Seaside 7: Seven's the Shark

[Gold Leaf]

[GGGG-M]

It is after Siana speaks that TALBot notices that the goblin has stopped digging. The red robot also wasn't even asking him in the first place, but he missed his chance to hit him with a "Did I ask?" so he's just going to have to hold that. However, he can deliver this line:

"Despite what the school system will teach you, you can talk and work at the same time, you goofy cartoon pirate Salad Fingers looking fool!"

(OWN THAT FRAUD!)

He could have spiced that up a little more, but that would require saying some things you probably shouldn't say whilst a child is nearby.

[Rebonack]

[GGGG-M]

Definitely don't want to be saying things that might be bad for nearby impressionable children.

The goblin looks pretty irritated about getting called out on his clever not-working ruse, but he returns to digging.

Slowly.

And mostly ineffectually.

And keeps sliding back into the pair of holes the two goblins are digging and at least half the sand they're flinging is landing in the hole being dug by the other.

These jerks are absolutely wasting time.

"There's different and then there's devil. You're different, lass. That thing's a monster what rots the world. Probably plotting to eat that wee bairn soon as your backs are all turned."

That rings pretty hollow coming from the guy who has been having kids buried in the sand.

Lapis, meanwhile, continues sitting with the kid and rather pointedly not eating him.

[Ironsmith]

[GGGG-M]

It is after Siana speaks that TALBot notices that the goblin has stopped digging. The red robot also wasn't even asking him in the first place, but he missed his chance to hit him with a "Did I ask?" so he's just going to have to hold that. However, he can deliver this line:

"Despite what the school system will teach you, you can talk and work at the same time, you goofy cartoon pirate Salad Fingers looking fool!"

(OWN THAT FRAUD!)

He could have spiced that up a little more, but that would require saying some things you probably shouldn't say whilst a child is nearby.

[GGGG-M]

Definitely don't want to be saying things that might be bad for nearby impressionable children.

The goblin looks pretty irritated about getting called out on his clever not-working ruse, but he returns to digging.

Slowly.

And mostly ineffectually.

And keeps sliding back into the pair of holes the two goblins are digging and at least half the sand they're flinging is landing in the hole being dug by the other.

These jerks are absolutely wasting time.

"There's different and then there's devil. You're different, lass. That thing's a monster what rots the world. Probably plotting to eat that wee bairn soon as your backs are all turned."

That rings pretty hollow coming from the guy who has been having kids buried in the sand.

Lapis, meanwhile, continues sitting with the kid and rather pointedly not eating him.

[GGGG-M]

tpf!

Siana's cane buries itself in the sand as she glares at the goblins.

"Nothing this girl has done would lead me to believe she would eat anyone." She snaps. "And I'm not about to take the word of a pair of scoundrels like yourselves over my own eyes." Even if they were to put it to a vote, Siana's eyes have the goblins outnumbered three to one.

"But more importantly..." She glowers at the two of them. "Even if she comes from a kind that did eat people, you're not going to earn any sympathy with me by falsely claiming she would." The armatures of her lips flare open briefly to bare that nightmarish arrangement in her mouth again. "All you're doing is reminding me that I haven't eaten in several hours." She sneers at them, quickly losing patience with their inadvertently insulting her.

"TALBot, remind me, how many goblins does it take to dig up buried treasure chests?" She adds as an aside.

[Vahnavoi]

[Expedition into the dark]

As Mia touches the button, the X on the wall seems to fold inward, opening the passage. Blue lines on the walls give the tunnel just enough sense of depth to make walking through it tolerable, though it is still very dark.

The walls are making very little noise and displaying few glyphs, in sharp contrast to when Khafir was plugged in. Most, Mia can hear repeated, simple commands given to wall segments to keep their shape steady. Every once in a while, she can hear another voice, however. A low hum, giving the impression of something big moving within the pitch-blackness of the walls. Occasionally, it sounds like it is querying something else for information on who is walking through the tunnels, but nothing is responding to it. Mia might get the feeling that the mental protections she's placed on the expedition members and Geneva's drones are preventing this secondary intelligence from perceiving them the way it normally would. She could, of course, speak to it and tell who they are - but she might not want to, as this secondary intelligence might be the evil thing she sensed from the outside.

As for Khafir's scrying attempts, the armory is very poorly lit. The tunnel leading to the large hall is completely dark and whatever is in it is hidden from her farsight. Fortunately, the same is not true of the large cubical hall, but it is a far cry from what she expected. What illumination the room does have comes mostly from four pairs of glowing red eyes, belonging to massive, humanoid statues in the corners. They seem to be clad in black and leaning on massive swords, their heads covered by what look like animal skulls - a wolf, a ram, a snake and an eagle. In the middle of the room, under the watchful gaze of the four statues, painted red by the light, is a small pagoda, seemingly made of bones. On it, rests a single sharpened stone, possibly flint, the kind one might see in a museum of primitive tools. The floor around the pagoda is covered in rocks, bones, bone dust and sand. What's on the edges of the room is hidden by darkness, but it looks like there might be skeletons standing there - humans, animals, assemblies made of humans and animals.

