Outside 52: Touch grass

[Ironsmith]

[Slavic Engineers - Near Mishnehel's House]

Svetlana does not look amused one bit, as she stares straight out the window, which is currently providing some upside-down version of a view. "Now he tells me." She responds crossly, crossing her arms. "Had I known, I would have suggested this not be our test flight. I might miss my deceased husband, but I am in no hurry to join him!"

She rubs her temples in exasperation. "So... I would like to believe you prepared for this eventuality, and have some sort of plan to get this plane out of here?"

[Slavic Engineers - Near Mishnehel's House]

"The plane? No. Us?" Vlad gives a preemptive grimace and pushes a little button on the console in front of him.

psht! Goes the now-disconnected canopy.

click! Go the pegs connecting the seats to the plane.

"Sorry about this." Vlad mutters as gravity takes hold.

[Geopol4r]

Vault 44
Linth will take a baton, and will disassemble a couple guns. He will examine the machinery, then take apart some bullets.

[Rebonack]

[Vault 44]

The guns are, of course, pretty complex. Quite a collection of springs, rods, and other teeny little components all working together to make a thing that uses contained explosions to throw small pieces of metal at people. Taking the cartridges apart is a little more tricky due to how they're put together, but assuming he can pry the lead out of the brass he'll be rewarded with a little pile of black powder.

How to actually use the weapon is pretty obvious.

It is, in effect, just a very complex repeating crossbow that uses chemicals to propel a projectile rather than mechanical tension.

If the free powder is exposed to a spark it'll burn pretty vigorously and with some impressive sparks, but it won't explode.

The stuff only does that if it is highly contained.

Now that science time has passed what's next on the agenda?

The elevator that leads deeper into the Vault is still waiting.

[bc56]

WUDJAT
"Guys? Stop shooting!" Herringbone is confused and also worried because her two teammates are now shooting at each other. At least they each seem to have shut down now.

...this would be a perfect time for whatever did this to get the drop on the pilots. She hopes that's not what's about to happen.

[Geopol4r]

Vault 44
Linth proceeds to take an intact gun, and a baton which he sharpens against the floor into a bayonet. The undead enters the ele:ator and clicks a button.

[Rebonack]

[WUDJAT]

Well, good news!

Sol Invicta has stopped shooting.

Mostly because its weapon systems are jammed. Which means its com systems are ALSO jammed.

Which means Gene can't really say what's going on at the moment.

Her mech does, however, move further down the hallway (backwards) away from the other mechs.

Just in case they begin blasting her again.

Nothing leaps out to attack them. Thankfully.

It would appear as though the only violence that dwells in this hall is their own.


[Vault 44]

The not-lich will be confronted with buttons upon stepping into the elevator!

Buttons and more weird bone-colored fungus growing on the walls.

Thankfully the control panel isn't overgrown with fungal nonsense so he'll be free to poke it at. So! Buttons! There are only four of them, arranged from top to bottom. V (for vault, where he is), Q, A, and E. It isn't clear what any of these mean or where exactly they will take him BUT! Each will lead to a horrible, horrible adventure.

Just different parts of it.

Pick a button, Linth!

[Geopol4r]

Vault 44
After the careful, deliberate consideration taken to jab a random button, Linth's finger slaps E. Linth will draw a runic circle on the floor of the elevator. He will charge it with magic. It has been prepared. Linth waits.

[Ironsmith]

[March of the Dragonborn]

bing-bong

"Now arriving, south station 18-94, connections to the Thunderdome and Anor Londo. Next stop, south station 18-93, with connections to Thrakeld, Selmora, and Strob Dagul." Drones a bored-sounding female voice over the Riftline train's PA system. "Again, now arriving at south station 18-94, next stop south station 18-93. To our departing passengers, thank you for choosing Riftline. Have a nice day."

ktack

It's been a peculiar journey already, this one. With the exception of those who were riding this morning, nobody on the train has seen a falmer sit... relatively quietly and patiently, waiting for the train to get them where they're going. They've snapped at anyone who's come close to them, even just in passing, but there hasn't been an incident yet. It helps that someone left behind a sudoku on one of their seats and they've mostly had their attention dedicated to solving it, with all the requisite cooperation and bickering.

"There's no space for a seven!" The left one hisses at its companion. "It's impossible as it is!"

"Then you must have made a mistake! They're all supposed to only have one of each-"

"I know how the puzzle works!"

"Then admit you messed up!"

"Obviously, we made a mistake somewhere. The question is, where?"

"Don't you go trying to pin this on m-"

"I'm not trying t-" The falmer stops and stares up at the sign. "...Did we just miss our stop?"

"No. It's the next one. Don't try to change the subject."

