rolled 3, 4, 10, 9, 17, 15, 18, 8, 17, 6, 10, 1, 16, 19, 4, 8, 8, 12, 7, 5 = 197

---

>>1040930
Going to try to wrestle the cannon away, intact. If I'm carrying it, seems like they probably won't be able to shoot at us with it, and maybe we can make use of it later.

rolled 3, 6, 18, 4, 19, 9, 1, 11, 11, 18, 4, 18, 13, 11, 17, 14, 7, 19, 13, 13 = 229

---

Grundlehaven takes the danage as he has no real time to prepare himself. Shaking in his bones he pushes himself to act upon something and aims his buzzer atthe set of keys and flicks it twice to try to carve the key ring out of the sticky mess then tries hedge magic once again

>>1041396
>rolled 3, 6
Grundle gets knocked down by the blast. Buzzer-blade shot misses the intended target by a mile, but ricochets off a wall and disables the shinspinner on the overhead bridge, saving Mask's pet lak.

>rolled 18, 4
Saoirse dodges successfully, activates the monoblade cypher (which she won from Grundle in a card game earlier that day), and extracts the ring of keys from the mass of sticky webbing.

>rolled 19
Hedge magic makes it possible to operate the control device without quite touching it (since that would just glue it to your hands for the next hour), and Grundle's other skills quickly turn the hovering orbs back to supporting your side.

>>1041391
>rolled 3, 4
Mask runs over toward the side of the conch-cannon. Turns out it's bigger than he is, and weighs hundreds of pounds. Response to the full-speed tackle is one leg of the tripod rising a few inches off the ground.
Still, that's enough to rattle the two shinspinners operating it. One of them bites him on the nose, but fortunately, the shape-matching effect only works in one direction. No damage gets through.
>rolled 10, 9, 17, 15, 18
After that it's a relatively simple matter of grabbing the two, smacking them into each other until they stop fighting back, then disconnecting the cannon from surrounding detritus and clearing a smooth path across the floor so you can drag it back to the entrance.

rolled 15, 8, 20, 13, 6, 2, 20, 3, 15, 13, 11, 20, 11, 3, 2, 1, 7, 15, 7, 17 = 209

---

>>1041403
Alright! Laser falcons secure, dignity only slightly singed, time to haul this stuff back home, and see if we can trap the shinspinners in something sturdy enough to start breaking them in, see if they can be tamed and put to work.

rolled 2, 5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 1, 4, 1, 3, 1, 1, 3, 5, 4, 2, 1, 6, 5, 1 = 59

---

Dice for everybody's ten-hour recovery rolls, and others as appropriate.

>>1041022
Reiko extracts 5 units of quantium and 25 units of parts from the first stage of dismantling the volcano tamer. Saoirse's monoblade peels 4 units of pliable metal off the conch-cannon's casing, then another 16 units of parts tumble out of it. Both have potential to yield more, but each successful extraction cumulatively hinders subsequent attempts from the same source.
Even with just that much, though, assuming Reiko and/or Old Grundle are willing to offer some io and responsive synth from their own personal stocks to contribute to the establishment of the fire nation's embassy, construction of the Farspeaking Pylon can begin more or less immediately with one unit of pliable metal left over.

In the pre-dawn hours, a 60lb chunk of Earthshaker rump roast goes missing from the butchering-and-smoking operation. Eliznyabeth follows tracks back uphill toward the eye of the sea, into the entrance previously designated number eight >>1039859 toward an elaborate pattern of green inlay on the floor of room F, about 18 meters in diameter. Drippy trail ends there. Outer section of the pattern is mostly just concentric circles, but closer to the center it gets more complicated. Maybe an illustration of some profound truth about geometry, or the sort of thing somebody would use to trap a demon?

rolled 9, 1, 8, 17, 9, 12, 8, 16, 5, 14, 14, 16, 11, 14, 14, 4, 10, 9, 1, 2 = 194

---

>Pylon
Reiko agrees to contribute some of her precious iotum stocks, on the condition that she be given partial access to any and all leftover materials. You know, investments.

>60lb chunk of Earthshaker rump roast goes missing
"Not that we don't have plenty to spare, but we should make sure they're just feeding their families and not planning a raid for the other 5,940 pounds of titan pus."

>Drippy trail ends there. Outer section of the pattern is mostly just concentric circles, but closer to the center it gets more complicated.
"Hm... doesn't take a genius to realize this is a transporter of some kind. But is it an elevator or a teleporter? The wrong answer could get us killed."

What do
Reiko investigates by (yet again) scanning for iotum.

rolled 11, 11, 19, 20, 17, 15, 11, 20, 10, 13, 3, 2, 12, 8, 12, 18, 16, 5, 1, 18 = 242

---

Forgot to mention earlier, the 1 XP from my previous intrusion will go to Natalina. They probably all will until the party reunites.

>innkeeper is very interested in that artifact, willing to accept application to designated items and/or interior surfaces as payment.
Paprika will spend some time with the inkeeper spraying the halls and items as instructed. By the time she returns to Natalina in the parking garage, she's somehow won the robot over despite bad first impressions. Spending 3XP to lock in the innkeeper as a friendly NPC.

>Protective option the spiderbutler presents first ...
>"Form fitting, headless... wear these without anything else underneath and we would be fulfilling someone's fetish, I'm sure."
>outer surface ends up more resembling a swarm of revolting insects, or thistle burrs soaked in cottage cheese
"Eeugh, not mine. Can you ask Abbot if they've got any other options?"

