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Aglippa gives Karina a bit of a side-eye, but doesn't say anything further, hand rubbing along her chin. "I'm in favor of going ahead, but I'll let ye all decide. Better not let the last hop ruin the whole beer..."
as in, she came here late, so she doesn't think she's got the same decision making power right now.
"I have no problem to go forward, we have to use every moment of momentum to find our quarry" he nods, with a metallic chime of 'confirmation' from the elemental
"Mmm, i wonder if i should call you Chime?" he ponders out loud
Ready to move ahead, Ba'hahk sticks his head through the solid-seeming wall before him, and is rewarded with a few beyond the illusion. There a sliding door, much like the ones you saw earlier, sits party ajar. From beyond, bright light streams out of the 4-5" opening. There is a panel near the door that has a small green light glowing on it.
"Curious" he comments as he goes to inspect the green light, perhaps there is a switch or lever connected to it
There is no switch or lever readily visible. The panel is about the size of a large book, smooth and unmarred darker grey material than the doors. It sits a little higher than waist high on the right hand side of the doorway, which is stuck open on the left hand side.
Alpha-47 walks in behind Ba'hahk, taking in the room and the door half ajar.
Investigating the door, does it look like someone could squeeze through?
Karina checks to see if anyone presses anything as she investigates for herself. She doesn't know much about ruins beyond their lack of magic, as a Witch-or-Bard, she can tell that these things are alien and non-magical. They fascinate her endlessly... which is something she'll have to investigate later.
If the group looks though the open doorway, (it's about 4 inches open, so very hard to slip through for a man-sized creature, but a viol might fit inside...). You see another room made out of the metal floor and walls. Inside, bright light spills from flat panels in the ceiling -- similar panels to the early part of this strange ruin, but those did not give off light. The panel by the door is also similar to those you saw before.
Complex looking machines of wires, spiral tubes, and nozzles are affixed on the east and west ends of the room. Nothing else appears to be visible in the room, though there is another set of doors on the other side which are fully closed.
"Knew Numeria was weird, but shite, this is something I haven't seen before in my life." There seems to be no immediate danger, but Aglippa still keeps a hand on her longsword.
... She walks over to the set of closed doors, trying to see if they can be opened or not.
While Ba'hahk and Alpha fiddle with the door, Zaria drops back, slips into the shadows, and keeps on eye behind the group to make sure that if something discovers them, the group will get a warning.
Karina sees if the Viol or Luther can fit through the gap in the door.
"Numeria is definitely weird. Non-magical, but that makes it even f#*#ing weirder. I may be able to fit L... the lute through the door if needed." She then decides, haphazardly, to see if any wires connect to the door. They're like dots and lines, might as well try if there's a way to open it by pressing.
Zaria slides back away from the doors, losing sight of part of Ba'hahk as he looks at the doors behind the illusory wall. She keeps her eyes peeled the other direction, just in case more of those four-armed skeletons or tentacled sand creatures pops in.
Karina moves to the front and starts fiddling with things, touching pushing and generally trying things out. Much to her surprise, if she lays her hand flat on the book-sized panel, the door shifts open with a slight hiss, allowing free access to the room. As the door slides open, a sizzling sound is heard from inside and the smell of something hot or burning is easily noticeable.
Karina's eyes light up. "Well, that does it! Note to self, those panels can control... everything."
Aglippa sniffs at the air for a bit.
"... Reminds me of the forge."
Watching how Karina masterly handled the ancient panel, thus opening the door, Alpha-47 stands in awe, "We will need that expertise no doubt the further in we go,"
He prepares his light and awaits Ba'hahk and Aglippa to lead them deeper within.
The door slides open as Karina puts her hand on the panel with the green light. The room beyond is brightly lit, the light seeming to shine from panels in the ceiling. There is a set of similar doors on the opposite wall of this chamber, with a similar pad with a green light near them. The east and west walls of the room are covered in contraptions filled with nozzles wires and tubes, they look very similar to equipment in one of the rooms you already traversed.
As Aglippa enters the room, a klaxon alarm sounds quite loudly followed by words in a language that is intelligible by perhaps only a few of you. The nozzles on the ends of the room seem to come to life rotating in loud clunking sounds, and the smell of electrified ozone gets even stronger.
Alpha-47 speaks up from the back, pointedly, "That does not sound good, the disembodied voice is speaking in Androffan, a language I thought only Androids knew,"
Looking around before continuing "It says, 'Life form detected. Prepare for sterilization.' Aglippa I think you are the life form, I'm sorry,"
The smell's getting stronger. Alpha's words ring into her ears. Sterilize? Sounds bad.
"I've been learning it, slowly, but all I've been able to learn is the specific words for the stuff around Numeria, like robot, android, and plasma" Karina adds. "Which, for the record, included none of those words."
After some thinking Aglippa decides to duck out of the room and motion for everyone else to back off as well.
"Something's about to happen. Don't want to be in the radius if it's something bad."