Then there's the archive. The expedition might catch the first glimpse of it through Geneva's drones, if they send them ahead. The tunnel goes on for almost fifty meters and the stairs go down two hundred, so it's a considerable walk - another demonstration of how little physical dimensions of the structure as seen from the outside constrain its interior spacing. The stairwell turns into metal for the last ten meters and descends into a dome-shaped room. The room is faintly illuminated by thousands of cylinders inscribed with blue glyphs lining the walls. Reaching the bottom of the stairs and looking around, it feels like standing inside a cross of an amphitheatre and a mechanical planetarium, with a large floating wheel, ten meters in inside diameter and twelve on the outside, circling the stairs at height of one and half meters. The entire room is maybe fifty meters in diameter, with other, smaller rings, mechanical gears and pulley systems both floating in the air and connected to each other in a way that gives the impression of something half assembled.

Near the bottom of the stairs, there is a familiar looking chair on a slightly elevated platform. The base of the platform looks like it can rotate. There is likewise a tray full of syringes - one of them is attached to a dessicated corpse sitting on the chair. The tubing connecting to the syringe piercing the corpse's left temple is still glowing blue, but it's clear even from a glance that no information is being passed into or out of this poor person's skull.

More careful examination reveals they were a man, maybe between 20 and 30. The corpse is dressed in a beige uniform resembling some colonial era attires of the British Empire. It is quite well preserved, save for its eyes, which look like they may have been deliberately removed before death. Other than this, there are no injuries. It looks like they may have died of starvation, their body mummifying naturally in cool, dry and nearly sterile environment of the archives.

There is a backpack at the feet of the corpse. It still contains some archeological tools, some dry food, and a diary.

[Gold Leaf]

[GGGG-M]

TALBot doesn't actually know what Siana expects him to answer with, so he just improvises and hopes for the best.

"One. That means one of you two..."

TASBot points at the two goblins.

"is expendable."

Even if that's not what she was going for, it sounded cool either way.

(IF IT EATS HIM, THAT'S ONE LESS NECK FOR ME TO SNAP!)

"We're going to watch someone get eaten alive in real life."

(FAIR POINT. AS YOU WERE.)

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
Jade shakes her head. "No, I wasn't partially lucid. I was completely, utterly, terrifyingly lucid! Everything I wanted, everything I felt, it changed! I remember trying to kill a man because he was in my way, I remember throwing fire at my boyfriend when he tried to stop me. I remember everything as if I did it of my own free will! So I think you understand when I want to be absolutely sure that this will work!" Jade's outburst shows clearly that she hasn't recovered from that. Less obvious is the fact that her trust in her own judgement and perception of reality has been shattered, possibly beyond repair. She felt like she was in control even as she was trying to incinerate that old wizard. She knows the exact chains of thought that led to her deciding to kill him. It's only after she snapped out of it that she realized, to her horror, the terrible nature of her act, remembered the value of human life.

[Rebonack]

[GGGG-M]

Canes really wouldn't be super helpful when walking in sand, would they?

Just sort of sinking in without providing much in the way of support.

Need one of those little pad things part way up like ski poles.

Anyway!

The goblin doesn't look like he's really liking where this conversation is going.

"H-hey now, let's not do anything hasty," he says, digging marginally faster.

They still aren't making much headway. Haven't even reached the trunk they're digging for yet. Just wasting time like a bunch of gross jerks.

And now the fog is starting to roll in.

The little boy makes a keening noise in the back of his throat and hugs his arms around Lapis, putting the half-elf between himself and the sea. Lapis looks concerned, squinting off into the rapidly thickening mist. The crash of the waves deadens, gradually, into the sound of softly lapping water.

[Ironsmith]

[GGGG-M]

TALBot doesn't actually know what Siana expects him to answer with, so he just improvises and hopes for the best.

"One. That means one of you two..."

TASBot points at the two goblins.

"is expendable."

Even if that's not what she was going for, it sounded cool either way.

(IF IT EATS HIM, THAT'S ONE LESS NECK FOR ME TO SNAP!)

"We're going to watch someone get eaten alive in real life."

(FAIR POINT. AS YOU WERE.)

[GGGG-M]

Canes really wouldn't be super helpful when walking in sand, would they?

Just sort of sinking in without providing much in the way of support.

