Drone Swarm in a Magical World (Riot Quest) ALWAYS RECRUITING

The Scout drones that had been out doing their own thing arrived back to a scene of devastation. Minor dings and dents abounded, and ten drones had been completely destroyed. It was a good thing that the destroyed among the Cutters could be repaired to combat effectiveness and limited utility, but that was about the only good thing to come of the disaster. Well, to be fair, there was one other perk; the equipment of the armored skeleton could be salvaged.

The Scouts that had decided to go out and actually scout had some disturbing news though. While they hadn't found much information, they had noticed figures on the ground. It seemed that whatever was coming had started using holograms of one sort or another, as see through images of floating bipeds were approaching quickly. They weren't certain if it was a communication system or simply a bafflement system of some sort, but their superior targeting saw right through it. With the defenses down though, it simply reinforced their need to leave.

The Scout that had been out on his own little survey came back in one piece, though barely. Apparently it had gotten confronted by two skeletons, one giving off the distinctive energy signature of the energy weapons. Realizing that, it turned around and ran away, quickly leaving the two boneheads behind.

Attention: Data acquired. Suspicions confirmed, it pinged to the other drones.

The Cutters kept working on getting themselves and their brothers in workable order for the most part, but one came over and the Scouts and Batteries that were left gathered around. Query? one of the Scout drones pinged.

Observe, the lone Scout projected a hologram showing various data gathered on the local flora. Structures of leaves on trees. Blooms on mosses. Bush growth patterns on drier grounds.

It pulled up a different hologram as well, Now observe data saved from forest surveys.

The drones looked between the two, and slowly realized what the first was driving at. Incredulous: Same biome? Or related?

Confirmation: Yes. The Scout beeped. Extrapolation: There is something horribly powerful controlling the quadruped-a pause to shut out access from the marked Cutter drone as pings began to hit the network-something that seems to either be connected to the area or possibly to be some form of hive mind for the area.

OH! It was surprisingly a Battery that got it first. Oooooh. You think that there might be something like that here?

Explanation: We know that things that should not be alive are here. More, they seem to be nakedly aggressive to anything in their territory, far more so than anything in the forest. Should something like the Spirit/King/God there awaken here, altered in the way of the corpses...

Disaster, the Cutter representative acknowledged. Button it up! it honked to the other Cutters, We're leaving.

The Cutters beeped in acknowledgement, their pace of repairs speeding up. The other drones gathered everything they could salvage, and by the time the Cutters were combat effective, they were ready to go. The still burning swamp backlit their odd mix of success and failure; on the one hand, they had lost almost half their forces in one fell swoop. On the other, they had gained some very interesting artifacts and a bunch of Information and energy. Overall, not bad.

So of course it all went wrong on the way home.

DANGER! One of the Scout Drones yelled, noticing rippling movement in the grass. as soon as the Drones drew together, something flopped out from the clusters of weeds, drawing itself into a puddle of deep purple liquid. The puddle had no sensory organs, or even organs of any obvios sort, but the Drones could tell that it was looking at them hungrily.

The Scout drones immediately launched an attack, dousing the thing with acid while the Cutters and Batteries arrayed themselves to begin their own attacks. The thing lit up in lavender light, then the light collapsed into a pointed face and wings made of slime. The Cutters leapt forward and the Batteries fired, but both missed entirely as the thing disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Surprising, but the Scout drones immediately set themselves into a search pattern, reacting immediately as the puddle burst out from a clump of grass directly behind the Batteries. With a warbling scream the Drones unleashed another deluge of acid. This time though, the face and wings rearranged themselves to act as a shield, catching the worst of the attack. It melted the features badly, but not enough to completely destroy them. The purple puddle glowed again, the light collapsing inward again and the slime manifesting a massive amount of butterfly wings across its back. And promptly poofed out again, leaving the Cutters to slam into the ground and the Batteries shots to explode beyond them.

