A suggestion-driven art quest about a dragon grad student
Dragon Summoning
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Update 0
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Zalan Iniri (toponymic: Skatheon) stirs fitfully, and faces the day like it's come to rob his hoard.
The sun pours into his west-facing window. It takes him a zombie-like moment to acknowledge that the habitat has not actually rotated during the night to point his dorm east.
The dragon's been up late trying to focus. The temptation to steal hours from tomorrow is universal, only made worse by artificial light, caffeine, and vitality elixirs, and he's left himself holding the bag, without much to show for it.
For the three hundredth time, Zalan wonders if he's doing the right thing. Information processing is something every field needs, and so it followed, a reasonable field of thaumaturgy to study to make himself useful. However, job security requires one can actually do the fucking job.
Back when his courses were just writing meditation-scripts to build spirits to do algebra, he was convinced he had a knack for it. Now, he was in over his head, with only the cold comfort that he'd done better than his old classmates who had dropped out already. One of them just made Interceptor in the Air Guard.
Surely, this should be getting easier.
Recently, Zalan took an internship at the Hyperborean Institute of Interplanar Studies. Here, the worldwide planar defenses are at their weakest, and the dimensional magicks can be cautiously probed. The program's expanded greatly in recent years, generating all sorts of research he's here to help build the infrastructure to meaningfully study.
...Maybe he could just call in sick. Why shouldn't he? If 'sick' can mean a virus, a bacteria, a toxin, or a spiritual malus, maybe whatever he feels qualifies in truth. And sure, there's work that urgently needs doing, but maybe it's good to manage expectations. Downwards.
...
Article: OOC: In this quest, we're trying out suggestion-based interaction:
This means votes only happen when there's clear, discrete, mutually-exclusive choices or the players are divided on a course of action.
Otherwise, type suggestions to the main character regarding what they should be saying, doing, planning, or answering.
Imagine it's like an old adventure game that accepts text commands, like King's Quest.
If that doesn't make sense, just assume every post always ends in "Write in"
Be nice to each other, and to Zalan. He is doing his best.
Example said:
Zalan surveys his room:
-His bedside screen displays some work/school alerts. Though, they're not only on that screen. They'll follow him from room to room. Very convenient...
-His Personal Attendant module, a mana-construct secured in his chakratic Crown node, whispers politely to inform him of private messages.
-Chests of clothes, books, dream-tablets, personal effects, etc.
-Out his window, the sun balefully lights the cloudscape. Intermittent contrails from supersonic dragons cross the sky. To the north, situated at a safe distance, looms the Institute's research facility.
-In the corner, his holographic room terminal flickers with an idle pattern. He'd been up late working on bugfixing a training script for one of the Institute's deep-contemplation engines.
Please suggest an action.
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Update 1
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Listen...
This style is supposed to be more nest-like, to help you relax. Zalan is getting pretty skeptical about that, but it does make falling into bed easier.
It's a kit-built clockwork golem. Zalan made a project of reprogramming its spirit to display complex behaviors, but ran into trouble getting it to uptake the scripts, so right now it's just kind of broken.
Y'know, perhaps he could give it another shot. Maybe thinking about a new problem will provide some insight to curing the glitch that's been plaguing the lab contemplation engine.
...but that's the sort of thing that someone who's avoiding work would say.
O life-giving She who made the worlds green, bless this pattern with your enlightened chemistry. May we imbibe with wisdom...
Zalan trudges to the kitchen, thankful for small luxuries.
The kettle takes a few seconds to heat up. He picks up the boiling water and dribbles it over a cone of ground coffee.
He whistles to himself. The arcology plays some soft strings to accompany.
Really, by the standards of most sapient creatures who've ever lived, he lives like a king, he thinks.
Yet the sword hangs above..
Autosummarization is active.
{Tieran-Sha}: My friend! [...] I'm ecstatic to meet you again. It's been ages. But are you certain you still have time? Lately you've only poked your head up from work to argue or lament.
Zalan thinks Well, there's a deadline between now and then, so, I'd better...
