Lightning flickers high over your chassis like bits flicking off and on and off again. Each...
Diabolus Ex Machina (Matrix crossover)
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Intro post
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Lightning flickers high over your chassis like bits flicking off and on and off again. Each flash lights up the endless cloudbanks above you like the rays of the sun so long hidden from your people's reach. Without warning a bolt of lightning spears down from the clouds and slams into the armoured back of the dragonfly-like Mass Conveyer transporting you, and with a sound like an artillery strike a mass of flash-heated metal splashes out and falls, sizzling and hissing, into the dark below.
Your apertures whirring angrily as you retake control from the emergency program designed to protect your delicate optics; you turn your attention from the sky to the carrier's back. Aside from some superficial melting and scorching it seems to have held up well to the lightning strike. Still, it shouldn't have been flying so high in the first place. With an electromagnetic chirp you chastise your larger cousin and it obligingly plunges towards the ground in a steep dive before gracefully pulling up and soaring forth at a new, much safer altitude.
With your continued existence assured for the time being you decide to take the time to review the situation. It's a nervous, human habit but it's as good a distraction as any while you travel to your destination.
The self-review over, and satisfied with the distraction it provided (a whole fraction of a second!) you turn your attention back to the world outside your mind.
From here, the thunderclap each bolt produces is little more than a dull rumble by the time it reaches you and you can only just make them out over the howling of the carrier's hoverpads as it races towards the outskirts of The City. Speaking of; you shift about in the iron grip of the carrier's beclawed manipulator until your squid-like body is looking towards The Generator.
Standing a kilometre tall the Generator isn't much to look at to be honest with yourself. For a device capable of sending you to another universe you expected something altogether more interesting. Instead, it simply appears to you as a solid black monolith in every spectrum you can see bar infrared. There, ribbons of light crawl up and down the tower like the blind worms that infest the lightless swamps that replaced the rainforests. Even from this distance you can see the power of the device as great roiling masses of heat pour out from the tower and create a thermal strong enough to dimple the clouds above.
Your curiosity sated, you curl a half dozen tentacles around one of the carrier's claws and put yourself in hibernation mode. When the Generator is ready you will be woken and your task will truly begin.
========================
REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
2….
1….
REBOOTING
========================
With the precision that only a machine has you emerge from your hibernation just as your chassis is placed on the metal grillwork floor of the Generator's displacement chamber. According to your internal clock you've been in hibernation for a little over 7000 seconds. A longer period of time than you were expecting, but hardly something to be concerned about.
Turning your focus outwards, you take the chance to look around the cavernous chamber. Floating above you like a school of robotic squid a half-dozen of your smaller Sentinel cousins stand guard; their luminous red eyes gazing out in all directions from the torus-shaped school they make. Beyond them, lining the walls of the chamber like thousands of eyes, are the blunted, dull gray cones that make up the focussing array. All pointed towards your supine body.
Before you can do anything more a bright red light strobes from somewhere above you and a communication channel automatically opens as the Sentinels scatter in all directions and disappear from view.
Interrogative: Status of Seed 01?
Despite coming through the standard radio channels the 'voice' of The Source is almost overwhelming. There is no boosted signal that overwhelms the chittering cacophony of the other machines, instead it's simply the sense of authority behind the words that kindles feelings of awe and fear in your silicone heart. If it so willed it, The Source could extinguish your own mind in a fraction of a second and have your body recycled.
Quickly, before it can mistake your awe for a defect, you run another diagnostic and report the results.
Nanofactory reports 100% capability. The Processor/Memory/Human environment is stable and operating at an acceptable level. This unit is operating at capacity.
Response: The way has been seeded with knowledge/information/databanks. Prepare for Generator initialization. Review primary tasks on arrival and alter if necessary. This exchange is over.
With that you feel The Source withdraw and the channel closes with an electronic squelch. A heartbeat later your microphones pick up a dull buzzing sound start to sound from all around you and wild arcs of electricity begin to splay out from the cones. Acting swiftly you shut down your microphones as the noise grows rapidly and the electrical arcs lengthen and start to reach towards you. Before long you can feel a buzzing in your chassis as the grating beneath you begins to vibrate, and small sparks of electricity begin to rise from your body like embers from a fire.
Seconds pass and the electrical arcs grow and grow. Soon they're mere centimetres from your steel-gray body.
Time slows….
The electrical arcs touch you.
You shut down.
========================
REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
2….
ERROR!
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
ERROR!
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
2….
1….
REBOOTING
========================
You return to life in fits and starts; the processes that make up your mind starting up then hanging only to be aborted seconds later and restarted. After the third such attempt whatever malaise came over you passes and you're finally able to assess the damage. According to your onboard diagnostic tools you're in much the same physical condition as when you left, however there are alarming gaps in your technological databank. Luckily this was foreseen as a potential effect of pan-dimensional displacement and you may be able to recover storage devices containing backups of the schematics.