Need one of those little pad things part way up like ski poles.

Anyway!

The goblin doesn't look like he's really liking where this conversation is going.

"H-hey now, let's not do anything hasty," he says, digging marginally faster.

They still aren't making much headway. Haven't even reached the trunk they're digging for yet. Just wasting time like a bunch of gross jerks.

And now the fog is starting to roll in.

The little boy makes a keening noise in the back of his throat and hugs his arms around Lapis, putting the half-elf between himself and the sea. Lapis looks concerned, squinting off into the rapidly thickening mist. The crash of the waves deadens, gradually, into the sound of softly lapping water.

[GGGG-M]

Siana gives TALBot a little nod of confirmation that he had, in fact, guessed her meaning well enough.

Almost.

She probably wouldn't actually eat the goblins. They seemed pretty gross, and if there was any chance they carried the some sort of taint as any other living creature, she wouldn't want to subject herself to their influence.

In fact, she wouldn't move against them at all. She still finds the idea of executing them in cold blood to be more than a little unnerving. Unfortunately for the goblins, she doesn't find it so much so that she would actually defend them if it came down to it, and from her assessment of the situation, pretty much the only thing stopping Lapis and TALBot from turning them into trash heaps was the fact that they were still doing something marginally useful. If they stopped, she's not going to step in and prevent events from unfolding. She basically already did that once.

...Not that it's really going to matter. That fog matches the rumors she and Lapis heard in the tavern. And the boy is clearly afraid of it. It seems as though the redcap and its friend had stalled long enough for the rest of the crew to make an appearance.

Damn.

Siana draws her sword again and prepares for the first goblins to show themselves.

Lachrymose Lagoon
Jade shakes her head. "No, I wasn't partially lucid. I was completely, utterly, terrifyingly lucid! Everything I wanted, everything I felt, it changed! I remember trying to kill a man because he was in my way, I remember throwing fire at my boyfriend when he tried to stop me. I remember everything as if I did it of my own free will! So I think you understand when I want to be absolutely sure that this will work!" Jade's outburst shows clearly that she hasn't recovered from that. Less obvious is the fact that her trust in her own judgement and perception of reality has been shattered, possibly beyond repair. She felt like she was in control even as she was trying to incinerate that old wizard. She knows the exact chains of thought that led to her deciding to kill him. It's only after she snapped out of it that she realized, to her horror, the terrible nature of her act, remembered the value of human life.

[Lachrymose Lagoon]

Owena takes a moment to digest what was said, but it doesn't seem to do more than slightly surprise her. "...I see." Owena straightens. "That's... going to mean fewer adjustments, actually." She says, in what she hopes is a mollifying tone. "If you wanted to test it, I might be able to put something together... but even that would need a failsafe and I'm not particularly keen on triggering the change without certainty that I can change you back."

[Gold Leaf]

[GGGG-M]

TALBot's watched enough TV to know that a sudden thick mist rolling in is never a good sign. He's also driven enough to know that a sudden thick fog is really annoying either way. In most situations, he's a patient bot, but this needs to be hurried up.

The goblins need to dig faster. No, that's not entirely accurate: the holes just need to be dug faster.

"Alright, I'm done watching you morons pad this out."

TALBot drops the RPG launcher and pulls a Monk's Spade (it's a polearm first, digging implement second, so it's allowed) from his core. Next, he teleports next to the goblin with the smaller hat, where the rush of air being shoved out of that position should hopefully knock him over. Otherwise, he will swing the spade at the goblin so as to knock him flat. Then, he starts digging at that hole with much more force and effort than the goblin was using. Whilst he does this, he will stare the other large-hatted goblin down, intending to convey 'shape up or you're next' as best as he can without actually having a face.

[Morty]

[Expedition into the dark]

"It appears his attempt to connect with this place was less fortunate," Calm Reed observes drily. She picks up the diary and opens it. "I can put his body to rest once we are done, though given how many bodies are likely to be here, this may be futile."

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"Test it? Oh no. No no no. I'm as big a fan of science as the next foxgirl," (actually she's a much bigger fan of science than most foxgirls), "But I'd rather not experiment on my brain." It only takes a moment for Jade to realize the obvious flaw in that idea. "But then I'd be going forward with essentially untested fail-safes in my brain." She throws up her hands in frustration. "Neither of those options are any good!"

[Rebonack]

[GGGG-M]

A tense moment passes.

Then two.

Then TALBot shoves one of the goblins out of his way and begins digging with extreme haste! Sand flies and before long there's a dull THUNK! as the shovel smacks up against a trunk buried in the sand.

...there isn't any calling for help from inside the trunk.

Only the deathly silence as the fog continues to grow thicker.