>Shock-absorbing goo squelches with every step, so even though the structure underfoot is solid metal it feels like trudging through loose sand or an ankle-deep swamp.
"Hopefully ones that are easier to walk in?"

rolled 13, 13, 10, 8, 2, 11, 15, 5, 14, 13, 5, 7, 1, 20, 18, 15, 20, 18, 14, 18 = 240

---

After figuring out the basics of the augmech (there's simply so much numenera where they've ended up, from their host, to the facilities, to the wondrous (and creepy) armor provided so casually, to the oversized machine itself which responds to even inexpert commands) Natalina plans to turn in for the night, trusting the inkeeper to live up to its profession. Now that the pair know the rest area is for that purpose, they might as well make blanket forts there instead of in the garage, this time.

She'll suggest to Paprika that in the morning they take the paramedic and go investigate the damaged communication systems.

>>1041537
The five-meter tall frame of 'Milaconi's cousin' had the aspect of an imposing temple-statue inside the garage, but after Natalina and Paprika have caught up on sleep, had breakfast, and headed back out, sheer dizzying immensity of the station's exterior soon makes it feel more like some tiny insect crawling out from a knothole and along the branch of a tree. Surface curves down to the east and west, roughly a mile-wide strip between level enough to comfortably walk on. Six miles south of your starting point, that surface ends in a abrupt cliff, with nothing but starry black visible beyond. Destination is a full mile short of that edge, though.

From a distance it looks a little bit like a silver fingernail clipping, floating on the horizon. Up close, this resolves into a bowl-shaped section of metallic foil, just under thirty meters wide and maybe three meters deep, suspended above the surface you've been walking on by a hollow truss, not entirely unlike the superstructure of the windrider repair shop where this all started. Underside of the bowl is close enough for the augmech to reach up and touch, but not so low it needs to duck when walking underneath.

There's an ugly gash in the east side of that bowl. Looking up through the hole, you can see the upper section of the truss. Pattern of converging triangles abruptly ends ten meters short of a parabolic reflector's focal point, followed by roughly eight meters of twisted wreckage, bringing to mind some ragged war-banner or loose tooth. A wrist-thick cable rises up from the ground, fastened along the intact truss and through the bowl, to loop loosely around that wrecked segment, where some biomechanical thing - smaller than a human but not by much - has set up a nest.

Below the torn hole in the dish, trailing off down-slope further to the east, there are scuff marks in the dust, as if something roughly the size and shape of the main pylon you're looking for fell, bounced, and slid.

>>1041451
>rolled 9,
>But is it an elevator or a teleporter?
Elevator, sort of. No iotum readily accessible for salvage from up here.
>1, 8, 17
>The wrong answer could get us killed."
As a GM intrusion, Reiko falls through the quicksand-like membranous surface of the 'binding circle,' beneath which a bath (silo? bottomless pit?) of preservative gel starts trying to put her into stasis. If Eliznyabeth (or somebody else nearby) assists, might be back out in only one round, taking 2 points of speed damage; otherwise, two rounds for Reiko to escape under her own power, and 4 speed damage. Anybody else would be taking twice as much speed damage, but Reiko's mechanical parts render her partially immune - presumably steel spiders can swim in the stuff unhindered.

Either way, the piece of meat you were looking for has been found and retrieved.

rolled 2, 7, 2, 9, 20, 11, 13, 20, 3, 11, 13, 6, 15, 10, 4, 13, 6, 11, 1, 4 = 181

---

>>1041580
"Whoa Nelly, no falling into the floor for you." She would say as she would quickly grab Reiko's hand as she fell in.

"Alright. Magical preservation goo... And the meat was in there..." Eliznyabeth would do the only sane thing imaginable in this situation and take a bite of the magically preserved meat with the stasis goo wiped off at least, and already start imagining ways they can use this for more industrial scale preservation efforts if this doesn't mess up the taste and nutrition too badly. Maybe even obviate the need for refrigeration.

>>1041606
Between awkward retrieval and imperfect goo-scraping, Eliznyabeth also takes 4 speed damage. The meat tastes profoundly bland at first, almost waxy, but once the stasis wears off it's as delicious and safe-seeming as ever - maybe not quite the same as when truly fresh, but actually a bit better than it did right after the two-hour drive back. Almost like the opposite of pickling.

>rolled [...] 20
Eliznyabeth realizes this must be the steel spider's larder, keeping rot at bay when too many meat-things are caught in the web at once. Could probably just dump all the meat straight in there, dredge it back out years later in the exact same condition, no need to worry about smoking or other laborious conventional preservation methods.

rolled 3 + 1 = 4

---

>>1041552
"Isn't this all terribly imposing." Natalina murmurs. "I suppose we have three problems then- following the trail of the missing part, ousting whatever nests in an airless void, and conducting actual repairs. Where do you think we should start?"

We would have passed through the healing mist on our way our, so rolling for the one-per-day recovery that provides.

rolled 11, 5, 2, 12, 13, 7, 2, 2, 3, 11, 4, 9, 14, 2, 18, 13, 11, 17, 2, 12 = 170

---

>2 Speed Damage
"Ow. I'pth nod ethaptlya reffnifiath." (Ow, it's not exactly a refrigerator.)
Reiko spits out the rest of the goo.
"Thanks. Crap, I think some of it got underneath my 'skin'."
Reiko opens up yet another panel in her arm. Apparently, the goo is jamming a servo. After a few moments, the servo moves again but easily halts when a weak force is applied against it. Luckily, the engine seems unharmed and is whirring away smoothly.

>Eliznyabeth realizes this must be the steel spider's larder
"Hm. I wonder what else is in there. More specifically, who else is in there."

