ioduanlogs | [Event] NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS: A CITY CONSUMED

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[Event] NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS: A CITY CONSUMED

Characters: Any signed up for the scouting mission here
Date: August 25-September 13
Location: The triple-tower shunt
Situation: It's a Shunt! Grab what you can and get out.
Warnings/Rating: In individual threads - please remember to warn!

The shunt, when it appears, is immediately obvious. There are silver towers, reaching skyward and glinting brightly in the sun – where the rays can reach them, through the thick twining cover of green vines and branches. Closer it is evident there are three, all interconnected, and a smattering of smaller buildings spreading out beside – some few of these have been bisected in their arrival.

To certain Dreamfolk, it will be very obvious that these are skyscrapers, not simply any tower. But overgrown ones; these have clearly not seen the touch of people, or pruners, in tens of years at least.

A scouting mission is immediately arranged to track the bounds of the shunt, and assess the potential. Shortly after, word goes out for volunteers for a recovery mission…

Running the volunteer show is a relatively short Muin man with a kind smile but a brisk voice. He doesn't have a lot of time to spare – once people come to him he points them at a tower. "Go with a buddy, grab easy to carry things that aren't nailed down and look likely. If you're not sure, a shine or a glow or anything with joints is a good bet."

There's a bustle of people around the bases of the towers. Some are trying to deal with various door problems; more have spread out to canvass the environs, scouting through the smaller and less likely buildings for anything that sticks out. Largely, they return disappointed. There are abandoned vehicles overgrown with vines, now rusted out and useless, which get largely ignored except for seating value. Samples of plants are taken, from leaves to root segments, and secured for transport into a foreign environment. One enterprising crew is scaling the outside of the southernmost tower with ropes and grappling hooks, two strong-armed friends singing some old shanty below as they belay.

Motion is constant all around, hurried but not rushed. Most notably at the moment, everyone at the base of the towers seems comfortable, not alarmed. There's been no sign of dangerous wildlife, which means – at least for now – that it's free salvage, and all anyone has to do is get to it before the shunt fades.

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OOC Notes:

Mods will begin threads with descriptive headers to present the situation, obstacle, and some suggestion on easily visible courses of action.

After that, it's your country. However, we'll be keeping an eye on things, of course! Expect some intermittent input on low-risk threads, and more regular input on high-risk threads. Remember you may back out at any time if you find it necessary.

Below, you will find headers for the entrances to all three towers. Please split up accordingly. In the case of Tower 3, please keep to separate threads per group, despite the similar starting locale.

Once you have progressed far enough – four comments per character – even if you are not finished, you may tag into the Plans header with your group's determined course of action. You will receive a confirmation of your choices, as well as an assessment of the level of risk present as your group presses on, and the next stage will be provided for you. You do not need to stop tagging the old one; it is simply to keep things moving.

If you have questions, please direct them here and we will be happy to clarify as we can.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The flurry of movement and preparation surrounding the shunt seemed more organized than the last one. There wasn't panic in the air, but a sense of focused purpose and imperative. The Muin man quickly pointed her at the third skyscraper. The building may have been covered in twisting vines, but the outline could be nothing else. She carefully took in the entrance. Something had forced it open, violently, and with strength she probably couldn't manage. Metal like that didn't just bend on a whim. She placed her hand on a piece of the door, noting the sparkle of shattered glass on the ground before moving her gaze to the large door.

Valdis picked her way around the wreckage, looking intently at the box and wishing that Tony was here. This would be right up his alley. The door probably wouldn't break and she didn't care to find a weak spot in the metal. She started looking around the edges, wiring or something that someone might be able to get around. Perhaps the wall, but structural integrity would have to be ensured first.

Aly kept her mace at the ready. She'd been in plenty of suspicious locations, and she'd played enough post-apocalyptic video games to take nothing for granted. There could be a zombie just around the corner.

She eyed the electronic box. "I guess that thing won't react well to a couple good whacks, will it?" she joked. It probably wouldn't. Most things didn't, and electronics like this were way too delicate to fail upon destruction. There were likely some extremely stringent fail-safes.

Raven's movements were slow, eyes continuously scanning over the environment. Whoever was here before them was clearly busy getting their rage on. It wasn't what she knew that was catching her attention, but what she didn't know. It was the three of them right now, but who really knew if they were the only ones inside or deeper in.

"Whoever it was already beat you to it." No sense in trying again, especially with something that sturdy.

She touched the door, examining it and the box next to it. Raven knew how to work technology, sure, but hacking was outside her level of expertise. Fortunately for her, there was more than one way of getting through.

"I can get us to the other side, but we'd have no idea what's waiting for us." Doors are locked for a reason.

Valdis looked over her shoulder at Raven, not displeased to see her, but still ever so wary about how interactions might progress. She moved aside to let her examine the door and turned her attention to Aly.

