"Hold," Faustite said, and the words echoed out over a barren canyon. The area, a narrow juncture between two broken cliffs, was silent but for the chatter of gathered officers.
Just behind them and to their right was the cave that housed their camp, with only some Generals and the Mauvians that worked alongside them. The reserve teams lingered there, acting as guards to those actively working, should youma return to the area. For now, even they had fallen silent, and watched on to hear what would come next.
The flaming General, poised just before the yawning pit that was their focus of investigation, turned to face the crowd of voluntary officers. "Tama and I will proceed first. Rest of you will split off into your teams as designated on your tablets. Once you receive the signal, want each team to rappel down to the building, one team at a time. It's about a fifty foot drop, so be sure of your footing as you descend. Mauvians are about finished compiling a map from data they scalped from the structure, and that information will be disseminated to you. Once you land, you'll be directed to your assigned area to investigate. As a reminder, stick to your groups. Don't know what we're facing down there.
"Expect teams to report in with any relevant findings on the hour. If you find yourselves stuck, call me – might be of some help. Won't have much to do, anyway," he added in a lowered tone. "Tama," he urged before he summoned the Mauvian to his shoulder.
After mounting their equipment, the pair turned and vanished. They weren't gone long before the teams' tablets glowed with the sound of the Mauvian's voice:
“It's showtime, folks, and get here quick. We’re burning daylight down here.”
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:09 am
The groups of agents filed through the maintenance hallway that opened near Faustite, bypassing the forcefield with its five-pointed star. They found themselves in a massive, lengthy room – perhaps the size of an airplane hangar by modern standards – with a muted white glow rising up from their feet. If the teams looked down, they would discover themselves moored on an island of the same substance that made up the ceiling in the last room, which looked to be an unidentifiable tile similar to obsidian. Beyond that, there were channels upon channels gored into the ground, each full of a peculiar substance.
The substance looked like water. Within it, however, were uncountable little quarks of light, as if they were observing the cosmos on a clear day. It lapped against the gouged edges of the floor like waves against a beachhead.
Further beyond were successive islands, each roughly the same as the first, each easily reachable by jumping over the channels. On the next nearest island was a nondescript block, roughly five feet in width and three feet tall. It appeared to be made of the same material as the floor, and lacked any other obvious characteristics at this distance. Scattered around it were piles of rubble with a few longer pieces of twisted metal and a couple glowing cables, similar to the ones seen in the maintenance corridor that the teams had just exited.
The walls featured repeated atramentous columns, each stretching upward to the ceiling. Behind them were a series of delicate glass tubes that ran parallel to one another. Within those tubes was a rush of orange fire, and echoing them were a few intact glass disks that projected an orange light into the room. Within one of them, on a faraway island, was a glowing green symbol that was too faint to read at that distance.
The walls were intact, but the ceiling was not. What was once a dome featured a massive hole, running nearly the length of the area, where much of the building's architecture and insulation hung down in ribbons and barely contained chunks. Each scrap of metal hung like a sword of Damocles over anything that lingered below it. Fragments of glass littered the floor to the right of the team, opposite of where they emerged.
Behind them was the forcefield they had glimpsed upon breaching the building, with its five-pointed star, and a console to the right of it, near the maintenance hall. While it bore a heavy gouge in the screen and parts of the glass looked to be floating, it still – somehow – worked.
Welcome to Area Three! This room's name will be updated as characters learn more about it.
Here's some ground rules:
Event posts will be posted every 48 hours. As the event progresses, these rooms may change in ways that open or close opportunities for characters, or advance the plot. You do not need to solve every puzzle to finish the area, so please do not be alarmed if an opportunity fades! There is no post limit between prompts. However, unless otherwise told, characters may only perform an action once after each prompt. Performing an action may mean interacting with the environment, or trying to do something to advance the plot. Update: If you have received a DM response for your character, you may roll again! Please do not reserve posts! There's no penalty for missing prompts!
