Down on the Disk (Graverobbing for Fun and Profit in an Original Science-Fantasy Universe)
- Thread starter CuttleFish2.0
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi Fantasy
-
- Tags
- original open voting
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Polly wants a Cracker?
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Polly wants a Cracker?
Vote closed
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Polly wants a cracker wins.
Last edited:
[X] Charge, fight it.
- [X] How? GO FOR THE EYES RAGHHH!!!
- [X] How? GO FOR THE EYES RAGHHH!!!
Day 81.2/82.1 - Dialogue
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Winner: Initiate dialog.
Day 81.2/82.1 - Dialogue
Those eyes burn.
Not so much seeming to see you as encompass you.
And yet, there is something startlingly familiar about them. Something that calls to you and tugs on your heart strings, that sends tears pricking at the edges of your eyes.
Years and years ago you remember similar eyes staring up at you from the rocky canyon floor with uncomprehending fear radiating from wide, black pupils. The sun had been relentless all day. You remember sweat trickling down your neck and back, the sticky film it left as the heat wicked it away, and the disappointment as you and Natya had discovered the creek you'd come looking to cool off in had dried up, leaving nothing but a rocky creek bed and sunburnt skeletons of plants.
At first you'd take the shape in the dirt for a particularly oddly shaped rock. It had quickly disabused you of that notion as you approached.
Though too weak to make more than a low, raspy gasping noise, and much smaller than most specimens of its kind, you quickly recognized a raroh hawk when you saw one. How could you not? They were everywhere in advertisements and vids around Pravj, a sort of local mascot. You might have a mind mostly for metal and mechanisms but a part of you was also still perpetually eight and fascinated by them even at the swaggering age of seventeen. So naturally you moved closer.
In response the bird lifted its head and tried ineffectually to scrambled away with its exhausted legs.
Wings beat against the dusty ground — one spread out wide as a kite of rusty red feathers, the other a twisted and bent mess of ragged feathers pulled tight against its side — as it tried to get off the ground.You stepped forward again, hands held out palms flat and arms wide as red shifted to green and brown.
Blinking you stare for a moment at the face looming before you in the shadows, seeing yourself reflected in the dark pools of its eyes, uncertainty written across your face. Shaking off the momentary sense of déjà vu you turn your focus entirely on the creature before you and take another step towards it.
Still it only watches and waits, the darkness of the forest clinging to it tightly like a coat, so you put one foot forward and then the other.
Its head twitches. A haze of viridian swirls through the air and it lets out a raspy, muted breath.
You stop.
Wetting your lips you let out your own shaky breath and swallow against the pounding of your heart.
"Friend?"
If it understands you it makes no sign of it, barely moving as its eyes continue to burn into you.
Despite how close you are now you can't make out anything of its form save for the head and neck; the former as large as your torso and the latter as thick around as your waist. This thing could, if it decided to, easily tear you limb from limb (thought from thought?).
Slowly you lower your hands, gesturing towards yourself, as you say, "Ivan. Friends?"
It barely reacts, only offering the slightest of head tilts.
You doubt it understands you.
Which isn't really surprising. It took three years before you were sure Nosta could actually understand any of the words you said to her, most raroh hawks never learn a single word. You doubt whatever the crew of the ship spoke twelve centuries ago even vaguely resembled modern common.
Right, okay, you need another approach then. As the past several weeks have already established, you do not know any ancient uurzish— assuming it would even understand that.
So how do you make yourself understood to an enormous feathered creature that might be either the millenia old security system of a crashed starship or a magical spirit that has taken up residence in the former. Wind rustles through the leaves. Around you, you can feel the unmoving presence of ancient trunks pressing and closing in on you with the weight of eons. Every passing second ratchets up the urge to leave.
You won't change tack now though, not when you can almost taste the iron-rich tang of victory on your tongue, heady and hot.
That thought draws a frown to your face.
You actually can taste iron. Nothing around you seems like it should be giving off anything that would do that. That leaves you with the thought that you're not really tasting it, but that's how your brain interprets the life-energy all around you.
And if there's enough life-energy for you to be 'tasting' things then there's probably enough for you to do something clever with.