Probably not the best sign, guys.

Lapis, meanwhile, hugs the lost child with one arm and draws her sword with the other, eyes roving over the mist. She can taste magic in the air. She can feel the lurch of being pulled down. There's definitely something going on here, but she isn't sure if it's the pirate ship maybe it's-

Her eyes widen.

"They're trying to make another Briar Patch on the beach! That's why they were burying people!"

Those are some words her allies probably aren't familiar with but Lapis isn't great at explaining things.

[Ironsmith]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"Test it? Oh no. No no no. I'm as big a fan of science as the next foxgirl," (actually she's a much bigger fan of science than most foxgirls), "But I'd rather not experiment on my brain." It only takes a moment for Jade to realize the obvious flaw in that idea. "But then I'd be going forward with essentially untested fail-safes in my brain." She throws up her hands in frustration. "Neither of those options are any good!"

[Lachrymose Lagoon]

"Then what about some form of restraint?" Owena asks, quickly rolling through their options. "We can test if a binding spell would work as intended in a controlled environment, without affecting your brain. It would be difficult for your altered self to harm anyone while shackled to the floor, and whatever damage you can do is contained until help arrives. Would that be sufficient?"

[GGGG-M]

TALBot's watched enough TV to know that a sudden thick mist rolling in is never a good sign. He's also driven enough to know that a sudden thick fog is really annoying either way. In most situations, he's a patient bot, but this needs to be hurried up.

The goblins need to dig faster. No, that's not entirely accurate: the holes just need to be dug faster.

"Alright, I'm done watching you morons pad this out."

TALBot drops the RPG launcher and pulls a Monk's Spade (it's a polearm first, digging implement second, so it's allowed) from his core. Next, he teleports next to the goblin with the smaller hat, where the rush of air being shoved out of that position should hopefully knock him over. Otherwise, he will swing the spade at the goblin so as to knock him flat. Then, he starts digging at that hole with much more force and effort than the goblin was using. Whilst he does this, he will stare the other large-hatted goblin down, intending to convey 'shape up or you're next' as best as he can without actually having a face.

[GGGG-M]

A tense moment passes.

Then two.

Then TALBot shoves one of the goblins out of his way and begins digging with extreme haste! Sand flies and before long there's a dull THUNK! as the shovel smacks up against a trunk buried in the sand.

...there isn't any calling for help from inside the trunk.

Only the deathly silence as the fog continues to grow thicker.

Probably not the best sign, guys.

Lapis, meanwhile, hugs the lost child with one arm and draws her sword with the other, eyes roving over the mist. She can taste magic in the air. She can feel the lurch of being pulled down. There's definitely something going on here, but she isn't sure if it's the pirate ship maybe it's-

Her eyes widen.

"They're trying to make another Briar Patch on the beach! That's why they were burying people!"

Those are some words her allies probably aren't familiar with but Lapis isn't great at explaining things.

[GGGG-M]

Siana frowns. Briar patch? How would burying kids alive result in a briar patch?

...That part doesn't matter. If Lapis knows what's going on and she's freaking out, that seems like enough reason to... something. Be wary, she supposes? They were already on high alert.

Siana makes her way over to the hole and swings her blade through the lock, counting on the magic in the weapon to cut through the metal like pudding. If successful, she'll then lift the lid of the trunk and peer inside.

If there's not a living child in there, the goblins have just outlived their usefulness. And then she'll need to figure out what to do with them. In among all of this business with the fog and... briar patch.

These are going to be a difficult five minutes, aren't they?

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"Better," Jade's still not satisfied. "But if we're going to do something like that, I would like to have someone else present. In case I can overpower you somehow." Jade thinks that's likely. Maybe Owena disagrees.

[Ironsmith]

[Lachrymose Lagoon]

"I can appreciate that." Owena says, in a tone that implies she was planning on following that up with a "but", then decided against it. "If you have any idea for who, would you mind calling them? My phone's kind of tucked away and I'd rather not show you where."

Then, realizing how that sounds, she adds, "Not in my person. I don't want thagomized-you to be able to cut me off from anyone else if it comes to that."

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"One sec. I'll call my brother. I trust him to watch me. And to beat some sense into me if things go wrong." She pulls a cell phone from her purse and places a call. "Hey, J. Got a minute? Need someone to watch my back for something. Yeah. Yeah. It's related. Yes, bring it.
No, not mine, just yours. Lachrymose Lagoon. There's no address, just look it up. I took Riftline here, you have the car. Yeah. See you then. Bye." She hangs up. "He'll be here in a few. In the meantime, we just need to wait."

[Gold Leaf]

[GGGG-M]

TALBot is equally confused. What could burying children possibly have to do with the 2019 crime drama TV show, Briarpatch?