[bc56]

WUDJAT
Likewise, Cynic has her comms offline, so there's a lot of silence in the airwaves as the three mechs pick their way carefully down the hall.
There's supposed to be a war machine this way. It could catch them with their metaphorical pants down. That would be bad, but they'll have to deal with it.

[Earl of Purple]

March of the Dragonborn

Vaveli is also a little unhappy about being on the train, very concerned about how it all works. Fortunately, she doesn't get travelsick, a great blessing most likely. She's put her staff away, packing it into the rucksack where it disappears despite not being able to fit according to the external dimensions of the bag. She hasn't pulled a staff out, or gotten changed into actual armour, still wearing her ragged robes with their heavy enchantments, although the iron dagger which was at her hip has been replaced with a much finer dagger with a leaf-shaped green blade of metallic glass. It's also enchanted, as it happens.

[Rebonack]

[Vault 44]

Ah, all the way to the bottom our hero(?) goes.

The elevator descends.

Down, down, down it goes!

And opens up into?

A barricade of metal plating and ruined mushroom zombies that look like they were set on fire recently.

On the other side of the barricade, taking cover behind several large machines and bulkheads, are a bunch of haggard looking humans with guns.

"Hold you fire!" one of them yells, raising a hand when she sees that the thing in the elevator isn't another gaggle of zombies. "Who the hell are you? What are you doing down here?"

She sounds equal parts angry and frightened.


[March of the Dragonborn]

Fenris is watching the exchange between the falmer, eyes narrowed.

"How do you suppose they're reading without any eyes?" she whispers to Vaveli.

That is definitely a good question.


[WUDJAT]

Our heroes don't get attacked, actually.

Not by anything at all.

After that initial attempt at hacking there aren't any further electronic assaults.

Phoenix is keeping her mech jammed, though, just in case. The claws on Sol can rip thought plating easily enough and she can still use all her lightning nonsense just fine. This just means no guns. And no guns are better than guns blowing her pals the hell up.

Once more the chamber opens up ahead of them and they find their war machine.

I stands like a statue in the middle of the room, one hand raised in an inspiring fashion. A low sound of rolling thunder emanates from it, like a storm on the distant horizon. It doesn't attack them. Or even move. It just stands there, a motionless monument. There's something almost... sacred about this place. Holy. Forbidden. The mech depicted is somehow all such war machines ever created and yet none of them. The idea of a battle mech made manifest.

Gene is mouthing 'What the ****,' in her cockpit.

[Shadowcaller]

[Cloud Castle]

Oh! Well this is a problem that Kara can definitely fix!
She did something similar with that terrible clocktower in the Pit.

Although...hrm. That would require unfolding here, wouldn't it? Is that a good idea?
Maybe if she just does the whole thing in the old barn, so that no one else can see.

"Umm, okay. I think I can maybe get your old barn to be usable again. It might not be perfect, but it can be a good backup location?"
So, while her Mom and G'nichi are over there fighting the weapons, Karaglen is going to make her way off the roof so she can get into the other barn.
She'll probably try to go around behind it, before she does any of her unfolding/[outways] moving shenanigans. Doesn't want to unnerve the person they're trying to rescue, or anyone else who may be watching.

There are some thoughts about how there are probably more mundane solutions to be had here, recalling lessons from previous incidents. Buuuut, this serves multiple purposes this way, and faster, than those other options.
A safe place to usher the cows, a safer alternate building for them to use without using up whatever (possibly?) limited resources they have, and more general assurance that they're just here to help.

Cloud Castle

G'nichi angrily parries the polearm flying at him. His reaction times are quite fast which he assumes comes from the sword. A shield would probably be better at this but when they're just coming at him dead on slapping them aside with his sword is...well it's not easy but it's not impossible.
The one in his hand struggles in his grasp fruitlessly. He can't really keep a good grip on it with it flailing around and scraping his arm and wrist so he settles for hurling it into the nearby hole Zee pointed out. Hopefully that actually works.

Cloud Castle- Skeleton Carriage

"Ah, it's... not a problem. We only discovered this place when it flew near my property and one of my gardeners reported seeing it and thought I'd be interested." A slight lie, there; the 'gardener' is a magically animated skeleton, serving as a guard and not a gardener, and with instructions to alert Benedict of any airborne scenery that goes past. "I was not truly expecting this location to be inhabited, as I believed it to be propelled by wind rather than any deliberate efforts at relocation." And flying castles that are getting pushed by the wind, in Benedict's experience, are usually abandoned and at risk of crashing into mountains, skyscrapers and cliffs.

[Cloud Castle]

These animated weapons are just actively unhelpful, aren't they?

Totally unwilling to be nice.