The second you reach out for it the life-energy practically leaps to your fingertips, so eager and hungry for direction and form that it actually glows a deep yellow-green as it gathers on the tips of your fingers. Your silent companion cocks its head at the light, seemingly as unfazed by its appearance as it was by you. In the glow of the life-energy the shadows around the creatures form recede a tiny bit, peeling back to reveal a suggestion of an enormous form against the inky darkness of the forest.
Where Nosta is sleek and raptorial this thing is bulky and looming, the similarities beginning and ending with the eyes and beak. You cannot tell where feathered-fur might give way to scale or bark or where its neck might flow to become rippling flesh or lithe limb. Eyes searching for claws or paws or tail find only shifting shadows.
You weave a net of hooked barbs around your hand guided more by instinct than any coherent plan. This thing, this creature, whatever it is has known nothing else for centuries. It must hunger for more than simply fresh flesh (or whatever the spiritual or magical equivalent of that is), you can only imagine that if you had lived as long as it has you would be starved for companionship… for something new.
So you craft hooks from the lure of a cooked meal, out of the promise of friendship, and a guarantee of familiar warmth.
It scintillates like a crown of barbed jewels wrapped around your hand in a dense thicket.
You open your hand and the spell unfurls like a constellation, spreading across the space between you and the thing in the blink of an eye. It twists its head the other way, eyeing your magic with open curiosity as it stretches out towards it, the long hooked tendrils reaching closer and closer with every second until the first few hover just on the edge of touching. Slowly, slowly, more and more of those tendrils reach out towards the thing, forming a tightening cage around where you think it sits. Still it does not react.
Finally the edges begin to close in, the ends of the tendrils reach out to link together and the hooks brushing against the very outer edges of its mind.
There is a long, interminable second as the hooks make contact that you see a vast spinning web of lights sprawled out across the heavens winking and blinking out in a pattern of mind boggling complexity. Vast ribbons of thought extend off into infinity. All around you is the churning press of hungry instinct warring against the slow tick of cold calculations; a sea of tooth and fang and talon held back by the patient grind of titanic, precision machined gears that give way with a final, resounding click.
And with that click your spell of hooks and tendrils freezes and shatters, dissolving into fading motes of light.
Out of the shadows a great furry paw, seven jet black claws jutting out, sweeps out and catches you in the chest. Pain blooms hot and wet across your torso. Your lungs ache and your heart stutters.
"Aaah!"
You gasp, flinching back hard, and collapsing onto your back.
Gone are the trees, the deep impossible shadows, the starry canopy, and the creature. Replaced by the cold gray and blue of composite and shipsteel and the mundane darkness of an unlit corridor.
Feet clatter against the hard floor, "Ivan?"
Stars dance in your eyes and a storm rages inside your skull, thundering from temple to temple.
"I'm okay, I'm okay."
You grope at yourself and when your hands don't come away slick and bloody and release a painful breath.
"Just," you gulp air, "Just startled."
"What happened? You were at it for a good while."
It takes you a moment to focus on his words past the intense throbbing still drowning out most of your thoughts. When you blink away the tears from your eyes you see Opal-Nine standing over you, concern clearly written in the tense bend of his antennae and the rest of his posture.
"There was a— there's something still in there that- ah," you wince as you sit up and the pounding in your head redoubles, "That didn't appreciate me being there."
You manage a weak smile, thoroughly done for the day.
By morning the raging headache has subsided into a dull and distant ache. Like a sore muscle.
You're in no hurry to experience it again so you've come up with a bit of a change of tactics; it seemed very content to let you make the first move and only respond when it felt threatened, or possibly just annoyed. With time to look back on everything you're fairly sure what you experienced was some sort of illusion, a sort of mental trap that you fell into. This thing… security system or awakened spirit or whatever it is seems more inclined to lay an ambush or stalk its prey patiently than to come out roaring and swinging.
That in mind, if you move fast enough you might be able to catch it by surprise. Get in, get out. Don't give it enough time to set up any sort of trap or ambush for you.
You make it back to the door in less than an hour and don't even wait a minute to get staredt.
Maybe this thing is watching you, maybe it's not, but you're eager and hungry to pay it back a small bit of the pain it caused you yesterday and decidedly not eager to give it time to prepare.
Slamming your life-energy probe into the system you push hard and fast past all the delicate systems that you wormed your way past the day before. Gone is every ounce of hesitation and caution. Your bones hum and tingle as life-energy courses through you.
At the back of your throat you taste copper and iron.
