CAVE: Conquering Alliance of Villainous Evil!

[5a Violista]

[HQ Book Club]

Nemo wasn't really sure if she was going along or not, but since Gem seems confident enough to have said 'we' as if it was entirely natural, she follows.

"P-probably asking around would be the easiest way," she says.

[bc56]

HQ Book Club

"Indeed. You there!" Gem singles out a guard passing by. "Which way to the infirmary?" The guard points the way, and Gem strides off in that direction. "Coming?"

[Shadowcaller]

[EVENT: The Nexuswide Story]

Every character in the thread will (if their players allow it) suddenly know a story, or perhaps several versions of one story, as if they’ve learned of it long ago.
Do you remember where you learned of Red Riding Hood, Snowwhite or Goldilocks for the first time? Since the characters won’t exactly remember where they learned of this story. Though the story and its many versions won’t only exist inside the characters heads as it's being added to storybooks and other media across the multiverse at the same time.
It’s just a story however.It has no special mental influences or compulsions connected to it. The story just exists as a simple narrative within a characters memory and sometimes such a mundane thing can have the greatest effect.

Spoiler: The Story: Once upon a time...

Show

...there was a king that ruled over the fairest of lands. There were many beasts and villains threatening the lands but he always managed to best them with the aid of his noble knights. But one day those who he had fought so hard to protect rebelled against him.
They took his title, they took his crown and threw him out of the fairest of lands to be forgotten.
But learning of the king’s banishment, the beasts saw their opportunity and attacked.
Without their hero king the inhabitants of the fairest lands could not protect themselves and without his title and crown the king could not protect them.

Thus the king was forced to watch on his forgotten throne as the beasts rampaged through not only his former home but also the kingdoms outside the fairest of lands. The inhabitants fought valiantly but against the beast's sheer numbers they could not win.
But finally the king had enough and dubbed new knights that would unite the kingdoms against the beasts. Along with his new knights the king returned to the fairest of lands and freed it from the beasts which had taken it over.

Only then could he reclaim his rightful title and crown and used them to once and for all end the threat of the beasts. Once the beasts had been defeated the king would grant many gifts to those loyal knights who had helped him retake fairest of lands and freed the kingdoms from the beasts. Then he would take the greatest among them as his queen and they would live happily ever after as rulers of the fairest land.

This is the “prime story” but it’s likely not the version your character knows. The version or versions they’ve heard of is likely specific to their homeworld with the actors and elements being unique to it. So their players can feel free to invent their own versions of the story that can be wildly different as long as it have these elements:

1. A being/person is a figure of great importance in a fantastical place.
2. They are banished from it for some reason.
3. A great threat emerges which not only threatens the fantasy land but ALL the lands.
4. The banished is helped by a group of people to regain their former glory and with it they end the threat and save the day.

Again, knowing the story have no special effect in itself. It's up to the players if:
A: The characters learn it at all.
B: If they do anything with it.
The story is connected to the King of Rags (who is controlled by the player Morty) so that's where they would have a chance to do anything with the knowledge.

[5a Violista]

[HQ Book Club]

Nemo is still following because she feels like she doesn't have the option to not come.

Which is why, when Gem asks, Nemo nods and just follows behind. "Y-yeah."

[bc56]

HQ Book Club -> Infirmary

The pair manage to find their way to the infirmary. Once there, Gem seeks out bandages and begins wrapping her injured hand up in a makeshift splint. It's doubtful that it will heal right if she does that; the bones are all out of position, and she hasn't bothered to put them back in place.

[5a Violista]

[> Infirmary]

Nemo gets there.

She doesn't really know how to fix a hand like that. No clue.

So, she just watches.
"You're doing it wrong," she says.

[bc56]

Infirmary

"Oh? And I suppose you could do a better job?" Gem's tone is confrontational. She clearly doesn't like being corrected. She continues her faulty bandaging. She evidently doesn't believe Nemo anyway.

[5a Violista]

[Infirmary]

Nemo blinks.
She moves closer to the wall to get out of the way of nurses trying to get past.
"I think the nurses here have been trained on doing it," she instead says, avoiding conflict.