"Briarpatch? What does this have to do with Briarpatch?"

The bot doesn't wait to see if the child has survived. Instead, he goes to started on the hole the leader goblin was digging, also trying the same shovel move on said goblin that he just used on its subordinate. He'll gauge from Siana's reaction whether the child lived or not, and if they didn't... well, it's up to the General what happens next.

[Zefir]

[Expedition into the dark]

Well for the fact that Mia is a human and has a hard time seeing in the darkness she is able to enlight her staff to create another lightsource, thought she keeps it low to not draw to much attention from far away.

"Be carefull." Mia warns Calm Reed. "Something is still around that doesn't seem to be part of the building. Maybe this is the entity i felt before. Since I can hear it, it might be a machine or something so be alarmed.

Then more walking. Lucky for Mia she was training her swordskills which include increasing her endurance.

"I think we should be even more alarmed now." Mia says as they are at the corpse. "His eyes got removed while still alive. Someone or something may be around even after years passed."

She keeps to look around while Calm Reed reads the book

[Rebonack]

[GGGG-M]

"A hole that goes down into the Bottomless Pit. The badder part of the Dreamlands," Lapis clarifies for the edification of others. "This is already a faerie grove the goblins are just trying to make it WORSE and they need nightmares to do it."

And burying kids alive in this weird surreal pocket of unreality seems like a pretty solid way to get some nightmares.

The sword cuts through the lock exactly like pudding.

Imagine swinging a sword an a big pile of pudding. What happens?

The pudding makes a goopy sound and gets shifted around a bit but is otherwise unbothered by the sword.

The reaction from the chest is pretty similar. Goopy sounds and the lock splatting a bit. That's unexpected. Also unexpected is the chest abruptly opening up to reveal a mouth full of shark teeth as it sprouts legs like a sea-robin and tries taking a bite out of Siana's legs. Given that Siana is a little limpy it may be difficult for her to get out of the way in time.

TALBot, meanwhile, shoves another goblins out of the way and-

Wait.

Where the heck did the goblins go?

And where did those brambles all over the beach come from? Don't brambles know that they aren't salt tolerant?

[Ironsmith]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"One sec. I'll call my brother. I trust him to watch me. And to beat some sense into me if things go wrong." She pulls a cell phone from her purse and places a call. "Hey, J. Got a minute? Need someone to watch my back for something. Yeah. Yeah. It's related. Yes, bring it.
No, not mine, just yours. Lachrymose Lagoon. There's no address, just look it up. I took Riftline here, you have the car. Yeah. See you then. Bye." She hangs up. "He'll be here in a few. In the meantime, we just need to wait."

[Lachrymose Lagoon]

"Then wait we will." Owena sets herself down in a nearby tide pool. "...Although if it's going to take him a while to get here... did you bring anything to swim in? The water's fine tonight, and you could probably use the relaxation." She's still confident in her ability to outswim Jade if she needed to; if nothing else, she can stay submerged much longer.

[GGGG-M]

TALBot is equally confused. What could burying children possibly have to do with the 2019 crime drama TV show, Briarpatch?

"Briarpatch? What does this have to do with Briarpatch?"

The bot doesn't wait to see if the child has survived. Instead, he goes to started on the hole the leader goblin was digging, also trying the same shovel move on said goblin that he just used on its subordinate. He'll gauge from Siana's reaction whether the child lived or not, and if they didn't... well, it's up to the General what happens next.

[GGGG-M]

"A hole that goes down into the Bottomless Pit. The badder part of the Dreamlands," Lapis clarifies for the edification of others. "This is already a faerie grove the goblins are just trying to make it WORSE and they need nightmares to do it."

And burying kids alive in this weird surreal pocket of unreality seems like a pretty solid way to get some nightmares.

The sword cuts through the lock exactly like pudding.

Imagine swinging a sword an a big pile of pudding. What happens?

The pudding makes a goopy sound and gets shifted around a bit but is otherwise unbothered by the sword.

The reaction from the chest is pretty similar. Goopy sounds and the lock splatting a bit. That's unexpected. Also unexpected is the chest abruptly opening up to reveal a mouth full of shark teeth as it sprouts legs like a sea-robin and tries taking a bite out of Siana's legs. Given that Siana is a little limpy it may be difficult for her to get out of the way in time.

TALBot, meanwhile, shoves another goblins out of the way and-

Wait.

Where the heck did the goblins go?

And where did those brambles all over the beach come from? Don't brambles know that they aren't salt tolerant?

[GGGG-M]

Well.

That is certainly surprising!

Siana lets out a little yelp as the chest bites her, and rather predictably loses her balance from the force of the impact. A few seconds later, she's flat on her butt.