Team captains may report to Faustite with their findings at any time during the investigation. They may also contact Faustite for suggestions of what to do next! All teams have one rugose pendant for the duration of the event. This can be used on anyone, but may only be used once during the event, so choose wisely if you decide to use it!
How to investigate:
Before posting for an investigation, roll 1d6 (a six-sided die). Edit the post and fill in for your character. Add any relevant bonuses to your roll (if you're unsure of your bonuses, check this sheet or the quotes on this post!). Characters that have two bonuses get +1, characters with one bonus get +2. Quote me with "[Character] is investigating [noun]! in your quote. Please include your total roll (with bonus if applicable)
Please make sure to include what your character is investigating in your quote – this helps me keep track of everything! The higher your recon roll, the more information may be gleaned from the investigation. The higher your tech roll, the more options may be available from nearby technology. Leadership rolls and combat rolls may be asked for in later prompts!
Have fun, and if you're uncertain of anything, feel free to ask! heart
Kamacite made a face as he pulled the hem of the long fabric around his legs up. It wasn’t really in danger of getting wet with whatever this substance was, but he couldn’t say he was all that excited to touch it and find out what it was.
He’d taken off his robe to scale down the cliff face, but once they were in the building, he’d pulled it back on. He knew the risks of having loose clothing in an unfamiliar place, but he had also used the extra fabric as a means for a makeshift shield more times than he could count.
As always, his hair had been cut short for the mission. He’d been doing it for years, and hoped all Senshi would heed the warning about keeping their hair from becoming a liability to them.
He wasn’t happy that Aquamarine was on his team, and he was feeling a bit overprotective of Lieutenant Zultanite, although he was doing his best not to hover or make it obvious that he wanted to stay close by. The Lieutenant was quite capable, but Kamacite also wanted to guarantee his safety as much as possible.
He was grateful that their team was currently with Prehnite’s team as well, and he found himself relaxing just slightly when he caught his eye and nodded. If he stepped a little closer to the General, well… that was just because he was trying to stay out of the way of Aquamarine, in case he decided to sacrifice one of them to find out what the peculiar substance was.
Quietly and carefully, Kamacite made his way to the next nearest island to inspect the nondescript block. He reached out to brush his fingers over the surface.
Sunshine Alouette
Mention
Shiningamisgirl
Mention
Guine
Crew
Lonely Explorer
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Offline
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 6:33 pm
guine
(3+0 = 3) Kamacite could discern little about the box — why it was there, what it was for, who might've abandoned it. Curiously, however, a wave of blue light washed over its surface before the box returned to its featureless black appearance. Then, blue-white lettering came to life in the very center of its top:
DEPLOY CONTENTS?
YES NO
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 6:44 pm
General Aquamarine Just keeping an eye out for danger for now. He says it’s up to the others to do the tech and recon. He’s just there to keep everyone safe and dish out orders and to look pretty.
Eyes of pale purple tracked Kamacite’s movements, but Aquamarine made no move to stop the Eternal Senshi from investigating whatever he wished.
For his part, Aquamarine studied their surroundings, eyeing whatever seemed as if it might pose them any danger. He doubted he would be able to assist with the technology in this place; that would be best left up to the cats, and whoever else among their numbers boasted a talent for such things. Likewise, he was not much use at reconnaissance. More than anything, Aquamarine was there to keep the team alive.
He’d shed his cape and pulled his hair out of his face before they arrived. For the time being, Aquamarine kept his weapons sheathed, but a hand came to rest on the hilt of his rapier — watchful, wary.
“You all know your assignments,” he spoke to his team. Aquamarine wasn’t much interested in babysitting, and the tone of his voice said as much. They shouldn’t require more direction than do your ******** jobs.
He glanced up at the ceiling, or what little remained of it. At this point, it wasn’t more than hanging debris — and an obvious hazard, one they could do little about.
“Watch out for falling debris,” he warned the others.