When the thing stirs you can feel it, like a distant rumble in the earth, a great indrawn breath.
You flare out your probe of life-energy, rapidly oscillating between all the patterns you've learned over the last few weeks until you find the correct one and the doors slide open. Alarms blare like startled birds and warnings flash like fireworks but you ignore them.
"Go!" You shout to Opal-Nine.
He responds instantly, leaping through the opening doors barely an instant after you.
Not a moment too soon either. You can already feel the thing in the system coming hot on your heels, a ripping snarl echoing in your head and the feel of hot breath on the back of your neck as you forcibly rip out your life-energy probe. The pain of it is sharp and electric, your right arm goes numb instantly.
Just two seconds later the doors slam shut again.
Feeling slowly starts returning to your arm, a wave of pinches crawling down from your shoulder.
"Well," you smile, "That worked. Only one more to go."
You don't expect that to work a second time though. Now that it knows you can and will act fast you expect whatever the thing is it'll jump on you immediately next time. That means you need another approach.
What is it?
[] Distraction; it seems pretty single minded, try to confuse and misdirect it.
- [] How?
[] Fight it; you think if you're smart and careful you can take it. Might be painful though.
- [] What's your strategy?
[] Endure; if you work fast enough you might be able to just take what it dishes out. Now that you're prepared for it, it can't trap you again. Will be very painful.
[] Write-in: Subject to approval.
Day 81.2/82.1 - Dialogue
Those eyes burn.
Not so much seeming to see you as encompass you.
And yet, there is something startlingly familiar about them. Something that calls to you and tugs on your heart strings, that sends tears pricking at the edges of your eyes.
Years and years ago you remember similar eyes staring up at you from the rocky canyon floor with uncomprehending fear radiating from wide, black pupils. The sun had been relentless all day. You remember sweat trickling down your neck and back, the sticky film it left as the heat wicked it away, and the disappointment as you and Natya had discovered the creek you'd come looking to cool off in had dried up, leaving nothing but a rocky creek bed and sunburnt skeletons of plants.
At first you'd take the shape in the dirt for a particularly oddly shaped rock. It had quickly disabused you of that notion as you approached.
Though too weak to make more than a low, raspy gasping noise, and much smaller than most specimens of its kind, you quickly recognized a raroh hawk when you saw one. How could you not? They were everywhere in advertisements and vids around Pravj, a sort of local mascot. You might have a mind mostly for metal and mechanisms but a part of you was also still perpetually eight and fascinated by them even at the swaggering age of seventeen. So naturally you moved closer.
In response the bird lifted its head and tried ineffectually to scrambled away with its exhausted legs.
Wings beat against the dusty ground — one spread out wide as a kite of rusty red feathers, the other a twisted and bent mess of ragged feathers pulled tight against its side — as it tried to get off the ground.You stepped forward again, hands held out palms flat and arms wide as red shifted to green and brown.
Blinking you stare for a moment at the face looming before you in the shadows, seeing yourself reflected in the dark pools of its eyes, uncertainty written across your face. Shaking off the momentary sense of déjà vu you turn your focus entirely on the creature before you and take another step towards it.
Still it only watches and waits, the darkness of the forest clinging to it tightly like a coat, so you put one foot forward and then the other.
Its head twitches. A haze of viridian swirls through the air and it lets out a raspy, muted breath.
You stop.
Wetting your lips you let out your own shaky breath and swallow against the pounding of your heart.
"Friend?"
If it understands you it makes no sign of it, barely moving as its eyes continue to burn into you.
Despite how close you are now you can't make out anything of its form save for the head and neck; the former as large as your torso and the latter as thick around as your waist. This thing could, if it decided to, easily tear you limb from limb (thought from thought?).
Slowly you lower your hands, gesturing towards yourself, as you say, "Ivan. Friends?"
It barely reacts, only offering the slightest of head tilts.
You doubt it understands you.
Which isn't really surprising. It took three years before you were sure Nosta could actually understand any of the words you said to her, most raroh hawks never learn a single word. You doubt whatever the crew of the ship spoke twelve centuries ago even vaguely resembled modern common.
Right, okay, you need another approach then. As the past several weeks have already established, you do not know any ancient uurzish— assuming it would even understand that.