Only interested in stabbing things.

Cows!

They stabbed COWS!

What's the point of stabbing cows, aside from being pointy?

Nothing, that's what.

Zee is going to aim to grab one of those spears and likewise shove it into that nice big hole she just dug in the floor!

Why?

Because as soon as there are two spears down there she's going to fill said hole back in again. There's a soft crystalline chime, followed by the pit being the proud owner of a great big cube of celestial glass. Which she's aiming to manifest just above the spears. Which means they'll now be stuck in the pit with the glass cube above them like a great big shiny cork in a bottle. Which means the barn just got a really interesting looking workbench?

Maybe?

That should still leave one spear remaining. It's probably still going to be a jerk, isn't it?

"You doing okay, G'Nichi?" Zee asks as she vaults up on top of the glass table she just created so she can point at the remaining spear. "Give up, Stabbakin, I've got the high ground now!"

The Ossuary

Cantata couldn't entirely disagree. Skeletons didn't unnerve her terribly at this point - after all, its just like robots but magic really. Once there's more meat on their bones is where it starts getting disconcerting. Still, it didn't make them any less pleasant to deal with. Skeletons were just bone with some vague arcane ties to puppet them. No brains to trick, no code to exploit, not even any arteries or poorly-shielded joints and cords to sever. They were far enough from her usual adversaries to be particularly annoying, and magic was a bit of a complicated thing to pick up as a means of counter.

"Of course," Cantata responds by way of a nod, slipping down and beginning to lead Pania through scouting the area. She makes a point of feeling the stones of the wall at various points, making sure that any hidden passages don't go unnoticed. Noting the orbs above, she glances back towards Pania and gestures towards one, raising an eyebrow.

[The Ossuary]

Pania is relieved as they made it to their destination unspotted. Normally she'd be itching for a fight, but her psychic shenanigans back there had tired her somewhat, on top of giving her a headache, and by this point she had thoroughly decided that fighting skeletons just felt weird. It all felt horribly unnatural to her. Which was admittedly a bit rich for someone with strange mind powers, but the human brain works in illogical ways sometimes.

She gave a nod of confirmation at Dena's orders, before turning to Cantata too to make sure they were on the same page. "You lead, I'll follow." She felt like deferring to Cantata's superior scouting/sneaking capabilities would probably be a wise idea here.

[The Ossuary]

You fools! Never split the party!

Actually it turns out that this isn't a terrible idea in this case. Especially since they're going to be hooking up again immediately.

The base turns out to be pretty straight forward. There's a large entrance pointing toward each compass direction, large squarish doorways each with a block of sixteen armed skeletons milling around aimlessly. Just how many of those things are in there, anyway? Was this guy some kind of king who had his whole army buried with him? If so then he was kind of a jerk.

The middle section, perhaps surprisingly, doesn't have any entrances to speak of. There are, however, spires of bone at each corner with a glowing necrotic orb at the top. The magic orbs pulse in time with the footsteps of the skeletons below. A control mechanism, maybe?

As for the top, there are two things of note. First? Some kind of sacrificial altar. Second? A stone slab that can be removed to reveal a set of stairs leading down into the upper levels of the pyramid.

[The Ossuary]

Dena was not too enthusiastic about taking the big front entrance into this place once she saw it. Besides the skeletons that were already present there could be more of them just waiting to stream out of the ziggurat. Big open spaces were easier to sneak through (at least if you were invisible) but if they got spotted, which seemed likely, they'd be at a disadvantage considering just how many minions they had seen already fighting the necromancers.

So once she was scrying what Violet could detect at the top she found it far more promising in comparison once the drone detected the secret (she assumed) passage behind the slab.
Violet couldn't remove the slab on her own but she could at least scan to see if there were any mechanisms, enchantments or curses tied to the slab or its removal while Dena was contacting the others using their ear pieces.

"Found a front entrance at the base but there's plenty of unfriendlies. Violet detected what I think is a secret passage at the top though which is promising. What about you?"

Cloud Castle- Skeleton Carriage

This castle wasn't actually being pushed around by the wind, it had a fixed position.
While the building is capable of resting on a cloud it's not actually light enough to be pushed around by the wind.

"So you were not invited by the master then? Curious." The giant raven tilts its head. "Well, that shouldn't be an issue as long as you want to take any of the books or scrolls in here home. Instead I can copy down whatever books that you're interested in once you've had a look around."

They raise their wings to display that underneath each of them is a pair of gray arms with talon-like hands.

"I must stress though, the master quite private about her, ah, collection so don't try to harm anything of it either. Handle it very carefully or she will find out and let's just say that being remote is actually a benefit to this particular library. She doesn't really want to harm anyone so just... obey the rules of the library, is that clear?"

