[IC] Trespassers DC: Tribal Times (Forgotten Realms Hunt)

[Chevaleresse]

". . . Huh. Thank you . . . ?" Commander Raynor, that meant he was in charge of this thing, right? If that was his preferred vehicle, that explained why he was a Rider, at least. Maybe the card would allow her to use it? She couldn't deny that it looked a bit tempting. A small part of her told her that a twelve-year-old girl (or technically six, but she was the former in every way that mattered) like herself had no real business operating some kind of advanced future hoverbike, but that part was by and large being shouted down by the part of her that said that would be awesome and she was magic so she could do what she wanted. She considered trying to drive the thing out of there for a moment, before electing to simply guide it toward the door she'd come in at; if she barely fit, the bike(?) probably wouldn't.

 

That done, she poked her head out of the vessel and waved at the others. "I found something cool! I think Law is figuring something out too."

[Strider]

Seeing as the information appeared to be out of date, whether because the ship had built in the redundant systems as a method of surviving, or because it had received modifications before the crash, who knew, Ena abandoned the display for now.

 

"What did you find then? Something stuck?"

[Chevaleresse]

Lucine glanced at Ena's frame, and the space she was occupying presently. She stopped what she was about to say - "Come and look" - due to the obvious geometric issue, and chose a different approach. "The ship thought I was some guy named Jim Raynor, and it gave me this hoverbike thing. I guess it's what he rode around on when he wasn't flying around in spaceships, or something." That was a slightly sad thought. Heroic Spirits were supposed to be from the past - that meant that he was probably dead. Someone older and differently minded might have called it poetic, tragic, or some combination thereof.

[Strider]

"Oh, that is interesting! I do wonder whether that would give you some access to more. . . secret information." This was interesting, and somewhat worrying. Ena knew that most beings resented deception when they learned of it, and they were attempting to repair this machine.

 

"It might be a good idea not to get too attached to the bike, since the machine may recognize that you aren't who it thinks you are when we fix it. We don't want to make an enemy of the thing we wanted to repair." With this new information, Ena returned to the holographic projection, and started searching through the logs, that Tiffany was using for a diary, for mentions of a Jim Raynor.

[Chevaleresse]

Lucine pouted a bit at the suggestion. It was already giving away all kinds of stuff for free, why would it take away her cool new bike? "I think it'll be fine," she said. Lacking any particular reason to stay out here now that she'd broken her news, and wanting to ogle the bike a bit more, she headed back inside. Once there, after taking a good look and taking a few brief moments to actually, you know, start to figure out what the controls do, a thought occurred to her. "Hey, um, Tiffany?" She wasn't sure if the ship could actually hear or respond to her wherever she was, but it was worth a shot. "Um, remind me what the current mission is."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Freya

 

Well, once she got the tree under control, Freya quickly realized the problem with reanimating dead plants. Thankfully, she was able to notice the two skeletons nearby before she could get disappointed, directing most of her magic towards the two, reanimating them and setting them to work.

 

Specifically, using them to simply cut the tree out of the… Thing with their teeth, all while she watched.

[DragonRage]

"Re-eboting vocal processing so-ft waer," Tiffany states after the first plug in, and then abruptly her voice clears substantially, settling on a mellow, feminine voice with a faint Mar Sara drawl as she reports to Law systems being restored or reconnected.  "Physical diagnostic systems online.  Tactical simulation programs online.  Passive sensor arrays one through three and seven through twenty reconnected to the grid.  Laser cannons online.  Yamato Cannon cooling sheathe re-powered;  oh, that woulda been nasty if I'd tried to fire without it.  Cannon'll be safe to fire in twelve hours.  Oh, active sensors!  Ah can see again!  Engines online.  Probably best not to fire 'em up yet.  Warp drive connected, but Ah don't trust it.  Dumped me here, after all.  SCV drones and spider drones rebooted; guess Ah'll send some down to see what's up with the warp drive.  Life support online in sealed areas.  Viking drones online.  Oh, that's gonna suck like a Viper on a hive.  Damage control  sensors on- ow!  Ow ow ow!  Sand my hull down with Lurker spines that hurts!  Haaaaah.  Damage control sensors online.  Bypassing damaged areas; dispatching drones.  The hell did they have to program my damage sensors like that?  Can't even self-medicate.  You organics are so lucky like that.  Hey, that consarned tree blocking my hangers is gone!  Mining SCVs deployed.  Hope they can find somethin' useful on this dust ball.  Man, Ah got a lot of components missing.  They hell was Ah doing, breaking myself down for parts?  Ah ain't in need of a salvage op yet.  Gee, thanks for the help...  Weasel Rat?  Sorry, Ah ain't never seen your species before.  Regardless, this looks great!  Hell of a lot better than Ah did when Ah built the place.  Not that Ah'm a professional starship engineer or nothin', but there weren't nobody else around to build this thing, and any landing you survive ain't so bad Ah guess."

