This is a hybrid character/civilization quest, though the main character is going to be a bit deadpan, hence the majority of the mechanics are about resource management and what we do with those resources. Also key to this quest is an arcanist aspect (which is exploring not just the world, but they mechanics of it), both you and the characters will be in the dark. It's also difficult and unforgiving, we may lose, and if we do, well, I have legacy mechanics in mind. But importantly this is a pretty experimental quest attempt at some non-simulationist rational mechanics, I am curious to see how they plays out.
Hey all, I wanted to try running a quest again. My last one… I tried too hard I think. I'm sorry to anyone who really liked it (maybe I will revive it someday). This one is going to be a more of a quick romp and I'm going to do my best to not be perfect. Posting schedule is late in the day Wednesday and Saturday.
With that said I do expect this to be fast paced. We might even loose pretty fast and we can start over. I am trying to be clear that this quest is meant to be brutal. When you see the games I am taking inspiration from you will see why. I hope you enjoy.
Forgotten to the long sands of time are threats that are better left buried. Threats promising destruction. Threats promising the end. Threats never meant to be invoked. Threats once feared enough to guard them and watch them and hide them. But in an endless shifting existence, over periods of millions of years, one by one, those guardians are conquered, those watchers are blinded, and those hiders forget what is to be hidden. Leaving only incomprehensible runes speaking of great violence and greater danger. And, of course, the threat.
The local hypervolume is a big place. For starters it has a whole eight—and a few partial—more dimensions than a normal volume. To say nothing of things like time. It is in this hypervolume that planes of existence manifest themselves. When the metaphysical ebbs and flows it sometimes roils, creating infinite three dimensional worlds, often planes. Like snowflakes made of looping hyper-dimensional spider silk they float on the currents, often forming in groups. It is on one of these infinite worlds, like a molecule of water at the center of a snowflake in a multi-dimensional blizzard, that a piece of the threat was hidden.
[x] Plane: Aere - Volcanic Hellplane
Aere is a hellish plane of existence. Figuratively as it is a desolate volcanic landscape, lava flows causing red radiance, ash causing red skies, with air so hot it would be impossible to breathe even if it wasn't toxic. Literally it is a plane of existence in which the metaphysical energies of evil and hate manifest and suffuse all natural matter. Devils are born here, as is deviliron formed here, demons are manifested here, as is demonsteel forged here, and so on through the hierarchy of the hellish beings and materials.
Hell Mode. Ludicrous threat escalation, don't expect a lot of survivors.
Lots of evil-meta materials (from metals to biologicals), and little else.
[ ] Plane: Bismarn - Storming Shatterscape
Bismarn is a shattered plane. Broken by a long forgotten cataclysm, its shattered land floats in chunks bathed in flowing endless storms of lightning, water, earth and wind. Found in these broken chunks of land are the ruins of an ancient civilization and their high technology, unintentionally guarded by the savage storm beasts that formed from the remaining cataclysmic energies.
Hard Mode. Moderate threat escalation, plenty of time to hang around and make stupid decisions.
Some primal-meta materials and lost technology, lots of biologicals and flows, less earths and metals.
[ ] Plane: Carthen - Barren Swarmworld
Carthen is a perpetual wasteland. Once it had vegetation, water, and what would pass for a normal ecosystem, now there is only the swarm. Whether an evolutionary fluke or a purposeful attack no one is quite sure, but the giant insectoids eat everything they can, tear at everything ordered that they see, and hibernate when they can't do anything else. Leaving a rocky, sandy, sludgy wasteland ripe for harvest, as long as one can handle the locals.
Normal Mode. Rapid threat escalation, but at least it's hard to miss what's coming over the horizon.
Lots of easy to access non-biological mundane materials, very few infused materials, nearly no biologicals besides the swarm.
We are also a piece of that threat, but we are not anywhere, though we could be everywhere. Maybe? No. Not yet, not now. We require a substrate of psychic materials to expand our power. A substrate we do not have.
Where we are now is with the hidden pieces of the threat. They repulse us, yet they are bound to us, unlike others. We are their master, we are their servant.
For so long we have repeated these thoughts. Waiting to be activated. Waiting for the call. We require a substrate of psychic materials to expand our powers. A substrate we do not have.
And now one of the pieces is disturbed. It is important to us. We must help it. We must guide it. A piece of the threat stirs…
[ ] Threat: The Paladin, The Slayer
An unparalleled warrior, a one person imperium, an empire of singular will. Slayer of mortals, demons, monsters, gods, and all that stands in their way. The thought 'violence answers all, death solves all' awakens it…
"DOOM". An additional degree of reasonableness for weapon related designs is allowed.
[Directive - Rip & Tear] - What it says on the tin, The Slayer will rip and tear, no one standing against them will survive.
[x] Threat: The Reliquist, The Destroyer
A peerless engineer, a spark to light universe consuming infernos. Designer, builder, and user of the larger annihilation (its not mutual if yours is bigger and better). The thought 'the answer is growth, the solution is more' awakens it…
"Factorio" (the deathworld variant). An additional degree of reasonableness for industry related designs is allowed.