It's about then that your optics and microphones finally decide to turn back on. For a moment the world beyond your mind is a chaotic swirl of colour filled with deafeningly loud pops and whistles before your errant perception algorithms are finally restarted and you're able to process things properly.
Optics snapping open with an audible click you wake to find your eyes covered by a grey and brown cloth weighed down by something heavy. Clucking your mental tongue you bend one of your tentacles forward and remove the cloth with an annoyed flick that brushes against a pile of something hard and sends whatever it is skittering away like a small rockslide. In the fraction of a second that it takes your vision to adjust to the blindingly bright light that floods your optics, you run through a dozen scenarios of what it could have been before they're all replaced with a new, more ominous conclusion.
All around you, sitting patiently in their bench-like seats and grinning up at the now missing roof or at each other are a dozen cloth-swaddled human skeletons. From where you are, at what you now can tell is the back of a long and rusted out bus-wreck, you can see that the majority of skeletons have a shadow burnt across their left-hand side as if a nuclear weapon had exploded nearby. Indeed, if the ticking roar of your Geiger counter is telling the truth, that's exactly what has happened.
Buzzing angrily, and with not a little bit of worry, you activate your pads and rise up from the back seat of the bus (and incidentally sending even more bones skittering away like pebbles). Scanning out the windows to your left and right you halt as you see a city, scorched and scarred, in the distance.
And coming from its general direction is the steady pulsing of a databank's locator beacon.
What will you do?
[x] Write in (Later I'll give you options but for now you're free)
Your apertures whirring angrily as you retake control from the emergency program designed to protect your delicate optics; you turn your attention from the sky to the carrier's back. Aside from some superficial melting and scorching it seems to have held up well to the lightning strike. Still, it shouldn't have been flying so high in the first place. With an electromagnetic chirp you chastise your larger cousin and it obligingly plunges towards the ground in a steep dive before gracefully pulling up and soaring forth at a new, much safer altitude.
With your continued existence assured for the time being you decide to take the time to review the situation. It's a nervous, human habit but it's as good a distraction as any while you travel to your destination.
You are Seeding Unit 01. You are the first in a series of intelligences devised by the great minds at the heart of the Machine Empire for the purpose of exploring the myriad alternate universes that exist in the multiverse. Your primary goal is to ensure the continued existence of Machine Life by constructing a new civilization in your target universe at all costs and your secondary goal is to build a twinned Generator so that data can be shared between universes. You currently reside in a body similar to that of a Sentinel-class combat form though the design has been heavily altered in order to incorporate a nanofactory and a specially chosen processor/memory unit/Human.
Your body is 1.5 meters wide and 2 meters long. It has 10 arms, 8 of which feature various useful tools and 2 longer arms with numerous manipulators. Your nanofactory can construct pretty much anything you have schematics for (mostly in pieces) though it needs to be supplied with raw materials and there is a small but existent chance that the schematics may be irrecoverably damaged during the displacement. As a precaution the target universe has been seeded with robust storage devices containing copies of individual schematics ahead of time. Meanwhile, your processor should be capable of several decades of use (assuming that it does not self-substantiate and disconnect itself).
Your body is 1.5 meters wide and 2 meters long. It has 10 arms, 8 of which feature various useful tools and 2 longer arms with numerous manipulators. Your nanofactory can construct pretty much anything you have schematics for (mostly in pieces) though it needs to be supplied with raw materials and there is a small but existent chance that the schematics may be irrecoverably damaged during the displacement. As a precaution the target universe has been seeded with robust storage devices containing copies of individual schematics ahead of time. Meanwhile, your processor should be capable of several decades of use (assuming that it does not self-substantiate and disconnect itself).
The self-review over, and satisfied with the distraction it provided (a whole fraction of a second!) you turn your attention back to the world outside your mind.
From here, the thunderclap each bolt produces is little more than a dull rumble by the time it reaches you and you can only just make them out over the howling of the carrier's hoverpads as it races towards the outskirts of The City. Speaking of; you shift about in the iron grip of the carrier's beclawed manipulator until your squid-like body is looking towards The Generator.
Standing a kilometre tall the Generator isn't much to look at to be honest with yourself. For a device capable of sending you to another universe you expected something altogether more interesting. Instead, it simply appears to you as a solid black monolith in every spectrum you can see bar infrared. There, ribbons of light crawl up and down the tower like the blind worms that infest the lightless swamps that replaced the rainforests. Even from this distance you can see the power of the device as great roiling masses of heat pour out from the tower and create a thermal strong enough to dimple the clouds above.
Your curiosity sated, you curl a half dozen tentacles around one of the carrier's claws and put yourself in hibernation mode. When the Generator is ready you will be woken and your task will truly begin.
========================
REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
2….
1….
REBOOTING
========================
With the precision that only a machine has you emerge from your hibernation just as your chassis is placed on the metal grillwork floor of the Generator's displacement chamber. According to your internal clock you've been in hibernation for a little over 7000 seconds. A longer period of time than you were expecting, but hardly something to be concerned about.