--------------------------------

Ena finds that Jim Raynor was the commander of a team of rebellious guerrillas fighting an oppressive 'Dominion of Man'.  Raynor's Raiders used Tiffany as a tactical advisor during their operations, but were forced to abandon her and some engineering personnel on a world called Char infested by hostile creatures called Zerg.  The engineers, desperate to find a way to survive, jailbroke Tiffany, and in turn she was able to salvage a craft that got them off planet to safety, but weight limits prevented her from coming along.  Instead, she apparently spent the next few years fighting the Zerg off and assembling her new body, this one, with which to fly away from Char herself.  Raynor's name comes up frequently, usually either in the context of asking herself 'What would Raynor do', or else railing against him for abandoning Tiffany on Char in favor of rescuing his girlfriend, 'that murderous, bug hussy'.  Huh.

------------------------------

"M-s-n obje-  Reeebooting vocal processors!"  Tiffany announces, before continuing in her uncorrupted voice.  "Mission objectives, secondary:  Rescue General Warfield, minimize civilian casualties, defend civilians from aggressors.  Mission objectives, primary:  rescue Sarah Kerrigan.  Can't imagine how ya plan to, or why, but them's orders.  Mission objectives, tertiary/future:  Perform actions that make the Dominion of Man look bad, ideally by doing their jobs better than they do.  Active sensors online-  You ain't Jim Raynor!  Ya read as him to my IFF tags, but ya don't look like him at all!  You wouldn't happen to have any idiot, lovestruck space cowboys as aunts or uncles, would ya?  The body language is awful similar, even if the looks ain't.  And this ain't Char!  I got out alive!  Hallelujah!"

 

The priest falls to his knees in supplication at the voice shift, mumbling thanks to the heavens and the hulking wreck.  Several sensor modules swivel over him, but quickly move on, as if the AI finds this too awkward to comment on.  Meanwhile, the beavers fell the tree with a loud CRASH!  The door behind it opens almost immediately, allowing several vaguely humanoid drones to hover out of the hatch, one of them carrying what looks like a prefabricated structure which it starts setting up while the others aimlessly explore the area.

[Hal Henderics]

"I'm a Precursor.  It's fair to say that we aren't well known, M'am."

 

"And yes.  You were scrapping yourself for parts.  I hope this taught you something about automatic priority processes during core system failure.  If I hadn't been here, you would have kept at it until I'd be looking at a pile of assault rifles instead of a ship."

Law says, arms crossed and with no small irritation.

 

"I'm assuming you can take care of things now that you are thinking straight? I understand how awkward it can be to have what looks like a pest running around in your brain."

[Chevaleresse]

Lucine thought for a moment. Lovestruck space cowboys? Strictly speaking, she didn't have any aunts or uncles, unless you counted the Justeaze model homunculi; the girl guessed those counted as aunts, in a way. In another way, the other Yggdmillenia mages were a sort of extended family, but she couldn't think of any that really counted as cowboys off the top of her head. And, of course, none of them were space travelers or anything. "Uhh, no." An idea occurred to her. "Unless I'm his great great great great grandma or somethin', I guess." She'd already been to one place that seemed to be a possible future of her own world, what's to say this ship wasn't from another. "What's Char?"