[Cloud Castle]

"You- okay." The reptile person don't seem to opposed to this plan at least and by this point they're kinda expecting the impossible from Kara. Simply watching her as she gets off the room before turning their attention to the sounds coming from below.

Down there the halberds continues to be annoying. They struggle, trying to pull themselves out of Zee and G'nichi's grip but ultimately their own nature becomes their undoing. They were made to be held after all so no matter how much they try they are eventually pushed into the hole.

Yet then all of sudden they cease and so does the still free halberd and goes back to the way it looked before it animated. Those grotesque faces that stretched across their form no longer visible.

Did they actually give up at Zee's command? Well, it might take them a moment to realize it but the bell has actually stopped ringing now.

This is something Kara might realize too as she reaches the barn.
Well, it isn't really a barn. It looks more like a stable which is sort of the same thing, right?
It's a long building, shaped similar to a longhouse. The door marked by the same black eyes that Kara should be familiar with by now. The door has been barred as well though it should be easy to get through for her. Inside there are stalls that were clearly intended for horses though like its exterior suggested its interior is likewise in a poor condition. A part of the ceiling have collapsed and there seems to be mold growing in a corner of it. Not to mention the strong scent of cows and their excrement but that comes with the territory.

There are no equipment of any kind resting on the floor though which is a good sign and it is probably big enough to fit her unfolded form should she assume it.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cloud Castle]

Well, Kara is pretty distracted by her latest charity project here, so the fact that the bell has stopped is only passingly noticed.
From where she is, she can't really tell that the weapons have all stopped, either.

This all wouldn't really make a difference in what she wants to do, but maybe she would be slightly less urgent about it.
As it is, she's moving in a pretty big rush.

So while no one else is looking, [glass] and [hands] slide into the barn, while a [wolf] studies the building's current state and imagines it in a more complete moment of its existence.
The [hands] of a [dragon] reach out for a wall, imagining the building's completeness into a more concrete Shape, held together with the Quality to endure further years to come.

Shalomel Invokes upon the barn/stable, declaring it to no longer be a decrepit ruin, but a brilliantly crafted home for the animals once more.
It's a fairly shiny process, calling upon that Light lurking inside her to make the world a better place.
She had hoped that doing it inside the barn would make it subtler, but she forgot that she was also affecting the outside of it too.

Whoops.

[Rebonack]

[Cloud Castle]

Zee is struggling!

Shoving those weapons around trying to get them into the hole but they just aren't cooperate aaaah this is so irritating and-!

Oh.

They stopped.

Zee blinks, flopping the spear in her hands up and down a few times and finding it to be nothing but a regular weapon again.

She eyes it for a few seconds.

Then tosses it into the pit she made.

"Whoop! In you go!"

It should probably be a pretty simple matter to gather up the various weapons floating around and toss them into the hole, whereupon Plan Shiny Table will be enacted to keep them sealed down there. Crisis averted!

"Well! That turned out okay. Are you alright G'Nichi you were getting poked at quite a bit there."

[Deathkeeper]

Cloud Castle

”I’m alright. Just a little scratched up.” G’nichi replies with a wince. His skin is hardened by the Broadsword’s magic but the impact of being hit with the spear still hurt. His shirt is half hanging off from being torn and his other side’s sleeve and scales are scraped up from the spear he was holding flailing about. He’s being tough but he is bleeding and could probably use some help.

[Recaiden]

[Bone Hills- Maw of Arkhentkhats]

The pavise has some chunks of bone lodged in the old wood, but it's managed to protect the skeleton behind. It steps out as the elemental approaches and swings a fist at the firey being. Black magic surrounds the fist as it approaches; should it hit, the punch will drain life-energy- or something equivalent- out of the elemental and into the skeleton. Were the elemental a fleshy creature, each contact would regenerate some of the missing tissue; as things stand, however, instead the skeleton will probably start to smoulder, as human bones aren't an ideal container for elemental fire.

The skeleton's fist connects with the flame, draining away volatile fire energy.
The elemental had really been expecting that punch to do nothing, but that actually hurt. They immediately call out for more fuel. Honeysuckle right away stops trying to help the manticore with bone splinters, and tosses another cartridge of oil towards the elemental.

Meanwhile, the elemental strikes back, aiming a burning fist at the skeleton's skull and trying to knock it right over.

[bc56]

March of the Dragonborn
"They seemed to be able to see earlier," Orathius comments. "Perhaps Miraak saw fit to restore their sight." He's not very uncomfortable in this metal carriage. It reeks of dwemer technology, but he spent a lot of time delving in dwemer ruins and dealing with their devices.