[Directive - The Forge Must Grow] - To overcome we forge a bigger forge, exponential scaling is The Destroyer's super weapon, the coming boom needs to bust the cycle itself, the forge must grow.
[Knowledge - Production I], [Knowledge - Logistics I]
Special Component Cache
[ ] Threat: The Tribune, The Conqueror
An unbeatable commander, the unbreakable tip of the endless spear. Conquering with brilliant strategy and obsessive tactics is not enough, it's when chance becomes rote that victory is within grasp. The thought 'be better, win' awakens it…
"Starcraft". An additional degree of reasonableness for strategy related designs is allowed.
[Directive - When Language Fails] - Let us talk because I am sure that we can come to an arrangement that favors us, for war is what happens when language fails, and war has never failed The Conqueror.
[Knowledge - Strategy I], [Knowledge - Tactics I]
Special Vehicle
The piece of the threat rises from it's crypt. It is prepared for confrontation. For it was set to rest armored, armed, and aware. From the time that its crypt was disturbed, and it was prepared, only moments have passed. Already it is restless. It will be hours yet.
'We require a substrate of psychic materials to expand our power' we send. More emotion than thought. For we are yet us.
Acknowledgement. The threat—us and it—studies those who disturb the crypt.
[ ] People: Criminals and Outcasts
They are individuals, each watches the others, each has power over the others. They are depraved and outcast. They are violent. They are on the edge of desperation. They could do anything.
Murder Hobos. Might makes right, do whatever you want. The moral center of this community is somewhere below the deepest sewers, and it's ethical framework couldn't support a balloon (I'm talking about the criminals and outcasts to be clear). Diplomacy and trade are not going to be a thing—not just due to the low probability of it working, even in ideal circumstances, making it not worth discussing, but—because civilized people will default to hostile upon seeing any sizeable portion of your community. They're bored, angry, and psychotic, good luck?
Extra Threat: Hunted by the authorities of both larger civilization and nearly anyone who meets them.
[Directive - Complete Anarchy] - Our plan has completely fallen apart and we have no clue what is happening, on the other hand things are definitely happening, quite rapidly in fact, some of them are probably even good for us.
Starting Resources:
Very well armed mobile camp of raiders.
Plenty of ammunition, fuel, drugs, batteries, spare parts, and alcohol.
[x] People: Workers and Laborers
They are organized and hard working, they coordinate. They would work till they fall. They talk of family and future. They are united together.
Settlement Defense. The defense of the people comes first, the defense of this new home that so many have already bled for comes second, a better home comes third. It is going to be very difficult to move this community from here, or even expand if it would leave the settlement weak. Luckily there are a lot of nearby improvements to be made, and portal technology is a thing. The people are hard working and in it for the long hall, they have families here, they have dreams balanced on this, not one of them will falter, will you?
Extra Threat: Collectively owe significant amounts of money to larger civilization.
[Directive - We All Lift, Together] - The land we call home is hard, we all push to keep the dark from coming, strong, united, we all lift, together.
Starting Resources:
Defendable, expandable, outpost filled with industry.
Large stocks of food, water, and medical supplies, lots of unrefined ore.
[ ] People: Nobles, Explorers and Scholars
They are fractured. They have a leader no one respects. Each fractured piece has a leader they do respect. They have conflicting goals.
Expedition Adventure. Everyone has a reason to plane dive to one of the most inhospitable places in the local volume, massive profits, unique research opportunities, rare artifacts worth a fortune, lost knowledge, and of course parental rebellion. No one rebels quite like a prince, no expense was spared. Infamous explorers were quickly hired, accompaniment was hastily assembled, a detachment of scholars forced their way into it. Mercenary companies, royal retainers, graduate students, what could possibly go wrong?
Extra Threat: Internal threats abound from every direction, though few are aware of more than one of them.
[Directive - Spared No Expense] - Don't worry folks, everything is going to plan, this here is an absolutely spectacular design, still years from being ready for market, a unique master crafted prototype, we spared no expense.
Starting Resources:
Heavily armored convoy of specialist machines and luxury vehicles.
Modest stocks of everything important, notable stocks of plenty that isn't.
They would do for now. We would need more soon. For our enemy must burn. The threat will be evoked.
Voting is closed.
Brief mechanics explanation for the preceding choices (so you can skip the Mechanics post for now after reading the below, unless you are really interested).
Resources - everything above in italics will be a listed resource of some kind, what that is, and how it's listed will depend on the choices above.
Directives - are a long cooldown auto win button for any decision. They are also a "virtue" that leads to minor advancement (in addition to slightly faster cooldowns) if adhered to.
Knowledge - these are basically skills. Most knowledge gains will be by direct player control, this bonus from the choice of Threat above is not in anyway limiting, just a starting bonus.