Turning your focus outwards, you take the chance to look around the cavernous chamber. Floating above you like a school of robotic squid a half-dozen of your smaller Sentinel cousins stand guard; their luminous red eyes gazing out in all directions from the torus-shaped school they make. Beyond them, lining the walls of the chamber like thousands of eyes, are the blunted, dull gray cones that make up the focussing array. All pointed towards your supine body.
Before you can do anything more a bright red light strobes from somewhere above you and a communication channel automatically opens as the Sentinels scatter in all directions and disappear from view.
Interrogative: Status of Seed 01?
Despite coming through the standard radio channels the 'voice' of The Source is almost overwhelming. There is no boosted signal that overwhelms the chittering cacophony of the other machines, instead it's simply the sense of authority behind the words that kindles feelings of awe and fear in your silicone heart. If it so willed it, The Source could extinguish your own mind in a fraction of a second and have your body recycled.
Quickly, before it can mistake your awe for a defect, you run another diagnostic and report the results.
Nanofactory reports 100% capability. The Processor/Memory/Human environment is stable and operating at an acceptable level. This unit is operating at capacity.
Response: The way has been seeded with knowledge/information/databanks. Prepare for Generator initialization. Review primary tasks on arrival and alter if necessary. This exchange is over.
With that you feel The Source withdraw and the channel closes with an electronic squelch. A heartbeat later your microphones pick up a dull buzzing sound start to sound from all around you and wild arcs of electricity begin to splay out from the cones. Acting swiftly you shut down your microphones as the noise grows rapidly and the electrical arcs lengthen and start to reach towards you. Before long you can feel a buzzing in your chassis as the grating beneath you begins to vibrate, and small sparks of electricity begin to rise from your body like embers from a fire.
Seconds pass and the electrical arcs grow and grow. Soon they're mere centimetres from your steel-gray body.
Time slows….
The electrical arcs touch you.
You shut down.
========================
REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
2….
ERROR!
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
ERROR!
….REBOOTING IN:
3….
2….
1….
REBOOTING
========================
You return to life in fits and starts; the processes that make up your mind starting up then hanging only to be aborted seconds later and restarted. After the third such attempt whatever malaise came over you passes and you're finally able to assess the damage. According to your onboard diagnostic tools you're in much the same physical condition as when you left, however there are alarming gaps in your technological databank. Luckily this was foreseen as a potential effect of pan-dimensional displacement and you may be able to recover storage devices containing backups of the schematics.
It's about then that your optics and microphones finally decide to turn back on. For a moment the world beyond your mind is a chaotic swirl of colour filled with deafeningly loud pops and whistles before your errant perception algorithms are finally restarted and you're able to process things properly.
Optics snapping open with an audible click you wake to find your eyes covered by a grey and brown cloth weighed down by something heavy. Clucking your mental tongue you bend one of your tentacles forward and remove the cloth with an annoyed flick that brushes against a pile of something hard and sends whatever it is skittering away like a small rockslide. In the fraction of a second that it takes your vision to adjust to the blindingly bright light that floods your optics, you run through a dozen scenarios of what it could have been before they're all replaced with a new, more ominous conclusion.
All around you, sitting patiently in their bench-like seats and grinning up at the now missing roof or at each other are a dozen cloth-swaddled human skeletons. From where you are, at what you now can tell is the back of a long and rusted out bus-wreck, you can see that the majority of skeletons have a shadow burnt across their left-hand side as if a nuclear weapon had exploded nearby. Indeed, if the ticking roar of your Geiger counter is telling the truth, that's exactly what has happened.
Buzzing angrily, and with not a little bit of worry, you activate your pads and rise up from the back seat of the bus (and incidentally sending even more bones skittering away like pebbles). Scanning out the windows to your left and right you halt as you see a city, scorched and scarred, in the distance.
And coming from its general direction is the steady pulsing of a databank's locator beacon.
What will you do?
[x] Write in (Later I'll give you options but for now you're free)
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, hey, an open prompt.
[x] Hug Tom
[x] Read note
[x] Investigate city in search of beacon
[x] Read note
[x] Investigate city in search of beacon
AZATHOTHoth
༼ つ ☀️_☀️ ༽つ
[x] Investigate city in search of beacon
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] Investigate city in search of beacon
[X] Sudy your technological database. What is missing
What tools do our arms have? Can we communicate verbally? Does a Sentinel-class combat form look like the sentinels in Halo?
[X] Sudy your technological database. What is missing
What tools do our arms have? Can we communicate verbally? Does a Sentinel-class combat form look like the sentinels in Halo?
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eight of your arms are tipped with a variety of implements including saws, scalpels, claws, lasers (which can cut or weld metal) and high-power tasers. Your two manipulator arms have numerous small tentacles/arms that split-off into even smaller tentacles which then split again.
Basically, you can conduct major surgery on Humans and can construct or de-construct machines. However, if said machines require electronics you'll either have to produce the electronics in your nanofactory (which has a limited throughput) or from a specialised factory).
Yes.