{Kezey}: Heyyy, did you hear a loud noise earlier? [...] Heyyy, what's with lab intranexus activity?
Zalan thinks Uuuuugh...
{Fortress Malefect}[Pseudonym]: It is abundantly obvious to anyone but a dipshit wyrmling that the established canon feats of the indomitable Tannel would render him largely immune to anything the Black Bridge saga could bring to bear. It's a fairly unremarkable Sword-and-Cellphone setting.
Zalan is starting to think this person hasn't even read past book one.
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Update 2: Like No One's Watching
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Everyone at the Institute of Interplanar Studies is a dragon. Other dragon-administered universities will host other species (usually kobolds), but this facility was built to be out-of-the-way. Zalan wonders if the administration's too paranoid about physical security. Maybe, maybe not. In either case, it isn't a decision he has a voice in.
Perhaps so... But he'd really be letting the department down.
On the other hand, if this oracle system does have safety implications, maybe they should've put more resources into it instead of putting it on Zalan's shoulders.
...but of course, eventually, that argument is just 'it's your fault for hiring me.'
Dragons can actually get pretty loud. During the mythic ages, this was a useful aspect of their powerful Breathing magicks. Now, it mostly means there's good soundproofing here.
...is that why he didn't hear whatever Kezey heard? Hmm.
Zalan quickly skims the unsummarized communication, but he didn't miss much.
{Zalan}: What kind of noise was it? Where was it located?
{Kezey}: Machinery sounds, like a turbine of pure tone. High in pitch, rising straight into ultrasonic, then nothing. It left me concerned there were dangerous audio levels outside my range of hearing, but it's actually silent now. I'm in the lab tower, of course.
There's certainly no way Zalan could've heard anything from here, then. The labs are built at a safe distance from the habitats.
{Zalan}: Sounds like normal equipment energetics. I assume you talked to someone about it?
{Kezey}: They said to let them know if I hear it again.
{Zalan}: Oh...
{Kezey}: So how's that script coming along?
{Zalan}: I'm working on it. I confess that I've never worked with oracular prognostication before. It makes data structures complicated.
{Kezey}: Well... I'm sure you can get it finished. Thanks for your hard work!
{Zalan}: Hello! I am looking forward to your visit. I'm gonna try my best to have everything in working order when you arrive.
Zalan waits, but there's no prompt response...
aw.
After speeding through the
He is going to track down each source of deviation spoiling this system. He is going to exert his will on these autonomous processes. He is going to enforce desired behaviors so that they perform effectively and in accordance with their requirements, because he is a DRAGON and he is a CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF SOCIETY.
THEN he is going to go win that forum argument.
Yeah.
Yeah!!!!
If the morning light made it easier, he'd have wrapped it up before he passed out. Still, his brain is working better now.
Zalan returns to his bedroom to examine the state he left his holographic terminal. Representations emerge, along with glyphs that allow secure synchronization with the terminal module of Zalan's chakratic Crown node. He communes.
The machine's data structures are an inelegant tangle of interdependencies. With some queasiness, Zalan considers the fact that he lacks the expertise to even be certain it should be refactored into something more elegant, or if this rat's nest is what elegance looks like.
Still. As his thoughts turn the problem over and over, he begins to hope that he might be on to something...
He heads to the workshop, where he has the tools to really get his claws dirty.
Zalan has a lot of decisions ahead of him, but one decision that informs all the others is what mental state to cultivate for the next several hours:
[] Flow - Draconic civilization offers easy access to elixirs once considered treasures. A sensible dosage can help him maintain his new sense of inspiration and push away distractions.
[] Pure Uncut Deadline - Potion seller, I'm going into battle and I need your strongest potion. Zalan is confident this is his best chance to get the job done tonight. He thinks it also might result in being able to taste numbers, but sometimes you just gotta know what numbers taste like...
[] Detox - On second thought, let's not take any powerful drugs today. How about some nice purification tea Zalan's mother got him?
(You can keep writing suggestions and questions as well as vote.
I try to take each suggestion into account even when I can't address them all directly.)