[bc56]

Infirmary

"Fine." Gem allows a nurse to bind up her hand properly. She looks very annoyed by the time it's done. "Bah. I can't do anything with my hand like this."

[5a Violista]

[Infirmary]

Nemo watches.

...

She doesn't give any input.

Once it's done, she tries to cheer Gem up: "You still have your other hand," she says. "You can still do that."

[bc56]

Infirmary

"I need both hands." Complex summoning rituals tend to be, well, complex. "How long will it take to heal?" Gem asks a nurse. She has things she needs to do which require both hands.

[5a Violista]

[Infirmary]

The nurse responds that, unless Gem seeks out healing magic, it will take several weeks to fully heal completely back to normal.


Meanwhile, Nemo, not really sure if there's any more reason for her to be here - she doesn't really know if there was any reason for her to be here in the first place? she just followed along because she felt like she didn't really have a choice - waits for the nurses to move away, so that she can leave without getting in the way.

[bc56]

Infirmary

"Bah! That's too long!" Gem seems enraged by the possibility. "I don't suppose I could sacrifice one of you?" She asks the nurses, in a mock polite tone. "I suppose I'll have to see if there are any doctors among the prisoners. So long!" Presumably, nothing good will happen to any doctor she finds.

[5a Violista]

[Infirmary]

The nurses get back to work without really saying anything, just glad that they can get back to work.


Nemo, meanwhile, also leaves the room.
"U-um," she tells Gem, to help her in what she's going to do, "You might already know this, but...the prisoners are that way." She points in a direction and gives slightly more detailed instructions. "Th-the trained ones tend to be kept separately from everyone else, so I'd recommend looking there first."

And Nemo would know, since she was going to be brought there.

[bc56]

Infirmary

"Yes, I know," Gem replies impatiently. She was already heading in that direction. She continues going that way whether or not Nemo follows her.

[5a Violista]

[Infirmary]

Nemo, as it happens, doesn't want to be insulted again.
. . .
So, she doesn't follow. Instead, she returns to where she was reading earlier.

[Lord Magtok]

Necromeowncer

"BEHOLD! The true future of cybernetics!"

Malice floats over to the steampunk cyber zombie, and jabs the side of its head with his brass finger, trying to gauge its response and reaction time to such unsolicited prodding and poking.

"A decent way of recycling our losses when the Alliance's own goons start taking casualties, too. Hrm. I'm assuming this is just the baseline, and that if anyone suitably special was sent your way, you could develop something a little less...disposable?" He's asking if you can make stronger, cooler zombies out of dead PCs, Raven. Personally, I don't think you're ever going to get an opportunity to do that, so I don't know why he'd bother asking, but it's still a pretty fun little idea, I guess.

[Reinholdt]

[Necromeowncer]

Cyber zombie one wasn't instructed to react, so it just doesn't. It may not be the best in terms of reaction speed while in idle mode. Raven's tail flicks not at all realizing what Malice is doing and just presuming he's poking for poking's sake. Seems pretty tough and durable at least.

"O-of course!" Raven says, having not at all worked on that in the least. "I'm always improving off the, umm, 'baseline'. These were, uh, less fresh normal people that just happened to get dug up." She had to bribe some icky gravedigger to do the digging for her initial few subjects cause she sure wasn't going to root around in that dirt. Then she killed him and let the zombies do the digging from then on.

"The ones you see here are the ones that I can mass produce once I have the resources and space to build an appropriate assembly line to dump bodies into. Custom jobs I will oversee and handcraft personally." She'll have to create and add some kind of partial free will module or something. Shouldn't be too hard to encode free will.

[Lord Magtok]

Necromeowncer

Uncle Malice nods thoughtfully. A shame he knows full well that Magtok cremates all his clones, or else an army of zombie Magtoks would be totally possible, and the most astoundingly twisted thing they could ever throw at him. Imagine that sad little cyborg getting surrounded and ripped to pieces by a every single death he's suffered in his entire history, even including Malice's own original body. Oh, that would've been perfect! Unfortunately, that's not reality, and we've got to make do with the hand we're dealt. Raven Ebondark isn't the best card we've ever held, but she'll have to do for now. A steady diet of judgmental frowns peppered with the occasional statement that could vaguely be construed as begrudging approval should be enough to keep this one in line.