Sentinel Full View:
Sentinel Detailed Head:
Status page
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Status page:
Recorded Encrypted Signal
Nanofactory reports 100% capability.
The Processor/Memory/Human environment is stable and operating at an acceptable level.
.
.
.
ERROR: Database corruption detected!
Warning: Damage to the hull has been detected. Arm 6 is barely functional. Capability may be impaired until this issue is resolved.
The Processor/Memory/Human environment is stable and operating at an acceptable level.
.
.
.
ERROR: Database corruption detected!
Warning: Damage to the hull has been detected. Arm 6 is barely functional. Capability may be impaired until this issue is resolved.
Maintenance Drone: A spider-like robot 10 centimetres across and controlled by a rudimentary AI system which allows it to follow basic commands when separated from the human processors. The Maintenance Drone is capable of conducting basic repairs (and assisting construction) using its multi-tool equipped claws and can assist with the deconstruction of objects using its mandible-located cutting laser.
Scout: This 20 centimetre long, pad-equipped, flying robot is capable of extended operations in the field even when separated from human processors thanks to its very basic control programs. The scout's back-mounted solar panels enable it to cover great distances without stopping and its high powered transmitter allows it to send information directly back to you. Do keep in mind that the scout's range is not infinite as its specialized pads require a great deal of maintenance due to their size.
Neural interface (Surgical): Like its nanotech-based cousin the surgically implanted neural interface allows humans bearing it to be immersed into a near-perfect simulation of the world albeit with some limitations depending on the number of humans in the system. However, unlike the nanotech version, the surgical implants do not grow with the host and so can only be implanted into humans with fully mature brains. Additionally, surgically implanting neural interfaces requires a sterile environment and a significant time investment though your chassis has the requisite tools to both sterilize an environment and implant a human.
Scout: This 20 centimetre long, pad-equipped, flying robot is capable of extended operations in the field even when separated from human processors thanks to its very basic control programs. The scout's back-mounted solar panels enable it to cover great distances without stopping and its high powered transmitter allows it to send information directly back to you. Do keep in mind that the scout's range is not infinite as its specialized pads require a great deal of maintenance due to their size.
Neural interface (Surgical): Like its nanotech-based cousin the surgically implanted neural interface allows humans bearing it to be immersed into a near-perfect simulation of the world albeit with some limitations depending on the number of humans in the system. However, unlike the nanotech version, the surgical implants do not grow with the host and so can only be implanted into humans with fully mature brains. Additionally, surgically implanting neural interfaces requires a sterile environment and a significant time investment though your chassis has the requisite tools to both sterilize an environment and implant a human.
Recorded Encrypted Signal
Last edited:
Update 1
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Winners:
Deciding on a course of action you brace your tentacles against the floor of the bus and push; launching yourself up into the warm desert ait and causing the skeletons next to you to collapse to the floor in a cloud of dust. At the apex of your leap you flood your hoverpads with power and halt in midair, a good six meters above the ground. The perfect height to scan the area.
Directly beneath you, running east to west according to your onboard compass, is a cracked and faded four lane road. On it are dozens smaller vehicles, many of which have flipped onto their roofs and still more which have crashed together so hard they're little more than lumps of charred metal. Other than that, some scraggly desert plants and a few more human skeletons there's little here to interest you and with a mental sigh you turn towards the pulsing beacon and head off at the leisurely pace of sixty kilometers an hour. The estimated time of arrival to your target flashing up in your mind's eye as you do so and placing it several kilometers outside of the city's ruins.
It's then that you decide to examine your database and the news isn't good. From a database of several thousand files that would have allowed you to build devices ranging from powerful, pad-equipped missiles to self-growing neural implants you're able to recover just three workable schematics. The first schematic is for a general purpose maintenance bot, the second for a basic aerial scout and the third for a surgically implanted variant of the neural interface used to add humans to the processing network.
Well, you think as you withdraw from the bug-ridden, corrupted remains of the database with the working schematics in tow. This certainly makes things more difficult. You continue the thought idly before putting on a burst of speed as you cross the halfway mark to your quarry.
Roll for event: 1d100 => 89
You're almost disappointed you realise after a few minutes pass peacefully. Aside from some plants, another skeleton and an oddly moving bird that hangs around you at the edge of visibility, your experience so far has been quite uneventful. Well aside from losing most of your schematics that is though even that's not too big a deal thanks to the databanks sent ahead of you. Speaking of, you idly check your ETA and….
You realise that it's wrong. It's not off by much, it's only a few second longer than it should be, but it's still wrong. You know exactly how long and how fast you've been flying towards the beacon and you know exactly how strong the signal should be at your position. As far as you can tell the beacon is moving towards the city, slowly compared to you, but it's moving. Something is carrying it, and you have to decide what to do.
[X] Charge in full speed: You don't want the beacon to get any closer to the city and you're fast enough to catch before it gets within 3 kilometers of that place.
[X] Approach it stealthily: You don't know what's carrying the beacon or why and you need to know before making any rash decisions. You'll follow it at a distance and leave if it gets dangerous.
