Amidst the Fire
The complex that houses the multi-state creatures self-identifying as Erulians (and other-identifying as freakish monster brains with a spine tail secretly made of fire?) is built like a snowflake or similar recursive fractal structure.
The central room is host to a terrible fungus that has fed on the energies of the machines burrowed into the substrates of reality underneath Starloscet’s tomb. The Erulians are never troubled by the fungus becuase they transit almost always in their fiery forms, which seem to be part of some other dimensions of being that are not affected by physical matter – perhaps the notorious 11th String, impervious to the bosons that create matter as we interact with in observable reality.
You have been offered and counteroffered, and stuck into a shitty cobble-down ancient networking pit that barely hums much less energizes a network. It connects to a deeper network in which, apparently, Hasver has been placed temporarily in some digitized form.
What will you do to get the Impossible Blade, claimed by the Erulians… or will you?
The Chambers of the Flame
- The Transept : [Center] the entry chamber and a line of defense for the Erulians. This room is full of a terrible fungus that has the genetic secret to convert living flesh to fungal volume. None of the Erulians claim mastery over the Transept; but the Tech offered you an unguent to protect you from the fungual transmissions.
- The Chapel : [North] a place of high arches, marble, an embedded metallic compass of directions, the province of the Erulian called The Devotee
- The MainFrame : [East] massive structures extruded from the floor, ceiling, and walls, brilliant structures of synth and some unknown material, gleaming, burning, emitting telltale signs of computation. Somewhere in there, Hasver is alive. Domain: The Master
- Respite : [South] a room of strange foam-synth walls, floor, ceiling, marked with rounded bumps. Such is the silence of the place you can hear the blood burning and pumping in your ears, heart, head, veins. Domain: The Tech
- Post : [West] Outside the fungus room, The Watcher keeps dominion over the chambers of the Erulians.
Overview
There see to be somewhere between 8 and 12 Erulians.
The Erulians are able to assume a form (a natural form?) that burns with the energy of being. It seems to be immune to physical structures.
They have another form that looks like a brain with a whip-like appendage. It has terrible strength and capacity as part of a true physicality.
Politics
So, as far as things stand, multiple assassination plots and service plots have been offered you.
- The Master: Has offered you the release of Hasver and your return to the surface if you depart forthwith through a deeper exit back to the edges of the Pit. The Master is always attended by 2 devotees. The Master seems to believe that the Tech is problematic for Erulian culture.
- The Devotee: Has offered you the return of Hasver and the Impossible Blade that the Erulians took from the grave of Starloscet if you kill The Master
- The Watcher: has offered you the de-digitalization of Hasver and access to some of the riches of the Erulians in return for you leaving the Tomb now. The Watcher has 2 other Erulians with it at all times.
- The Tech: seems simultaneously aware of the many Erulian stratagems and inured from them.
Numenera
- The Transept : [Center] the steam bursts of the entry chamber are nothign to be trifled with, and even the Erulians avoid it.
- The Chapel : [North] there is a measurable intensity and presence in the Chapel which could be harnessed to hide humans in its magnanimity.
- The MainFrame : [East] the bizarre structures of the Mainframe have a palpable network intensity which probably could be harnessed for some kind of transport with the help of embedded Hasver if he could be reached.
- Respite : [South] The Tech uses the impossible Blade in this room to carve tiny pieces out of silence in service to the Devotee and the Master.
- Post : [West] There are hidden sonic weapons in the Post, which the Watcher has hinted at being turned against the party if they disturb the peace of the Erulians. The Respite might be proof against them.
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Shambo spends a time recovering in the silence of Respite. He meditates, naps, and observes The Tech’s use of the impossible blade. From The Tech he learns of The Devotee’s grudge against The Master, and of the stash of Sonic Weapons.
Shambo’s likeliest course of action is to try to acquire control of at least some of the sonic weapons and use them to assasinste The Master in a double-or-nothing gambit to rescue both Hasver and what remains of their mission.
how would Shambo go about getting the Sonic Weapons? Flattery? Trade? Conspiracy?
Shambo would probably attempt trade with The Watcher, assuming Shambo has anything remotely of interest to it.