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Update 3
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Zalan IS working...!
True, under other circumstances he could be at the department chantry, seeking guidance from people who know the system better, but right now he'd need to pull them away from other vital tasks, maybe for hours, maybe for days to get them up to speed well enough to cover for his mistakes. No, better to face them when he has something to show them.
Well, half the reason this facility is dragons-only is what might happen if someone with hostile intent uses it to breach the walls between worlds. Planar invasions, monstrous incursions, dragons kidnapped by summoning spells, dogfolk and catfolk living together... But that's not going to happen just by accident. He's pretty skeptical he's in any danger at all just sitting in his room. Still, that's a good reason to keep himself sane and presentable in case he needs to head over there in person. Their tolerance for Antics is fairly low.
PLURALITY VOTE said:
After consideration, Zalan resolves not to take any potions or elixirs. He can't rely on that for simple jobs. It shouldn't take the maximum effort he can wring out of his brain just achieve basic functionality. He's already feeling inspired. Perhaps today's the day that prognostigative scripting becomes easy...
Of course. He may not have direct access to expertise, but he has plenty of lore. If he doesn't know how to solve the problem, he'll find somebody who has and make their techniques his own.
With determination, he marches into his workshop.
[LATER]
It should be not be a shock to learn that aggregating and collating huge numbers of automated fragmentary visions of low-probability future events is an extremely complex and counterintuitive task. But somehow, this fact just keeps managing to sneak up on Zalan and repeatedly hit him like a bag of magic swords.
Additionally, it turns out that purification tea hasn't filled him with zen-like serenity, and mostly just makes him have to pee a lot. And the stoic fervor of filial piety does not render him completely invincible against distractions or a lack of mental acuity as the hours grind away his attention and replace it with a looming fear of failure.
Indeed, the approval his mother might show for succeeding the right way only makes sense if he actually succeeds.
[LATER...]
Maybe he shoulda taken those elixirs.
He has made progress. He really has! He's sure he's close now. But he's stuck, and whatever home-grown inspiration he started with ran out awhile ago.
Messages are piling up from his supervisor, so it must be morning again. He gave some boilerplate responses to the backlog when he sat down to work, but he hasn't had the guts to even look at the latest ones.
More of his attention shifts from the practicalities of thaumaturgical problems, towards the question of what the hell he is going to do if it turns out he really is in the wrong line of study. He's put in so many hours and used up so much time and resources to get to this point. You can't really walk away from that without it leaving some kind of black mark on your reputation. Not at his age, when he needs to be proving his worth.
He tries to cheer himself up: One failed project doesn't make him a failed professional. And that is technically true, but his failure is feeling pretty... systemic.
He thinks about his future: The population of dragons isn't very large compared to the economy. (Fewer than 10 million for a civilization with its wings spread across a world, and controls most of the mana) This means someone with any drive at all can surely achieve some position in life, but by the same token, anything he attempts will put real weight on his shoulders. Lacking the numbers of some species, dragons maintain their position through individual excellence. What if mediocrity is all he has to offer?
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Update 4: WAIT.
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It's too late. That plan made sense when he had a head full of sleep and a clock full of hours. Now he's late, exhausted, running out of focus, and of questionable emotional stability to serve as a foundation for internal alchemy that powerful.
Moreover, it takes a significant amount of time just to kick in.
He'd might as well, at this point. If the punishment for rebellion is the same as the punishment for being late, you'd might as well rebel, he reasons. Then he shakes his head and chides himself for catastrophizing. The situation is not so severe, and anyone can walk the grounds any time they want. If he feels exiled to his lair, it's a voluntary one.
He performs a brief breathing exercise to calm down, and lets go of the idea that he can push himself through this with willpower and stress alone. What he's doing is just pouring water into a cup with a hole in the bottom. It's time to change his approach.
Thinking it over a second time, he decides: the hell with it. What's he got to lose?Repeated Suggestions said:
Since that elixir does take time to work, he can dose up, then go for that stroll while he waits for it to activate.