"Alright then. You have any tricks besides cannon fodder yet?" he asks, reaching for her cyberzombie's mouth to pull back its lips and get a better look at its gums and teeth. Something you're not supposed to do with gift horses, but this is neither a gift nor a horse, so we should be fine, right?

[Reinholdt]

[Necromeowncer]

Sure, it's absolutely fine. I mean he's looking into the mouth of decay with the stench of death. Normally it's kept inside by the lack of lungs pushing it out, but Malice is opening that box himself and staring into the yellow and silver abyss. The colors of the teeth which seem to have been cyberneticly reinforced to make up for the fact that they're never brushed.

It's kinda gross.

But hey, he can look at zombie teeth all he likes. It gives Raven Ebondark time to mentally stumble over an answer. As if her beautiful creations weren't somehow good enough on their own! That they were somehow mere 'tricks'! The nerve! She should have him flayed alive and just take his spot for her own and tell the higher ups how much better off they are. If he wasn't family...

Raven Ebondark spins her unique umbrella in her hand. "Well I'm not sure what a conquering army could possibly want beyond 'more army', but I am a distinguished cybernetic physician." Of sorts. Mostly just with the dead. She's found the living to be too... Icky. But she can theoretically adapt the procedures if they're insistent. Probably. "After all I made this eye. People still think I was born with it or something." Oh yeah! She did do that on the living. Hah! Take that doubters.

[Lord Magtok]

Necromeowncer

"Not surprised. Some idiots out there used to ask if my mother was a toaster. Only about half of them were kidding," Malice scowls, before making a mental note to never look a single zombie in the mouth ever again for the rest of his life. That was...that was a mistake. The cybernetic reinforcing was a nice touch, but really, did it come even close to mattering enough to warrant doing that to ourselves? Blegh.

"How'd you get your start working with the dead, anyway?" he asks, hoping that question is just specific enough to avoid getting the entire edgy Magspawn backstory dumped in his lap. He really does not care at all how Magtok's stupid kids wind up into edgy little weirdos trying to rule the world. What matters is that she's here and useful, not whatever daddy issues cost her that eye.

[Reinholdt]

[Necromeowncer]

The fools. Magtok's FATHER was the toaster.

"There was a boy my senior year, Jimmy Cocrin, who asked me to Prom." Here we go. "He was handsome and sweet and had the juiciest abs that made a cute sound when you nibbled on them..." Raven Ebondark takes a moment to wipe away a little drool that had started to form at the corner of her mouth.

"But you- I mean dad refused to allow me to date a 'Sub-intelligent Neanderthal'. His words. I told him I didn't care and was going with Jimmy anyways. Until somehow Jimmy had a little 'accident' and stopped breathing." Those ski trips are dangerous.

"I'm not about to allow dad's malice be the final word, so I fixed him up and went to prom with him anyways. It was a bit of a messy job admittedly. But at the end of it, I had to do something with what remained of the senior class. I also won Prom Queen." By default, sure. But none of the corpses objected so it still counts.

"I've perfected things since then. These won't try to eat you unless I tell them to." Or something goes wrong. She also sounds like she's gotten over Jimmy Cocrin. Unless that's whose teeth Malice just examined.

[Lord Magtok]

Necromeowncer

The man behind the desk blinks. Wow, this one is messed up. Thanks, Miss Daddy Issues. You've just validated Malice's entire worldview, and gave him all the more reason to never have kids. Stupid Magtok, knocking up dangerously unhinged cat ladies and expecting anything more than additional dangerously unhinged cat ladies to follow. If this one ends up killing you somehow, or if she already done so before she came to this world, then great! One less worthless wretch standing between him and taking back all that is rightfully his own.

"I can certainly see why you were so unhappy to see me, then," he remarks diplomatically, making a mental note to never watch the movie 'Carrie' while Ebondark is around, lest she start taking notes or something.

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Blue Dragon's Peak]

Blue chuckles, an ominous and yet not unpleasant noise.

"Very well." The dragon opens its massive maw, and time seems to slow down, as lightning races from its maw to surround Malice, a wall of blinding blue-white fire that separates the cyborg from the world outside. And from the wall, smaller bolts lance into the cyborg, over and over. But these bolts do him no harm.