He is curious as to how, if at all The Watcher’s and The Master’s interests align. They offer similar deals, and seem to share the goal of getting the party out of the tomb as soon as possible.
Okay, here is the Gambit.
After he recovers in the Respite and learning of the political sittuation, Shambo shmoozes with The Master, and agrees to end The Devotee’s treason, and eliminate The Tech’s heresy, in exchange for knowledge of the erulian’s true purpose in the tomb.
Shambo requests that Hasver be released, and offers Takir (maybe since Daniel won’t be there anyway?) or Burris Han in exchange, saying that Hasver’s specialites and possession of a powerful Numenera artifact that would be useful against the other Erulians. Also, he requests to borrow some sonic weapons.
Then, the party (sans Burris) takes the impossible blade from the tech by force, destroys The Devotee and then flees with the blade.
If that is too contrived then obviously The Devotees offer is the best. Of course, the “Too good to be true” aspect is exactly why Shambo doesn’t trust it.
TAKIR SAYS:
Takir will attempt to forge some sort of scholarly rapport with the Tech. If he can get his toe through the conversational door he’ll openly attempt to learn as much about the blade as possible, and more subtly attempt to suss out how the Tech feels about his fellow brainthings. Failing that, or as time allows, he’ll see what he can learn poking around the Mainframe.
Takir notifies his fellows that having found a well of scholastic fellow-feeling with the Tech, he intends to attack the issue as a technical one of rivalrous resources, in parallel with them (presumably) preparing to attack it as a political/military one between the Erulian factions. Then he will go off and do so.
The fundamental goal: To find a solution that gets each group its actual end goal (no spine worms for us, continued access to predecessor-technology for them).
Tack one: Can the Erulians provide us with an alternate means of deworming? Maybe the tech can help me get more out of the Jovian Exotelligence’s data-dump (from which I gained knowledge:biology) in such a way as to be able to attack the problem without intense reality-rewriting, or we can figure out how to apply the Blade on site and just borrow it under my new friend’s supervision?
Tack two: Can I help the Tech do his work with a lesser tool? Apparently they’re using the blade because they’re no longer compatible with the front-door interface to their technology, but perhaps my different perspective can help them get in the easy way. Maybe they’re post-human and all they really need is an ordinary Joe? For that matter, Hasver’s digitization didn’t happen to *be* the front-door interface did it?
Which reminds me, I should establish contact with him. Does the child-sized data link at least contact a high enough band that I can “text” with an entity in the mainframe?
Indeed, assuming that Hasver does not do something outlandish inside the Mainframe, you could certainly (and with the Tech’s help even) get in contact with him through the ‘ancient and outmoded’ interfaces of the NetPit.
http://tinyurl.com/fear-and-sufferance
“HASVER.”
Like a bolt of lightning, the appellation struck him in the darkness, throwing him into what suddenly appeared to be a sea of bones. Though the sun was nowhere to be seen, his eyes had no need to adjust to the horrific landscape around him: the devastation of a civilization sowed and reaped… not once, but over and over beyond counting. The remains of buildings and people alike were left nearly unrecognizable as dust and detritus, heaped haphazardly into piles upon the fossilized layers that came before..
“HASVER.”
“What?” he screamed out loud, searching for the voice. As if in reply, a skeletal, robotic hand burst forth from the ground near his feet. He backed away, terrified.
“HASVER,” came the voice once more. And then he realized. It wasn’t speaking to him. The hand pushed down with great force, and the rest of the body followed from the earth, a metal mockery of a man, but with the strength of ten. It towered over him, oblivious to his presence, and in its other hand was a trumpet. And Hasver knew somehow, deep inside, that it hadn’t always been thus. This is what was left. This was all that remained.
“HASVER.” A thing… a creature approached. A horse of steel and synth. Its singular red eye seemed equally either unaware or uncaring of his presence. The skeletal man mounted it and stirred it forward with a sound like metal scraping metal. As he rode atop the crushed landscape, he brought the horn to his mouth. The sound… the sound…
Hasver’s staff rose, and the horn and the staff sounded as one, with sickening, interminable familiarity. When it had finally finished, a deathly, unnatural silence settled over the field. The skeletal figure in the distance pointed with its other hand towards Hasver. He heard a single word, with the force of a terrible curse.
Prophesy.