WUDJAT
"That must be it, do we break it?" The weird statue of a mech is hard to identify, but it might be the source of the signals.
Of course with everyone's comms off to prevent more hacking, it's really hard to tell if everyone agrees.
So Herringbone just aims a salvo of missiles at the statue's feet, intending to bring it down.

[Shadowcaller]

Cloud Castle

Nothing preventing Kara's charity project. Now there's a completely new barn for cows of all ages (and horses too!)

Meanwhile, inside the other barn the previously wounded cows are trying to get up on their hooves.
Above them the reptilian person is slowly making their descent but G'nichi and Zee can probably have a small exchange as they don't seem to want to interrupt them. G'nichi might get the idea that their groups mere presence make them nervous but that's probably not too hard to guess.

[Geopol4r]

[Vault 44]

Ah, all the way to the bottom our hero(?) goes.

The elevator descends.

Down, down, down it goes!

And opens up into?

A barricade of metal plating and ruined mushroom zombies that look like they were set on fire recently.

On the other side of the barricade, taking cover behind several large machines and bulkheads, are a bunch of haggard looking humans with guns.

"Hold you fire!" one of them yells, raising a hand when she sees that the thing in the elevator isn't another gaggle of zombies. "Who the hell are you? What are you doing down here?"

She sounds equal parts angry and frightened.


[March of the Dragonborn]

Fenris is watching the exchange between the falmer, eyes narrowed.

"How do you suppose they're reading without any eyes?" she whispers to Vaveli.

That is definitely a good question.


[WUDJAT]

Our heroes don't get attacked, actually.

Not by anything at all.

After that initial attempt at hacking there aren't any further electronic assaults.

Phoenix is keeping her mech jammed, though, just in case. The claws on Sol can rip thought plating easily enough and she can still use all her lightning nonsense just fine. This just means no guns. And no guns are better than guns blowing her pals the hell up.

Once more the chamber opens up ahead of them and they find their war machine.

I stands like a statue in the middle of the room, one hand raised in an inspiring fashion. A low sound of rolling thunder emanates from it, like a storm on the distant horizon. It doesn't attack them. Or even move. It just stands there, a motionless monument. There's something almost... sacred about this place. Holy. Forbidden. The mech depicted is somehow all such war machines ever created and yet none of them. The idea of a battle mech made manifest.

Gene is mouthing 'What the ****,' in her cockpit.

Vault 44
Linth raises his chin and steps out of the elevator.
Do not fear. I am a master over fear and death and plague. I have been sent to save you.

Linth has not, in fact, been sent at all, and has no intention of saving them in the long run. But they don't know that, and it puts Linth in a position of temporary power.

If you take the foolish move of betraying me, you will be the ones who die.
It's entirely likely Linth could kill a number of them first. But probably not all of them.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cloud Castle]

"Great! A better home for our little moo-friends!"
There is some questionably-proper prancing in the fixed-barn, before Karaglen slips out through the back and starts the process of folding herself back up into a more-palatable elf girl again.

By the time she jogs back over to where everyone else was handling things, she has completely missed all the fighting.
Whoops! But probably for the best, given her random lapses of debilitating pain (and not enjoying fighting).
"I'm baaaack, I'm back! Sorry, I was, uh, fixing their other barn!"

She can offer some more healing, to whoever needs touching up though (including cows).

Cyberdyne Industries Airship Above Rovering

The officer didn't much like being hoisted down via telekinesis; it felt really weird to not be held by anything. When they land, he bends to slash at the scuttling hand-spiders, but even the one he bisected ignore the pair; they're not interested in intruders, but wish to repair the damage inflicted by the officer's super-sword. They'll extrude artificial silk from apertures hidden on their underside to stitch the hole shut, before using more silk to provide a more efficient seal.

"Yes, I think so. We can cut more holes in the balloon, make it crash, or try finding the control room. Take those out, get it to land, Rovering can eat it and rescue everyone and recover some of the materials and technology." A bit hopeful there, at 'rescuing everyone'. The people the cybermen are abducting are needed for something, and it's not exactly 'as slave labour', which is his current thought process.

The little spider-hand-bots are watched for a moment or three, curiously.
Their work is...inspiring, in a way. Not in a way that the regular populace would appreciate, but the unicorn isn't sharing these thoughts with the class for a reason.

"I vote for control room, if it please. Few forces maintain cohesion when their leaders are torn apart in front of them."
To that end...let's go exploring! The spiders apparently aren't a threat, so they go onto the "mostly ignore until they do something weird" list.
She'll keep a more aggressive eye out for other things, instead.

If there's nothing obstructing passage through that nearby door, she'll try that.