As Aglippa leaps back, a blast of electrical energy explodes from the nozzles and hoses on either side of the room, filling the space for an instant with white hot light and power. Then the blast is over as suddenly as it began. The burning ozone smell more powerful than ever, and the contraptions on either wall rotating back into their original place wiht a herky-jerky cadence.
"Shite-!
Even the usually stoic Aglippa has to yell a little. That might've turned her into a pile of ash on the floor if she'd tried to dismantle the mechanism.
"Alright, no goin' in there for most of us... Hm."
She glances over to Alpha-47.
"Ye think ye could walk in there without that happening?"
"Hmm, perhaps Chime here could enter too? Not sure how this thing 'detects', but a being like Chime could potentially fool such means? If you think it would be beneficial for it to follow you in?" he asks looking over to 47
Hesitant, "Maybe we just run through, it seems the electricity is localized to the entrance, with enough speed we might be able to run through,"
Looking around though, "I will proceed within and report my results. If you wish to send Chime with me, you may do so,"
Alpha-47 gathers themself, then attempts to run through the Sterilization area and open the far doors.
Alpha-47 leaps into the sterilization room. As he does, the klaxon alarm sounds again, giving the same warning of imminent sterilization. The machines on the east and west walls clank and clunk and a whirring sounds starts up again that is intermittently overcome with a horrible grinding sound and loud series of thunks.
But, despite all the noise, Alpha makes it to the far door without issue. It is closed tightly, seemingly of the same metal that most of the walls and floors are made from. There is a similar panel near the door with a glowing green light inside. No handle or way to pull open the door is readily visible.
Thinking back to what Karina did in the last room, Alpha-47 slaps his hand on the glowing green panel, saying in Androffen "Door, open"
"That gives me an idea..." Karina says, as if she's hiding something from the group as she sighs, shaking a little.
"For the record, if we continue further. I should warn you, I am not a bard by the source of my magic. I am -- in reality -- a Witch... whose patron, I've come to learn... is the Queen of Witches herself, hence the familiar being... well. An instrument. I've learned to make the locomotion methods closer to telekinesis, though, so no chicken legs."
The lute then starts to hover away from her and into the room. "I doubt this device will detect Luther here, as most Numerian ruins seem to be built around biological life-forms -- what little information that trickles out is consistent. Whoever built them knew nothing of magic."
Ba'hahk and Chime follows her and her familiar as the large orc finally shrugs
"Can you play an instrument and come up with songs and rhymes?" he finally asks
"I did say my SOURCE of magic isn't the same as most bards you hear! My profession is still a bard, after all. Same spell list, too, just that music isn't actually.... -needed- to cast."
Aglippa gives Karina some side-eye, but in the end she merely shrugs. Been in the adventuring bed with stranger fellows before this and all.
"As long as your weird crap helps with this sorta thing, ye aren't going to be hearing any sort of complaint from me about it. Let's try it out if we encounter something like this again."
Alpha-47 is able to get the doors on the far side of the sterilizer room and open the door. It appears a hallway is on the other side, which is about 30' long. Another door, closed, is at the end, but the hallway also continues to the right side of that door.
Zaria doesn't care how Karina gets her magic, so the revelation gets no reaction from her.
She then moves, once Alpha has the door open, to take the lead, slightly ahead of the group once more. Her plan is to move to the corner and take a peek around it.
Zaria dashes through the sterilizer room, paying no heed to Karina's revelations. On the other side, she goes to the open corner and looks around it. She sees the hallway turns 90 degrees there, and then runs to the northeast, parallel to where the closed door stands.
This area is also brightly lit from panels in the ceiling, by the way.
Karina walks ahead. "Alright, so none of you are outright enemies with my patron. That's for the best," Karina says as she gets back into her singsong tone again.
Alpha-47, happy the panel worked, steps inside, eying Karina, "Brigh has no issue with the Queen of Witches, neither do I so long as you you don't carelessly destroy others’ creations or research, enslave intelligent constructs, abuse constructs, refuse to acknowledge or learn from mistakes," He says, reciting Brigh's anathema's.
Aglippa jogs through the room to catch up with the rest of the party, ready to advance with the party.
"Been with stranger folks."
"Unless your patron has an issue with nature and the elements, I see no reason for us to come to harsh words. Besides..." he points to Chime "Seems I'm not your typical druid either"
"Here in Numeria? No, you don't have to worry. I figured I'd ask, some people take exception... she isn't exactly the kindest, to put it lightly. No issue with Brigh either."
Don't bring up the eternal winter.
Aglippa follow Alpha and Zaria across the sterilizer room and into the hallway. But when Ba'hahk tries, the warning alarm goes off again, and the tubes and nozzles begin rotating. The ozone smell returns, and the far door, where the others are now waiting, shuts on its own.
Alpha-47 spins around as the door closes shut behind him, locking Ba'hahk out. Alpha-47 Looks around for a green panel on this side or some way to either shut off the sterilizer's or open the door.
"Ba'hahk, calmly place your hand on the glowing green panel, the door should open. If it does not, goodbye."
"Lets not go that far" as he quickly tries to aid the android
Karina just watches on in anticipation-horror.