The robot chirps as it creaks out of its holding bay, then fires a photoelectric pulse from a damaged emitter
---(Round 1)--
Darim
Twilight
Brownie
---(Round 2)--
Ratrace
Johnnie
Anthethriss
---
Robot (20)
---
Johnnie pierces an armor plate with his bullet, while Twilight moves to a better position. Ratrace lights us a servo, and scrapheap's shot lands in a conveyor belt.
---(Round 1)--
Darim
Twilight
Brownie
---(Round 2)--
Ratrace
Johnnie
Anthethriss
---
Robot (25)
---
Butcher takes out the explosive, while Antethriss takes out the front kick, and demonstrates the stopping power of the foot.
---(Round 1)--
Darim
Twilight
Brownie
---(Round 2)--
Ratrace
Johnnie
Anthethriss
---
Robot (32)
---
Darim hits the damaged robot, but not hard enough to bring it down.
The nanite-powered machine chomps at Anthetriss
---(Round 2)--
Darim
Twilight
Brownie
---(Round 3)--
Ratrace
Johnnie
Anthethriss
---
Robot (33)
---
Twilight fires a volley of missiles, which is enough to utterly destroy the robot, letting the few remaining nanites slink away and disperse.
The group is free to explore the remainder of the technocreche, now that the nanite activity has been safely put to rest.
The factory's control consoles allow access to a database.
The database contains schematics for a variety of the hybrid robots once created here. Among these schematics are plans for truly massive, dangerous hybrid robots, clearly intended to both kill living things and destroy large structures. These robots have a variety of body plans, notably a monstrous spider-like being of light and technology, a kilometer-long segmented robot with a head plate and overlapping plates covering its body, and a winged monstrosity with probes and a hexagonal mouth fitted with a large cannon.
In a basement of the technocrèche there is a massive, locked door with a receptacle that the group immediately realizes matches the shape and indentations of the Eternity Drive. Someone has tried to hack into this lock and clearly failed repeatedly.
There is a great richness of text to use Kinpopo's lexicon on. At the console, it's possible to read out some words (though analyzing the full database is too much for the puny processing power of the unit). The lexicon is able to make out the words “planet,” “solar,” and “destruction.”. At the locked door, some of the symbols translate as “the end,” “ender,” or “final.” Together with the other words from the technocrèche, the door’s symbols as translate closer as "world-enders,” “planet-killers". Or something similar, who knows.
|
Twilight does a lot of recording and analysing as well as scanning with Kinpopo's translation matrix.
Wow - maybe my core was created in a place like this they say quietly to themselves.
I quite agree. Looks like 'Those That Call' were trying to get in here. Besides, if we want to go further, we're going to need the Eternity Drive
Sarmak listens with great attention when the group returns Quite the discovery. I believe it is imperative that you take the the Eternity Drive to explore that locked area you've found
---
Returning to the special area of the technocreche, the Eternity drive indeed unlocks the strange door. The cold light of a console illuminates a metal elevator sitting comfortably in a wide shaft descending deep into the darkness underneath Eternity. The elevator hovers silently, held up by magnetic rails. Oddly spaced bars dot the sides of the shaft, disappearing out of the reach of the console’s pale light.
Kinpopo's lexicon shows some proper nouns in the error messages, indicating the elevator is only intended to be used by specific users. Ratrace of course manages to convince the elevator that the group is that of that set of intended users, and the elevator descends...
It's hard to judge how deep the elevator descend, but it must have been at least a hundred feet. The doors open into the ruins of a settlement.
Collapsed walls and steel panels box in a settlement without any of the exposed circuits, cold metal, or imposing superstructures of Eternity. A few of the surviving buildings have exposed metal bars and roofs made of a transparent glass-like material overburdened with rubble. A wide road embedded with flickering lights leads to a section that is still traversable, while all other paths are cut off abruptly by rubble, or an artificial barrier covered in glowing circuits. A dead creature made of segmented metal plates lays stiffly on its side, its entrails hungrily devoured.
Johnnie has a hard time wriggling through, while Twilight points out the marks of extensive damage on the city's buildings: damage inflicted purposefully by heavy weapons and other wanton acts of destruction.
Ratrace tries to follow the metal wiring, but finds the entire city is penned in on all sides by metal barriers, many of which cut right across a road or through a building. These barriers reach from the floor all the way to the lofty ceiling fifty feet above and are clearly the handiwork of the First Ones. This makes it impossible—at present—to determine the true size of the site. There is no way past the barriers.
Anthethtiss spends some time chasing strange creatures, which vaguely resemble pillbugs the size of cats, although they are wider and have a flexible carapace with a metallic sheen. This hard carapace is clearly a defensive adaptation, meant to protect them from predators. The creatures are not aggressive at all and likely pose no threat to the group.
The remaining walls of the last building are covered in parallel scorch marks, with some sections burned and warped, some destroyed by shelling, and a few completely disintegrated. The remains of a gargantuan robot slumped against the southern wall peers through the original roofline of the ruined building. The robot’s frame is covered in dents, holes, and ancient scars. Scratches and claw marks crisscross its original circuitry, disrupting their regular patterns. Similar scratches appear on a few exposed rebars emerging from the wall.