>Elevator
"Guh, I can't remember my science classes. Eliznyabeth, can you study this while I try something?" (Reiko has a disadvantage to understanding numenera.)
Reiko spends some time building a sturdy retractable bridge across the circle, along with a tethered shadoof (crude crane) in case someone else falls in.

rolled 10, 16, 11, 1, 18, 7, 19, 17, 16, 13, 3, 17, 1, 6, 4, 17, 13, 6, 20, 4 = 219

---

>>1041552
Let's try to get an idea what we're dealing with- move 'Milaconi's cousin' around the dish to maybe get a better look at the nest, see if we can perhaps identify whatever made it. Not closing with the nest yet- don't want to get jumped by surprising whatever beastie lives on this immense, airless metal plain.

rolled 4, 2 = 6

---

Paprika will say goodbye to the innkeeper, offering a warm hug and a kiss before she departs with Natalina. Rolling two recovery rolls, one free from the decontamination spiral and another expended from her daily allowance. Next post will have resolvable actions (I figure I'll separate recovery from d20 rolls for the sake of our record-keeper's sanity)

rolled 18, 11, 12, 7, 3, 15, 14, 9, 19, 4, 1, 17, 7, 4, 11, 17, 13, 5, 15, 19 = 221

---

>"Isn't this all terribly imposing."
"I think it's beautiful. I've never seen anything like it."

>"I suppose we have three problems then- following the trail of the missing part, ousting whatever nests in an airless void, and conducting actual repairs. Where do you think we should start?"
"I say we chase off the nesting creature before it causes more damage."

>There's an ugly gash in the east side of that bowl. Looking up through the hole, you can see the upper section of the truss.
"You think we can get Milaconi's cousin up through this hole without mangling the dish any further? If not, I can leave the cab and climb up there myself. I think you should stay in the mech in case we need to go in a hurry."

>>1041746
It resembles a winged insect, suckling lightning out of the plug at the end of the cable the way a young mammal drinks milk. Ecological niche is more like a vulture or jackal, though. Level 4, can shoot darts that expand on impact to entangle and drain power. Augmech would be much more vulnerable to that than the goopy smart-fluid suits are.

rolled 13, 9, 14, 1, 10, 16, 4, 20, 2, 17, 12, 8, 6, 16, 7, 18, 4, 16, 5, 6 = 204

---

>>1041755
"A literal lightning bug? Perhaps more a lightning flea or mosquito, given the scale of this place."

>>1041753
>"I think it's beautiful
"I suppose it is at that, though no less imposing for it."

>chase off the nesting creature, climb out
"Sounds like a plan. I'll have Milaconi's cousin keep her distance, to avoid having its lighting stolen, and try to support you."

Paprika, trained in climbing and balancing, is the least likely to be slowed down by the sickness of the traction, and less vulnerable to the creature than the machine.

"...this feels odd to ask, but did you want any drugs? One of those our ride restocked seems to temporarily boost physical performance." (Might Edge).

rolled 8, 16, 14, 3, 13, 14, 2, 11, 1, 19, 11, 15, 15, 11, 6, 6, 16, 5, 7, 17 = 210

---

>>1041686
"Nyah, bi ban bo pat." (Yeah, I can do that) she would reply, her entire mouth almost entirely not working from the chunk of gel she specifically actually ate.

And she would hunt to work out the secrets of the elevator that they might board it and ride deeper into the dungeon.

>"...this feels odd to ask, but did you want any drugs?"
Paprika snickers, "Fuck me up, Nat."

Paprika exits the augmech and begins assembling her spear as Natalina injects her with might-boosting drugs. "Hey Natalina, listen. I've got a huge crush on you. I think I've had it since we first met back in the City of Needles...two days ago? Wow it feels like so much longer. Um...I just wanted to get that off my chest in case, you know, I get killed by a giant robot fly in space."

Paprika climbs up through the hole in the dish and carefully approaches the giant fly thing, waving her spear to try to shoo it away.

rolled 20, 11, 12, 3, 18, 15, 4, 10, 18, 19, 16, 6, 1, 15, 6, 3, 5, 19, 1, 9 = 211

---

Oops!

rolled 2, 11, 14, 13, 12, 3, 5, 15, 10, 14, 6, 14, 11, 2, 18, 2, 1, 20, 1, 5 = 179

---

Having completed the retractable bridge (a piece of rusted, warped plating, screwed and soldered into the floor, and then a ladder with a handle soldered perpendicular to push through the hole between the plate and the floor), Reiko opts to investigate the hunting pattern of the spiders. How much meat they move at once, if they eat some of their surplus just before storing it, potential hotspots for nests, etc. (Intelligence, 1 Effort)

>>1041953
Only apparent route further down is swimming in the preservative gel, which would at minimum require an air supply, and some sort of sealed suit or personal force field or other countermeasure to avoid being put into stasis.

Now that Eliznyabeth knows what that goo looks like when it's dripped on the floor, she realizes the steak-stealing steel spider climbed back out the other side and walked off through the room's west exit to somewhere else on the same level. Follow it, or turn back and report what's already been found?

>>1042064
Paprika leaps up parallel to the truss without touching it. This catches the lightning mourn completely by surprise. When she floats back down it's twitching helplessly, impaled on the end of her spear. Could be repaired and released, or broken up for parts.

Next problem: a mile away, the detached pylon is found, battered but intact. It's three meters tall, just over a meter wide, ~30 cm thick, and as long as the augmech's height in a direction you can only just barely see with those helmets on, for an overall 1:4:9:16 ratio atop a small rubble pile, near the center of a circular slab of metal eight meters in diameter which protrudes from the main structure like a shelf.
Main surface here is a near-vertical cliff over an effectively bottomless starry void. Paramedic augmech can walk around, but it's very important not to let go. Farspeaking pylon is close enough to touch, but, even in the low effective gravity, too heavy to lift safely at such an awkward angle.

Sensible approach would probably involve ropes and pulleys. Some chattering datasphere imp proposes a faster option: if a gravity detonation cypher were positioned at just the right spot underneath, [garbled noun] could act as a sort of lens, isotidally launching the pylon back up onto relatively level ground.

rolled 17, 20, 19, 5, 3, 5, 1, 14, 5, 18, 14, 1, 4, 14, 17, 17, 19, 13, 20, 15 = 241

---

>>1042064
Caught off guard first by surprise, then by a rush of mortification, a flustered Natalina doesn't manage to respond before Paprika escapes outside. Wha- How did she not notice- she invited her flower picking for goodness- oh. And just lept a story and plucked that creature from the sky with effortless grace after confessing. Um.