"Damaging the electronics might make the situation worse," she warned, thinking about how much pressure she might have to apply to break through the wall, or if she even could. Knowing what the wall was built of would impact her ability to destroy it. She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword, gaze returning to Raven.

"How?" she asked. They would have to deal with whatever was on the other side eventually, so best not to dwell on it.

"I'm all ears," Aly said. She was never one to discount any course of action, and she had no clue what Raven was capable of, anyway. After all, Soren was a Seer, the Princeps could do all sorts of things, and Annie....Annie was Annie.

"I mean, I don't think the door'd like me trying to melt through it, but hey, I'm up for trying it. Just putting that up on the table."

Edited 2018-08-29 04:07 (UTC)

"I can teleport us through." Raven turned towards the others. "I can't see what's on the other side, but I can at least open a portal so that we wouldn't be going in completely blind."

Or smack themselves into a wall.

"But we still won't know if there's anything on the other side until I actually open it."

Teleportation. Valdis supposed it was only a matter of time before that ability showed up here, though she recalled that Gene was capable of it. She stepped forward to tap the wall.

"I can check for anything with a soul beyond the door before we open a portal," she replied, "But beyond the danger of sentient beings, there's no predicting what we might find. I mean, all plants have a life force, but generally not a soul."

Klaus had hung back for the time being, as he'd been carefully checking over the medkit to make sure all supplies were readily available should someone get hurt. Still he had his ears open to the suggestions and, once satisfied they were well stocked, stood and cleared his throat.

"I can create a blood barrier that will shield us from any immediate attack should we set off traps," he said. "I'm for proceeding with the barrier."

Ripping the door seemed more than doable but he was sure that would set off whatever remained of the security system. Stealth was always preferable to brute force when he could manage it.

Whatever the method, it is possible to pass through the wall safely. Within the secured area, there are two laboratory areas with corresponding offices/observation rooms. The air is stale and still, and notably there is very little dust collected here, as though it's remained sealed off from the outside - and it mostly is. Further inspection will reveal that this area has an isolated ventilation system from the rest of the building, with heavy filtration. Both labs appear to be dedicated to highly technical physics experimentation. The first lab features a series of laser generators and optics experiments. One of the lasers appears to be missing.

In the second lab, there is a flat ring about 3 feet in diameter raised on four prongs; both the ring and the frame are made from a strange, almost iridescent bluish-gray metal. While the ring is pristine, everything else in the room appears to have been subjected to an explosion. The walls and floor are blackened and cracked, and the generators that powered this experiment are toast.

There are bodies in the offices. Eight of them total, five in one office and three in another, and they are mummified, not decomposed. The computers here appear undamaged but unless the computers are collected and another power source is found, there is no way to determine what data they hold - it could, however, be enormously valuable salvage.

At the end of the hall that separates the labs, there is another door. It looks as though it was intended to be secured like the first, but something has peeled it open and left it hanging from its hinges.

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[There will be separate headers created beneath this one. Please use those to proceed. Further input will be provided differently for each group.]

With a bit of magic and a lot of caution, Raven and the others make it through the other side of the security door. For the moment at least, it looks like they're the only ones on the other side, though she remains on guard. Immediately of notice are the high-tech labs.

She steps into one of the laboratories, taking in how utterly trashed most of it looks. Clearly signs of a big explosion, too.

And dead bodies, those were also pretty hard to miss.

"Wonder what caused all this."

The path through the wall was a bit disconcerting, but not nearly as disconcerting as what lay on the other side. Valdis moved around the area, glancing in the offices as Raven looked in the lab. The first thing she noticed are the bodies and how well preserved they are. The smell of scorched ground lingered, even with how stale the air in the rooms seemed. There wasn't any dust that suggested passage of time, the seal must have been airtight.

Valdis backed out of the current office and walked up to Raven's side, taking in the destruction.

"Probably the one thing in the room that looks untouched," she replied, gesturing at the ring, "I wonder what they were doing."

Aly's used to portals and so on. It's not the weirdest thing. This, though - this isn't quite in her wheelhouse, aside from stuff she's seen on TV and in video games.

She knows better than to poke the corpses, even though she really, really wants to.

When Valdis goes into an office, she mumbles "Don't split the party," under her breath, and then, because her advice comes too late, decides 'screw it' and peels off down a hall. Everything is blackened and cracked, but there's a door that's hanging crazily askew.

Even she's not reckless enough to go down that way alone.

"Guys," she says, trotting back up to the little party. "I found another door like this first, one, but get this, it's totally trashed."

"Nothing good if it caused all this."

There wasn't much else to go through inside the room. The dead bodies were... well, still looking pretty dead. And the blue ring, while fairly interesting in how untouched it looked, was unlikely to be examined given the state of the room and their lack of tools and knowledge to even know what to do with it.

She was more interested in continuing to move, and heading in deeper and deeper.

If only it wasn't for the constant doors getting their way.

"Well that can't be a good sign." But also looked like the only way forward.