[DragonRage]

"In here Ah should be good.  Better than Ah was before the crash, even.  Ah outta be able to fix myself up right good now that Ah got full control back.  And this wiring plan logged in my schematics.  If y'all could find a way to dig me outta this hill though, Ah'd be mighty grateful."

--------------------------------

"It's possible, Ah suppose.  Ah don't know anything about Commander Raynor's family, aside from his terrible taste in girlfriends," Tiffany states, "Char's a planet.  The home world of the Zerg.  Nasty bunch of bug lizards that eat anything what gets in their way.  Powerful hard to kick 'em off a world once they get a toehold.  Dunno if Char is where they came to be, though it's certainly unpleasant enough, but it's where their greatest strongholds are."

[Hal Henderics]

Law scampers out, having the same drone from before ferry him out, before leaving it behind.

 

"Ok guys, crisis averted.  I just had to do some IT support.  Apparently, this Tiffany's computation has been slapped together by someone who doesn't actually know how to hook up a brain."  The last part muttered in a sotto voice.

 

"Anyone here have a way we could dig out this dirt? Apparently they are stuck."  He continues.

[StormLord]

After dealing with the piled up dirt and rubble Tim went back to his circle, he needed to make a solar collection array and this was just the exc-- time to get the job done.

He pulled several strange crystals, glowing rocks, some cut stones and glass, and a few drops of Mercury to construct the thing with.  A few minutes later and he had a small block of a machine, something was a little off and made it heat up after working for a while, but nothing that couldn't be fixed later.  He set the machine down and looked up when the giant metal hill started talking again, only this time they could actually understand it.

 

"Excuse me.  Tiffany?  If you're able to do so a list of what raw materials you need to complete repairs along with samples of anything more...exotic.  I should be able to set something up to provide said materials in mass."

 

Spoiler

Servant of the God-Emperor-04/29/2018

You make an energy condenser, but the quality is not so good. A lot of the solar energy is lost as heat during the conversion. I’m not sure what a fair value would be, but this thing doesn’t produce EMC fast.

 

Crude Energy Condenser: A large box made of stone, glowing yellow crystal, and strange magical symbols. Converts light into EMC when exposed to it, however due to miss-calibration and "Hasty" construction some of the light misses the mark and turns into heat. Produces 3-5 EMC(matter) when exposed to light for an hour, cannot be handled without protection after being exposed for three or more consecutive hours.

 

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Freya

 

For the most part, Freya was... Kind of lost with all of the talk going on. Mostly because she was too distracted by this entire thing, since it was huge, inanimate, and talking. Somehow. But, thankfully, her attention was good enough so that she heard the thing about dirt, "Oo, oo, I got it!" she said, stepping forward as her new skeletons scampered back, the young Necromancer lifting her staff as dark energy began to swirl around the bottom tip, "Thing about dirt is, most of its made out of dead material... Soooo, with a bit of Necromancy and some extra effort..." she explained, before slamming her staff on the ground, tendrils of magic branching out from it as it went to reanimate and move the dirt and other organic material keeping this thing in.

Edited May 6, 2018 by GodofGamingRWBY

[Chevaleresse]

Lucine glanced at Law curiously. "What was that last part again? I didn't catch it," she said inquiringly. The little weasel. . . otter. . . person thing was interesting, he seemed to really know his way around things. That metal he used was interesting, too. She wondered if she could get him to collaborate with her more in the future. 

[Hal Henderics]

"N-Nothing! M'am!"  Law's hair stands on end as he stiffens up at the toddler glaring twin holes in his back.

[Chevaleresse]

"Oh." She frowned. Was he actually afraid of her? She didn't think she was particularly intimidating, but then Law was like a foot and a half tall. "I was just wondering."

"Oh, now you've really got her mad. You'd better fess up, weasel boy!"

"Opal, what are you even talking about? I'm not angry."

"She's lying, if you don't apologize right now she's gonna turn you into-" Whatever Law was supposed to be turned into would have to be left to his imagination, as Lucine battered Opal downward before the imitation Kaleidostick could finish the sentence.