After a pause, a descending Paprika hears a sigh over the communication-tether. "I feel quite foolish for not realizing sooner. In retrospect, you were not being particularly subtle."

>>1042244
>When she floats back down it's twitching helplessly, impaled on the end of her spear. Could be repaired and released, or broken up for parts.
"Is that safe to bring inside?"

Natalina isn't going to protest if Paprika plans to show mercy and release the critter (preferably after moving it further from the communication installation). If we're to harvest her hunt, we can put it out of its misery for now, but cleaning and gutting can likely wait until we return. (When we can safely expend bonuses to overcome our disabilities on salvaging numenera).

>Some chattering datasphere imp proposes a faster option
Wait, hold on, that seems important. Some kind of... information spirit is aware of our situation, down to details of our surroundings and avialable kit, to the point they can offer tactical advice? How are they communicating? Have they been following along, are they local to this area, do they reside within some piece of the numenera we've gathered for this airless expedition...?

Actually, were the protective suits smart enough to ensure a belt-secured grenade ended up outside the protective layer? If not, disrobing inside the augmech could retrieve the cypher, but that wasn't functionality Natalina thought to check in advance.

>>1042347
The datasphere is ubiquitous, but mostly intangible and inaccessible. People catch random fragments from it reasonably often, daydreams known as 'glimmers.' Some machines and creatures can access it more directly, finding prompt, useful answers to specific questions. Terrifying predatory beasts known as jiraskar use it as their primary sense for hunting. Things live in the datasphere, ranging from vast alien gods all the way down to the equivalent of worms or beetles. Based on what's spilling over into the augmech's communication queue, immediate vicinity of the farspeaking pylon seems to be very crowded from the datasphere side, like the line outside a popular nightclub, or the office of a politician who just made a very unpopular policy decision. Imp itself has already wandered off, but proposal's geometry is still present, like a note scribbled on a napkin or a footprint in snow.

> were the protective suits smart enough to ensure a belt-secured grenade ended up outside the protective layer?
No. Transferring stuff from belt to hand is easy enough, but attempting a throw without the right setup leaves the projectile still inside a gooey pseudopod. Likewise, if you had a hammer or chisel from your crafting toolkit inside the suit, and tried to use it on something outside, smart fluid would probably end up cushioning the impacts to frustrating effect.

Fortunately you figure out a trick for transferring items through the armor - or rather, convincing the armor to start treating them as if they belong outside - by tying knots in the retractable tether, which it prefers not to enclose, and then using them to 'cut' the smart fluid pseudopod. Takes about a minute per item, though, and when you're gripping a tool firmly enough, might start trying to re-enclose it. Proceeds relatively slowly across metal, though, particularly with a coating of that dark purplish powder, so you could rig up an atlatl to throw grenades using a bar from the wrecked truss.

JamesLeng 2022/09/02(Fri)21:43 No. 1042716 ID: f57349
File 166218018729.png - (853.74KB , 804x536 , New Hallux in progress.png )

>>1042215
>rolled 2
Reiko successfully repurposes lava-proof pontoon bridges to cross the stasis pit safely (though this turns out not to be necessary, since it's possible to just walk around) and follows the spider's trail deeper inside.
>rolled 11, 14
Scrap and debris in one of the rooms it passes through (on the way to room D) seems like a potential iotum source. First pass doesn't find much of note, but scan confirms there's got to be something, and you're not under much time pressure. Second attempt, with Eliznyabeth's help, turns up a whisperlock and an oddity: a red scarf that, when one end is wrapped around a living person's neck, the other end blows dramatically perpendicular to the wind... or when there's no strong wind, in whichever direction is least likely to get it caught on anything.

rolled 18, 6, 15, 12, 15, 17, 7, 9, 6, 7, 12, 15, 18, 16, 19, 16, 14, 17, 18, 14 = 271

---

>Protagonist Scarf
Reiko dons the scarf, wondering what kind of poser of the previous worlds spent the time and effort to make such a classic decoration a reality. Wondering how many other would-be heroes and captains have donned this cloth before her. Then she realizes this thing has probably gotten people killed, as having a bright red scarf trailing everywhere makes for a good targeting beacon in ambushes.
She opts to use it to bind her chest instead. Perhaps whatever spirit remains in this façade of heroism will take lustful appeasement.

>>1042716
Reiko opts to take paths further from the center, at least until she and Eliznyabeth can regroup with the rest of the party. Reiko leads to Point B and continues scanning.

>>1042721
Room B has two more fungal stalactites on the ceiling, but unlike the one found in that outlying circular room these aren't shriveled up. Instead, they glow with a dull brown-orange inner light. Similar thin layer of dry soil across the floor, but instead of a perfectly uniform distribution it rises to shallow peaks.
>rolled 18
While still a short distance away, Reiko notices bone fragments and a scrap of chainmail protruding from the northern mound. Also, faint smell of vinegar.

rolled 12, 3, 17, 16, 7, 16, 7, 18, 9, 18, 11, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 11, 18, 9, 13 = 257

---

>>1043058
"Right, so I will ache he ock." (Right so I will take the lock) Eliznyabeth will cautiously poke at the fungus from afar to see if it reacts, especially wanting to make sure it's not going to explode with a puff of gas. And possibly try and come up with an explanation on the vinegar smell.

>>1043059
Eliznyabeth throws a small rock, which bounces off, then narrowly dodges the stream of acid squirted back in response.

rolled 14, 11, 6, 6, 13, 19, 11, 3, 9, 8, 10, 5, 3, 9, 13, 9, 11, 12, 13, 9 = 194

---

>>1043065
Alright, well then we just need to drain the two mushrooms to be able to safely get at the refuse piles. So, a dumb idea occurred to her.