[Rebonack]

[WUDJAT]

Missiles smash into the immaculate mech, blackening its pristine form

It feels like an act of desecration.

But eventually it topples over, thick black smoke pouring from fires eating away at its innards.

The sound of thunder stops.

As so the anomalous signals.

Those are both good things, right?

Phoenix' coms finally pop back on now that the worm trying to convince her mech to shoot her buddies isn't trying to wriggle its way into her machine's systems anymore.

"That was it? I was expecting some kind of big battle," Gene says, pleasantly surprised.


[Cloud Castle]

"Fixing the other barn seems like a pretty good thing to be doing to me! Turns out the weapons were just going to keep fighting until the alarm bell went off and now they're... sleeping? Again?" Zee muses as she peers at the nice shiny glass table she created for the barn that doubles as the eternal prison of the weapons inside. Whilst doing her admiring she reaches out with one hand, fingers splayed, and aims to just sort of drape it across G'Nichi's face.

pblp!

Should Zee make contact she'll be invoking Shape and Information to tell his body that it should really rearrange itself back into the non-stabbed configuration it's supposed to be in.

"Okay! I think that crisis is averted, right? So we can head up to the SECOND level like we had planned to see if the folks living up there want some welcome brownies!"

A beat.

Zee glances up at the lizardy sharky person climbing off the roof.

"Wait, hey, I don't suppose you know if the other people up at the second level like welcome brownies, do you?"

This is a vitally important question.


[Vault 44]

The vault dwellers give each other some uncertain looks, muttering amongst themselves, before the de-facto leader speaks up again.

"I'm not sure how you could have known that we NEED saving but we sure as hell do," she replies. "Those mushroom monsters have taken over the atrium and quarters levels. A decent number of us made it down here to the engineering section and barricaded ourselves in but supplies are dwindling fast. I have no idea what you can do but we need those monsters cleared out. If we can push them out of the quarters level we should be able to rain hell on the big mushroom garden in the atrium with impunity."


[Forest of Hunger]

Approaching from the sky our heroes will be able to see the infected forest from afar off.

It looks...

Wrong.

The trees have all split open, spilling forth deep brown roots and limbs and vines that laced with veins of throbbing pink eldritch power. Alien fruits hang from the trunks and vines like eerie coco-pods and distressingly fleshy giant blackberries. Everything that uncanny shade of pink, swollen with unwholesome magic. As they get closer the air begins to grow bitterly cold, though the unnatural plant life doesn't appear to be bothered by it in the least. Snow drifts through the air in spite of it being late spring and Lapis finds herself shivering.

Not because she's cold.

But because of the wrongness in the air.

Near the forest there stands a village with a simple wooden wall around it, the buildings shrouded in steadily building snowbanks.

<There are people who are sick in the village I think we should go there first, Mister Kothar,> Lapis suggests.

Inhuman wails drift up from the forest. That's clearly the source of the blight. But should they really ignore those bitten to instead strike off the head of the serpent?

[bc56]

WUDJAT
"Yeah, it's weird. Let's get to that other path quickly. This place gives me the creeps." Herringbone turns her mech around and begins to march back the way they came, with Cynic following.

Forest of Hunger
<Yes. I will heal what I can before we set out to destroy the heart of this.> Kothar agrees. He hops off and heads for the village. This place is unnatural, but he's been many unnatural places. He does not fear the unknown, for he has stared it in the face and struck it down before.

[Deathkeeper]

Cloud Castle

G'nichi sighs in relief as his shoulder knits itself back together.
Wow having Zee around sure is handy. It's almost a little unfair. It seems like she could really take care of most of this by herself if she wasn't being so careful to avoid collateral damage.
Regardless, he walks over to the rest of the team and the lizard person.
"Is there an easy way to the second level or should we just fly?" he asks, looking up at the palace.

[Ironsmith]

March of the Dragonborn

Vaveli is also a little unhappy about being on the train, very concerned about how it all works. Fortunately, she doesn't get travelsick, a great blessing most likely. She's put her staff away, packing it into the rucksack where it disappears despite not being able to fit according to the external dimensions of the bag. She hasn't pulled a staff out, or gotten changed into actual armour, still wearing her ragged robes with their heavy enchantments, although the iron dagger which was at her hip has been replaced with a much finer dagger with a leaf-shaped green blade of metallic glass. It's also enchanted, as it happens.

[March of the Dragonborn]

Fenris is watching the exchange between the falmer, eyes narrowed.

"How do you suppose they're reading without any eyes?" she whispers to Vaveli.

That is definitely a good question.

March of the Dragonborn
"They seemed to be able to see earlier," Orathius comments. "Perhaps Miraak saw fit to restore their sight." He's not very uncomfortable in this metal carriage. It reeks of dwemer technology, but he spent a lot of time delving in dwemer ruins and dealing with their devices.