So how do you make yourself understood to an enormous feathered creature that might be either the millenia old security system of a crashed starship or a magical spirit that has taken up residence in the former. Wind rustles through the leaves. Around you, you can feel the unmoving presence of ancient trunks pressing and closing in on you with the weight of eons. Every passing second ratchets up the urge to leave.
You won't change tack now though, not when you can almost taste the iron-rich tang of victory on your tongue, heady and hot.
That thought draws a frown to your face.
You actually can taste iron. Nothing around you seems like it should be giving off anything that would do that. That leaves you with the thought that you're not really tasting it, but that's how your brain interprets the life-energy all around you.
And if there's enough life-energy for you to be 'tasting' things then there's probably enough for you to do something clever with.
The second you reach out for it the life-energy practically leaps to your fingertips, so eager and hungry for direction and form that it actually glows a deep yellow-green as it gathers on the tips of your fingers. Your silent companion cocks its head at the light, seemingly as unfazed by its appearance as it was by you. In the glow of the life-energy the shadows around the creatures form recede a tiny bit, peeling back to reveal a suggestion of an enormous form against the inky darkness of the forest.
Where Nosta is sleek and raptorial this thing is bulky and looming, the similarities beginning and ending with the eyes and beak. You cannot tell where feathered-fur might give way to scale or bark or where its neck might flow to become rippling flesh or lithe limb. Eyes searching for claws or paws or tail find only shifting shadows.
You weave a net of hooked barbs around your hand guided more by instinct than any coherent plan. This thing, this creature, whatever it is has known nothing else for centuries. It must hunger for more than simply fresh flesh (or whatever the spiritual or magical equivalent of that is), you can only imagine that if you had lived as long as it has you would be starved for companionship… for something new.
So you craft hooks from the lure of a cooked meal, out of the promise of friendship, and a guarantee of familiar warmth.
It scintillates like a crown of barbed jewels wrapped around your hand in a dense thicket.
You open your hand and the spell unfurls like a constellation, spreading across the space between you and the thing in the blink of an eye. It twists its head the other way, eyeing your magic with open curiosity as it stretches out towards it, the long hooked tendrils reaching closer and closer with every second until the first few hover just on the edge of touching. Slowly, slowly, more and more of those tendrils reach out towards the thing, forming a tightening cage around where you think it sits. Still it does not react.
Finally the edges begin to close in, the ends of the tendrils reach out to link together and the hooks brushing against the very outer edges of its mind.
There is a long, interminable second as the hooks make contact that you see a vast spinning web of lights sprawled out across the heavens winking and blinking out in a pattern of mind boggling complexity. Vast ribbons of thought extend off into infinity. All around you is the churning press of hungry instinct warring against the slow tick of cold calculations; a sea of tooth and fang and talon held back by the patient grind of titanic, precision machined gears that give way with a final, resounding click.
And with that click your spell of hooks and tendrils freezes and shatters, dissolving into fading motes of light.
Out of the shadows a great furry paw, seven jet black claws jutting out, sweeps out and catches you in the chest. Pain blooms hot and wet across your torso. Your lungs ache and your heart stutters.
"Aaah!"
You gasp, flinching back hard, and collapsing onto your back.
Gone are the trees, the deep impossible shadows, the starry canopy, and the creature. Replaced by the cold gray and blue of composite and shipsteel and the mundane darkness of an unlit corridor.
Feet clatter against the hard floor, "Ivan?"
Stars dance in your eyes and a storm rages inside your skull, thundering from temple to temple.
"I'm okay, I'm okay."
You grope at yourself and when your hands don't come away slick and bloody and release a painful breath.
"Just," you gulp air, "Just startled."
"What happened? You were at it for a good while."
It takes you a moment to focus on his words past the intense throbbing still drowning out most of your thoughts. When you blink away the tears from your eyes you see Opal-Nine standing over you, concern clearly written in the tense bend of his antennae and the rest of his posture.
"There was a— there's something still in there that- ah," you wince as you sit up and the pounding in your head redoubles, "That didn't appreciate me being there."
You manage a weak smile, thoroughly done for the day.
By morning the raging headache has subsided into a dull and distant ache. Like a sore muscle.
