Session 21
Prev: Session 20
Next: Session 22
- Arkari
- Go to talk to Dakine
- a I heard yo u have information from the mayors office?
- D From or about?
- A Either
- D I’m no technomancer, I cant see through a wire but I told you about a secret door. Tehre was also a recording device located in the secret statue + 2 cameras
- A how did you know this
- D [shows lazer panel] doyo uknow how a solar panel worlds? You can use this to catch special sensors, infrared and the light
- A and you caught special sensors?
- D no one really pays attention to these there used to aumgent batteries, if you have enemies like this you need to be smart , surely you have tricks up your sleeve?
- Z do we have that?
- [we realize we have a new scan ability to add things to the gacha]
- “You dont know how to track down special equipment and u plan on taking down Lemdako Corporation??”
- We’re so ambitious and willing to learn
- Al: do you have any ways? (scans her)
- (turns white from the Data-Temple as it tries to learn about the world through us)
- (creature then needs to die within the next hour for the ability to lock in)
- “I’m just a wizard.”
- Al: tech wizard?
- “No just magic. I have basic hacking abilities?”
- Z: help us with dealing with the mayor?
- “I can make some selectively invisible? But it might be best to lure her out while the rest of us sneak in. the rest of us arent combat trained.”
- 26 internally: we are able to uses our senses thru a wire
- “We can set up a wire while you’re out? We’ll just buy a basic copper wire and run it into the office.”
- Rest and set up the meeting
- We say the middle of the woods
- She suggests an abandoned quarry near town
- Quarry
- Mayor Aleria Venn purposefully closed it 20 years ago
- We get there earlier than the meet up time, 1 hour
- But she’s already there as of 30 mins
- She waves
- “Hello. You’re back. Was going to your brother too much of an ask?”
- Z: i didnt find him there
- “They would’ve taken you.”
- Al: who’s they?
- “Are you in a place to ask right now?”
- M: we think u wouldnt have come if u werent interested!
- “I am. I’m willing to let you all go.”
- M: in exchange for the data temple location
- “Yes!”
- (truthful, but there is a bit more)
- Z: wdym let us go?
- “As in i wont send word to the camacho family that their beloved son has been replaced. Do you know what his brother is in charge of? I am talking of course abt admiral camacho.”
- Z: admiral?
- (there’s no service out here)
- (she does have a specialty antenna built that can ping off of specialty satellites)
- (otherwise, there are inscriptions and glowing lights in the pool of water. Entirely alien to our known world.)
- “Youll be free of all that. None will follow you.”
- Z: and the town?
- “None of us ever have to see each other again.”
- Z: the trafficking of shapeshifters-
- “relocation.”
- Z: where?
- “Idk. but im paid handsomely for it, and it funds the town.”
- (miku tries to start recording. Unfortunately, she is able to see and wave the camera to turn off.)
- She was the technomancer all along
- Z: you sold my brother?
- “He went of his own free will”
- Z: he left town
- “And i paid for his transport. He wasnt going to make it out on his own.”
- “Unfortunately our hires didnt want me to get in contact with the data temple. So they wipes his memory. I wouldve paid him for it.”
- “You know what happens when the small families start getting too strong? They fight each other. Can’t have too much infighting.”
- “How many people have i killed?
- Z: i know of one?
- “That’s hardly haphazard.”
- Z: she had a good life ahead of her. I wouldve left anyway
- “I wouldnt have been paid. And i dont want my spotless record tarnished twice by another.”
- She was going to use him as a way to get other shapeshifters hiding
- “No, Its only astrazoans that come here.”
- Both astrazoans only come here and only trafficks them
- (should we have disagreed to go to the quarry, zmena wouldve said yes against his will)
- X: anything to do with the symbols in this quarry?
- “I believe so. Maybe its a fragment of our homeworld.”
- X: did it draw you here as well?
- “I like to think so. And as a ruler of the fragments, that makes me a queen, no?”
- Z: how could you do this? You betray your own kind for money
- “And security and my own life.”