Despite this, it doesn't take her long to regain her feet, in the metaphorical sense. She still has her sword out and she intends to use it, slashing through the chest's mouth from one corner to the other. Barring any protective enchantments, the blade will cut through anything in the way... including her leg. But compared to being eaten by a nightmare monster, that hardly seems bothersome.

[Expedition into the dark]

As Mia touches the button, the X on the wall seems to fold inward, opening the passage. Blue lines on the walls give the tunnel just enough sense of depth to make walking through it tolerable, though it is still very dark.

The walls are making very little noise and displaying few glyphs, in sharp contrast to when Khafir was plugged in. Most, Mia can hear repeated, simple commands given to wall segments to keep their shape steady. Every once in a while, she can hear another voice, however. A low hum, giving the impression of something big moving within the pitch-blackness of the walls. Occasionally, it sounds like it is querying something else for information on who is walking through the tunnels, but nothing is responding to it. Mia might get the feeling that the mental protections she's placed on the expedition members and Geneva's drones are preventing this secondary intelligence from perceiving them the way it normally would. She could, of course, speak to it and tell who they are - but she might not want to, as this secondary intelligence might be the evil thing she sensed from the outside.

As for Khafir's scrying attempts, the armory is very poorly lit. The tunnel leading to the large hall is completely dark and whatever is in it is hidden from her farsight. Fortunately, the same is not true of the large cubical hall, but it is a far cry from what she expected. What illumination the room does have comes mostly from four pairs of glowing red eyes, belonging to massive, humanoid statues in the corners. They seem to be clad in black and leaning on massive swords, their heads covered by what look like animal skulls - a wolf, a ram, a snake and an eagle. In the middle of the room, under the watchful gaze of the four statues, painted red by the light, is a small pagoda, seemingly made of bones. On it, rests a single sharpened stone, possibly flint, the kind one might see in a museum of primitive tools. The floor around the pagoda is covered in rocks, bones, bone dust and sand. What's on the edges of the room is hidden by darkness, but it looks like there might be skeletons standing there - humans, animals, assemblies made of humans and animals.

Then there's the archive. The expedition might catch the first glimpse of it through Geneva's drones, if they send them ahead. The tunnel goes on for almost fifty meters and the stairs go down two hundred, so it's a considerable walk - another demonstration of how little physical dimensions of the structure as seen from the outside constrain its interior spacing. The stairwell turns into metal for the last ten meters and descends into a dome-shaped room. The room is faintly illuminated by thousands of cylinders inscribed with blue glyphs lining the walls. Reaching the bottom of the stairs and looking around, it feels like standing inside a cross of an amphitheatre and a mechanical planetarium, with a large floating wheel, ten meters in inside diameter and twelve on the outside, circling the stairs at height of one and half meters. The entire room is maybe fifty meters in diameter, with other, smaller rings, mechanical gears and pulley systems both floating in the air and connected to each other in a way that gives the impression of something half assembled.

Near the bottom of the stairs, there is a familiar looking chair on a slightly elevated platform. The base of the platform looks like it can rotate. There is likewise a tray full of syringes - one of them is attached to a dessicated corpse sitting on the chair. The tubing connecting to the syringe piercing the corpse's left temple is still glowing blue, but it's clear even from a glance that no information is being passed into or out of this poor person's skull.

More careful examination reveals they were a man, maybe between 20 and 30. The corpse is dressed in a beige uniform resembling some colonial era attires of the British Empire. It is quite well preserved, save for its eyes, which look like they may have been deliberately removed before death. Other than this, there are no injuries. It looks like they may have died of starvation, their body mummifying naturally in cool, dry and nearly sterile environment of the archives.

There is a backpack at the feet of the corpse. It still contains some archeological tools, some dry food, and a diary.

[Expedition into the dark]

"It appears his attempt to connect with this place was less fortunate," Calm Reed observes drily. She picks up the diary and opens it. "I can put his body to rest once we are done, though given how many bodies are likely to be here, this may be futile."

[Expedition into the dark]

Well for the fact that Mia is a human and has a hard time seeing in the darkness she is able to enlight her staff to create another lightsource, thought she keeps it low to not draw to much attention from far away.

"Be carefull." Mia warns Calm Reed. "Something is still around that doesn't seem to be part of the building. Maybe this is the entity i felt before. Since I can hear it, it might be a machine or something so be alarmed.

Then more walking. Lucky for Mia she was training her swordskills which include increasing her endurance.

"I think we should be even more alarmed now." Mia says as they are at the corpse. "His eyes got removed while still alive. Someone or something may be around even after years passed."

She keeps to look around while Calm Reed reads the book

[Expedition into the Dark]

Oh.