She wasn't the best at trick shots, but she was practiced at them, and so she would line up a bowshot to bounce off of the ceiling and stab into a section of the mushroom towards the bottom, so that the spray of acid would be both near the bottom so that gravity could assist the spray, and aimed away from them. Then they could figure out if the mushrooms work on a pressure system, or if they have some way of regulating spray as some kind of weird ammo system.

rolled 7, 17, 13, 13, 10, 14, 4, 13, 5, 9, 6, 10, 11, 3, 17, 18, 18, 13, 16, 16 = 233

---

>>1043058
Ah yes. Reiko barely remembers, but this was one of the spa's guests. She and her adventuring party made a horrible drunken ruckus that pissed the whole staff off. They threw stools at kids, fed chocolate-coated aneenshoes to the aneen, and even farted lit candles at the drapes. Reiko personally pushed them far, far away from the Volcano Tamer before they inevitably 'adjusted' it with a greathammer. She didn't even get reprimanded for firing iotum lasers at them.
At least they tipped extravagantly.
Nobody asked where they were going next, and frankly, the staff collectively agreed to forget the whole incident to prevent PTSD.
"... This is definitely a deathtrap. What a way to go, you obnoxious party animal."
Reiko turns to Eliznyabeth.
"We should come back la-"

>>1043065
"... Could I deplete them of acid with enough stones?
Eh. Let's get back to camp. I have an idea..."

Reiko (and Eliznyabeth) walk back to the nearest camp. Reiko gets to work on engineering and constructing an acid collection apparatus and some basic hazmat equipment.

>>1043067
>rolled 14
Eliznyabeth figures out a clever way to line up a bowshot so it'll bounce off two of the walls and strike the fungal stalactite from a completely different direction. That hits, but only deals 1 damage (target apparently has the equivalent of heavy armor). Acid spray comes straight at her rather than falling for the misdirection,
>rolled 11, 6, 6, 13
...and she doesn't get out of the way quite quickly enough this time. Three speed damage, paralyzed for a round, a third spray without immediate provocation, three more speed damage, second round of paralysis successfully resisted.
>>1043068
>rolled 7, 17
Reiko helps Eliznyabeth retreat to a safe distance, and notes how fumes from wherever the corrosive spray touched flesh seem to be flowing back toward their source with uncommon directness, almost more like a fisherman pulling in the catch of the day than typical turbulent-vapor fluid dynamics.

rolled 6, 5, 16, 14, 7, 17, 5, 4, 18, 7, 8, 14, 4, 20, 8, 20, 5, 11, 4, 8 = 201

---

After a few minutes of shock, Reiko manages to shake herself out of it.
"Okay, that's enough adventuring for today! Eliznyabeth, did you get all of it off?"

On the way back to camp, Reiko makes small chat.
"Now that I think about it, the spiders are expected to perform maintenance on their territory. I guess even they can't handle a sentient colony of semi-telekinetic acid-spewing fungi...
Wait, I think Grundle said something about his power working on anything that thinks about eating people."

Back at camp, Reiko brainstorms a plan to 'capture' the fungi, or at least contain their acid, in the hopes that they can be used to kill the spiders - or better yet...
"If we could somehow dominate the fungal colonies, their psychic control over the acidic spit would easily eat through the grunge while leaving the fine-tuned components intact. And better yet, they've been looking for the cheapest form of mass-produced engraving...
I wonder if those @#$%ing ferrets will melt faster than they can burn."
(Intelligence - Engineer a strategy to capture the fungus, Effort 1)

rolled 20, 7, 6, 14, 6, 3, 19, 13, 12, 10, 16, 16, 6, 12, 9, 16, 16, 15, 1, 5 = 222

---

>>1043115
"Yeah, I absolutely agree, that's enough adventure for today, we should come up with a plan of attack, but go the opposite direction in the morning from the fork that we took. After all, as much as I want to take my vengeance on the mushrooms they are otherwise a low priority if there's a safe alternate route."

And so, Eliznyabeth would take the lead out of the dungeon, and start to rest under a tree.

> Roll a recovery
> Roll a 4+1

> Roll a recovery
> Roll a 2+1

Of course, she wasn't exactly tired or anything, and 10 minutes later she realized that she was actually really bored. So, rather than take the rest of the day off after getting almost melted, it was probably a good idea to tell Elenyah about the preservation goo since she was really the only person here she actually knew. Maybe also tell the chirurgeon since he's kind of the person that she just gave a LOT of money to. But after all of that then go find Reiko and see about going back into the dungeon on that other path now, as opposed to later.

rolled 11, 1, 3, 6, 19, 15, 7, 11, 16, 3, 12, 15, 6, 5, 4, 7, 1, 9, 19, 19 = 189

---

Hours have passed, and Reiko has come up with little. Her best bet would be to either use her cypher or Eliznyabeth's to bring the fungus to their level.

A harried messenger from Mia Xan unfolds a letter and begins chanting its contents in what can only be described as an anti-iambic pentameter. Annoyed, Reiko snatches the letter from the messenger and skims the contents. Turns out that leaving an intentionally half-dismantled device which formerly kept the volcano from completely blowing over (or so the residents incorrectly assumed) without its formal replacement has left the townsfolk... agitated. It is only due to her love of unsinged mahogany that she hasn't formally written a letter of complaint (i.e. an assassination contract), and Reiko should probably be back to work by three hours ago.