- Z: you can have your own life without that.
- “I would not.”
- X: they would simply use the quarry to draw them here and send them away as well.
- R: why not make this a haven?”
- “I dont use the quarry to- are you stupid?”
- Al: if people are out there buying them, theyd surely take the whole community i assume
- “Of course”
- Al: instead 1 gets to live.
- “I made sure it was me. They gave me cybernetics that even work on me.”
- X: we found a lab filled with corpses. Is that the fate ur trying to avoid?
- “Its a fate.”
- Z: did you sell your family like you sold mine?
- “No, they died. Natural causes.”
- “Your brother’s hardy. Im sure he’ll survive whatever they do.”
- M: miku thinks you should be kinder with your words to other people
- X: if you had access, do you think you’d still be as incentivized to do this?
- “Of course not.” (technically true, bc it gets rid of an incentive, but she still loves the profit)
- Aura sight:
- Worried about us
- Mostly hostile tbh
- No idea abt herself
- Suffering from Shisade Syndrome. Without tech embedded, she’ll become dislocated from time and space and perish. She needs cybernetics to live
- (partially connected to the data temple digitization. But if ur saved, u can be implenated with cybernetics.)
- As: what’s the truth of the tech in your office from the data temple?
- “I got it as a gift from higher ups. I can’t tell you more or they will kill me.
- As: And it’s true that the last android to touch it died?
- “Yes, that part is true”
- Z: higher ups meaning the ones in charge of trafficking your kind?
- “Yeah they don’t give a shit
- Z: what are you going to do when you run out of ppl to shell to them? Its just you left?
- “It’ll never just be me. They come in droves. You’re the oddity. I cant explain it, but they come in a specific number. Can you guess?”
- Z: four?
- “No. an oddity. The answer is 7.”
- (astrazoans have 7 arms)
- “Are you going to take the deal or not?”
- Almado proposes a business plan
- “And when they stop supporting me and decide to end my life?”
- Al: u havent been putting part of your funding to ur own research?
- “U know how much it costs? Its in the billions of credits. And also requires the trafficking of astrazoans anyway. I can either lose the near billions, or i can gain in the 100s of thousands.”
- As: do u not feel shame?
- “I’ve learned to be okay with it”
- As: after how many deaths?
- “A couple hundred?”
- Z: we keep getting called. Do u know why?
- “I assume its some biological urge with our homeworld.”
- X: if we took the deal, would u also give us time to study the runes before we left?
- “Do whatever u want”
- X: would we be wanted on this planet
- “No.”
- X: would u object to us looking into your org further? Would that change the nature of the deal?
- “I would have to say u cant do such a thing.”
- X: good to know.
- Z: how do we know u dont fuck us over later?
- “You dont. Do you want me to say i have an oath to aeryn-vox and i cant lie? I dont.”
- “If you want, the location of the data temple?”
- We give her the info
- “If you could. Put it on a chip?” she puts a small data recorder on the ground “and put it in.”
- Telekinetic hand grab it
- She, with her partially detransition limb, shoots almado (almado turns to the party, confused, ready to fight)
- Combat
- Zmena gets the kill on her
- Her cloaking skin remains, but none of the others do
- Able to see the signal go upward, almost like it was controlling her like a marionette on a string
- Xep tries to grab it, against all odds grabbing the video of zmena killing an innocent woman. The message had 2 parts: the video, and the signal that she has died and for the vault to release the video held there
- Ponder the glowing runes
- It is hard to tell, but shes purposefully dropped a rock on it, some are still visible on the rock
- We are able to find almost a crashed ship
- Not much, effectively a hull and a few pieces of pieces of computer parts, most rusted by the salt. It would take a miracle, someone legendary in computers, to salvage it
- Doesnt seem to be using credit based electrical grids, alien tech outside of our galaxy. Important note that astrazoans have no known homeworld and have just appeared on other homeworlds
- Zmena doesnt sense anything in particular, but it feels nice here. Tho once he leaves it’ll feel like he should go back to town. This feeling persists until we leave this planet’s orbit
- We go to the mayor’s office
- Dakine meets with us with the wire she managed to run into the mayors office area and her electrical grid
- “I failed to ask, why are we doing this? Attaching a wire to the electrical grid, i mean.”