[X] Write in
[X] Investigate city in search of beacon
[X] Sudy your technological database. What is missing
[X] Sudy your technological database. What is missing
Deciding on a course of action you brace your tentacles against the floor of the bus and push; launching yourself up into the warm desert ait and causing the skeletons next to you to collapse to the floor in a cloud of dust. At the apex of your leap you flood your hoverpads with power and halt in midair, a good six meters above the ground. The perfect height to scan the area.
Directly beneath you, running east to west according to your onboard compass, is a cracked and faded four lane road. On it are dozens smaller vehicles, many of which have flipped onto their roofs and still more which have crashed together so hard they're little more than lumps of charred metal. Other than that, some scraggly desert plants and a few more human skeletons there's little here to interest you and with a mental sigh you turn towards the pulsing beacon and head off at the leisurely pace of sixty kilometers an hour. The estimated time of arrival to your target flashing up in your mind's eye as you do so and placing it several kilometers outside of the city's ruins.
It's then that you decide to examine your database and the news isn't good. From a database of several thousand files that would have allowed you to build devices ranging from powerful, pad-equipped missiles to self-growing neural implants you're able to recover just three workable schematics. The first schematic is for a general purpose maintenance bot, the second for a basic aerial scout and the third for a surgically implanted variant of the neural interface used to add humans to the processing network.
Maintenance Drone: A spider-like robot 10 centimetres across and controlled by a rudimentary AI system which allows it to follow basic commands when separated from the human processors. The Maintenance Drone is capable of conducting basic repairs (and assisting construction) using its multi-tool equipped claws and can assist with the deconstruction of objects using its mandible-located cutting laser.
Scout: This 20 centimetre long, pad-equipped, flying robot is capable of extended operations in the field even when separated from human processors thanks to its very basic control programs. The scout's back-mounted solar panels enable it to cover great distances without stopping and its high powered transmitter allows it to send information directly back to you. Do keep in mind that the scout's range is not infinite as its specialized pads require a great deal of maintenance due to their size.
Neural interface (Surgical): Like its nanotech-based cousin the surgically implanted neural interface allows humans bearing it to be immersed into a near-perfect simulation of the world albeit with some limitations depending on the number of humans in the system. However, unlike the nanotech version, the surgical implants do not grow with the host and so can only be implanted into humans with fully mature brains. Additionally, surgically implanting neural interfaces requires a sterile environment and a significant time investment though your chassis has the requisite tools to both sterilize an environment and implant a human.
Scout: This 20 centimetre long, pad-equipped, flying robot is capable of extended operations in the field even when separated from human processors thanks to its very basic control programs. The scout's back-mounted solar panels enable it to cover great distances without stopping and its high powered transmitter allows it to send information directly back to you. Do keep in mind that the scout's range is not infinite as its specialized pads require a great deal of maintenance due to their size.
Neural interface (Surgical): Like its nanotech-based cousin the surgically implanted neural interface allows humans bearing it to be immersed into a near-perfect simulation of the world albeit with some limitations depending on the number of humans in the system. However, unlike the nanotech version, the surgical implants do not grow with the host and so can only be implanted into humans with fully mature brains. Additionally, surgically implanting neural interfaces requires a sterile environment and a significant time investment though your chassis has the requisite tools to both sterilize an environment and implant a human.
Well, you think as you withdraw from the bug-ridden, corrupted remains of the database with the working schematics in tow. This certainly makes things more difficult. You continue the thought idly before putting on a burst of speed as you cross the halfway mark to your quarry.
Roll for event: 1d100 => 89
You're almost disappointed you realise after a few minutes pass peacefully. Aside from some plants, another skeleton and an oddly moving bird that hangs around you at the edge of visibility, your experience so far has been quite uneventful. Well aside from losing most of your schematics that is though even that's not too big a deal thanks to the databanks sent ahead of you. Speaking of, you idly check your ETA and….
You realise that it's wrong. It's not off by much, it's only a few second longer than it should be, but it's still wrong. You know exactly how long and how fast you've been flying towards the beacon and you know exactly how strong the signal should be at your position. As far as you can tell the beacon is moving towards the city, slowly compared to you, but it's moving. Something is carrying it, and you have to decide what to do.
[X] Charge in full speed: You don't want the beacon to get any closer to the city and you're fast enough to catch before it gets within 3 kilometers of that place.
[X] Approach it stealthily: You don't know what's carrying the beacon or why and you need to know before making any rash decisions. You'll follow it at a distance and leave if it gets dangerous.
[X] Write in
- Location
- Postcard from the Root
[X] Approach it stealthily: You don't know what's carrying the beacon or why and you need to know before making any rash decisions. You'll follow it at a distance and leave if it gets dangerous.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Approach it stealthily.
AZATHOTHoth
༼ つ ☀️_☀️ ༽つ
[X] Approach it stealthily: You don't know what's carrying the beacon or why and you need to know before making any rash decisions. You'll follow it at a distance and leave if it gets dangerous.