"degree of reasonableness" - this will come up in future interaction, but this basically means how far I will let players push that interaction in their designs.
I do plan for there be a lot of player interaction outside of votes. For now feel free to ask a question or two about stuff, and if they are reasonable in world questions (asking the obvious questions like "what are we actually?" are just going to be ignored), I'll answer them and try to work some of them into one of the next chapters.
Posting schedule is late in the day Wednesday and Saturday. Votes close late in the day Friday and Monday (respectively). This gives me a day off to write, and two days while working to write; as well as making the voting periods two days (at least 36 hours). My post length goal is more than 3k words (and as a guess probably less than 5k).
Mechanics
This is a hybrid character/civilization quest hence the majority of the mechanics are about resource management and what we do with those resources. Also key to this quest is an arcanist aspect (which is exploring not just the world, but the mechanics of it), both you and the characters will be in the dark. It's also difficult and unforgiving, we may lose, and if we do, well, I have legacy mechanics in mind. But importantly this is a pretty experimental quest attempt at some non-simulationist rational mechanics, the basics of which I describe below.
Decisions. The primary method of interaction, it's a quest, you vote on what we do. With that said, I am going to be avoiding expansive voting options. I'll be presenting pretty restricted sets of possible options for us to take, the choices will be me assembling solutions from the resources and [REDACTED] we have available. How much information will be available will depend on [REDACTED], but the primary and possible consequences will be spelled out in each vote option. I'm going to try and avoid surprises, when we loose we should see it coming like a freight train a few posts ahead of time. Sometimes there will be more than one choice in a post, I will try to avoid this, but when it happens I will strive to make them uncoupled—which is to say, I deeply dislike plan voting, please just vote for what you want on each piece individually. Finally, I am not perfect—which is to say, every one of these decisions will always allow a form of write in, tell me when I missed something and it will be added to the list of possible options, or I'll tell you why it's not viable or rejected.
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
Advancement. The last method of interaction, this is a form of research system. This is an (effectively) in-world advancement mechanic, it will offer a large list of choices, and the vote will be made over multiple posting periods. For which I will be using approval voting (for reference, the basics of strategic voting for approval voting is: always vote for your favorite, avoid voting for moderate choices). The advancement mechanic will have very little direct in world consequences. Advancement will mainly effect [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and the resolution system.
Advancement comes in two main forms. Knowledge is the primary form of advancement and presents as the improved ability to [REDACTED] as well as access to the other forms of advancement. [REDACTED].
Directives are get out of jail free cards for decisions. They will nearly always be applicable to most challenges, and they will always succeed for maximum possible rewards (as is realistically possible e.g. if reward A and B are exclusive due to how the universe works, only one will be granted). The downside of course is that then you don't have them, restoring a directive primarily takes time. This is a thematic part of the quest, playing to a directive's strength in other decisions will often grant hidden rewards, the least of which is recharging the directive more quickly.
Resolution System. I am not going to say much about this, but whenever I need to know what happens in the universe I will be using it. It will primarily determine the addition and removal of resources, through degrees of success and failure dictating the outcome of specific interactions involved in the larger scene. Degrees of success and failure will be determined based on interactions between the runes, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. For example (though this is not the frequency nor the specificity with which I would use the system):
The Paladin came upon a bulky lumbering demon. It was grotesque, perhaps it had once possessed a deadly visage, but currently it had languished. Likely in captivity, for it's arms had been replaced with sleek energy cannons. The Paladin engaged with his assault rifle.
[5: ~S, +2]
To little effect. It's layers of decrepit demon flesh took the bullets, blood barely spilled. Faster than The Paladin expected the demon charged, raising it's arms to fire dangerous green beams of energy as it did. The Paladin faltered, the beams glancing off their shell, cutting into the nearby rock and leaving molten trails.
In that brief moment the demon had arrived, it was already throwing a punch at The Paladin, the cannon firing as it did. The Paladin's instincts cut in, dropping their rifle, they drew their sword, cutting upwards across the demon's wrist. The peerless sword severed the limb, which promptly exploded as the cannon overloaded, throwing the two combatants apart.
[6: &4]
The Palandin's armor was damaged, and they were without their rifle...
All that I will say is that the first number behind a colon (`5` and `6`) is the optional target difficulty, after modifiers, and that runes are separated by commas (so there are three here `~S`, `+2`, and `&4`). These have meanings, there is a system, and discovering that is part of playing.
[REDACTED]
Everything else is pretty freeform and "learn as you go" (which is to say intentionally obfuscated).
For every power rank increase The Threat gains the capability to expand another rank of knowledge. Below are the possible knowledge choices. By default there are 16 basic ones which go up to 5 ranks.
Some notes on voting. It's important to keep the [Knowledge] tag on the voting line. You can put these votes in spoilers if you want, my tool will still count them. I will always use the latest knowledge vote post of each person at the time of knowledge uptake. As it is approval voting you can vote for as many as you want (the strategic voting methodology for approval voting is to always vote for the stuff you want most, and avoid voting for things you would be merely alright with but that you suspect will be popular moderate choices; relatedly this means you can still vote for "wacky" unpopular choices to signal your wanting to explore that way, or vote for the moderate choices anyway).