Kamacite cast a wary glance over where Aquamarine was. The others in the room didn’t immediately move around to inspect the other areas, which left Kamacite sighing softly in resignation.
He hadn’t liked seeing Faustite stuck in that strange tube. He couldn’t allow himself to look like he was worried. He already got upset enough as it was when it came to Faustite being put in danger. No one else seemed to be worried, and Faustite hadn’t been asking for help, so he could only assume that it was intentional.
Which just meant they needed to get things taken care of as quickly as possible.
The strange blue-white that flashed on the surface of the box caught Kamacite off guard for a moment, and he frowned a little at the words. Deploying something sounded like weaponry. But they were there to learn more about this place.
Normally he would have asked if the others had found anything useful by now, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“I’m going to open this box,” he said, raising his voice as much as he felt comfortable, which was casual conversation volume for most. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he had Aquamarine’s attention, and then selected YES from the top of the box.
Upon arrival to their own location Hylonome turned to face those in her core team that she belonged to before eyeing all the others that made up their entire group. Names would undoubtedly come later but for now it was a relief just to be able to assist in whatever was causing this mystery of missing youma and to figure out what this building's secrets were. There had been a slight gasp from her lips at seeing the strange beauty of this area but as some of the others broke away did Hylonome hang back.
As a healer she wasn't going to be out in front, no, it was safer for her to hang back but that didn't mean that she couldn't try and get some answers about their environment as well.
Bringing out her tablet pen did the senshi of edelweiss move closer to the gouges that made up the channels that separated the various platforms before transforming the tablet into a working screen mode. That done, Hylonome balanced her device on her knees before reaching out to snag a piece of glass that was near her position before gently lowering the debris into the channel's peculiar substance in order to get a possible reading on what it might contain. As her hand lowered the glass to touch the surface of the substance did her free hand point the tablet screen at the interaction point, not willing to miss a single possible data point.
General Prehnite Prehnite had never been more grateful that his group consisted of those he knew. Even if he wasn't familiar with General Aquamarine on a personal level, he at least knew the face, the tone of severity that dared those around him to ******** around and find out. Anywhere else it would've been a drag of cats tongue and barb, but here? Blessing and balm, because there was likely to be ******** -- and then those with level heads n steel spines would be needed all the more to handle it.
He found himself a middle to meld himself too, a solid stance between one mass of recruits and another; mirrored image to Aquas watchdogged pose with ever-roving, scrutinous gaze. He'd learned well the last time what happened when people started poking things too quickly, bet rocks or crablike stalactites that seemed overly friendly...
"Go on Kama," and if the words on the screen the Senshi explored seemed ominous? Prehnite didn't say so, eager to be supportive in the tone of 'we've got you'; hand on the hilt of a sheathed blade just in case all of the cave came tumbling down -- or alive --- or any other number of possibilities. Only an occasional glance spared back towards Hylonome where she worked on something safely towards the back.
He was a worn pair of denim, n in all the ways the Rift awed with its alien-ness, it also amused him with how sci-fy zoned into neverending twilight it seemed. Not a place to live, no, but maybe as a tourist attraction? A whole housah doom n the like. He smiled slow at Kama's back as he got to investigating his own glowy bits.
Then turned n meandered paces away to gingerly dig through the scattered piles of rubble nearby -- he figured it weren't far enough away to give the man a heart attack -- but not to close to be up his skirts like a burr. Cause he honestly admired Kama's attempts at baby-bird-mama-hen-herding the flock. It was sweeter n a sugared rim on a lemon drop shot, n he wasn't about to piss on that.
xStrickenized
Zultanite is Investigating the Piles of Rubble near Kamacite.
When Kamacite (3) touched the panel, the entire lid of the box retracted slowly. However, the surface did not seem to retract to anywhere; the lid was simply disappearing slowly. Inside, Kamacite would find pristine, finely stacked weapons – mainly swords, maces and flails, made of materials not unlike those of the facility's. They each sported a glyph on the handle.