Valdis looked over at Aly when the girl returned, tipping her head in agreement with Raven.

"I doubt any of this is good," she replied, considering the merits of investigating versus moving on. "But I'm not a scientist, so I say we follow the trail we were given."

Without really waiting for permission, Valdis headed back the way Aly had come, pausing to take in the destroyed door. Whatever had done this might be beyond their skills, but she'd never really shied away from a challenge.

Aly trotted after Valdis, one hand on the handle of her mace, the other prepped to call fire if she needed to. Anything could be behind that door. Science experiments gone rogue. Zombies. Survivalists gone half-feral. Zombies. Wild animals. Zombies. Radiation-mutated fauna. Zombies. Zombies. Zombies.

"Once more into the breach. Literally." She cracked her knuckles. "I'll take point."

Through the door, there is a room larger than the previous ones combined. It appears to be part laboratory and part air hangar in construction, with high ceilings and reinforced support beams - except a quarter of it, from floor to ceiling, almost appears to have been grafted on from another building entirely, replacing the original structure.

There is a plexiglass and steel barrier that divides this anomaly from the rest of the room, but it is clearly far too small to be designed for full containment. What has replaced the chunk of tower is a mass of interconnected geometric shapes colored a deep, iridescent blue, and it is impossible to tell whether it is metallic or some other material. In fact, looking at it is strangely difficult, as if there is something there that the eye is trying to process but can't. The substance gives off a feeling of movement without perceptible shifting.

A low hum, almost beyond hearing, emanates from a rectangular frame of metal that has almost been completely covered by this anomaly. Snaking away from the frame to the other side of the plexiglass are thick, black cables, most of which disappear into the floor. The ones that don't are connected to a wide control center. Most of the screens are dysfunctional, and one panel is blown out completely. Surprisingly, the controls - and presumably what they're connected to - are still powered on. The rest of this side of the room is full of a wide variety of tools and equipment in varying stages of disrepair, as well as some undamaged computers and even a few clipboards with paper notes.

There was a lot going on in the room they entered, but one thing in particular caught Aly's attention and held it in a way that nothing else could.

The way that her eyes slid off the strange blue geometry, as if it didn't want to be looked at, the way it made her eyes water and her head pound and her mouth taste like acid and garbage in a too-strong memory could mean only one thing. Faeries. She let out a low, animalistic growl, and readied her mace in her right hand, calling up crimson fire into her left.

"Show yourselves!" she snarled, stepping into the center of the room. "Show yourselves, you cowards!"

The oddity of the place was quickly cataloged, her gaze moving around with interest, though she frowned when she tried to look at the blueish metallic structure. It almost didn't register, and it felt very wrong. Aly seemed to perceive something that she couldn't see, for the girl's emotions spiked with fear and fury. In the next moment, fire flickered to life in Aly's hand and it became clear that something was wrong.

Valdis moved her vision onto the soul plane, but there was no immediately visible life, leaving her confused over the girl's reaction. Leaving her sight active, she turned to Aly.

"Aly," she said sharply, "What's wrong?"

Spending a good couple of years watching over Satan's prison in Hell, Raven knew a thing or two whenever something just felt wrong. And though this wasn't quite the same as that, it was still an unusual feeling. Unusual and just flat out unpleasant. Naturally, it was what stood out the most inside the room.

Though for some reason, it seemed to really offend Aly.

Like, a lot.

"Keep it down, will you? We're trying to keep a low profile."

Neither of her companions seemed to know what was going on, and Aly wiped her eyes before turning to Valdis briefly. She couldn't turn away for long - what if they attacked?

"Faeries," she hissed, taking Raven's advice, looking at the both of them with confusion. "You can't tell? They've got to be right there, cloaked. Just look! See how your eyes don't want to stay on it? That's what they do!"

She turned back to the strange structure, staring intently at it despite her blooming migraine. "You know when you're outmatched, huh?"

Valdis turned soul sight back to the strange architecture, still seeing no signs of sentient life. She stepped forward, placing a hand on Aly's shoulder.

"Aly," she said softly, "There's nothing there."

Then, as if to prove her point, she walked around the girl to examine the counter with all the equipment. She carefully avoided the controls, but picked up one of the clipboards to try to make sense of what the previous residents had been studying.

"Raven," she said without looking up, "What else can you do that might help us here?"

"Not much else, I'm afraid."

She looked around and studied the available technology, trying not to look at that... thing. Raven was the practical sort, and she decided didn't want to mess with any of this stuff that she didn't know about.

Because that could've been a fast way to make things that much worse.

Aly jumped when Valdis put her hand on her shoulder. "How can you be sure?" They were hanging back, taunting her. She squinted at the disturbance, letting her eyes relax enough to see the lines, but there was...nothing. And no faeries.

Cold comfort, because she knew they could hide themselves even from lines.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Event] NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS: A CITY CONSUMED

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