I mean, I'm pretty sure I know why they need the Freezer, it's the climate control system
Whether it's working as intended is another question entirely, but I suspect that if we break it right now this city will gradually become uninhabitable
Then again
This dimension is gradually becoming uninhabitable
Fuck, Mikhail, you are a cosmonaut and high-energy physicist, I kinda thought you'd provide us with more useful insight than "use explosives", way to enforce harmful stereotypes about Russians
The only person more qualified to give us advice is Evie, but going back to Vault 3 just to ask her the question and back is such a big waste of time
Sigh
Explosives it is
[X] Use your Mastery of Sound to destroy the machinery which causes the 'Freezer' effect.
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Reclaimers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
Also the Freezer probably doubles as the cold sink for that giant thingy the False God is using to maintain this dimension from collapsing entirely
Soooo
If we destroy it, our time limit will shorten even more dramatically
We could go back to the Reclaimers, explain the situation, make them organize the evacuation, then return and destroy the Freezer when they have everything ready.
I'm gonna go on a limb here and say it acts as a sort of air-conditioning unit, maybe? Terminus is a relatively mechanical city, after all. I feel like if we destroy it right now, it'll come back to bite us in the ass. I'm sure it's got some kind of important purpose to it, crucial to the city's continued functioning. If we destroy it and fuck everything up for everyone else here because we take too long to evacuate them... that would be a pretty awful Bad End.
Edit: Ninjaed by Raiseth, who is far more competent than I in explaining these things!
@Raiseth 's idea sounds better.
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Reclaimers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Reclaimers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
Fuck, Mikhail, you are a cosmonaut and high-energy physicist, I kinda thought you'd provide us with more useful insight than "use explosives", way to enforce harmful stereotypes about Russians
Bear in mind, he's concentrating on using his psychic powers to keep Frida and himself from freezing to death. While he's doing that, he can't really think about anything else.
Here's the vote tally so far:
Adhoc vote count started by Chandagnac on Oct 20, 2020 at 12:03 PM, finished with 10 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Use your Mastery of Sound to destroy the machinery which causes the 'Freezer' effect.
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Reclaimers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
[X] Use your Mastery of Sound to destroy the machinery which causes the 'Freezer' effect.
-[X] Maybe try scouting out the interior with echolocation first, try to look for delicate parts or something.
EDIT: Hmm. "Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night" is the sensible option, but "Use your Mastery of Sound to destroy the machinery which causes the 'Freezer' effect" is the typically Frida option. I'll give you some more time to decide which you want to go for.
Frankly, someone should probably have turned the Freezer off years ago. What is it for, anyway? It doesn't seem to be useful for anything; it's just an environmental hazard.
'It is designed to draw heat from the surrounding area and move it somewhere else,' says Grimwood's disembodied voice. He sounds rather fascinated by it. 'But for what purpose? Where does it go?'
'The Pandemonium bar and nightclub is situated somewhere above the Freezer,' you tell him. 'There is a huge block of ice in the middle of the club, but the ambient temperature is never worse than chilly.'
'But why?' he asks. 'What's the point?'
'Maybe the people who originally designed the city of Terminus included the Freezer and the Furnace so that they'd have a better chance of keeping the city alive in spite of a nuclear winter or catastrophic global warming, or something like that,' you suppose. 'The Freezer is obviously being used for something, so…'
Well, either something is going to freeze even harder, or something (someone?) will be thawing out. Personally, I thought the Freezer was the method they used to subdue the Demon King, but Mikhail seems to imply it actually is heating something up. Is it a heatsink? Is it a method by which the Furnace is powered? We've never been there either, so we have no idea what it's for and whether it's necessary for the existence of the city.
I was about to write "we are here, and there are still things not yet broken, this needs to be rectified", but... Rekindlers (yes, they are called Rekindlers) might actually know something about how the city was put together. Very well, just this once.
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Rekindlers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Rekindlers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Reclaimers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
[X] Leave as quickly as possible. Go back to Vault Three and sleep for the night.