Weaponry - Theory, design, and usage of offensive technology.
[ ] [Knowledge] Weaponry I
[ ] [Knowledge] Weaponry II
[ ] [Knowledge] Weaponry III
[ ] [Knowledge] Weaponry \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Weaponry V
Shielding - Theory, design, and usage of defensive technology
[ ] [Knowledge] Shielding I
[ ] [Knowledge] Shielding II
[ ] [Knowledge] Shielding III
[ ] [Knowledge] Shielding \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Shielding V
Production - Theory and design of refining, manufacturing and assembly processes.
[ ] [Knowledge] Production I
[ ] [Knowledge] Production II
[ ] [Knowledge] Production III
[ ] [Knowledge] Production \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Production V
Logistics - Theory and design of transportation, organizing, and pipelining processes.
[ ] [Knowledge] Logistics I
[ ] [Knowledge] Logistics II
[ ] [Knowledge] Logistics III
[ ] [Knowledge] Logistics \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Logistics V
Strategy - Theory, design, execution, and manipulation of loose goal-oriented situational plans (often over long periods).
[ ] [Knowledge] Strategy I
[ ] [Knowledge] Strategy II
[ ] [Knowledge] Strategy III
[ ] [Knowledge] Strategy \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Strategy V
Tactics - Theory, design, execution, and manipulation of structured concrete action plans (often over short time periods).
[ ] [Knowledge] Tactics I
[ ] [Knowledge] Tactics II
[ ] [Knowledge] Tactics III
[ ] [Knowledge] Tactics \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Tactics V
Civology - Theory, design, execution, and manipulation of explicit material-value systems of sapient interaction (Economics, Civics).
[ ] [Knowledge] Civology I
[ ] [Knowledge] Civology II
[ ] [Knowledge] Civology III
[ ] [Knowledge] Civology \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Civology V
Politory - Theory, design, execution, and manipulation of intuitive perceptual-understanding modes of sapient interaction (Religion, Politics).
[ ] [Knowledge] Politory I
[ ] [Knowledge] Politory II
[ ] [Knowledge] Politory III
[ ] [Knowledge] Politory \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Politory V
Meta Hate - Theory, design, and usage of hate metaphysical materials, mechanisms, and machinery.
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Hate I
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Hate II
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Hate III
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Hate \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Hate V
Meta Holy - Theory, design, and usage of holy metaphysical materials, mechanisms, and machinery.
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Holy I
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Holy II
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Holy III
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Holy \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Holy V
Meta Cosmic - Theory, design, and usage of cosmic metaphysical materials, mechanisms, and machinery.
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Cosmic I
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Cosmic II
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Cosmic III
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Cosmic \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Cosmic V
Meta Primal - Theory, design, and usage of primal metaphysical materials, mechanisms, and machinery.
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Primal I
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Primal II
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Primal III
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Primal \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Meta Primal V
Physics - Theory, design, and usage of mundane mechanisms, super-sized machinery, and lesser known properties of reality.
[ ] [Knowledge] Physics I
[ ] [Knowledge] Physics II
[ ] [Knowledge] Physics III
[ ] [Knowledge] Physics \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Physics V
Computation - Theory, design, and usage of computational mechanisms, automated machinery, and information networks.
[ ] [Knowledge] Computation I
[ ] [Knowledge] Computation II
[ ] [Knowledge] Computation III
[ ] [Knowledge] Computation \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Computation V
Biology - Theory, design, and usage of living mechanisms, and machinery like plants, animals, monsters, and sapients.
[ ] [Knowledge] Biology I
[ ] [Knowledge] Biology II
[ ] [Knowledge] Biology III
[ ] [Knowledge] Biology \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Biology V
Hyperology - Theory, design, and usage of hyperdimensional mechanisms, cross planar mechanisms, and planar geology and mechanisms.
[ ] [Knowledge] Hyperology I
[ ] [Knowledge] Hyperology II
[ ] [Knowledge] Hyperology III
[ ] [Knowledge] Hyperology \II/
[ ] [Knowledge] Hyperology V
Genevieve Howard was watching over the manic thermal lancing of this mystery wall with a frown. She was making sure that no one got themselves killed by being idiots. Mostly a normal day for her, as that was her role as shift boss, a role she often agreed to. The others appreciated her capability in spotting problems early, and her prudence in not harping on them.
Her normal serenity was being tried today.
They'd sealed the site of course, there was no telling what was on the other side of this wall of pure demonsteel. While there might be limits to what could be on the other side of it given the scans, a liquid would still be a problem for the rest of this section of the mine. When this entire area had been scanned back during the founding it had just showed a big boulder here. Instead the team drilling a tunnel by it had gotten a hit for deviliron and found this mystery wall of demonsteel.
