Chevaleresse

The Knight seems to watch the space dragon for a moment, then settles down against the wall, being very careful to not let any of their limbs actually poke out from beneath the cloak.

"The gods have advisors. They seem to do a lot of the work involved in governing a plane." There was another long period of silence. "I do not know if I want to tell you."

The Knight falls silent for a long time, nearly enough to make one think they hadn't heard the question. And then: "No."

(Castle Tank Exploration BGM)

The hooded head nods. "The tournament's prize is the right to challenge the Tenth God as the strongest fighter in Tempest. Defeating him means ruling a plane as the Eleventh."

"Both. I do not tend to mesh well with people, and the circumstances of the tournament made it difficult to hold conversations with many people. Why do you ask?"

The Hellfire Knight side-eyed the strange creature known as Eon from beneath their cowl. He's. . . actually pretty neat to look at. Stars and all that. I've seen paintings that tried to imitate the night sky but it looks like he's made out of a piece of it or something. "Most people don't talk to me unless it's required for formality." [25 vs 17] Mar, after some focusing, creates a Well-Made Golden Chain Gun. Name: Golden Chaingun (Well-Made) Description: An Arm Covering Hookshot made of Golden Stone, High Carbon Steel, and tipped with Magic Obsidian, This Device fires a Chain Encased in a rod of Holy Solar Magic and tipped with an Orcish Spearhead hook, not as sharp as one freshly replaced often, but still sharp and strong enough to pierce almost anything, and sharp enough that only extremely durable targets can be hooked onto with it. Type: Weapon Damage: 1d8+Dex Minimum Stats: 0 Weight: 2 SYN Threshold/Bonus: Special Qualities: This weapon can grant the user first strike next turn, disabling it for next turn and the one after as it drags the user around. Sharp: Damage dealt with this weapon ignores 25% of RES. Hikari explores the Castle Tank as it grinds toward the town, the great machine slowing as they draw near. She discovers it is made of six primary divisions, along with some towers topped with what looked like battleship cannons(!) near the corners of the structure: The Barracks: A set of sparse, functional rooms meant to house squads of soldiers, connected to an armory, smithy, and mess hall. Unfortunately, the armory has largely been stripped clean, as has the mess, but the smithy still has a few miscellaneous mundane ingots and such left behind. The Engineering Bay: The "tank" part of the castle, this contains two offices and an extended room housing the majority of the workings that power the immense vehicle's movement. The engines are rusted and badly in need of attention, and it smells of burned grease, metal, and a bit of smoke. The Throne Hall: A massive set of three rooms, and the scene of the party's main intrusion. An entrance hall leads to an antechamber which leads to the throne room and the controls for the castle tank; the antechamber has been converted into a Heartless manufactory, which was recently dismantled by the party. The Servant's Quarters: A set of smaller chambers meant to house the staff that kept the castle maintained when it was inhabited. The bedrooms are functional, but not quite as spartan as the barracks, and unlike the former are individual; there's also a dining room that the servants likely used to take their meals when this was the seat of some feudal power. The Suites: A few luxurious bedrooms that housed guests of high standing; they have borne the brunt of time's assault on the castle, with many of the furnishings mostly dismantled or carried off a long time ago. Still, what was left behind speaks to great wealth. The Ballroom: The main event center of the castle, it consists of a massive room with a dance floor and fine engraved decor about the walls, connected by side doors to the main kitchen of the place, in order to make serving food to the esteemed guests faster and more efficient.

The Knight nods, and then falls silent. They start to slowly wander further away from the bulk of the group.

"That. Um. Won't be necessary. There are more important things to attend to than my looks." The figure looks distinctly uncomfortable .

The cowled head shakes. "The best doctors in Tempest could not fix it; I have long since given up on trying to heal it."

A staccato series of static bursts emanated from the Knight as they skittered away from the fallen gangster, and took a moment to collect themselves before replying. "I was severely disfigured as a child."

It's hard to look someone in the eye when you can't see their eyes and they're a foot shorter than you. "A mech lets you fight past the normal ability of your body, no matter who you are. Past that, all of them are different. The cloak is because I do not want to reveal what I look like. Please don't." Despite the lack of tonal cues from the artificial voice, it's clear who the Knight means.

A small burst of static sounded before the Knight spoke. "I do not. I fight using my mech." The answer to the half-demon's question is terse, and evasive.

It's hard to tell under the cowl, but the Hellfire Knight appears to have stared at Kyle momentarily before slooooowly sliding further toward a corner of the room.

The castle groans and shakes, and the loud sound of rock scraping against rock echoes through the interior. However, just as it seems like the thing might sputter and die (a worrying noise coming from wherever the engines were located), it lurches forward, guided by Alexandria's hand, crunching its way up and over the cliff before it smooths out a bit. The great machine coughs and fades occasionally, the noise of the engines faltering and then roaring back to life with accompanying changes in the forward momentum, but overall it's not particularly difficult going; the thing is huge enough that it rides fairly effortlessly over the network of cracks in the rock. It seems they'll be to town in the span of five minutes or so.