"Why are you like this?!"

[Hal Henderics]

"Oh sure you fake-science metal chicken!  What are YOU gonna do, fall on my foot? I've programmed children's toys with better lying capabilities than you."

 

"If you ask me, that hoodoo ritual-stuffed aesthetics-purposed cheater-grimmoire needs percussive maintenance."

 

"I mean Me-damn it! I'm getting sick of mal-fitness'd A.I that lack one of the many key ingredients of common sense!"

 

Law stamps like a toddler, shaking his harmless scanstave at the Off-brand Kaleidostick

[DragonRage]

"Hey!  It's not like Ah had a choice," Tiffany grumbles, "Ah'm a tactical advisor, not an engineer.  If Ah'd had a professional to wire up my core and code my control software for this ship, Ah woulda had them do it insteada tryin' it myself.  Ah should be good for raw materials.  Ah'm not getting any high density crystalline minerals, but my SCVs are finding enough ores and organic material in the ground to fix me up."  Freya is able to shift the soil covering the rest of Tiffany's superstructure with some effort, and more SCVs and spider drones immediately swarm over the uncovered areas, some welding patches over damaged sections of armor while others start constructing a massive jack under the thinnest part of her spaceframe.

[Hal Henderics]

"That's! Why! You! Proxy! And! Backup!"  Law is stomping now.

 

"When you are bad at something, You work on tools to make it easier!  Even something as simple as making it LOOK pretty helps, if only because when something catches fire, that's not just 'something that happens'!"

 

He falls to his knees, screaming overdramatically.

 

"Stripped Cables! Outdated IPU Ports! Leakage!"

 

"If anyone on this whole planet even HAD an engineering degree, I would demand it be revoked!"  He boldly yells into the ground, facefirst in the dirt.

[Chevaleresse]

"Do you even know who and what you're talking to, rat? I channel the Second AND the Third Magics, I could fry you-" Lucine hit Opal again.

"No you couldn't, you need me to do anything but float around and be useless!"

"I don't need you, I could contract with whoever I wanted!"

"No you couldn't, nobody else has compatible circuits!"

"Watch me!" The box attempted to fly off, only to be reeled in my Lucine once again, rapped against the ground for good measure, and then zipped into her backpack. The occasional muffled taunt or insult emanated from the bag, but it seemed the Kaleidostick wasn't capable of generating enough force to resist much of anything imposed upon it.

"I'm sorry, Law, Opal is just. . . terrible. I think there's a glitch in her personality, somewhere. Father didn't want to work all that closely with the golemancers. . ."

[Hal Henderics]

"At least now I understand why the Precursors never delved into Artificial Intelligence.  I feel a headache already, no matter how many Parallel trains of thought I distract myself with."  Law says, rubbing his head and getting off the ground to attempt to regain dignity.

[Chevaleresse]

Lucine wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that. Strictly speaking, she was a form of artificial intelligence; while she ate, breathed, and bled like a human, those were analogues to the processes that they went through, not identical ones. "I mean, they're not ALL terrible. . . Tiffany at least was just trying to be nice." She doubted he'd meant anything by it, but it did sting a bit, especially since she'd met other homunculi that had been programmed, rather than taught as she was - not to say she was the only homunculus capable of learning, but most of them were built for a purpose and had that encoded in their beings from the start.

[DragonRage]

"Ah didn't know what half them words you said mean without looking them up, gear rat," Tiffany protests, annoyed, "But Ah'd like to see you do a better job getting off planet with a head wound and a buncha scrap while getting attacked by Zerg."

[Hal Henderics]

"The one thing I would not do in that situation is fish around in my vital organs for parts to hand off to primitives."  Law says simply.

[DragonRage]

"Of course ya didn't!  You ain't got any bits they could use in there!" Tiffany exclaims, her accent thickening a bit.  Behind her, her SCVs start jacking her bent midsection up while others swarm over it with welding torches and replacement struts.  "Ah'm glad Ah ain't dead, but Ah saved hundreds a lives, and Ah ain't sorry for that at all."