Demonsteel was rarely naturally forming, especially at quantities of this magnitude, let alone in a pure form. This was probably worked, a detail that Genevieve thought they had been willing to skip over pretty quickly. The current theory that it was some sort of buried hypership making people more interested in hurrying to uncover the buried treasure. A quick meeting had been called and everyone had agreed to cutting it open.
People had rushed, practically fallen over each other, to work on something interesting. Genevieve knew it was because people were bored. All there was to do around here was work, drink, work, and talk. That and some narcotics that she was sure some people were skimming. Part of the problem was that there wasn't even a proper place to talk or drink. The settlement was still pretty rough hewn, everyone was still living in first pass housing—it didn't help that the local building material, disgustone, had metaphysical properties that often caused people to feel disgusted with it. For all that they had been here for three years, it barely felt lived in.
That rush to escape boredom lead of course to the problems that Genevieve was currently dealing with. For starters there were at least four more people here than should be for a site this size. Also sealing the tunnel here from the work shaft had been sloppy and quickly done. And also there were fewer lights in here than there probably should be, she would swear that she was seeing things, little red shapes kept popping up on the demonsteel wall at the edges of her vision. It was kind of creepy actually.
But it was fine. She knew she was a stickler for things. She understood people wanted something exciting to do. She was aware that one reason she was made shift boss so often was because she knew when to care about problems. And right now this lancing operation was fine.
What was not fine was the fact that people were using the mining rigs—powered partial exosuits that went over the soft environment suits everyone was wearing—in either direction around the wall. That was problematic because it meant there were a lot of people down here working in a lot of different directions. The wall definitely had a curve, enough to fit in the boulder shape it had scanned as, and the plan was to go all the way around it to make sure the scan wasn't wildly inaccurate.
Genevieve had tried to argue for doing one thing at a time, but people were too enthusiastic. Which meant she was currently watching two drilling teams, their mucking teams, and the thermal lancing team.
Which was probably why she missed the banging sound. Armund was swapping the lance, and was just commenting on the banging sound probably being thermal flexing, when the mostly lanced section of demonsteel popped out. And out of the new hole limberly followed a man in a dark green hardsuit with a pitch black visor.
Genevieve was still trying to process what she was seeing, the lancing team and one of the mucking teams had also frozen at the man's appearance. He bounced to his feet and patted Armund on the shoulder as he walked past the stunned man towards one of the mining rig teams.
'we have acquired a psychic substrate… we are beginning language acquisition… we have obtained limited communication ability…'
Genevieve just couldn't quite understand. She was pretty sure mine fumes were more likely than… nope she was still on a breather unit like every one here. There weren't any people around here? Especially living a kilometers under ground? The man walked with a confidence that confused her even further, like this was just a normal experience for him.
Reaching the mining team the man used his knuckles to rap the back of Jorgen's shoulder—one of the mining rig operators. And when Jorgen looked back the mystery man made the sign for cut power.
'we have acquired a psychic substrate… we now have a power ranking of 1… we can expand new knowledge…'
Jorgen started upon seeing the mystery figure, he yelled "What the fuck!" as he jumped out of the mining rig and began running.
That broke the rest of the crew, most of them started running for it, dropping their tools, as if a general danger alarm had sounded.
Genevieve had always been calm under pressure, cold blooded some would call her, but she had always viewed her self as stuck in her own head. This case was not any different. She was simply unable to let the panic and terror she was feeling escape as this hardsuited man approached her, extending an arm in greeting.
Instinct took over and she shook it, "Genevieve Howard, shift boss, and you?" she managed.
'we have acquired a psychic substrate… we have completed language acquisition…'
"The Reliquist. Advising against further excavation in this area," the voice was clipped and functional, it was softer and higher pitch than she had expected, delivered in a precise tone without hesitation.
"Understood. The reasons for the advisory?" Genevieve asked as if he were any other miner, as if it was a totally rational request from a man who had just appeared out of a tube buried more than two kilometers under the surface of a hellworld—and whose title apparently included a 'the'.
The figure, The Reliquist, tilted his head as if considering how best to reply to that, and after a moment he said, "buried in this area, among other volatile substances, are 120 cubic meters of purified plastic smite."
Genevieve nodded, plastic smite was dangerous stuff, even if it was generally stable a mining rig might set it off, and a couple centimeter stick was enough to… wait. Cubic meters that had to be a mistake, and who the hell measured explosives by volume? Just as if another miner had made that mistake, one worth joking about, she ran the estimates in her head anyway, like how… how that would be roughly equivalent to 3 gigatons of basic mundane explosives.
The Reliquist had already returned to the hole in the metal wall, as thought the conversation were complete. Launching himself through it in a strangely fluid movement that involved falling back first, and then shoving himself off the ground with his arms to go vaulting legs first through the hole.
Genevieve wondered if he would be returning, or if he just lived there. She was no longer feeling like any of this absurd situation was joke worthy.