After leaving behind a message for Grundle (with the messenger, who should enliven the old man), Reiko and Eliznyabeth quickly chainpod their way back down the mountain, at which point Reiko hurries alone to Mia Xan, briefly reports Eliznyabeth's injury and explains her discovery of a specific fungal acid (which is somehow prehensile) which should speed all repairs and construction once they manage to capture / kill the damn fungus colonies producing it, and then jogs to the Volcano Tamer to begin another round of disassembly.

rolled 6, 6, 2, 5, 3, 1, 4, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 3, 3, 6, 6, 1, 5, 3, 2 = 79

---

Progress around Hallux shows while the engineers work on assembly and repair projects- Mask spends this downtime trying to capture/train shinspinners to be useful around camp. Once Eliznyabeth and Reiko are both freed from their respective duties, the glaive works with them to clear a safe path towards room D and handle whatever threats are present within.

Hallux during the off-season is a rank 2 community with Health 6 and Infrastructure 6. It was faced with a rank 2 eruption, as well as those magma weasels. Repairing the volcano tamer reduced the eruption to rank 1. Eruption inflicted 2 health damage while weasels inflicted 3 infrastructure damage, leaving health at 4/6 and infrastructure at 3/6.
If the PCs hadn't gotten involved, the town would have hit zero infrastructure at the end of the next hour-long community-scale turn, downgrading it to rank 1. While the immediate attack would end at that point, and food and water reserves might last longer with fewer surviving mouths to feed, overall prospects would have been grim.
Grundle >>1036633 and Saoirse >>1036659 patched up the Health, while Mask fixed one Infrastructure. Remaining damage can be rebuilt by local NPCs, one point per day.

Over the course of the next month, anybody who's staying in town can take a number of long-term actions equal to their tier (meaning one, unless you get a lot of XP first). Non-exhaustive list of options:

-Build up food and water stores. This is what I'm assuming Eliznyabeth will be doing. Foraging, rationing, imports... regardless of approach, each PC doing this adds 1d6 days to the deadline for clearing the dungeon.

-Craft Object or Structure. This is what I'm assuming Reiko Lastname will be doing to set up the farspeaking pylon and embassy. Requires a roll.

-General maintenance. This is what I'm assuming Grundlehaven Havespont will be doing, by applying crafting and medical skills to set up an efficient and hygenic refugee camp with room for further development. Increases the community's maximum Infrastructure, semi-permanently.

-Enhance Community Happiness. Focused on cultural and aesthetic rather than directly utilitarian factors. Increases the community's maximum Health, semi-permanently.

-Discover new site of interest. This is the sort of thing Elanyah was busy with on previous months. Ruins, monster lairs, previously unknown neighbors, etc.

-Treat with a neighboring community. This is the sort of thing Mia Xan does. Must be within one week's routine travel... but that can include vehicles, portals, etc.

-Create a closer relationship with an NPC. Requires a roll to initiate, ongoing time to maintain. Emotional benefits expand your Might, Speed, or Intellect pool.

-Earn XP or gain other benefits by focusing on self-improvement. Diminishing returns for repeated use between adventures, no direct benefit to the town.

-Scavenge dry iotum. Parts, plus 24% chance io, 24% chance responsive synth, 16% chance apt clay, 12% chance each orthogonalium fiber, synthsteel, or pliable metal. A whole month's work sifting through the less exciting sorts of ruins only provides two units.

-Scavenge bio-iotum. Similar to the above but focused on different sources, yielding 16% chance each immorcell colony, cognitive weave, optogenetic muscle, or mother marrow, 12% chance each allophene nodule, bio-circuitry, or metabolic vesicle.
Side benefit is organic matter rather than mechanical parts, which isn't worth much around a functional ecosystem, but might be relevant in other environments.

>>1044178
>rolled 11
Salvage result is two cyphers, a level 6 stim and a level 7 iron wind resistor. There's no obvious way to use the latter for embassy construction apart from leaving it in an emergency-supplies locker, but a stim cypher is exceptionally versatile: it eases ANY single task by three steps. Given sufficient materials, you could use that to set up a specialty workshop or other high-end commonplace structure in days rather than years. Appropriate specialty workshop would then cut a week off the build time for the farspeaking pylon, and have many other benefits besides.
Thanks to Grundle's assistance you also extract 6 units of Azure Steel, which might be even better than tungsten for engraving magma-proof formal documents, or setting up thermal-mirror surfaces so visiting volcanic nobility can 'let their hair down' inside without accidentally setting the walls on fire. Lot of Parts, too, but the exact count probably isn't relevant unless you're embezzling.
>rolled 1, 3, 6, 19, 15
GM intrusion from that 1 on crafting: once the pylon is built, for every recipient of any given message sent through it, next single meal they eat which includes meat, the meat will taste like soap.
Otherwise, looks like reasonably smooth sailing for whichever thing you build first. Construction is resolved as a series of subtasks, starting at difficulty 1 and increasing incrementally over the course of the total time required, so the hardest part always comes last. Failing any given subtask once just results in a proportional delay, but failing the same subtask twice in a row also ruins some of the components (which is mostly a problem when working with hard-to-replace iotum).

>>1043668
>rolled 20
Short nap in direct sunlight and some stretching exercises suffice for Eliznyabeth to mostly shake off the effects of two potent, and unrelated, paralytic poisons. Shriveled fungal stalactite in that outlying room seems like a sensible practice target for parkour tactics in her vendetta against the vapor feeders. Series of wall-jumps leading into a forearm-blade stab see it torn loose at the base, revealing a long narrow hole leading up through the smoky flying buttress.
>>1044189
Mask fetches a ladder so non-acrobats can reach the hole, and figures out (partly based on Eliznyabeth's description of the smell) that it's an alternate entrance to the shinspinner lair - probably close to whatever they're using to extract food and water from the Eye of the Sea. Depending on what you find at the other end, might even be possible to convert the passage into an aqueduct so townsfolk can resupply without needing to intrude on the main tunnel complex. Downside is, you'd have to be crawling in there single-file, and while it's unlikely the shinspinners would have built traps in what was until very recently a dead-end passage, that's not a guarantee. Spherical laser falcons refuse to enter such tight quarters.