Not an armory, then.

Well, good. That simplifies things.

Her curiosity about the other rooms momentarily satisfied, Khafir returns her attention to the Archives. "We know interfacing with the machine is not, itself, dangerous." She points out. "Given the lack of other corpses in the area, it seems our friend here made the mistake of attempting to interface without anyone around to protect him. Even with my clairvoyance, I could not tell what was happening around me while within the confines of the virtual reality. He would not have been aware of amy danger until it was too late to defend himself." She straightens. "We should not have that problem. If there is any information to retrieve from the archives, I would volunteer to interface again."

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"I can't swim," Jade replies without hesitation.
It's not exactly true. She knows how to swim, it's just that being submerged in water is bad for whatever she is.
It's also too dark to sunbathe, so she doesn't have beachwear with her. She just sits down in the sand by the water's edge to wait.

[Vahnavoi]

[Expedition into the dark]

The diary in Calm Reed's hands details the fate of a British colonial expedition that got lost in North Africa. They stumbled upon a dark tunnel through some hills, guarded by a hostile tribe of, apparently, Zulus. This is noted as highly peculiar, given Zulus usually live on other side of the continent. Investigating this oddity, the expedition found the tunnel lead to a bay of what they presumed to be of the Mediterranean sea. The bay was dominated by a previously undiscovered, highly intact pyramid, which of course piqued interest in the expedition.

A harbor and a town were founded near the pyramid to facilitate its excavation. Entries indicate numerous failed attempts to gain entry, the structure proving highly resistant to being cracked open by force and turning out to be much larger than at first suspected. There are hand drawn images showing the difference of the part initially visible above ground, compared to a large quarry built around it to reveal more.

After a point, the writer loses interest in the excavation and focuses on daily life in the town instead. Special focus is paid to construction of a large church and a separate bell tower next to it. An orphanage is noted to accompany the church, run by the apparently lone priestly figure in town. The writer expresses some confusion over and concern for the children in the orphanage. The writer's not sure where the children are coming from and they don't seem to be very healthy or well cared for, with older girls in the orphanage mostly having to take care of the younger kids.

One of those older girls had a fling with one of the expedition soldiers - whether the diary's writer or someone else is left oddly unclarified - and got pregnant to him. The man returned to assume responsibility, but the child died at birth - or, reading between the lines, had to be aborted to save the ill mother's life. Either way, they were buried in the new churchyard, in the shadow of the pyramid.

Three days later, the orphanage was assaulted by a horrific creature, somewhat human-shaped but lacking eyes and a face and having grown to be bigger than any man. It was shot dead by the soldiers. Wondering about its origin and following a fell premonition, the diary's writer went to check the grave on the churchyard. It turned out someone had opened the grave and taken the dead child's body. The same had happened with several orphan children who'd died of illness. The guilty party was assumed to be the church father. Soldiers chased him to the half-constructed bell tower. Once there, they found the tower didn't only reach up, it reached deep down to the ground and connected to the pyramid somehow. The writer expresses horror at the thought of the darkness below containing "thousands after thousands" of the faceless beings.

The writer confronted the church father at the top of the tower, shooting them dead. The entire tower came crashing down after. It is unclear how the writer himself survived. Following these events, excavation of the pyramid ceased. The soldiers tried burning down the half-built church as well, but it refused to catch fire, even after being doused in oil.

A long time passes between entries. When they resume, it appears life in the town has resumed normalcy. The writer notes their pregnant friend is moving to town. Things take a turn for the bizarre again when said friend gets ill, and the writer feels something from the pyramid is trying to claim her child. The last entry describes this something as "worse than the Devil", with the writer he and his friend have taken sanctuary in the attic of the church.

The diary offers no insight on if the man who died plugged in to the structure was the diary's writer, nor how this person got here.

As for Mia, while the Lantern is clearly deactivated and in half-assembled state, she can hear other machinery below the floor and behind the walls, still active after all these years. If she pays careful attention, she might occasionally notice a cylinder being withdrawn or replaced. Somewhere within the walls, there is a still an active mechanism maintaining and making more of these cylinders.

What they are, is not hard to surmise. They are memory storage - each cylinder has a core of a canister filled with that blue liquid, with layers and layers of thin film wrapped around it, each layer inscribed with glyphs. The entire history of this building and everything that's happened in it is probably inscribed here somewhere - but it's clearly not meant to be searched through by hand. Even being magically able to decipher the text like Mia is, without an index, finding anything of worth here might be undertaking of a lifetime.

[Gold Leaf]

[GGGG-M]

Well, TALBot definitely didn't expect for Siana's reaction to be 'getting bitten'.

"Does that mean... Have you- ...huh."

