"A valiant effort, Belmarniss and Mari," comments Flint, "but we must press on and hopefully find the master keycard as you say."
Having no particular preference which set of doors to check next, Flint goes back out into the main area via the door that Mari is waiting by, positioning himself at the aft-most unused door. "Shall we check this door next?" he asks, inviting the others to share opinions if there is a good reason to do something else first.
Despite a few wistful glances at the lockers, Ordyt stays posted up at the next door while the others work. "Do we really have claim to any of this? We still don't know whose ship this is or where they've gone."
Sammad follows Flint. He nods as the Captain raises the question. "I suppose we'd get to it at some point. And Flame knows I don't want to talk with the stowaway anymore today..."
Flint answers Ordyt and Sammad, saying ”If this equipment can help us secure the ship, I say we use it and figure out who it belongs to later—assuming we can find the master keycard.”
”In any case, let’s keep moving. We need to gain control of the ship before it drifts somewhere dangerous,” he says, opening the door to the next unknown area.
"Makes sense to me," says Mari, following after Flint.
Turning away from the armory room and it's mysterious airlock-like doors, you return to the posh room and set your eyes on the starboard side aperture.
At a touch from Flint, the door irises open and you see a spacious room decorated in brass, basalt and steel. Panels of metal adorn the walls and match the metal lounge chairs and low metal tables that lie around the edges of the room. The walls and ceiling gleam with polished metal, except for tiny red and white tiles forming inset mosaics of elegant trees, their leaves like countless little flames. Each of those little leaves sport an actual nozzle that flickers with flame to provide light and warmth to the room. Three recessed ceramic tubs tiled with blue glassy rock sit recessed into the ground in the center of the room. Each has openings for massage jets, and all three are empty of any water.
The starboard end of this room has a real-time viewscreen showing the void of space outside... though the image glitches and sometimes winks out for a second or two.
Mari stops Flint from going further into the room and points at the nozzles. "Cap, look at the flame nozzles. Doesn't it seem like there's too many of them? It can't just be a fancy fireplace, there's something else going on here."
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Belmarniss, disappointed at being unable to open the lockers, follows the team, and nods at Marisol's description.
"Maybe, given how elemental fire is so iconic to the builders of this ship this is some sort of...fire-bath or something? A sauna or steam-room? My initial thought was an incinerator, but this set-up is far too luxurious for the simple purposes of burning waste."
"Ah, yes," says Captain Flint, stopping immediately, "I have indeed been burned enough this cycle already. Thank you for the warning, Mari...Perhaps you can determine a way to deactivate the nozzles before we enter?"
Flint stands aside, looking into the room but not entering.
Mari nods and steps carefully into the room, looking for anything that might be a trap or alarm.
"Okay, it looks clear. I might just be paranoid."
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Sammad steps forward. "If I have to smell burning flesh again today, I'm out. So I'll go first, since I'm fireproof-to a point."
And with that, Sammad strides past the others into the room.
Marisol sees nothing that could be even slightly construed as a trap. And in any case, Sammad is mostly fireproof, right?
The ifrit steps into the relaxation room and starts looking around. The quality of all the furnishings and adornment is top notch, but at a casual glance, he doesn't spot any other interesting objects left lying around. He hears the door to the room irising closed and a gravely voice coming out from hidden speakers.
With no more preamble than that, the fire jets along the ceiling suddenly expand to multiple foot long streams of flame and the empty pools begin filling with boiling hot water!
While Sammad fails to dodge the billowing jets of flame, his planar heritage causes the flames to do little more than singe his gear and leave him feeling unpleasantly hot! However, the flame jets and steamy water nozzles show no signs of abating in their attempt to turn the room into a deadly sauna.
Mari recoils from the closing door, shouting, "I wasn't paranoid! I wasn't paranoid!"
”Are you okay in there, Sammad?” Flint asks as he steps back up to the door and touches it to see if it will re-open.
The door doesn't open to Flint's touch... and it feels rather quite warm for some reason.
After recovering from her initial shock, Mari sets about trying to unlock the door so Sammad can make his escape. "Hold on, Sammy! We'll get you out of there!"
Sammad sighs deeply, then hears Flint's voice over comms. "I'm all right for the moment, Captain. Like I said, I'm fireproof-to a point. But the speakers said something about a sauna sequence-and I'm not eager to find out what that point is."
Sammad searches quickly around the room. There doesn't seem to be any physical controls for the "sauna" inside or outside. Whether it's fully automated or merely voice controlled is unclear.
Outside, Marisol quickly realizes that the door has no keypad or computerized controls. Instead, she pries a small panel off the wall next to the door and finds a perfectly organized set of wiring and technomagical instrumentation to control the door.
||| INIT |||
Flint
Belmarniss
Marisol
Ordyt
Sammad
Wordlessly, Ordyt rushes up to the door and tries to jam his pike into the frame, using the weapon as a lever to haul the door open.
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Belmarniss screams at Sammad suddenly getting trapped inside the room that has now confirmed it IS in fact a sauna. Trying not to panic, she looks at the panel Marisol has opened and tries to see what it would take to hack or hot-wire the door.
"I'm a bloody technomancer, systems combining tech with magic should be EASY for me," she whines to no one in particular.