---
The Destroyer returned to their crypt, and we followed them with our attention, for we had no where else to devote our attentions. Physical contact was enough to hijack a mind's metaphysical psychic capabilities to support ourselves and expand our power. But it was not enough to have complete vision and control over the hijacked mind, not yet anyway. Or at least not without destroying the mind in question, which would cause social problems. Of course those social problems might happen anyway, since there were also those mortals capable of perceiving such hijackings, but they were not common.
We also perceived things differently. When The Destroyer, a locus of our attention, was near people we could achieve a muddied understanding of what those people were thinking. But within this protected crypt we were unable to do more than vaguely perceive them. And so we focused the majority of our attention on what we could.
The Destroyer had decided to leave their peerless weapon behind. None of the laborers had posed a threat to likes of them, with or without the deceptive mountain cleaving tool. The weapon presented as a simple pickaxe, obviously of great quality, but it was also indiscernibly beyond understanding. Except by one such as ourselves. And we did not have the capability to attempt it at the moment. More within our grasp was the understanding that without the peerless weapon The Destroyer could appear more peaceful, a simple tactic we were only grasping now that we had expanded our power. Now that first impressions had been made, they replaced the tool upon their back.
The Destroyer turned now to our minor relics. The tools we were to utilize in service of carrying out the threat. Most were beyond saving, time was harsh even to beings as powerful as ourselves, but some had survived. Two to be specific.
The first was a fist sized sphere, a portable star (blue), capable of outputting steady energy in many forms. It would last until the star bound inside of it collapsed, which was still a few billion years off. It was an inconvenient thing, the area of the output surface made it difficult to extract useful amounts of energy, even a sizeable percentage of the light output would turn any nearby materials into plasmas, and the omnidirectional output made it a difficult weapon at those energy levels. These inconveniences alone would be enough to limit it to use as a personal energy source. But it also had a side effect, except when it was in hibernation, the binding to the star was so strong that it slowly destabilized the hyper volume containing the local planar space. Put simply, it could not be used in the same place for too long, or things would get problematic. The Destroyer saw this as a welcome distraction, they could just avoid walking across the same places, just with a trick of their memory.
The second was a bundle of thin rods. The rods were themselves tightly woven bundles of even thinner strands. Each thin strand was a stack of twenty thousand psionic localizers. Each psionic localizer, once dispersed, was like a snowflake or fleck of ash, they could track the position of each other and sense some metaphysical materials and energies, psionics chief among them. Their simple locomotive force combined with their basic networking and computational elements meant that they could be used as an extremely detailed real time imaging tool. Or the basis of more complex weapons. The main limitation was that they weren't exactly reusable or recoverable, and they would die out over time due to environmental factors.
The Destroyer had gathered everything of value in this part of the crypt. We exited, it was time to recover the rest.
---
Troy Stevens watched the suited figure swing their pickaxe. He was waiting for any justification that would allow him to eliminate the threat to Defiant.
Troy often had to dispense justice himself. Nothing too serious in a settlement like this, but he would not allow this place to fail due to an individual's problems. Sometimes people got too drunk and fights broke out and he made sure they ended up doing scut work for a week. Others had tried to sell narcotics, community property, to others, that had involved some intimidation all around. His justice had never had to escalate to violence, but then the people of Defiant were his people, and this suited figure was a stranger. And he had always been prepared for violence if it was required.
So far though the suited figure appeared like it would fit in well around here given its focus on its task. Each strike of the pickaxe shattered an entire layer of the ground, in a circle around the impact point, but it was just a few centimeters deep all around. Obviously a meta-tool of somekind. And then the figure would use the head of the tool to scrape away the gravel, setting it to the side near where the mucking teams had been working, before repeating the process. It obviously had a destination in mind, and it had a 4 meter deep ramp already.
It was extremely good time, better than a mining rig even, given it had been maybe 20 minutes since the figure had first appeared. Jorgen had ran into Warehouse 1—the unofficial town center—covered in sweat and talking about an alien released from their hypership that had appeared in the mining tunnels. Others quickly followed and began explaining the story in detail. Troy had not waited to listen past the location, he had grabbed his shotgun—for it was never far—and quickly descended.
Now half the settlement, basically everyone without something important to do, was here watching from the top of the ramp. Including, like Troy, most of the militia. But it was also getting out of hand despite Gene's best efforts. Even Geoff, the entitled layabout and, Ilva, one of the settlement's teens, were here pestering the figure with questions.
Troy didn't like that the figure seemed so blithely uncaring.
"You sure ya don't want help with that?" asked Armund, "we gots plenty of tools."
"I do not," said the figure in that near monotone bored voice, "this tool is sufficient for cleaving the universe."
As normal for the answers the figure gave that elicited a slight nervous chuckle from those present. Troy knew they thought the person was a pompous clown, or at least acting one. He however saw the danger in delusions, and the person was obviously suffering from them. It was a bad influence.
"Weird question, are you a guy or gal?" asked Ilva, most of her previous questions had been trying to pry a name out of the figure, and Troy felt the tension rise among the workers, in some areas of the hypervolume a question like that would be fighting words.