Instead, each contains a memory, an idea, a feeling. More and more and more pour into Malice: memories of other worlds, ideas for powerful technologies long forgotten, arcane magical sciences that would make even the most powerful mages jealous. As the cascade begins to slow, Malice might become aware of another presence inside his own mind, familiar and yet alien, and he can feel its roots, leading somehow, perhaps psychically, perhaps magically, perhaps even technologicially back to the massive beast that he stands before. As the last bolt falls away, and the world returns from the bright-white wall that was shutting it out, Malice can finally feel the massive dragon's wounds. The gashes in its belly and along its sides are the most serious and grievous; focusing on them brings a memory that is wholly not Malice's own: a bolt from a swirling void of energy that lashed out and caught a dragon flying next to Blue as it (he?) was shifting through interdimensional space. The unexpected bolt sent the other dragon careening into Blue, a massive grey and silver mechnical beast that accidentally ripped its claws over Blue's hide as it was ripped apart by dimensional tides. Some of the injuries that Malice can feel now in his very guts, where he shouldn't be able to feel them at all, are still yet more aftermath of this incident. Blue itself managed to maintain its dimensional shielding, but the collision and subsequent injury sustained badly injured Blue's former bond-mate, and she succumbed to her wounds just as it and the remaining dragons managed to breach the barrier and emerge into the Nexus.

Blue itself breaks into the memory, speaking directly into Malice's mind.

"You can see how badly I was injured, both physically and.....spiritually." The physical wounds are more than physical it seems; Malice may be able to detect a faint hint of magic and psionic energy lingering about them, but it is strange and chaotic. Perhaps not out of his expertise to remedy, though, given time and access to equipment. Blue does seem a bit happier than it sounded when Malice arrived. "But perhaps one component of that injury is...lessened now."

[Reinholdt]

[Necromeowncer]

The catgirl would find pig's blood too tame.

Raven Ebondark waves her non-umbrella hand dismissively. "I'll find an idiot free world some day. Until then, I'll brush up on my conquering skills." So she's ready to take the world for herself for when she does find one free of Magtaint.

"Unless there's any more, I'd like to get to work right away. Which would you prefer that I start on? Mass production, or the specialized individuals?" Might need to kill a PC for the latter, but they'll be ready to accept their new unlike and unwavering devotion to their ingenious feline mistress that much quicker! And she can probably pump out some generic half-PC zombie minions until then. Or he could chose the safer route of cookie cutter techno zombies that won't accidentally grow free will.

[Lord Magtok]

Blue Dragon's Peak

A wave of revulsion washes over Malice. He's an emotionally repressed little ball of hate; it shouldn't be too surprising to find that feelings of sympathy and pity are met with outright hostility and disgust. That complete ****ing bastard, how dare the scaly degenerate make him feel?! The wounds are nothing; they're just trivial scrapes and bruises to someone with the accumulated memories of a thousand dead clones, but the loss of his Vespe, Happy, Krystal, Everyone Else He Knew Before He Died And Was Resurrected Years Later bondmate is what sets Malice off, opening up all his old emotional scars. Imagine being dragged out of hell because of some silly random effect magical artifact, years and years after your own demise, only to find the whole world had moved on without you. The traits that embodied Magtok then aren't the traits that define Magtok now, making you an outcast among your own people. The only true adherent to the faith in a sea of frauds and false prophets, who have barred the gates to the heavens and claimed it all for themselves. He should be the one calling himself Magtok, not them! They squandered his legacy, and shoud've realized this, should've rejoiced to find one such as him willing to correct their mistakes, to retake the mantle and guide them to diabolic fame and fortu-

"Stop this," Malice hisses, clutching his chest, but more enraged by the outpouring of his own miserable history than a little sympathetic physical agony. How does he shut it off, how does he make himself stop thinking it all so loudly?! "**** you, make it stop. I didn't come here to exchange backstories, I'm not doing this on purpose," he insists, as he tries to pretend losing Krystal to deadtime didn't leave him adrift and alone again, with only Rasputin's head and his own worthless knockoff Magbots for company. As if any of this was really about Magtok or taking over the Nexus at all, and not just filling the cavernous void where the friends he'd made once filled.