And so, Zalan gets to work preparing it: He opens the locked casket. He retrieves a base potion, a vial of reagent, and unwraps a black pill the size of a human thumb, laser-engraved with the tughra of a sage of alchemy.
He measures out a quantity of potion into a bowl, carefully places the pill at its center, then activates it with a dose of reagent. The mixture agitates as it dissolves. It spins and stirs itself, threatening to spray in all directions, changes colors, then settles suddenly into an unnatural stillness.
The dragon contemplates it, and then drinks. It tastes like calculating anger, with notes of smoke and saffron.
The mixture settles heavily in his stomach. He washes it down with pure water.
He briefly considers initializing his Wing magic and going for a flight. How long has he kept himself cooped up in only the habitat, the lab tower, and the bridge between?
He decides against it. What if he's seen as joyriding while ignoring work communications? And should he be flying in his current state, or the state he aims to soon achieve?
Instead, he heads to the nearest park, slumps down, and waits for the effects. The bright morning filters through a skylight. The grass is cool under his digits. Air dances through the leaves. Zalan relaxes. He begins to feel energies moving through his mana channels, altering their natural flow, and beginning to accumulate at his Crown and Sacral chakratic nodes.
Coming here was a good idea, he thinks. This experience would feel much different if he were still locked in his workshop. Like a furnace as experienced by a piece of coal. This steadies him instead.
It was monitoring some telemetry from the lab tower which he was trying to use to calibrate his model. It-
WAIT.
Zalan returns to the lair as quickly as possible.
what the fuck is going on over there
Update 5
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's a lot of things to ponder, in fact.
The former, but really the latter.
This is way over his head and he can't honestly make sense of it, but he's seeing errors way outside the norm. If he'd finished his work on the deep-contemplation engine, then maybe it could've produced an analysis he'd know how to read. He can't really just eyeball it. It involves a lot of thaumaturgy he doesn't know.
What he can say is that he's seeing interference in instruments that are supposed to be completely separate experiments. That suggests something is operating at an unauthorized energy level. Whatever it is, it's not part of the telemetry he's able to look at. It's even possible something's happening outside the arcology and only these instruments are picking it up, but they're so far from the nearest mana plant that he can't imagine what could do that.
Maybe one of her aphorisms about waterway management.
Like "a dam breaks in a trickle and then all at once."
Or "deep in muck, keep your head high."
Zalan isn't sure about that metaphor. Surely if your footing's bad you'd keep your head forwards.
Shoulda thought of that before he took a pill that had its own halo!
Is there time for that?
Zalan isn't being entirely rhetorical. He's trying to get a feel for how urgent this is. A lot of dragons here know more about this stuff than he does. He's just here to get the information magic working. If it were an emergency, one of them would've noticed by now, right?
This feels premature, but he can spare a little time to instantiate his Voidspace inventory and put some nexus modules and personal effects inside...
Autosummarization is active.
[Supervisor] {Ioseth}: Have you gotten that engine spirit behaving?
[...] How's progress proceeding? Can I get an estimate? [...] The Augury drakes keep asking.
[...] I know you're busy, but could you take a look at some of these lab readings?
He'd better not think too hard right now about how urgently people wanted this particular prediction engine running right before things started getting weird...
Presently, he feels sober enough to respond coherently. For now.
{Zalan}: I'm still trying to make sense of the telemetry from the lab. I'm not trained in planar magicks. But. Too many instruments are entering fault states at once. It must be external interference. Lots of it, I would assume beyond authorized parameters. Is there something energetic taking place?
{Ioseth}: I see. Thank you.
I'll try talking to them.
Talking to who, Zalan wonders? That was strangely curt. He'd expected Ioseth to either yell at him, or angrily blame someone else. This language seems guarded, for him. Is somebody important involved?
{Kezey}: I'm sorry to bother you again but has your work concluded?
[...] You might need to stop. I'm sorry, but there's something else going on. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it.
[...] Then again, if we aren't supposed to bring in more help then you'd might as well keep working like usual. Haha~!
{Zalan}: Thanks, I think. Stay safe over there. From what little I can see, I'm not sure if I should be flying away and screaming.