What he was going to ask was if the goblins have just been burying anything that breathes, only he's just noticed that they somehow managed to slip away. Considering their skiff is in pieces, they must have disappeared into the fog whilst he wasn't looking.

(WHERE DID THEY GO!?)

TALBot should be done with the hole he was digging. He keeps the blade of the monk's spade pointed downward, in order to give whatever leaps out at him something to snack on instead of him. Maybe afterwards, he can use it to hack at some of those brambles that are here... have those always been here?

[Ironsmith]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"I can't swim," Jade replies without hesitation.
It's not exactly true. She knows how to swim, it's just that being submerged in water is bad for whatever she is.
It's also too dark to sunbathe, so she doesn't have beachwear with her. She just sits down in the sand by the water's edge to wait.

[Lachrymose Lagoon]

"...Oh. That's too bad." Owena replies with a sympathetic smile. But also good to know. She won't necessarily have to resort to going deep into the water as a safety measure. "It really is a nice place to swim around. It's just too bad you'll end up missing out."

Oh, well. That's life.

...Sort of.

The strigoi shrugs and lays back in the water, submerging herself and staring up at the moon overhead, seemingly unbothered by all the salt that must be getting in her eyes. Is that even painful for her?

But, unless Jade does something else, she's completely content to wait for Jason's arrival.

[Zefir]

[Expedition into the dark]

Well taking in the diary and the things she hears she feels sad. Those people clearly had been decived by this priest which offend her as a high priestress even more. Sure in her world there are also bad priests that abuse their position, but she tries to check this as soon as a problem appears.

"The story sounds very sad." Mia says and turns to Calm Reed. "It might sound strange for a priestress of a machine god, but I would prefere if we can do something about this place. The archives here aren't easy to read. I assume if we plug in we might be able to have a sumary of everything and ways to filter things, but I'm not happy to do that. I could also get the body to a rest"

[Purple Eagle]

[Submarine - Interior]

"You'd be surprised," Olvisin comments as they leave. "It's not just goblin-sized tunnels. There's plenty of space."

[Submarine - Interior]

"Oh? Well, colour me interested. Maybe it'd be another date or something." Chidi chuckles, just before walking through the doorway.

Once they exit the submarine, the pair find themselves at another dock, with staff consisting almost entirely of the slightly orcish seapeople they saw swimming earlier. "Had them drop us off near Himmelia, it's just right this way." He leads the way towards the entrance to the town, guarded by a few ninja. A couple of them look curiously at Olvisin, as whilst they've met goblins before, they've not met her kind. "We'll go straight there, Igwe's hanging out with Marzanna." He nods at the guards and they let them in.

"Yo, Lieutenant!" A figure spots them entering and walks towards them. "Zara was looking for ya, she just left. The other one." Meaning not Zara ben Haim.

It's Mirai, looking as fashionable as ever! They turn to Olvisin and smiles. "Ah, a goblin! Nice to meetcha. You also MERC?"

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
Jade shrugs and waits.

Eventually, a car arrives. A man steps out. He looks about Jade's age, but he's clearly human, not... Whatever sort of fox person she is. "He's here." "Hey, I'm Jason," the newcomer introduces himself to Siana. "So what is this about? Need help with something?"

[Ironsmith]

[Lachrymose Lagoon]

Owena looks up the beach from her view underwater, noticing the arrival of another person. Given that Jade (as she can be seen through the water) isn't telling him to run, get away as fast as he can because she's dangerous, Owena assumes he's the help Jade called for this job.

The vampire sits up, breaking through the surface of the water with a light spray, shaking it out of her hair for a moment before properly introducing herself to the newcomer. "Um... hi." She smiles, extending a hand to him. "Owena Ty-Maldwyn. I'm, ah, here to help Miss Fisher with her problem. We were going to test some restraining spells, to trigger if she has another episode so she doesn't hurt anyone." She smiles and quietly looks Jason over, squinting to try to make out more details in the moonlight than just "human".

[Morty]

[Expedition into the dark]

"This diary details the discovery of this pyramid, or a pyramid line it, on another world." Calm Reed will give it to anyone else who wishes to read it. "Of note is that it mentions disappearing children, dead and alive ones, and subsequent appearance of faceless beings. Like the one I encountered earlier."

[Submarine - Interior]

Olvisin looks up at Mirai. Before, her head was on a swivel, looking about curiously.

"I am, yes. Name's Olvisin. And you?"

[bc56]

Lachrymose Lagoon
"Jason Fisher." A hearty handshake. He's about a head taller than Jade, brown hair cut short and neat. "Restraints?" His fingers are surprisingly delicate. They're not hands used to physical labor, but to fine, detailed work. "You just tell me what I need to do." "Me too."