Troy merely thought, 'give me an excuse asshole'.
"Neither. There is no gender that can describe the purpose for which I was forged, and that I continue to serve."
'Case in point with the delusional answers' thought Troy, as another round of nervous chuckles escaped.
The figure had reached another demonsteel wall, Troy saw Armund about to offer his thermal lance when the figure simply swung the pickaxe at the wall. It resounded with an odd ringing sound, and to the surprise of everyone a chunk of the steel cleaved off. That wasn't how pickaxes worked.
The figure tilted its head, as if they had expected more, and then repeated the action two more times until there was a door way sized hole in the wall.
Through which it stepped.
---
The Destroyer knew that we must hurry. A presence such as ours on Aere—assuming that was where we still were—would draw devils like honey. While lesser demons would probably flee, the greater ones would have already gathered their strength and begun their approach. We were beginning to understand just how much danger we were in. We were meant to be awoken by a professional army, prepared to be pledged into our service. Not a group of civilian miners. We would have to push ourselves to survive.
Before we could do that, we would have to acquire our major relics. There were two kinds stored in this larger chamber, along with some sundries.
The first were the four supra meta-engines, endlessly useful devices, that turned nearly any metamaterial fuel into locomotion. Normally such an endeavor would require a specialized engine not just for each kind of fuel, but for each of the meta-variants. The five meter long supras could not just effectively, but efficiently run off of anything fuel like without any chance of clogging or jamming. The major downside was that their exhausts, while always mundane, were consistently dangerous in some form. Of little concern to The Destroyer's hardsuit, but most people didn't appreciate radioactive, caustic, toxic, or all of the above, materials being dumped out of their engines.
The second were the deepwroughting apocalypse forges, to The Destroyer's mind, beautiful devices. They could be adjusted to any hotter temperature or higher pressure conceivable, given enough time of course. Inside of them metals could be forged into any shape or form. They had to purified metals, if there were too many earthly impurities then the forges would have to be cleaned. An arduous process that started with bringing them down in temperature and pressure before bringing them back up.
We would have to widen the door, both of these relics, even packed as they were, were over a meter wide (and tall). As were the hyper-sensors. Thankfully the larger obelisk nodes had been buried elsewhere—with the explosives, the plastic smite, surrounding them.
'we sense a shift in the crowd', we believed the leader was here, a structural shift towards a point of focus had occurred in the thinking of the crowd outside.
The Destroyer, confident that the relics were in pristine condition, exited the room and stood at the bottom of the ramp. At the top of it was the obvious chief of their settlement. Everyone was deflecting to him. The laborers and the shift boss stood behind him. To The Destroyer's sides, above us at the sides of the ramp, stood some of their armed members.
We could no longer just ignore them. We needed them, or at least their psychic substrates, as a basis for our power. There was a coming threat with which they could assist us with, but would also threaten them. It was time for us to decide how to approach this.
Code:
= WORLD
+ Threats
- Devil Swarm, Imminent (<5 days).
- Greater Demons, 15-25 days.
- Purpose, ?.
= THE THREAT
+ Level 0 Coherence
+ Rank 1 Power (1 unexpanded)
- Production I
- Logistics I
+ The Destroyer (100%)
- peerless pickaxe
+ components
- 12.00 plastic-smite
- 1.0 (10x) obelisk-nodes
- 0.8 (8x) hyper-sensors
+ relics
- equipment: 1 portable sun (blue)
- 0.1000 psionic-localizers
- 4 supra-meta-engines
- 20 (2x) deep-apocalypse-forges
[ ] Subjugate
The obvious option was to simply take control. Install ourselves as their leadership and force them to obey our commands. They would not be as helpful as they might otherwise be, but nor would they be getting in our way as often—except if they attempted mutiny. It would also ensure a quick acquisition of their psychic substrates. Though that benefit was dubious as it was likely that many would perish, along with the destruction of useful equipment they might have. It was difficult to rule, even as a one person army.
The Destroyer would have to do it with just a pickaxe, of course that was more than enough.
Designs:
Strategy: (Fragmented 0) Subjugate
Loadout: (Fragmented 0) Makeshift
Consequences:
Probable: Extreme population loss, likely 20%-50%.
Probable: Learn information about the settlement.
High Chance: Population becomes 'subjugated' (their benefits and maluses are muted).
Medium Chance: Significant loss of equipment and military forces.
Low Chance: Greater than 50% population loss.
Low Chance: Near 0% population loss.
Possible: Outside threats take advantage.
Possible: Total Failure.
Time Estimate: 1-3 Days (settlement work interrupted).
Progression Estimate: 4-5 power ranks.
[ ] Negotiate
[ ] Negotiate (We All Lift, Together)
The obvious inverse of that choice would be to negotiate with these people. To offer our help and what we know, specifically about the coming attacks. In return we would be able to learn what they have to offer and take full advantage of it. There was assuredly common ground there. And it would allow us the best opportunity to expand our power. For example, they likely already have ores that they weren't able to process that we would be able to, or they would know where to find them.