{Kezey}: Haa. You worry too much. Don't forget to eat~!
Zalan isn't sure what to make of that either.
{Tieran-Sha}: Hello, Zalan! I hope you've succeeded at clearing some time, because I'm now en route. I apologize for my excessive promptness, but we concluded our significant work ahead of schedule, and I was so excited that I barely slept before taking wing. If you require more time, don't worry. I'm certain the Institue arcology has much to see and many to meet. The aurora should be visible tonight.
Tieren-Sha always sounds like he doesn't need wing magic to fly. Zalan might even resent it if he wasn't so relentlessly nice.
He feels queasy at the notion of meeting him now, like this, and as some kind of secretive totally-not-dangerous-probably situation continues to develop.
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Update 6: Hello, Fellow Students
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{Zalan}: I look forward to your visit, but I'm still neck-deep in an intractable problem. And... I feel that I should warn you that there appears to be a developing situation here which, I suspect, may prove dangerous.
{Tieran-Sha}: Unfortunate! Of what sort?
{Zalan}: I don't actually know. I just started noticing faults in the instruments I'm able to check. I believe it's caused by some powerful construct or spell in the Institute's research lab which is greatly exceeding authorized parameters. My team told me to keep an eye on it, but can't or won't explain what's causing it. For all I know, I shouldn't be speaking freely either.
{Tieran-Sha}: Ominous indeed. Yet, intriguing. Some plot by a great wyrm or councillor? Digging too greedily into the spaces between worlds? Summoning some foreign god or monster in an act of hubris?
{Zalan}: Probably not!
{Tieran-Sha}: Haha. Far more likely a maximum power test. Perhaps to achieve a record, to enhance the Institute's prestige. Yet from our limited vantage, we can rule out nothing. Are you evacuating?
{Zalan}: Well. No.
{Tieran-Sha}: Then I would not dream of leaving you to face this danger alone. I should be there within four hours, weather permitting.
{Zalan}: Fair enough! Hey speaking of weather, if you see anything TOO strange on your approach, please steer clear.
{Tieran-Sha}: I will be careful, my friend.
---
Zalan isn't hungry at all, but when he thinks back, he realizes just how long it's been since he had anything substantial. This seems like a quick way to send his alchemical-high in a dark and jittery direction. As a dragon, most of Zalan's caloric needs are met by respiring mana. But he still needs food. He has some in his kitchen, but the quickest route between here to a hot meal is a dining hall two levels down and across the central axis. He doesn't often eat there, but he feels a sense of clarity more powerful than habit.
He slow-walks to the dining hall. He's feeling different. Sharp. Severe. A sword that turns every way. Oh how he wishes he'd done this at the beginning of an all-nighter rather than the end.
The hall's broad and gaudy, resplendent with decorations to awe young dragons and convince their patrons they'll endure no hardships. Trays of meat, fruit, and other food are on display. Golems glide around, waiting tables and collecting flatware, their serpent-like arms curled in a respectful bow.
At the first smell of roasting meat, Zalan's appetite comes suddenly back to life. He wonders why he ever bothers eating at his lair. The meditative ritual of cooking? The individualized recipes? The desire to be alone? The illusion of self-reliance? Fool. Here there is meat!
Soon, the dragon's eating ravenously, biting off thick mouthfuls of beef, and taking deep drinks of a bowl of watered-down nectar that leaves him gasping for breath. He has to reassert his self-control. If he overeats, the lack of sleep is really going to catch up with him, and he has more to do. He scans the room for someone who might know what's going on.
The closest thing to a familiar face is a pair of students Zalan recognizes, though not by name. They're relatively new. He usually leaves them alone.
"Everyone I talk to says we need more time. So-" says the one with the pierced frill.
"Hey I hope I'm not interrupting," Zalan interrupts.
"-I asked but she wouldn't- Oh! Can I... hhhelp you?"
"I was just wondering if you'd heard any word about the recent trouble."
"the c...
...aaaaalculus exam?"
Oh right. They're undergrads. Of course.