Hylonome's (4) inspection of the gouges in the floor had been thorough – at the bottom of the gouges were broken-open spheres that looked like matte gunmetal eggs, if eggs were perfectly spherical. When she analyzed the substance on the end of her glass shard, she would find it to be a type of fuel. Remarkably, it had no odor.
Zultanite couldn't find much in the way of useful items in the wreckage, but as he dug down into the mess, he had found a handheld terminal that looked mostly functional. Presently, however, it looked to be turned off – or out of power.
Faustite's voice sounded over the team leads' tablets. "Aquamarine and Prehnite, status with me if you've anything to report."
Stars began to float up from the watery substance, reaching to about shin height before finally dissipating. The water level rose with it, which was now high enough to coat the floor in a thin layer. It was dark, yet clear, and splashed lightly as agents trod through it. As the water spread over the floor, small five-pointed stars lit up where they had been gouged into the floor. Each of them appeared near pieces of detritus – a busted metal frame, broken glass and a pile of brilliant threads, and a series of broken obsidian plates.
As team members neared these symbols, intention notwithstanding, ghostly white apparitions of items began to form. Near the bested metal frame, there was the ghost of a long and intimidatingly well-crafted table. By the broken glass and pile of threads, something like an indoor window suspended by those threads. By the plates, a series of chairs each at random angles with one another.
The gouges on the floor had shrunk. While still there, they were much less the hazard that they used to be.
The stars that began floating up had ensconced Thornasite and Prehnite, whorling upward to paint their appearances over in an iridescent wash of sparkling stars. The flurry lasted but seconds, and by the time it finished, the other team members would find their partners looking like a pall had been cast over them – as if their appearances were haunted by figures that were no longer of this world.
Quote:
Thornasite and Prehnite have gained the appearance of their most recent past life. If your characters do not have a past life or you are uncertain how that past life may look, you may also describe them as looking like they've been painted over with an iridescent, starry sheen.
The next story post will occur on 12/23/22 around 9P EST.
General Aquamarine Responding to Faustite. Vaguely disturbed by all the weird s**t going on.
Aquamarine made a cautious approach as Kamacite opened the box, getting a quick glimpse of the weaponry inside before Faustite’s voice came over his tablet.
“Nothing useful yet, as far as I can tell,” Aquamarine responded. “Box of weapons. Swords and s**t. Seem to be in good condition. Kamacite’s looking them over. Zultanite’s found a… something. Some sort of tech. I don’t ******** know, I’m not a ******** tech whiz. One of Prehnite’s team is checking out all the weird s**t running through the floor channels. Give us a—”
He cut off abruptly, glancing down as stars rose up from the watery substance. They were there and gone again, followed by a minor surge in the water level. Aquamarine studied the five-pointed stars which soon lit up along the floor.
“Bunch of ******** stars,” he added. “Like the one on the forcefield. You said it burned like a Cosmos knight, didn’t you? Funny that it burns like them and has their ******** symbol.”
Aquamarine looked back toward the forcefield. There was a console near it no one had bothered to examine yet. He turned as if to make his way toward it, boots splashing in the shallow water which now coated the floor, but he drew to a stop near one of the lit symbols. Aquamarine blinked, then blinked again.
Now he was seeing things. Ghosts, but not really, because tables and s**t couldn’t be ghosts.
“Anyone else seeing this or am I hallucinating?”
Aquamarine shook his head like he could make things return to normal with a brief rattle of his brain. He looked toward Kamacite, then Prehnite, the only two he trusted on either of their teams to have any sense, but where Prehnite had been was… well, Aquamarine didn’t quite know what was going on.
Prehnite hadn't meant to touch the stars, their sudden appearance around him as pools rose up to the backdrop of Aquamarine checking in -- to the sound of Faustite echoing for answers across their comms -- their bright glow and all the goings on him left him feeling somewhat distracted, between feeling excitement for Kamacites find (because anything that wasn't a trap was obviously good!) and wondering what his team'd gotten themselves into.