rolled 8, 8, 13, 16, 1, 10, 16, 16, 12, 8, 5, 8, 7, 16, 10, 6, 9, 20, 2, 1 = 192

---

>GM Intrusion: Meat tastes like soap
A quick pulse test of the base transmitter causes Reiko's mouth to ache with the equivalent of chewing melted rubber bands and a side order of acid. After gargling for two minutes, she tries to snack on a meat ration - only to discover, to her horror, that it tastes like what she just cleaned off.
After panicking for about a half-hour, she manages to inference the cause and effect. As the 'curse' appears to reset after a single 'meal', Reiko concludes that the side-effect, while disgusting, is acceptable. In fact, she realizes this could be a great dietary aid! Or a way to help vegetarians make sure their 'mystery salad' is not, in fact, a pile of fried pork rinds.
"Dear Mia Xan... some complications... hire a vegetarian... Wuv, Weiko. Nah, too silly."
She warns the other townsfolk that they may want to cut down to a quarter-ration for one lunch.
(Offering an XP to Eliznyabeth)

"... That's what it was capable of?! He used it as a goddamn counterweight!"
>If there's enough resources to build the specialty workshop
Reiko immediately injects herself with the stim. Her cyber implant quickly hums to life, gaining temporary access to the datasphere with a hacked account and a pre-selected list of topics. Reiko has enough time to download a single instruction manual before the archive's security protocols kick in and banhammer the account. Reiko selects "how to create precursor-quality construction tools with big dum-dum butterfingers" and is hit with a full Maester's knowledge. It's fading fast, so Reiko quickly begins crafting the advanced workshop, designed specifically to repair and maintain fine-tuned components. By the time she's finished, the information is a hollow memory she can't quite recall, but she can't believe she managed to create an electron microscope out of hot sand, oak fibers, and a tub of butter. This is the workshop she needed three months ago.

>If not, or afterwards
Reiko stores the cyphers, hoping they won't break down on their own, and begins basic construction of the pylon. The magma-proof documents take priority over thermal mirrors, keeping the records fully accurate and preserved is worth more than a fiery hairdo.

rolled 20, 20, 15, 13, 14, 16, 11, 20, 10, 4, 15, 16, 17, 11, 12, 11, 20, 7, 18, 18 = 288

---

>>1044189
Whoops, rolled d6. Here's a better roll.
>>1044394
Mask takes point, explores for traps, so the engineers can figure out how to widen it and get the water out.

>>1044464
>rolled 8, 8, 13, 16
The magma embassy's farspeaking pylon is fully operational in less than a week, with no further complications.

>>1044842
>rolled 20, 20, 15, 13
Only trap on the route in is a force-wall projector. Semi-domesticated shinspinners approach it without triggering activation. Mask persuades them to move it to the room's other entrance, alter the trigger conditions, and redirect some pipes. Soon enough refugees from Hallux have a functionally unlimited supply of fresh water and fish, while the shinspinners have to beg, steal, flee, or starve.

>>1043668
>rolled 20
Steel spider base unit has three main sections: input disassembler, eggshell projector, and the control console across the top. Materials which the spiders dump in are reassembled inside the shell to build new spiders, with surplus converted into energy or something almost like spraymetal to recharge and repair existing ones. Console seems to be describing the device's connection to the Eye of the Sea - it's not an essential component, more like a simplified toy model for educational purposes, or possibly a sort of remote control.
Eliznyabeth sneaks in and rips out the reassembly mechanism, castrating the "queen." Any steel spiders still loose may pose a threat, but with no way to repair or replace, time is firmly on the town's side.
The factory's death throes graft a linear accelerator and set of malformed steel-spider face-parts onto her forearm blade. Through the string of thumb-sized sapphires, she can view targets up to 1 mile (1.5 km) off as if they were just a short distance away. Once a target is sighted, the device can almost silently fire a tiny slug of metal, dealing 6 damage. Kick to the shoulder might knock her down if she's not braced for it, though.

Everybody gets 4 xp for neutralizing the main threats under the Eye of the Sea. Hallux is saved - they'll probably all survive the winter, and come back stronger next year thanks to that new potential trade partner.

Another few hundred miles closer to the Beanstalk, beside a small lake on the northernmost fringes of the Ba-Adenu Forest, you've tracked rumors of a renewable supply of amber crystal to the village of Glawv. Lake Lom is home to dobworms, a type of arm-length, aquatic invertebrate that produces pea-sized bits of amber much like how oysters produce pearls. The 400 or so Glawvians tend to the dobworms, either in wild “farms” along the edge of the lake or in basins in their yards, and harvest the amber pieces (called dobs) to make jewelry. The farmers have a technique for heating and squeezing the dobs so they either form larger pieces or temporarily liquefy into a resin that can be painted on as a durable seal. Each worm produces only a few grams per year (caged dobworms tend to produce dobs with a more consistent color and clarity, but dobs from wild, lake-living dobworms tend to be larger) while a chunk sufficient to serve as part of a chainpod's power core would need tens of kilograms of the stuff.