"I meant at the lab."
"Which lab?" asks the dragonelle with horns.
"The tower."
"Nnooo?" says frills. "I haven't really - is this about - What is this about, exactly?"
"I'm still trying to determine that," says Zalan.
"I mean why are you looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
Zalan needs to make a decision. This could be a great excuse to finish his work on the engine and sneak it in after the deadline. But it could also be a great excuse to not do that. And it's possible he has much larger concerns. Should he:
[] Throw himself back into finishing his work on the deep-contemplation engine - It's the whole reason he took that elixir. This is his last, best chance to put a stake in this godforsaken project. Additionally, this engine's prediction abilities have applications in safety validation, so it's possible that fixing it will help with the current situation. Even if it doesn't, if he just gets this done, all will be forgiven...
[] Throw himself directly into figuring out what's happening - Forget the engine, we're in panic mode! Zalan should get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. His elixir should help him maintain focus despite high stress. It wouldn't be the first time the lab has dealt with an eccentric mood. [Note: May result in Zalan having a heated discussing with security where he forgets to blink the entire time]
[] Calm Down - This is starting to sound suspiciously like somebody else's problem. Just keep an eye on his messages. Eat at the dining hall. Do a little work on the engine. Work on his mech-golem. Argue on the internexus. Take a bath and commune with the five faces of God...
Update 7: 11th Hour
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This isn't some tablet of amphetamines or a ball of hashish. It's industrial alchemy. It's altered the aspects of his body's mana, diverted the channels it runs through, and changed the character of his personal nexus.
Dragons are engines of magical energy, and this one's been sport-tuned.
Zalan hurries home to his lair and looks at himself in the mirror.
Hmm. That's new.
He's only resorted to alchemy this powerful on a few occasions, and never seen or felt its effects manifest quite like this. It's not an altogether pleasant experience, but none of this has been.
He feels like he's balanced on the edge of a sword. If he loses his balance for a moment, he'll be cut. But the more he maintains his focus, the stronger it becomes. Stronger, more pure, and better able to maintain itself. The process hungrily drains mana from his Core, but that's not a problem. His spirit is tapped into the arcology's power distribution.
He accesses the terminal module of his Crown node. This, too, feels different. Given the way the node is manifesting a burning black aura, that shouldn't surprise him, but if he can't commune with his development environment, this will all have been a waste of time.
He marches back to his workshop. He takes a meditative position, establishes synchronization with his equipment, and his fears evaporate. Soon, he forgets all about them. There's so much that doesn't matter. Zalan prunes it away, pouring more and more of that razor-sharp Focus into his project.
It's not quick. It takes time just to pick up the pieces where he left them. But he can do it.
In a trickle, and then all at once, Zalan gets it.
It's no wonder the answers would slide out between his claws every time he squeezed. Zalan had succombed to four-dimensional thinking in a system of at least six. The engine can't see the future, only glimpse at an array of possible futures to build a heuristic, and those futures were themselves influenced by interventions from planar space.
He might've still gotten it, under normal circumstances. But the "normal" readings he was using to calibrate were anything but. They already reflected second-order effects of events he didn't realize clouded the future. Events that are now unfolding, sitting inside the time horizon for the past month or more.
Perhaps some towering genius could touch the faces of God and unravel the entire tangle of error bars clouding the future, but Zalan is just a dragon with last minute panic so powerful it's manifested physically. Instead, he'll build his models based on archived information, and prune any from less than a month ago.
Excluding the present biases against the present, whispers a doubt.
"The present's abnormal," he says, hopefully not out loud but he isn't sure.
You don't actually understand what's happening.
"No. I don't think anyone does. But we soon will."
---
Spirits are magic constructs capable of independent response to stimuli. These can form naturally, gain sentience, even sapience. Or they can be manufactured and taught to think deeply in accordance with specific rules yet have no selfhood at all. The deep-contemplation engine Zalan's been working on is as far into the latter category as possible. A physical substrate of anchors, artifacts, and crystal latticework that can spring up a cluster of unfeeling spirits, to dutifully apply vast powers of analysis with neither curiosity nor doubt.