-[X] Let the Rekindlers know about the portal out of this wasteland.
-[X] On the way out of the Freezer, take two bottled emotions and give two to Mikhail. (2 Envy and 2 Spite)
I remember all the times you were embarrassed
By the choices you've made, mistakes you've made.
I thought you were the heroine for me
And rejoiced in your inanity,
But I guess that was a phase and now it's over.
You can get addicted to a certain kind of madness
Like destroying Vault Six – yes, you killed Glitch!
I'll admit this quest does not make sense
And yet still I keep up the pretence
Because it's been a lot of fun while it's lasted.
But you didn't have to act mature,
Pretend the silliness never happened, like it was nothing.
I don't want you to change at all,
But you're acting like a stranger and that feels so rough.
I never want you to grow up,
Or start listening to your allies and then being cautious.
Why don't you just blow stuff up?
What happened to the Frida that I used to know?
What happened to the Frida that I used to know?
What happened to the Frida that I used to know?
Now and then I think of when I screwed my readers over:
I had them thinking that my quests were really deep,
But over time they got fed up with me
Because of my unreliability.
I admit that it's my own fault, though.
Still, what happened to the Frida that I used to know?
No, you didn't have to change at all,
Pretend the silliness never happened, like it was nothing.
I don't even need you now,
But you're acting like a stranger and that feels so cold.
No, you didn't have to stoop so low,
Acting like a proper adult to impress your girlfriend.
I guess that you don't hear me, though.
What happened to the Frida that I used to know?
The Frida
I used to know
The Frida
Now you're just the Frida that I used to know.
The Frida
I used to know
The Frida
Now you're just the Frida that I used to know.
I used to know,
That I used to know,
I used to know.
'With a sufficient quantity of explosives, anything's possible,' he says flippantly.
He was probably joking, but his words give you an idea. A few days ago, you used your sonic powers to destroy Vault Six, an underground bunker which had been designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse. That reckless act of destruction ended up causing you a lot of problems and got your robot friend, Glitch, temporarily killed. But what if you tried using your destructive powers for good? Could you use a thunderous blast of sound to disrupt, damage, and ultimately destroy the delicate machinery which makes up the Freezer? If so, anyone trying to escape through the extradimensional portal would only have to navigate their way around a few heaps of broken machinery, but they wouldn't be in any real danger while they were doing it. Frankly, someone should probably have turned the Freezer off years ago. What is it for, anyway? It doesn't seem to be useful for anything; it's just an environmental hazard.
You consider it carefully. There may be some downsides you haven't thought of yet. Well, you should definitely try your best not to collapse the roof on top of you or Mikhail. You don't want to end up killing any more of your friends. But you're pretty sure you know what you did wrong last time. It might be worth or shot.
Either that, or you should probably leave. There's no sense in waiting around until you gradually freeze to death.
'We should leave here,' you decide. 'I think I could use my sonic powers to destroy the Freezer, but I don't want to do that until I know that I won't be killing thousands of people by doing so. This portal is worrying, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it. Yes, it appears to be growing, but so slowly that it will take weeks or months before it starts to affect anything outside of the Freezer area. We'll leave it alone for now, but we'll do some research and figure out what to do later on.'
'Understood,' says Mikhail. The strain of keeping the two of you from freezing to death seems to have etched a permanent grimace on his face.
'Let's go,' you say, handing him two more vials of bottled emotions – Envy and Spite, this time – and take two for yourself.
The return journey seems to take much less time than your earlier journey through the Freezer in search of Vault Nine. Obviously, you know exactly where you're going, which helps. And Mikhail walks very briskly, holding your hand in his almost tightly enough to crush it, muttering under his breath. Occasionally, he shoots hateful or suspicious glances in your direction. Evidently, the liquid emotions you gave him to drink are having a detrimental effect on him, but not so much that he stops keeping you alive. You're grateful for the iron core of professionalism which prevents him from releasing you to face the harmful effects of the Freezer alone, even if that would be the spiteful thing to do. Fortunately, you are able to restrain yourself from doing anything stupid because of the negative emotions you've been drinking, at least until you get out of the danger zone.