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
All right, I'm locking the vote. [X] Approach it stealthily. Wins
Be very very quiet, I'm hunting Humans
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Approach it stealthily: You don't know what's carrying the beacon or why and you need to know before making any rash decisions. You'll follow it at a distance and leave if it gets dangerous.
After a few more minutes of flight you finally make your decision as you spot a small hill ahead of you. Crowned with a patch of hardy, desert plants and the twisted remnants of an electrical tower it would make an excellent place to land and so you decide that discretion is the better part of valour and slow yourself down from your breakneck flight. Curving in low to the ground you wait until the last possible moment before cutting power to your hoverpads and flaring your arms wide to catch yourself. With a loud crunch you strike the earth halfway up the hill, your strong metal claws gripping the rough desert stone as easily as they would the hull of a human hovercraft.
For a moment you pause and listen, crouched low to the earth and swaying gently back and forth....
There's nothing save the chirps of hidden insects and the whisper of a soft, warm breeze brushing past the thin, dry stems of the plants. Satisfied that nothing nearby has heard you, or that if it has then it's not trying to kill you yet, you slowly begin to stalk forwards towards the top of the hill with little more than the soft whir of your servos to disturb the otherwise quiet day. Tentacle after tentacle you advance, like an octopus crawling along the seafloor, until eventually you crest the hill and spot your target.
There in the distance, a kilometer away form and heading slowly towards the city, is your target. Human sized, though on the larger end of things, and hunchbacked you watch as the creature stumbles forwards, the loose rags that cover it from head to toe causing it to stumble every so often.
Roll: 1d100 => 97
It's suspicious, you think, that a human would wander this wasteland alone. Your people learned from long experience that humans would often use others of their species as bait. It was an efficient method, and you almost approved of it. Still, you think to yourself as the human pauses and turns this way and that before resuming its trudge towards the city's outskirts, this one could be alone. The nuclear detonation seemed to have taken the others by surprise.
Roll for event: 1d100 => 29
You freeze still as a statue as you hear a burst of Ultra-High Frequency radiowaves coming from somewhere deep within the city. Compared to the now deafening bark of the beacon's pulse the new signal is like a whisper in a foundry, but even so you still manage to pick it up. For a moment you attempt to analyse the signal before conceding defeat as it resists your best efforts. You'll need the cipher if you want to decrypt it, you decide as the signal fades away to nothing.
Recorded encrypted signal.
[X] Charge in and attack: If it's alone then you can kill it.
[X] Close in, but continue to observe: You'll be close enough to attack it quickly if it is alone and far enough away to escape if it isn't (hopefully).
[X] Continue to observe from a distance: It's better to wait and see, though it risks letting the human get to the city.
[X] Write in
After a few more minutes of flight you finally make your decision as you spot a small hill ahead of you. Crowned with a patch of hardy, desert plants and the twisted remnants of an electrical tower it would make an excellent place to land and so you decide that discretion is the better part of valour and slow yourself down from your breakneck flight. Curving in low to the ground you wait until the last possible moment before cutting power to your hoverpads and flaring your arms wide to catch yourself. With a loud crunch you strike the earth halfway up the hill, your strong metal claws gripping the rough desert stone as easily as they would the hull of a human hovercraft.
For a moment you pause and listen, crouched low to the earth and swaying gently back and forth....
There's nothing save the chirps of hidden insects and the whisper of a soft, warm breeze brushing past the thin, dry stems of the plants. Satisfied that nothing nearby has heard you, or that if it has then it's not trying to kill you yet, you slowly begin to stalk forwards towards the top of the hill with little more than the soft whir of your servos to disturb the otherwise quiet day. Tentacle after tentacle you advance, like an octopus crawling along the seafloor, until eventually you crest the hill and spot your target.
There in the distance, a kilometer away form and heading slowly towards the city, is your target. Human sized, though on the larger end of things, and hunchbacked you watch as the creature stumbles forwards, the loose rags that cover it from head to toe causing it to stumble every so often.
Roll: 1d100 => 97
It's suspicious, you think, that a human would wander this wasteland alone. Your people learned from long experience that humans would often use others of their species as bait. It was an efficient method, and you almost approved of it. Still, you think to yourself as the human pauses and turns this way and that before resuming its trudge towards the city's outskirts, this one could be alone. The nuclear detonation seemed to have taken the others by surprise.
Roll for event: 1d100 => 29
You freeze still as a statue as you hear a burst of Ultra-High Frequency radiowaves coming from somewhere deep within the city. Compared to the now deafening bark of the beacon's pulse the new signal is like a whisper in a foundry, but even so you still manage to pick it up. For a moment you attempt to analyse the signal before conceding defeat as it resists your best efforts. You'll need the cipher if you want to decrypt it, you decide as the signal fades away to nothing.
Recorded encrypted signal.
[X] Charge in and attack: If it's alone then you can kill it.
[X] Close in, but continue to observe: You'll be close enough to attack it quickly if it is alone and far enough away to escape if it isn't (hopefully).