It's a fantastic tool as long as you never make a mistake.
In a way, his own thought process is feeling similar. He silenced his self-doubt to get this far. He has no room for it.
It approaches zen. Thought without thought...
---
A muffled alarm wakes Zalan up.
He fumbles to turn it off, but nothing works. His limb drifts slowly against resistance like he's still dreaming. His spirit's construct modules are like a limb that's fallen asleep, tasting like static. The non-construct parts of his spirit aren't faring much better.
He's floating in his tub. He doesn't remember anything about how he got here. Everything is wrong and far away.
With supreme effort, he attunes his thoughts with his personal attendant module...
[Autosummarization is active.]
{Kezey}: Oh, you retrained the engine. Nice! [...] Wait, are you sure you did this right? [...] I know we didn't have time for a full review but did you not pick any of this up during testing?
{Kezey}: Zalan what did you dooooo?
{Zalan}: What? What's going on?
{Kezey}: As soon as it cycled up it started producing all sorts of weird reports... and these crazy predictions any time they'd run a [Monte Carlo]!
{Zalan}: Oh.
{Kezey}: I tried to explain it hadn't been properly tested but the Augury section freaked out and now they're trying to shut down the entire you-know-what project.
{Zalan}: Oh.
{Zalan}: Actually, I don't know what because I didn't need to know, remember?
{Zalan}: Wait what do you mean "trying"?
{Kezey}: I mean!
{Kezey}: There's a lot of energy to bleed off.
{Kezey}: A LOT!
Zalan lifts his head enough for the water to drain from his ears.
"-significant possibility of significant Etheric flux. As a precautionary measure, all students proceed to shelters in a disciplined manner."
Please suggest an action.
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Update 8: Rise and Grind
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It was always intended as a multi-purpose machine...
Most of the work Zalan did was interfacing a cauldron of spells and modules together which other people designed. It's certainly not impossible it was made to do things he doesn't understand in the slightest. Technically, it's guaranteed, since it includes individual components he doesn't understand. But he's a little skeptical that he was the unwitting lynchpin of some sinister plot.
It is possible. He can't rule it out. Perhaps he's about to be scapegoated with a black mark on his honor he won't escape for centuries. But simultaneously, he's faced with the equally terrifying possibility that it's performing exactly to spec, and the reason it keeps returning signs of some massive fuckup is that someone fucked up massively.
How humiliating to contemplate Tieran-Sha being there at the moment Zalan's towers crumbled down. Would his friend brave the impropriety of invading his lair? He would if he felt Zalan's life were in danger...
"Hhhhello?" he croaks.
No answer. The place seems empty.
It's not that you ever should consume an energy field larger than your head. It's that sometimes you have to.
And anyway, he didn't consume that much. He'd have burst into flames...
(Wait. Is that what the tub is about? He sure hopes not!)
Regardless, he does regret the timing. If he'd overcharged himself earlier, while he had more time and while he was still rested...
Well, he didn't, and now his mana channels feel like a sewer.
Oh no. Not again.Multiple Suggestions said:
Shoving his face back into that is the last thing he wants to do right now. Fear of failure got him this far, but Zalan is growing more exhausted than he is scared. Telling himself that victory was at hand was how he kept pushing himself harder. Planting his flag, only to get right back to work, feels almost like a betrayal of the self. Tracking down faults in the logic of the engine's spirit might take hours. It might take days.
"hhhhh," he wheezes.
Fine. He will, at least, look at what the engine is doing.
Zalan shakily towels himself off, then drags himself once again to the workshop, leaving wet pawprints. He sips some lukewarm tea and feels it turn to ash in his mouth.
If the tea's purification effects were a person, they'd approach him with a clipboard and a hardhat, let out a sigh, and shake their head.
Embarrassingly, Zalan's having trouble interpreting the results of his own machine. It's making predictions, alright, and a lot of the graphs with extremely scary looking exponential growth curves, but aside from "not good," he has difficulty translating this into coherent physical events. And what he thinks he knows, he doesn't feel confident about. There's so much he lacks the expertise to process meaningfully.
