Ex, perfect)
Yellow and Green are somewhat perturbed by the time traveling Android.