True to her word, Belmarniss easily crosses two of the wires inside the wall, and the door irises open. A blast of heat hits all of you inside and an automated voice speaks in Ignan.
The flame jets abate immediately, though the steaming water remains in the pools in the room.
Flint peers in and looks at Sammad. Seeing that he is no worse for the wear, Flint calls with a smile,”Quit lounging about in the spa, Ambassador, we have work to do.”
Flint moves up to the next door and waits for the others to get ready ( or inspect it if they so choose). When people are ready, he opens the door.
Sammad bows curtly to the others as they enter the room. "Thank you for the prompt attention. I don't think my equipment was too badly affected."
He pauses for a moment. "When the sauna activated, it greeted me as visitor #2...I suppose someone fire-proof came through this way already."
He then walks out of the room, moving to the door with Flint.
"...I suppose someone fire-proof came through this way already."
"Or highly flammable!" Ordyt quips, pantomiming melting away.
Mari quickly moves away from the death spa and to the next room. "I'm not sure what I expected on this ship, but it wasn't, y'know, this," she says, gesturing vaguely at her surroundings.
”I just wish the bridge were still intact. I would love to know the combat capabilities of this vessel,” adds Flint as he opens the next door.
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"Form and function merged seamlessly, and elevated almost to excess...it's what the Cooperative's ships strive to be..."
Sammad glances down at the brooch on his lapel, which managed to come out of his sauna unscathed. "I have much to share with Quassela, once this is over..."
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"I'd certainly have traded the bridge in return for that decon chamber they call a sauna."
The next door opens readily at Flint's touch. This large room appears to be a combination engineering bay and science lab, filled with workbenches, baffling arrays of equipment and tools scattered about. Most of the walls still sport screens attached to them, but impact damage has cracked many and left the remaining ones looping through glitchy red and gold images. Cabinets and lockers line the lower half of the walls. Overhead, two clear, almond-shaped domes offer a view of the stars.
At the room's forward end stands a long transparent box split into two chambers. The starboard side chamber is filled with a silver liquid, while the port side chamber has been cracked open by a fallen shelf that once was attached to the wall above the box. The two chambers are separated by a a narrow opening that is currently open... some strange force is stopping the silver fluid from leaking through the opening and into the port-side chamber.
Flint looks into the room at all the unfamiliar equipment and moves in a few steps to see if anything jumps out at him ( ). Assuming not, Flint observes, ”I have no idea what to make of all this. Mari, Belmarniss, Sammad, what do you think?”
"I agree. It's like a military corvette mashed together with a luxury cruise vessel!"
"Perhaps conceived as an armed yacht? Or a warship for nobles who can't do without their luxuries? I agree that it's very strange."
Upon seeing the silvery fluid, the oread's eyes narrow suspiciously, and he pokes at the substance with the tip of his pike.
Sammad chuckles in response to Ordyt's speculation. "Not so strange if you know anything about efreet."
He looks around the room, trying to see if there's anything interesting about.
Once she catches sight of the equipment in the room over Flint's shoulder, Mari rushes in past him and starts examining everything. She doesn't say anything, but is clearly fascinated by all of it.
Ordyt spies some kind of tools or technological objects suspended inside the silvery liquid. It seems the fluid isn't entirely opaque. If the fluid is safe, it shouldn't be too difficult to fish them out.
However, Marisol instantly recognizes the silvery fluid for what it really is. An assembly ooze!
While undoubtedly useful, uncontained assembly oozes are a dangerous hazard - a living garbage disposal that seeks out and consumes nearby technology, including that worn or carried by nearby creatures.
Mari turns away from the computers to check out the rest of the room, notes the ooze in its container...and then notices Ordyt poking it with his pike. As it stirs to life, she yells out, "Ordyt, back up! That's an assembly ooze!"
”That ooze seems to be breaking out of its container! Is there anything we can do to reinforce it so it doesn’t escape?” exclaims Flint as he sees the cracks in the structure and looks around for something that could be useful.
Sammad hears Marisol and Flint's words, and a look of concern crosses his face. He looks around the room along with Flint.
With more time, you might have been able to use the terminals here to work out why the container's internal force field isn't operating, but as-is the ooze will be free in a matter of seconds. Neither Flint nor Sammad see an obvious way to seal up all the cracks and fissures in the transparent container.
The ooze moves even quicker, having picked up a whiff of tech somewhere in the vicinity.
With combat looking inevitable, Flint draws his solar dueling blade and moves up a bit to cover those with ranged weaponry, say 2 squares right and 3 squares down. ”What’s an ‘assembly ooze’ Mari, and how do we stop it?” asks Flint, concerned that this could be bad news if it gets completely free.
"I appreciate the warning, Marisol! Will it harm my weapon if I strike it? I can use acidic attacks if that would be better." Ordyt backs up a step, pike leveled as he calmly waits for the bizarre creature to finish breaking out of its container.
"Short version: it's a blob of nanomachines that break down tech for raw materials and then reassembles it into something else. It's not going to care if you're wearing that tech and it won't care if it smothers you in the process."
Defensively, an assembly ooze has typical ooze immunities, along with a vulnerability to electric discharges due to its reliance on nanites.