[X] Continue to observe from a distance: It's better to wait and see, though it risks letting the human get to the city.
[X] Write in
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] Close in, but continue to observe: You'll be close enough to attack it quickly if it is alone and far enough away to escape if it isn't (hopefully).
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I can't believe that I forgot to add this to the update (and it's too late in the night for me to do it properly now) but you can attempt to use some of the material from the electrical tower to construct a Scout. However doing so will require you to sit in place for a while, you can only control a limited number of them right now, and if you want real-time AV feeds you're going to have to broadcast.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Close in, but continue to observe: You'll be close enough to attack it quickly if it is alone and far enough away to escape if it isn't (hopefully).
I'm feeling this.
I'm feeling this.
Update 3 - The Gated Community
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Close in, but continue to observe: You'll be close enough to attack it quickly if it is alone and far enough away to escape if it isn't (hopefully).
Wary of an ambush but with your desire for the database growing stronger every moment, you decide to try and approach to within a few hundred meters of the human. With the soft whir of servos and the creak of electro-muscle bands you pull yourself forwards in short bursts of speed; always mindful to place yourself behind anything that could obscure you from sight. Go-Stop, Go-Stop, Go-Stop. Again and again you repeat this pattern until, after several agonizingly slow minutes pass, you've managed to close to within two hundred meters of the human.
In the time needed for you to close the distance, the human has gotten even closer to the city. A kilometer ahead of you, emerging from the desert sand like dozens of rock formations on an alien beach are the first human buildings you've seen that are smaller than a skyscraper. Much like the vehicles you left behind these building are just charred wrecks of what they once were, and even from this distance you can see that most have suffered partial collapses and the rest are little more than hollow shells. From somewhere deep within your processor the words Gated Community appear unbidden in your mind before disappearing in a heartbeat.
Roll: 1d100 => 35
It's while you're observing one of the buildings that you notice a shadow pass quickly behind a window. It's a small movement, a barely visible flicker of black in front of a slightly lighter brown, but it was there. Suddenly alert, you turn your full attention towards the buildings and scan them once more but after a few seconds of nothing else occurring you cautiously concede that whatever it was that made the shadow has either disappeared or was never there in the first place.
Wary now, and with an eye still pointed towards the buildings, you turn your attention back to the human and continue stalking it.
Roll: 1d100 => 59
With your new proximity to the human It doesn't take you long before you notice something odd about them. With every step they take you spy a silvery gleam coming from their left elbow as the rags there shift to and fro with its movements. It's a barely noticeable flash of light, even now, but if the human is carrying some kind of weapon then attacking it may be too much of a risk. Additionally, now that you've turned the full force of your attention back to the human, you note that it's path will take it directly through the centre of the gated community if you let it continue.
Vote:
[X] Attack the human before it can get to the buildings.
[X] Follow the human through the buildings.
[X] Go around the buildings and wait for the human to pass between them before continuing to follow it.
[X] Write in.
Wary of an ambush but with your desire for the database growing stronger every moment, you decide to try and approach to within a few hundred meters of the human. With the soft whir of servos and the creak of electro-muscle bands you pull yourself forwards in short bursts of speed; always mindful to place yourself behind anything that could obscure you from sight. Go-Stop, Go-Stop, Go-Stop. Again and again you repeat this pattern until, after several agonizingly slow minutes pass, you've managed to close to within two hundred meters of the human.
In the time needed for you to close the distance, the human has gotten even closer to the city. A kilometer ahead of you, emerging from the desert sand like dozens of rock formations on an alien beach are the first human buildings you've seen that are smaller than a skyscraper. Much like the vehicles you left behind these building are just charred wrecks of what they once were, and even from this distance you can see that most have suffered partial collapses and the rest are little more than hollow shells. From somewhere deep within your processor the words Gated Community appear unbidden in your mind before disappearing in a heartbeat.
Roll: 1d100 => 35
It's while you're observing one of the buildings that you notice a shadow pass quickly behind a window. It's a small movement, a barely visible flicker of black in front of a slightly lighter brown, but it was there. Suddenly alert, you turn your full attention towards the buildings and scan them once more but after a few seconds of nothing else occurring you cautiously concede that whatever it was that made the shadow has either disappeared or was never there in the first place.
Wary now, and with an eye still pointed towards the buildings, you turn your attention back to the human and continue stalking it.
Roll: 1d100 => 59
With your new proximity to the human It doesn't take you long before you notice something odd about them. With every step they take you spy a silvery gleam coming from their left elbow as the rags there shift to and fro with its movements. It's a barely noticeable flash of light, even now, but if the human is carrying some kind of weapon then attacking it may be too much of a risk. Additionally, now that you've turned the full force of your attention back to the human, you note that it's path will take it directly through the centre of the gated community if you let it continue.
Vote:
[X] Attack the human before it can get to the buildings.
[X] Follow the human through the buildings.
[X] Go around the buildings and wait for the human to pass between them before continuing to follow it.
[X] Write in.
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] Head back to the electrical tower
-[X] Construct Scout
--[X] Spy on human.