[March of the Dragonborn]

"Is that a man thing? To not understand speech?" One of the falmer snarls, looking back up at Fenris and Orathius. "'Our eyes once were blinded, now through him do we see'. Didn't we tell you this already?"

"Never mind them. Men are rather stupid." The second chokes, tucking the sudoku into its armor as the train stops. "Come, stupid things. The Master is waiting."

The falmer lead the trio of Dragonborn off of the train and down towards a by-now familiar set of Dwemer ruins. Well, familiar for Fenris, at any rate.

...Before suddenly turning off to the side, towards an otherwise innocuous cliff face.

"Navigating the ruins takes too long." One of them rasps impatiently. "Come, this way." It presses its hand against the rock face, pressing back a hidden panel and opening a hidden door, which slowly recedes into the ground. Guttural chanting can be heard echoing up the tunnel, indicating the presence of a large number of excited snow elves.

"Stupid Men and Dunmer first." The first falmer insists, gesturing down the tunnel.

[Rebonack]

[WUDJAT]

And so our heroes turn now to the path of dust.

Now, normally, you might expect dust to be no big deal.

But our heroes find themselves walking into a veritable sand-storm.

Which means dust is getting in everything.

It won't be very long before the mechs begin making some pretty unpleasant noises thanks to dust getting into every single intake that exists.


[Forest of Hunger]

Lapis takes a moment to shrink back down into her half-elf shape but it's a bit different this time around!

Instead of the little girl in the VIGIL support staff uniform there's a half-elf teen right at the cusp of the age where young humans with an itch for adventure head off to make their mark on the world. In place of the VIGIL uniform is an eclectic mishmash of cloth, leather, and plate armor bolted and riveted together. An elegant side-sword waits in the scabbard at her hip and shield made of obsidian and lightning is slung across her back. She takes off a jog to catch up with Kothar, the helmet strapped around her neck (and not currently on her head) bouncing against her shield as she runs.

<People think I'm too little to be adventuring if I'm small so this works better most of the time,> Lapis helpfully explains.

As they approach the wooden gates a man with palled skin and sunken eyes peers over the top and calls down to them.

"Ho, travelers! Turn back! A dreadful plague has fallen on us! Go back the way you came lest it claim you as well!"

[bc56]

WUDJAT
"Is this it? We've fought in worse conditions, right?" Cynic asks. It's true, they have. If you think it's hard to sink heat in a sandstorm, try doing it in hard vacuum. "Visibility is **** though. Stay on the lookout for trouble." A cautious advance through the storm should serve them well.

Forest of Hunger
<Why? You're a dragon, you are far more powerful than you appear in your human guise. They should know that.> Kothar asks, assuming she means people at Vigil (why else would they employ a dragon as a groundskeeper?). But he also greets the gate guard. "I am healer. I can help with plague?" It's a sharp contrast to his eloquent Draconic speech.

[Shadowcaller]

[Cloud Castle]

"Great! A better home for our little moo-friends!"
There is some questionably-proper prancing in the fixed-barn, before Karaglen slips out through the back and starts the process of folding herself back up into a more-palatable elf girl again.

By the time she jogs back over to where everyone else was handling things, she has completely missed all the fighting.
Whoops! But probably for the best, given her random lapses of debilitating pain (and not enjoying fighting).
"I'm baaaack, I'm back! Sorry, I was, uh, fixing their other barn!"

She can offer some more healing, to whoever needs touching up though (including cows).

[Cloud Castle]

"Fixing the other barn seems like a pretty good thing to be doing to me! Turns out the weapons were just going to keep fighting until the alarm bell went off and now they're... sleeping? Again?" Zee muses as she peers at the nice shiny glass table she created for the barn that doubles as the eternal prison of the weapons inside. Whilst doing her admiring she reaches out with one hand, fingers splayed, and aims to just sort of drape it across G'Nichi's face.

pblp!

Should Zee make contact she'll be invoking Shape and Information to tell his body that it should really rearrange itself back into the non-stabbed configuration it's supposed to be in.

"Okay! I think that crisis is averted, right? So we can head up to the SECOND level like we had planned to see if the folks living up there want some welcome brownies!"

A beat.

Zee glances up at the lizardy sharky person climbing off the roof.

"Wait, hey, I don't suppose you know if the other people up at the second level like welcome brownies, do you?"

This is a vitally important question.

Cloud Castle

G'nichi sighs in relief as his shoulder knits itself back together.
Wow having Zee around sure is handy. It's almost a little unfair. It seems like she could really take care of most of this by herself if she wasn't being so careful to avoid collateral damage.
Regardless, he walks over to the rest of the team and the lizard person.
"Is there an easy way to the second level or should we just fly?" he asks, looking up at the palace.