You're in no hurry to experience it again so you've come up with a bit of a change of tactics; it seemed very content to let you make the first move and only respond when it felt threatened, or possibly just annoyed. With time to look back on everything you're fairly sure what you experienced was some sort of illusion, a sort of mental trap that you fell into. This thing… security system or awakened spirit or whatever it is seems more inclined to lay an ambush or stalk its prey patiently than to come out roaring and swinging.
That in mind, if you move fast enough you might be able to catch it by surprise. Get in, get out. Don't give it enough time to set up any sort of trap or ambush for you.
You make it back to the door in less than an hour and don't even wait a minute to get staredt.
Maybe this thing is watching you, maybe it's not, but you're eager and hungry to pay it back a small bit of the pain it caused you yesterday and decidedly not eager to give it time to prepare.
Slamming your life-energy probe into the system you push hard and fast past all the delicate systems that you wormed your way past the day before. Gone is every ounce of hesitation and caution. Your bones hum and tingle as life-energy courses through you.
At the back of your throat you taste copper and iron.
When the thing stirs you can feel it, like a distant rumble in the earth, a great indrawn breath.
You flare out your probe of life-energy, rapidly oscillating between all the patterns you've learned over the last few weeks until you find the correct one and the doors slide open. Alarms blare like startled birds and warnings flash like fireworks but you ignore them.
"Go!" You shout to Opal-Nine.
He responds instantly, leaping through the opening doors barely an instant after you.
Not a moment too soon either. You can already feel the thing in the system coming hot on your heels, a ripping snarl echoing in your head and the feel of hot breath on the back of your neck as you forcibly rip out your life-energy probe. The pain of it is sharp and electric, your right arm goes numb instantly.
Just two seconds later the doors slam shut again.
Feeling slowly starts returning to your arm, a wave of pinches crawling down from your shoulder.
"Well," you smile, "That worked. Only one more to go."
You don't expect that to work a second time though. Now that it knows you can and will act fast you expect whatever the thing is it'll jump on you immediately next time. That means you need another approach.
What is it?
[] Distraction; it seems pretty single minded, try to confuse and misdirect it.
- [] How?
[] Fight it; you think if you're smart and careful you can take it. Might be painful though.
- [] What's your strategy?
[] Endure; if you work fast enough you might be able to just take what it dishes out. Now that you're prepared for it, it can't trap you again. Will be very painful.
[] Write-in: Subject to approval.
So it is an AI bio-core! Evolved enough to have it's own instincts and an advance enough thought processes- but still slaved to its programming…
If only it comes with a nice android waifu packing respectable thiccness!
Ah well.
[X] 2b or not 2b?
-[x] The existential crisis plan: Instead of coming at it head on, with life magic try to tinkering to its underlying programming: essentially figure out the overarching guidelines that govern it. Ping a query in an appeal to the logic portion of the entity
-[X] Via life energy find a loophole to have the AI master controls be handed to you, if not possible, ping the Ai on its purpose. Any and all of its endeavours would have been long since relegated into futility the moment the ship had been left languishing in the dirt for the millennia.
-[X] Now you have come in the place of its former masters, crudely proficient as you are in the manipulating life energy, a chance to be given new purpose.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Mmm, I'm going to have to veto this; Ivan has no idea how he would go about doing any of this (except to try what he just tried and got smacked for). Way too many unknowns.
How good is Ivan's manipulation of life energy? If he can somehow put in a pre-timed expression of life energy to fire roughly in the hopes of convincing the ai to attack it…
[X] Bamboozle Birb
-[X] prep a simple machine/bomb that can timed and send out emanations of your life energy to trick the Ai in going after it instead of you as you unlock the final chamber. Hopefully it'll lag just enough to get you through and loot its forbidden booty.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Machines can generate life-energy given certain conditions, Ivan does not think he can whip one up in an afternoon (or a month without access to better materials and resources to do some research), but the basic intent of the plan is something he is confident in accomplishing and would fall under 'Distraction.'
[X] Bamboozle Birb
-[X] prep a simple machine/bomb that can timed and send out emanations of your life energy to trick the Ai in going after it instead of you as you unlock the final chamber. Hopefully it'll lag just enough to get you through and loot its forbidden booty.
-[X] prep a simple machine/bomb that can timed and send out emanations of your life energy to trick the Ai in going after it instead of you as you unlock the final chamber. Hopefully it'll lag just enough to get you through and loot its forbidden booty.
BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
So are we trapped behind the doors we just went through until we figure out a way through?