"Hylo', Faustites wanting a report -- do you have anything there?" an easy ask tossed back over his shoulder, passed down the line, in waiting for an answer he noticed Aqua's short squawk of a curse and paid him a bit more mind, "What were you about to say?" And he felt like he sounded far away, or distorted, or "Aqua--why are you star--"
Prehnite caught his own reflection in the inch-deep ripples below and the squawk that left him was entirely undignified. The way he found his hair its old eggplant hue, only his face was no longer his own. A form dripping with iridescent umbels and egg shaped seedlings; flecked with inlaid patterns of fern leaves that were so similar to the Fools Parsley fauna he knew from home -- infused with Aethusa in all its glorious genus -- though the deeper shades beneath that made him think of the Datura with it's deceptively delicate trumpet flowers and deadly deep greens.
Guine
Indigo_Plateau
Shanyume
tefla
Lieutenant Zultanite Terminal is Up for Grabs! Whistlin' at the weapons cause he don't play with no 'ghosts'.
Well great, his Eternal of a General had found a damn good haul, and he'd found some scrap. On the upside no one'd blown up n died-- least not yet.
Zultanite took the moments in-between all the weirdass happenings to clip the dead seeming, handheld terminal to his belt. If anyone was tech savvy enough to try he'd let 'em have their hands on it, and maybe he'd bother one of the Cat's about it? Or any number of goggling onlookers -- not that he could blame a single damn soul for pausing to do so right now--
Because when s**t hit the fan? It did it with panache n style, the likes of which he'd never seen -- even well traveled n well worn -- apparitions of ancient furniture n stars-swapped bodies of (what he hoped was still an agent and a General under there) we're not things he'd expected.
"Nah Sir, m'fukn' seein it too. Y'nno? Maybe the Youma were smart to stay clear of 'ere..." off the cuff to Aquamarine and suddenly the weapons Kamacite had unearthed looked mighty interesting to one who lacked such a thing, and found themselves in an increasingly strange situation, "...d'either of you mind if I try onna those? Incase this place does mor'n flood slowly." It was the glyphs that had his interest as well, and he paused to stare before daring to lay a hand on any of them. Who knew if he'd need to stab a disembodied chair with more than just a cinnamon stick -- or defend himself from one of their own.
The strangeness of Prehnite n Thornasites appearances didn't go unnoticed, Zultanite'd simply been raised better than to gape at people, least so long as they looked like people enough.
Strickenized
Rolling for Glyph Inspection
Guine
Sunshine Alouette
Guine rolled 1 6-sided dice:
1Total: 1 (1-6)
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2022 7:33 am
Eternal Kamacite Picking up the discarded handheld tablet. He's not good with weapons, anyway.
Kamacite stood ready to jump out of the way of any kind of projectile from the box -- but instead, while there were weapons, they were unmoving.
He didn’t let his guard down just yet, and he cast a wary glance over to where Aquamarine and Zultanite were, before reaching into the box to lift up one of the swords. He didn’t dare touch the blade itself, but he held it up with the intention of looking at the glyph on the handle...
At least until stars began floating around them-- along with the water!
Kamacite let out a disgruntled squeak, and tugged at his robes to make sure they weren’t going to get wet… more wet… his feet already felt damp and for a moment he wished Albite was there so he could maybe convince him to let him ride on his shoulders. No, that would be too much, probably. He could handle some water! But the weird stars and -- whatever they were doing to Prehnite and another from their team -- were something else entirely.
“Be careful,” he warned Zultanite, maybe unnecessarily, but not wanting him to be caught up in whatever weird sparkling mess was taking over the others, but his heart was racing.
“Are you okay? Is it hurting you?” he asked the two, but with Zultanite taking up some of the weapons, Kamacite picked up the handheld terminal to inspect for himself. His magic sometimes shorted out electronics, but maybe… if he couldn’t figure out how to turn it on… his magic might help charge it a little. Or destroy it. But either way, it would have been useless, right?