At last, you burst out of the Freezer's main doors and back into 'the Hole', breaking into a run as you do so, grateful for the feeling of solid, non-slippery ground under your feet. Mikhail lets go of your hand and flings you away from him, gulping in great gasps of air and clutching his forehead. Nearby, Neoptolemus Grimwood materializes from the mists, looking at his hands as though surprised that he was able to call them back into being. 'The longer I remain incorporeal… I feel less and less able to become solid again,' he says shakily. 'That was too close for comfort.'
'But you're here now, so that's fine,' you say, attempting to reassure him. Then, turning to your other companion, you say, 'Are you all right, Mikhail? Got a bit of a headache?'
'Yes,' he says, barely more than a grunt.
'I appreciate your keeping me alive and non-frozen back there,' you say. 'I'd be dead several times over if not for you, so… thank you.'
'Don't mention it,' he replies. 'I have never shied away from difficult tasks before and I wasn't about to start now.'
As you begin walking back towards Vault Three, his grimace begins to fade back into a more normal expression and he becomes more animated, until he seems restlessly energetic. 'You have a map of the Bowels,' he says to you, apropos of nothing. 'May I see it?'
'Sure,' you say, taking it out of your extradimensional storage space and handing it to him. 'Any particular reason?'
'The layout of the Bowels makes no sense,' he growls. 'I'd probably have figured it out before, if I'd ever looked into it, but… never mind.'
'Over the past several hundred years, the Bowels region has been substantially added to,' Grimwood tells him. 'Hundreds of new tunnels have been dug. And I'm sure the Maze wasn't part of the original design.'
'Exactly. It was added in by something with… ugh, godlike power. Well, it stands to reason that such powers could have been used to make other changes to the layout of the Bowels. I would imagine that the Freezer and the Furnace were originally meant to be a matching pair, in a more-or-less central position – where 'the Hole' and the Maze are now, perhaps? – so that they could be used to heat up or cool down the city above, as needed.'
'But now they're on opposite sides of the city,' you point out. 'Why do you think that their position is important?'
'The machinery in the Freezer is designed to move thermal energy around. For example, if the city above was subjected to freezing temperatures, I assume that the Furnace's heat would be used to keep people warm. If the city above was too hot, the Freezer would remove some of that heat and dump it somewhere. Both machines could do their jobs more efficiently if they were in a central position and didn't have to expend extra energy to move heat to or from parts of the city which are further away.' He sighs heavily. 'Of course, this is all just speculation.'
You keep walking. As he walks, Mikhail continues to talk. 'The original designers of this city were determined to keep at least a small remnant of humanity alive. They tried to prepare for any possible eventuality. And it seems to have worked fairly well, until now. However, the machines which they intended would regulate the temperature have been deliberately sabotaged. Someone moved them out of position, for what purpose I have no idea.'
'Are you sure it was sabotage?' you ask. 'Maybe it was an accident, while they were trying to do something else. You know what these godlike beings are like, right?'
'No, I have no idea,' says Mikhail, rolling his eyes.
'The Furnace hasn't been active for hundreds of years,' says Grimwood. 'It's just dead machinery. Whatever it was originally meant to do, it doesn't matter now.'
Mikhail looks like he wants to say something else, but decides against it. Instead, he slumps, in an attitude of weary resignation. 'Maybe you're right,' he mutters.
The rest of the way back to Vault Three is uneventful. Quite a pleasant walk, actually. By this time, it's evening. You stop for a moment, considering what to do next.
What will you do? (Choose one)
[] Enlist Mikhail's aid in emptying the construction vehicle of everything you stole borrowed from the museum.
-[] Give Woe, the Sword of Sorrows, to Garrar.