[7 vs 11] The pillar turns out to not quite be stable enough, with the flames puttering out as they're knocked away from the core of the pillar. The core itself does so as soon as Argent stops maintaining it. Perhaps this would be more doable later, with a bit more time to focus. The Hellfire Knight offers a polite bow to Alexandria, despite the powered armor's bulk, and then drapes the cloak overtop of themselves before the armor vanishes, leaving a notably smaller figure beneath - shorter than the previous times they'd been out of the armor, by a bit, and looking less hunched.

There was no hole, Leon was guided in with the rest of the group, and whatever cosmic entity is controlling him should probably check its eyes.

The cameras shift a bit, but they appear to be largely fixed in place; the many monitors are intended to give you a full field of view. The structure shudders, and the sound of rock scraping against rock sounds for a moment, before the entire works lurches backward slightly. This causes most of the monitors to clear up, revealing that the vehicle(?) seems to be angled parallel to the town, and that it had been somehow embedded in the rock.

There's the unmistakable sound of machinery powering up, and a high pitched whine sounds from the room they'd come from for a few moments before the initial surge quiets down, though still with a level of background noise that's particularly jarring given the near-deathly silence previously. The monitors flicker to life; several of them seem to be showing nothing but darkness, but one of them, while still partially covered, displays a view of the cliffs past this point, with the rise of Hollow Bastion's town visible on one side.

There's a lever that looks suspiciously like some sort of power toggle.

Edmond's concerns would quickly be assuaged as the set of doors behind the group creaked open again, revealing a blonde-haired man with a cigarette smoking in his mouth and several unexpected strangers. "Well, I see you all fucked up whatever was making all of those Heartless show up, or at least scared 'em off. I found a few other random people wandering around so I figured I'd throw 'em at you." Halley, Isobel, Kenta, Argent, and Leon are now in! "What the hell is this place, anyway? Looks like a castle but that tech doesn't belong in something this old. And there was no goddamn castle out here in the first place."

The armored fighter shakes their head. "It was left behind near the gate; it would take too long to go back and get it." They fall silent for a few moments, as if thinking, and then begin to follow the group into the next room, firing their jets and lifting off the ground slightly as to not make an enormous racket as they stomped around.

Mar finds little of note behind the tapestries themselves, and the carpet tells a similar (lack of) story. They appear to be little more than fine decorations. However, what's on the tapestries themselves is a little odd; like many works about battles, it appears that many of them are supposed to take place in open fields, yet a disproportionate number feature a castle, many in the background but with some having it as the focus of the work. Edmond and Alexandria would likely recognize the panel in front of the throne, if they inspected it closer. Alexandria would probably pick up that there was a fair amount of machinery around them, and that much of it seemed to hook up to this point.

The Hellfire Knight turns to finally reply to Eon after the small fiasco that had just occurred. "I have misplaced my cloak; I am afraid I left it behind when we first began fighting, and I would rather not reveal my true appearance." She silently thanked herself that her helmet didn't fit so snugly that the voice changer did not; the mech did not have the same functionality, though it wouldn't be impossible to add it. As Mar pushes open the door, it creaks open, revealing another room that looked much like the first ones they'd encountered, save for a much higher ceiling and pillars, with intricate scrollwork at the tops and bottoms, stretching from it to the floor. The walls were lined with tapestries depicting battles in a foreign land, and there was an ancient-looking carpet leading to a slightly raised platform; a throne room, save for where the throne itself would normally be. The seat in that location did indeed look like a throne, with a tall back and gold trim, but in front of it was a keyboard and an array of levers and other controls, with monitors raised above them, all on stone stilts that wouldn't have looked out of place if not for the things they supported.

The grenade detonates, driving pieces of shrapnel into the reactor and causing its barrier to rise once again. The remainder of the shards impact harmlessly against Alexandria's barrier, which had set itself up mere inches from Katsuo's face. The swords are, while quite nice looking, actually rather useless; they'd been heavily damaged by their usage just now, and in fact one of them broke apart as Solomon picked it up. It betrayed their nature as pieces intended to be decorative or ceremonial, and certainly not intended for any actual combat use. They might be useful if you used them as part of something else, though. The armor tells a similar story. 2x Broken Ceremonial Sword obtained, 4x Decorative Armor Scrap obtained Working together, Mar and Solomon are able to strip the machine down to nothingness, though they aren't able to get to the reactor itself in time before they were distracted. 2x Destroyed Robot Arm obtained, various miscellaneous bolts and metal bits obtained, 4x Small Robot Arm obtained, 1x Large Metal Plate obtained, 4x Medium Metal Plate obtained With everyone looking in that direction, they'd note a thin black line in the wall behind the machine; closer inspection would reveal this was a door, and a rather grandiose one much like the one they'd come in by, albeit this one was the same color as the walls around it. Looking back, the inside of the door they'd used looked the same way from this side.