Once again, the puddle appeared from a clump of grass, this time directly below the Batteries, its wings flapping madly and keeping it on a course to catch one. The scouts were more prepared though, and launched another assault on the thing, finally managing to melt the face and begin work on the butterfly wings infesting the thing's back. The thing's glow manifested again, this time collapsing into a canine head and tail and legs, immediately latching onto the damaged Battery drone and tore off a large chunk. However, it didn't actually destroy the drone, and this time it didn't teleport.

And a stationary foe was just target practice. A brutal rain of bolts lashed down, blowing it into steam and destroying all of the aberrant features. Finally the Cutters came in with their saws and slashed it into droplets, where it seemed to simply melt into the ground. The Scouts kept up their guard, but nothing else attacked, nor did the puddle come back. They searched the area, but it seemed that everything about the corpse had disappeared, leaving nothing for them to even study

Query: What is wrong with this world?

None of the other drones answered the Scout's plaintive cry, instead opting to just hover off grimly.

After all, the seemingly correct answer was depressing.

The mood lifted when they finally made it back to the ship to drop off everything they had gathered. The ship was quite happy with the haul of unusual weapons and equipment, but the sheer amount of damage they had taken and the amount of soiling from the swamp necessitated all chassis to be recycled. More, when the ship saw the records of their battles, it decided that they desperately needed two things: Actual combat drones and program optimization. The sheer amount of times not particularly fast things had outpaced the Batteries and Cutters was frankly embarrassing.

It was an entire period later that they were finally ready to be re-uploaded into their new chassis, including their new combat model! The Canister drone was heavily based off of the Battery design, but focused on combat. The heavy capacitors it held could be used for energy transportation in a pinch, and it could do some energy harvesting, though at a much lower rate than a true Battery. However, its plasma burst weapon got switched out for a more powerful weapon: Charged Canisters. The Canisters had two modes: Close range and Medium range. At close range, the canisters would be set of inside the magnetic launchers, with the fields accelerating the needles and keeping them from damaging the interior of the launchers. When released though, the needles burst into a cone of shredding devastation. For the Mid range option, the drone could set the canisters to explode after a certain time, then launch them into the air, allowing them to fall directly over the target and hopefully burst directly above it. Weaker than a Close blast, but more flexible tactically.

However, this does come at a cost-every Canister drone cost 1 Energy and 1 Material.

The ship counseled them to be careful with the Canister chassis, as they were relatively expensive to replace given the lack of industry set up that it was currently limited to.


[] {Riot} Scout Drone

[] {Riot} Cutter Drone

[] {Riot} Battery Drone

[] {Riot} Canister Drone (Cost: 1 Material, 1 Energy)



[] {Group} South (Unexplored)
Materials: Potentially High
Energy: Potentially Medium
Information: Potentially Low

[] {Group} West
Materials: Low
Energy: High
Information: Medium
Dangers:
Skeletons
Zombies
Other (???)

[] {Group} East
Materials: Medium
Energy: Low
Information: High
Dangers:
Bioweb Creatures
Quadruped

[] {Group} North (Unexplored)
Materials: ???
Energy: ???
Information: ???

AN: Well, now we get into the social planning part of the quest. Will you work together to optimize who gets to be in the fun, top tier drone? Or will it be chaos? It's up to you!

Also, as an explanation for the slime fight: A Pudding is always capable of casting some form of magic. In this case it was using summoning with a twist. Instead of summoning things externally to fight for it independently, it would summon them internally, immediately absorbing their magic and using their forms to supplement itself, giving it more and more attacks and health as the battle went on. You had enough drones to overwhelm it, but it's fun to think what would have happened if it had caught a small group unaware. Or had the brains to summon before it attacked you. Also, it isn't dead. Don't mention this message in thread though.

The one turn auto-training is because I felt that there had to be some penalty for multiple crit-fails and constantly losing initiative contests to Zombies.