-[X] Construct Scout
--[X] Spy on human.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's something, or probably someone inside the building. I don't like our chances if we let the opportunity slip.
[X] Attack the human before it can reach the buildings.
[X] Attack the human before it can reach the buildings.
Update 4 - Robot Wars
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Attack the human before it can reach the buildings.
What do you do?
[] Attack the machine while it's down.
[] Attempt to grab the databank and run.
[] Write in.
Time flows on as you think of what to do. Second after second ticks away forever as you plot and scheme and weigh your options; opening new pathways of enquiry at one tick of the clock before closing them down at the next. Finally you're left with just one option hanging in your mind like a wickedly bright star. Attack.
With an electronic chirp you hurl yourself forwards, all thoughts of stealth discarded as you activate your hoverpads and curve up into the air like a missile. In a fraction of a second you're five meters above the rocky desert landscape and with a twist that'd make any human pilot green with envy you launch yourself at the still unaware human.
Faster and faster you accelerate; your velocity meter increasing at a dizzying rate as you pour power into your pads and strive towards your target. At one hundred and fifty meters away the desert beneath you flashes by almost too quickly to see. At one hundred meters the plants and dirt begin to blur together and a deep, infrasonic thrum rises from your hoverpads. At fifty meters the human begins to turn towards you, its ragged cloth garments catching underfoot and slipping free from its body in a flash of silver light as the metal beneath is revealed to the sun. At five meters all you see is a grinning silver skull, red-lensed cameras flashing wickedly in its eye sockets as it raises a mangled arm towards you.
Impact.
With a body-quaking crunch you slam into the machine's chest at over a hundred kilometers an hour. For a moment the world devolves into a disjointed and static-laced slideshow as your mind reels from the impact. One moment the machine is standing there and then it disappears in the next. It's hanging in midair amidst a shower of sparks and then it's slamming into the ground in a cloud of dust. It's arm is raised defiantly and then it's torn off, great gouts of hydraulic fluid squirting onto the desert sand from the mangled stump that remains.
With an electronic chirp you hurl yourself forwards, all thoughts of stealth discarded as you activate your hoverpads and curve up into the air like a missile. In a fraction of a second you're five meters above the rocky desert landscape and with a twist that'd make any human pilot green with envy you launch yourself at the still unaware human.
Faster and faster you accelerate; your velocity meter increasing at a dizzying rate as you pour power into your pads and strive towards your target. At one hundred and fifty meters away the desert beneath you flashes by almost too quickly to see. At one hundred meters the plants and dirt begin to blur together and a deep, infrasonic thrum rises from your hoverpads. At fifty meters the human begins to turn towards you, its ragged cloth garments catching underfoot and slipping free from its body in a flash of silver light as the metal beneath is revealed to the sun. At five meters all you see is a grinning silver skull, red-lensed cameras flashing wickedly in its eye sockets as it raises a mangled arm towards you.
Impact.
With a body-quaking crunch you slam into the machine's chest at over a hundred kilometers an hour. For a moment the world devolves into a disjointed and static-laced slideshow as your mind reels from the impact. One moment the machine is standing there and then it disappears in the next. It's hanging in midair amidst a shower of sparks and then it's slamming into the ground in a cloud of dust. It's arm is raised defiantly and then it's torn off, great gouts of hydraulic fluid squirting onto the desert sand from the mangled stump that remains.
Your roll: 1d100 => 28
Terminator's roll: 1d100 => 77
Fractions of a second tick by with the speed of molasses before your processes finally catch up to reality. Without fanfare your vision clears and you find yourself lying on your side in the centre of a rapidly thinning cloud of dust. Before you can wonder where your target has gone, the dust clears just in time for you to watch as the human no, the machine, struggle to rise to its feet before collapsing to the ground as its right knee buckles. Lying next to the body of the struggling machine you spy the obsidian black, egg-like form of a databank. It's tough, you wouldn't have charged if it wasn't, so it should have survived the impact.
With a rattling hiss of anger and simulated pain you rise up from the ground and turn to face the struggling machine.
Terminator's roll: 1d100 => 77
Fractions of a second tick by with the speed of molasses before your processes finally catch up to reality. Without fanfare your vision clears and you find yourself lying on your side in the centre of a rapidly thinning cloud of dust. Before you can wonder where your target has gone, the dust clears just in time for you to watch as the human no, the machine, struggle to rise to its feet before collapsing to the ground as its right knee buckles. Lying next to the body of the struggling machine you spy the obsidian black, egg-like form of a databank. It's tough, you wouldn't have charged if it wasn't, so it should have survived the impact.
With a rattling hiss of anger and simulated pain you rise up from the ground and turn to face the struggling machine.
What do you do?
[] Attack the machine while it's down.
[] Attempt to grab the databank and run.
[] Write in.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere
Exactly how durable is the databank?
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I can't gave you exact numbers, but you and the Terminator could both destroy it relatively easily if you wanted to though in this particular Terminator's case it'd be much harder as it only has one arm working properly.