- 26: it is an aspect of our cultivation technique
- They do Ancient Roots Decree
- Static sense appears to be a bit odd, feels like the data temple itself, feels like a small section of the data temple was taken inside. Dont know what it means
- Actual orb has moved inward, the glow is gone from it when we enter. Appears to be hiding within for some reason
- Given her condition, likely recreated the nature of a data temple in order to be able to operate on her stabily without her implants. More like a demiplane, stablize within there, including the orb from her office. Compression of data is incredibly nice, very easy to store things within
- Minimum of 8th rank magic to achieve such an effect
- Attempt to sneak, zmena is caught tho
- Guards on alert, but without guns drawn, look “you cant go here. Are you looking to meet with the mayor?”
- Z: i was looking to get my license renewed, i think im lost
- “Sir its a weekend”
- Z: are you not open on weekends?
- “No, its a govt office. Are you alright, do we need to go to the hospital?”
- Z: no i just got the wrong info
- “Abt govt offices being open on the weekends?”
- Z: ive been so confused, the days flew past me
- “No its the weekend. Be careful. Are u from town?”
- Z: no i just moved here recently, still getting used to the town
- “Where did u move to? My family and the like could show u around, not a whole lot to see.”
- Z: insert answer that makes sense for someone who’s lived here
- office
- Zep focuses a lot on the locks and mechanisms
- Asper can see the wider picture, near where she has the ladder, theyre able to spy a book, hardcoded, that simply says: “The Laws of Power” by MP, the authors name not said in full
- Pull it out, appears to be a basic text abt cultivation, tho there are some words that are considered misspellings by most, prime words, that if u were to take out those misspellings could create a password
- Door opens to a cool air, mini data vault
- The records within are mostly scrubbed of things that go back to who she works for
- There’s a lot thats usable, theres info on how she met via personal journals, including the fact that she never went to a data temple. Thru unknown means she touched an object and got scrambled. She was hired by a cultivator, he needed her for a project. There’s info on the Trifecta Program, this is of The Perfect Form. you need to change shape easily to do it. (the cultivator contemplative one was The Perfect Mind). We havent figured out what the third is (could be soul or heart)
- She has theories that there are other planets with astrazoan harvesting programs
- Also some notes made abt the developer’s interest in the Serenade
- His name appears redacted, but he has great interest in it
- “He never has a conversation the same twice with me, but he’s asked 3 times.”
- Medical bench also includes the names of each astrazoans that gave her the implants, it seems that to give an astrazoan an implant it has to be made for that astrazoan. The tech isnt there for astrazoans for it to work with them broadly
- She knew her place at the lower rung of the ladder, didnt ask too many questions about these things
- DESTROY THE EVIDENCE
- Hard to see, a smaller credicite hiding in the corner away from us. A small goop thing that hides amongst the circuits like the prev one did
- Try to scoop it out of the wire into an external bag, oops hard to scoop it bc its liquid metal
- Use xep to grab it
- It hurts, goes into his hand, into the circuits he call veins
- He looks at asper, who looks a bit different. (Xep does not remember what changed.)
- This one doesnt free him, feels oddly ok with everything happening around him. Mind loses ability to articulate between past present and future. Effectively stupefied 6 in this state.
- Zmena gets asked to give dna
- He gets blood taken “see its not a big deal” then beeping red, audible alarm
- He runs away, sneaks into a crowd of people leaving a movie theater, manages to get out
- Achenar is a burned identity here
- Manage to sneak out with xep
- To the ship, Halrex Korr looks at xep
- “Does he need…?”
- As: yes
- Blows his shit smooooth off
- In the ship, we’re left with another cube
- Go to talk to Dakine
- Off to the aedryn capital