[Cloud Castle]

The reptilian brushes off dust from their clothes before turning to the two, regarding them which might be caution for a moment before they seem to steel themselves. "We consider this our home, this entire flying structure and all the buildings on it. So with that in consideration I feel I need to ask you what you're doing here. The simple gesture of handing over food? Then why were the kuaro released? You moved around here rather than coming to us." They gesture at what's likely the stone stairs leading up to the second level.

G'nichi, Zee and Kara should have been able to see them from the air and any time they looked in the direction of the barn. They're pretty big.

They glance at Kara as she enters the barn but then continues. "Since no one but the cows live here. You must have noticed that. The buildings are not for people to live in anymore."

[Rebonack]

[WUDJAT]

Gotta hate sand.

It's gritty and course and gets into everything.

This is, typically, a nuisance.

But what if that sand is part of the winds that change the face of the world.

"****!"

That sudden exclamation is probably troubling.

"I'm getting greywash alarms from this stuff we're dealing with angry sand!"

The dust isn't just getting into everything its getting into everything.

Phoenix pushes her mech into full speed ahead, but the nanites are making that process difficult. They aren't chewing on the mechs (thank goodness) but they're getting into joints and binding to them, making movement difficult.

Sounds like they need to hurry and figure out where the other mech? Statue? They need to destroy is at and slag the thing. But how the hell are they supposed to see in this dust storm?


Forest of Hunger

<These people don't know that though, Mister Kothar. And sometimes people get scared when a dragon comes to their homes in Outside. Outside doesn't have as many different sorts of people as Inside does,> Lapis explains. The paladin may notice that in this older (looking) form her voice doesn't have quite the degree of breathless enthusiasm that it would otherwise. She seems to calm down a little like this. But only a little. <The Commanders at VIGIL don't like me going on official missions. I'm strong but I'm still little so they worry about me.>

She sounds plainly and obviously frustrated with that fact.

Then!

Time to chat with the guard.

"Mister Kothar is a paladin! He has healing magic," Lapis helpfully supplies. "We're from VIGIL we're here to help!"

The guard seems visibly relieved by this, his shoulders sagging as though a weight had just been lifted from his back. "Thank the gods. Open the gate! Let them in!"

With a groan of wood and iron hinges that clearly need to be oiled more often the gates part for our heroes, giving them a good view of the miserable state of the village. They're simple buildings of hewn logs with the gaps filled in by pitch. The muddy streets are covered in snow and judging from the smoke ascending from chimney holes most everyone is inside trying to keep warm.

"That blight hit the forest about a week ago and it has steadily been getting worse," the guard on the wall tells them. "Then the snow started and killed most of the crops. The fevers began soon after that. Everyone is hungry, cold, and sleeping is difficult. It doesn't help that the fever makes people delirious. The monsters started appearing just yesterday."

[bc56]

WUDJAT
"You rigged up that special defense system, will it work on this?" Cynic asks. It seems like a worthwhile question. This is causing their mechs to heat awfully even from just walking. They can probably survive without anything special, but it won't be pleasant.

Forest of Hunger
"Show me where sick are," Kothar commands as soon as the gates are closed behind them. "I can heal before destroy blight." Hopefully he's making sense. Otherwise there could be some awkward misunderstandings.

[Rebonack]

[WUDJAT]

"Probably. S'worth a shot, I mean," Phoenix replies. "It should be able to flush 'em. But we might wanna wait until we run into trouble before we try to hose the gunk out otherwise it'll just gum us up again."

Trouble, huh?

Well.

It turns out they run into trouble pretty quickly this time around.

At the center of the swirling dust storm is what appears to be a marble pillar with legs. It proves to be a hostile pillar with legs when a compartment slides open on it and it unleashes a churning storm of the world's most aggressive glitter on the Dragon. Sadly this stuff isn't just annoying, the greywash will begin actively chewing on her mech which definitely isn't great.

Now is probably a good time start using that anti-nanite defense.


[Forest of Hunger]

The guard nods to the paladin since it sure seems like he understood what Kothar was getting at?

He begins leading them deeper into the village when suddenly a scream cuts through the air. A man comes running out of the one of the cottages clutching his heavily bleeding arm. Pursuing him close behind is woman(?) who appears to have gone completely feral. Her eyes are sunken and dark, her hands vaguely claw-like, her bloodied teeth grown such that they poorly fit her mouth, and a pair of short wooden spike horns? antlers? have grown up through her disheveled hair.

Suffice to say the guard is shocked by this development.

"By the gods not again..."