With us warning of the imminent attack, and offering our assistance, it's likely that The Destroyer would be able to demonstrate their combat abilities to these people. This would likely gain us favorable dealings.
However we would be unable to aggressively prepare or advance our power base as we should, doing so would make it hard for them to trust us, and hence our ability to quickly negotiate for a deal beneficial to ourselves. Time was of the essence, even though with this path much of our valuable time would be unused, there should be long term savings. With some luck we could even attempt to get a forge up and running when not negotiating.
Designs:
Strategy: (Fragmented 0) Negotiate
Consequences:
Probable: Learn information about the settlement and the surrounding area.
High Chance: Able to do as we please without confrontation in the future.
High Chance: Coordinated response to the coming devil attack.
High Chance: An avenue of trade for, or access to, their resources.
Medium Chance: Gain assistance with our projects in the future.
Low Chance: Assembling and on-lining one deepwroughting apocalypse forge.
Possible: Total Failure.
Time Estimate: 1-3 Days
Progression Estimate: 2-5 power ranks.
[ ] Bootstrap
[ ] Bootstrap (The Forge Must Grow)
We could also simply skip most negotiations and begin bootstrapping right now. They can talk to us as we work, if they care. We could do it right here, or somewhere nearby that they are willing to have us. We do have to be near them of course, at least until we can build a better psychic substrate, but a few kilometers would be fine.
Of course this would mean we couldn't warn them of the coming devil attack without social complications, like being rightly blamed for it. They would have to deal with it themselves. Though we assumed that they likely had some sort of defenses, and we would of course help if they asked, it would still be problematic if they get wiped out.
The bootstrap would be straight forward, a refinery for the materials we mine, and a workshop to begin basic production. The portable star would give us enough energy to run it, which is a reason they would have to come to us, the system could only run when we were nearby managing the star. Maybe we could even get one of the relic forges online, time depending.
Designs:
Strategy: (Fragmented 1) Bootstrap
Layout: (Fragmented 2) Refinery
Layout: (Fragmented 1) Workshop
Consequences:
Probable: Creation of a refinery and a workshop.
Probable: Mining for sufficient ores to begin smelting.
Medium Chance: Partially automating the refinery.
Medium Chance: Learning some information about the local settlement.
Medium Chance: Settlement takes serious damage and casualties from the coming devil swarm.
Low Chance: People taking issue with us and disrupting our work.
Low Chance: Assembling and on-lining one deepwroughting apocalypse forge.
Possible: Total Failure.
Time Estimate: 1-7 Days
Progression Estimate: 1-4 power ranks.
[ ] Scout
We could also make fast negotiations to leave most of our supplies here—booby-trapped—and be allowed out to the surface to fine a suitable location for us to set up our own base of operations. Again, such a location would have to be near them until we could establish our own substrate.
This would require us to survey the nearby area. While very dangerous on a hellplane like Aere, this would provide us with the best site possible for our base, as well as a better understanding of where nearby resources are. This plan was probably a bad ideas as we would also loose the protection of the settlement (and being under ground) as well as reducing the opportunity they provided for more power advancement.
Designs:
Strategy: (Fragmented 0) Survey
Loadout: (Fragmented 0) Makeshift
Consequences:
Probable: Learn detailed information about the surrounding area and some about the settlement.
Probable: Direct confrontation with devil swarm.
High Chance: The Destroyer is wounded.
Medium Chance: An increase of relations with the community due to our leaving them alone and trading information.
Medium Chance: Establishing a makeshift base in an ideal location.
Low Chance: People taking issue with us and disrupting our work.
Low Chance: Settlement takes serious damage and casualties from the coming devil swarm.
Low Chance: Find something of direct use.
Low Chance: Find other people to use as a psychic substrate.
Sorry for the late update. Not only did I had to go program more mechanics than I had originally expected (due to actually writing this all out for once), but my state just entered COVID lock down again (which was a whole thing to change plans for), and I had a pretty terrible migraine on Sunday. I'll be keeping this vote open until Wednesday (if not later).
A note on vote tallies and directives. The directives are on each choice that they are used to enhance. But I tally the choice of option (e.g. both bootstraps count as the same kind of choice) independently from the directive use. Remember that directives have a cooldown.
A note on knowledge votes. These are running approval votes, I count each user's most recent post of all time that contains any knowledge votes every time I resolve it. This is why every level of the knowledge is independently listed. Remember you can vote multiple times, even for things we can't get yet. Feel free to skip the knowledge vote, or wait to vote on it later. As it's a persistent vote that lasts for in world time, when I resolve it is independent of the primary decisions.
If you read my posts right after I post them, it's worth knowing that I still do some last minute hour editing for a while afterwords. Refreshing once you are done reading before studying the options in detail will probably be good with me. In this case I screwed up the copy-pasta for the Scout option.