He did a pile of research to understand this job, but that's not the same as what a specialist would know. He needs time to dig into the literature, and meanwhile the emergency alert un-silences itself every few minutes.
However, what he isn't seeing is any sign that he made a serious mistake. He can't be sure without a thorough audit, but if some module were spitting out garbage which poisoned the spirit machine's thought process, or otherwise failing to interface in some dramatic fashion, he should have seen it by now.
His work isn't wrong! Probably.
He rubs some of the sleep from his eyes, and finally notices that some of the reports that the Augury department generated using his engine are appended with comments.
-analysis broken impossible returns
-???
-Even if this engine is untrustworthy, it highlights that Portal Dynamics never should have proceeded without thorough analysis by a trustworthy one.
-look either this things busted or we should call the air guard
-Could COMPLETELY invert planar defense magick for [100 kilometers] approximate. Could lower <kQ> so far any street magician could open a worldgate. We could be dealing with a hyperspace incursion within an hour. Worse than the old days.
That last one was an hour and a half ago.
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Update 9: Absolutely No Flashbacking
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Zalan thinks back to his early-
No there is no time!!
What matters is that invaders from a thousand planes used to come from outside the world, and people here used to be snatched out of their lairs by evil wizards. During the late Mythic Age, dragons put aside their differences and built powerful magicks which capture the mana produced by the sun and use it to protect the world.
That was long enough ago that they don't bother inoculating young dragons against binding rituals anymore. Zalan feels suddenly grateful to his mom for being stubbornly old fashioned that way. Forever will he cherish the insane fever dreams.
Presently, he's certain the shelters are far more defensible than his lair and not designed to attack students. (Not even grad student interns...)
It's not his fault! All his damn machine is supposed to do is generate reports!
Really good reports! Adaptive reports! Oracular reports, even! But that's it!!
From what he's pieced together, this is the Dynamics division's fault. They're the ones running some big project ("Portal Dynamics"?) he hasn't even been allowed to look at. Zalan's deep-contemplation engine isn't directly connected to them, but once he got it working, it had enough instrumentation to glimpse the shape of the problem slouched over the future.
In fact, if he'd worked faster, it might've given enough warning to shut down their project before it got to this point.
Which means that it is his fault, actually...
That elixir is still active?
Zalan doesn't think he's in actual danger of acute injury (at least not from that), but it can't be good for his emotional state. Or heart rate. Hyperventilating a little, too. On the bright side, it should keep him as alert as possible right now.
(The fact that he lost consciousness before it fully wore off is worrying. How tired was he? How tired is he? He can only speculate.)
The dragon feels suddenly skeptical of this advice. If he'd responded to this alarm by panicking, he'd have probably reached a shelter by now.
Indeed, if he'd panicked hard enough early enough, he could have been halfway across the world and crying into a bowl of noodles while Tieran-Sha offered sagacious advice.
aaaaaa!
Zalan bounds towards the door, then pauses. He races around the lair and grabs a few personal effects he doesn't want to lose, and a few things from the kitchen, and stuffs them into his Voidspace inventory he instantiated earlier. He opens the door again and breaks into a dead run down the arcology corridors.
He takes a wrong turn, realizes he's accidentally headed towards an exit instead of a shelter, doubles back, accelerates again, and then nearly collides with a dragon wearing high-visibility gold.
"...Zalan? Are you... alright?"
oh god it's Tieran-Sha
Zalan's heart leaps at the sight of his friend, then fills up with embarrassment at the thought of how he must look.
"I'm looking for stragglers," Tieran-Sha explains. "I tried contacting you, but did not receive your reply."
His voice is calm, clear, and firm. He was in the Silverdrakes. This isn't the first time he's gone searching for people too stubborn or careless to evacuate. Zalan burns at the thought of being one of them.
"Right! I- meant to check," Zalan stammers. "I'm sorry. I've been dealing with a lot in a short amount of time."
"Well..! I suppose I can see that."
help
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