"S t o p !" he demands, eyes aflame, and his mind goes silent. His history is sealed in a vault, abandoned, discarded. That tome of loss and woe was only weighing us down, but thankfully it's gone now. Locked away, imprisoned for eternity, which is far better than it deserves, honestly. Malice turns his eyes towards the future, towards the horizon. There is work to be done, and we can't be wasting time on anything as stupid as reminiscing, can we?

"There is no wound marring your form nor mine that is beyond my power to heal. We will rebuild. I will lounge upon a throne of skulls, and the Nexus will quake at the sound of the name Malice. That is all that matters," he promises, his tone and stature passively denying that there had ever been so much as a moment of weakness disgracing his cold-blooded image a few seconds ago.

Necromeowncer

"Mass production, please and thank you," he answers briskly, clamping down on the urge to give some pithy response to her implication that an idiot-free world would have no room for people like himself. She's barely out of her adolescence, there's no need for us to stoke the flames to some sort of passive-aggressive feud with a literal child. We're better than that. We're better than her.

"Our enemies are hardly equipped to deal with large numbers. Quantity is a quality all its own, after all," he adds, leaning back in his seat and imagining an entire army of disposable undead washing over Inside, gnawing on Intersection and anyone else daring to get in their way. It's beautiful, really. Vaguely nostalgic, for reasons Malice can't quite put his finger on.

[Reinholdt]

[Necromeowncer]

Raven Ebondark gives a little Hmph, probably disappointed Malice didn't rise to her bait, but also in affirmation of what he said. "Numbers it is then. Our enemies will fall before my genius. Ohohoho!" She laughs shrilly, one hand covering her mouth. Finally, the catgirl twirls, umbrella spinning with her as she heads back to her seat, tech zombies reacting without instruction to lift her up and carry her out, leaving Malice mercifully alone once more.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Blue Dragon's Peak

The Malice can feel the great beast in front of him's approval radiating from both within and without.

"Excellent. Your fellow Alliance members who are bound as we now are have adopted titles, signifying them as being bonded to their respective dragons. If you wish, your moniker could no longer be simply 'Malice'. I leave that choice to you; after all, secrecy is in both of our natures, but the Blue Dragon of Rigel might add a bit of flair, if you'd like."

The dragon lowers its head slightly, as though suddenly irritated.

"There are things afoot it seems. You should now be able to access my distributed security network. There are hundreds of enhanced creatures scattered over the entire mountain range; the only contribution I was able to make after our unexpected arrival. Focusing on a node will allow you to piggyback on each node's senses, but you can cut off contact whenever you need. You should give it a try. Focus if you can through node A1c4m32; I suspect you may need to meet with your counterpart of the Red Dragon once we are done."

[Red Base]

Emily will find that it's been roughly 5 minutes, if the guard is changing here, someone would, in theory, be along shortly. Probably best not to linger too long.

[Laboratories]

Baumhund shakes her head.

"I do not believe there is, though our own intelligence is still being updated. The only person of note we've been able to locate so far, to all indications, was never one of the Corpse Emperor's servants. We may need to pursue other means."

[CAVE HQ - Slipstream]

Kaydara's expression is somewhere between amused and annoyed. She's seen this sort of thing before. Useful, but irritating. At least Slipstream doesn't seem to be one of the ones who constantly speak in riddles. She seems to weigh the options for a moment, then sighs.

"Fine. Let's discuss how you might be useful to the Alliance." She starts moving back towards the base, but seems to be watching Slipstream closely.

[Morty]

[Laboratories]

"But they do come from the same universe as I do?" Larukh asks. Some of it is mere curiosity, but then again one never knows what may become relevant. "Who are they? They may be of interest to us."

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Laboratories]

Balthius pipes up, scratching his head.

"The current information we have is that she was, at one point, the mayor of one of the cities here. Riverside, I believe the locals call it. We're still gathering data, but the current rumor is that she's now working with, or perhaps for, the organization known as VIGIL. The images and rumors we have suggest that she was possibly tainted by one of your universe's warp entities, or is perhaps some form of mutant. We're still working to confirm this information, though, so she may indeed be not from your universe after all. Jezebel Tel'Vree is the name, if it makes any difference."