Grundlehaven Havespont observes that leftover dobworm slime would be an ideal dunking medium for his humiliation hospital plan, and setting up such a beneficial numenera installation would probably be fair trade for a dozen or more units of amber crystal. Apt clay and responsive synth can be easily scavenged from the Eye of the Sea, Mayor Delby happens to have a few jars of mimetic gel in her cellar so worst case you could use more of that to substitute for a shortage of synthsteel, and quantium is available as Reiko's share of the treaty with the King Under The Mountain... but that still leaves the hardest part: midnight stones.
There's a clave called Elsawn Observatory half a day's walk deeper in the forest (or a few minutes by chainpod), to whom Glawv sends food and various other gifts in exchange for help with weird problems. An offhand comment from that many-handed automaton who set you on this quest in the first place, which didn't make sense at the time, could be taken to imply that Elsawn Observatory has a stash of midnight stones, but the aeon priests are reluctant to discuss their inventory with heavily armed outsiders.

rolled 3, 11, 13, 15, 3, 6, 6, 4, 20, 11, 17, 15, 20, 18, 4, 6, 11, 12, 10, 1 = 206

---

>>1042347
>>1042244
>Paprika leaps up parallel to the truss without touching it. This catches the lightning mourn completely by surprise. When she floats back down it's twitching helplessly, impaled on the end of her spear.
It takes a moment for Paprika's breath to catch up to her. She tries to stay calm, despite this possibly being the most awesome thing she's ever done.

>After a pause, a descending Paprika hears a sigh over the communication-tether. "I feel quite foolish for not realizing sooner. In retrospect, you were not being particularly subtle."
"Really? I was trying so hard to play it cool...I have been told I'm about as subtle as an earthshaker, before."

>"Is that safe to bring inside?"
>Natalina isn't going to protest if Paprika plans to show mercy and release the critter
"I think so. It's not looking too good, poor thing. You think we can fix it up and let it go?"

>disrobing inside the augmech
Paprika visibly blushes at the suggestion.

>if a gravity detonation cypher were positioned at just the right spot underneath, [garbled noun] could act as a sort of lens, isotidally launching the pylon back up onto relatively level ground.
"Haha that sounds really risky. I'm all for it though, what do you think?"

rolled 14, 8, 1, 18, 15, 7, 4, 7, 19, 3, 4, 2, 10, 3, 11, 19, 20, 20, 8, 13 = 206

---

>>1045364
>"Really? I was trying so hard to play it cool...I have been told I'm about as subtle as an earthshaker, before."
An aborted laugh comes across the communication cable in response. "Much as I'd like to credit your success and spare my dignity, they may have been correct."

Natalina continues, hesitantly. "A part of me feels like I should expound on the perils of a workplace romance, or one between two people stranded alone with one another. ...although, no, we're not the only two people present counting our inkeeper-abbot. And of the two of us, I'm not the one you kissed.

"...I'm sorry, I quite lost track of where I was going with that."

>You think we can fix it up and let it go?
>Working through [the augmech] provides three free levels of Effort on medical care and repairs to biomechanical creatures
Natalina, operating Milaconi's cousin, will attempt to extricate and repair the impaled lightning mourn. Not sure how quickly the creature can travel, but if we're engaging in catch-and-release, we should do so away from the nest we're trying to evict it from.

>"Haha that sounds really risky. I'm all for it though, what do you think?"
If only one of the pair ventures out onto the platform to plant the grenade, the risk of falling into the abyss is a lot lower, since they'd be tethered to the other and the augmech. Paprika would be better at a balancing act, but Natalina could apply discounted Intellect effort, Learned for training in demolitions, and training in noticing flaws to help pick the right point in the rubble pile to place it (and to not knock the pile down on herself doing so).

"...I'm not confident in my ability to accurately throw in this gravity, but I think I could place it."

>>1045399
>rolled 14
Lightning mourn has been patched up, and gently reprogrammed to see you as neither a threat nor a food source. It immediately zooms back to suckle at the sparking end of that loose cable, though.
>rolled 8, 1, 18
You find the correct spot, and (after burning xp on a reroll) a position from which Milaconi's cousin can simply throw the gravity-pear with exactly the right speed, angle, and timing. Detonation is shockingly loud, in contrast with the near-total ambient silence of the station exterior.
>rolled 15
By the time you hike back to the dish, that mangled support truss has somehow been completely repaired or replaced, and farspeaking pylon landed in what looks like the right spot atop it. The lightning mourn gives you an insectile salute before skittering away.

After simply touching the reconnected cable, Milaconi's cousin can interface with the farspeaking pylon, and even maintain the connection from a distance. Local datasphere is still very crowded, but seems to be making progress toward clearing the queue.

Now, to see if you can remember the chainpod's ID code...

First attempt: at the other end of the connection you're looking up from the bottom of a squarish shaft, 2.5 meters by 3 meters and at least five meters deep. No light apart from the display screen itself. Error message, core... something something... not found... reserve power... blah blah catastrophic blah... This chainpod is in very bad shape. Not just neglected maintenance, somebody tore important pieces out of it. Only other item of interest visible through the dashboard camera is a jumbled pile of bones including at least three human skulls. Advanced state of decay, but with hair still visible, suggests time of death somewhere between two months and ten years ago, depending on accessibility to scavenging beetles.
Wait, no, this isn't even YOUR chainpod! Got that last digit wrong.

Second attempt: it's outdoors, in or near Cerdyn's Pass, maglinked to two others, and the engine is having problems consistent with accumulated volcanic ash, so you're fairly sure you found the right one. Audio transceiver unresponsive, dashboard camera seems to be blocked by a large furry butt.

Third attempt: one of the other two linked pods. Camera is, again, mostly obstructed, but this time by some pale papery-looking thing, leaking a thin trail of blood.

Fourth attempt: last linked pod, fully functional, empty, and wide open to the sky. Shattered wall of a building - one you recognize as among the few in Hallux which were completely intact during the eruption's immediate aftermath - and to the other side, greasy smoke rising from out of frame in front of the wrecked volcano tamer. Reiko is laughing somewhere nearby, but it doesn't seem like the happy sort of laughter. Several other voices, crying or shouting, mostly unintelligible. A not-quite-humanoid silhouette approaches. Bright red eyes flicker "This confirms that you survived." Reaching toward the 'disconnect' button, a finger of angular stone.

rolled 14, 4, 12, 8, 18, 5, 9, 10, 5, 12, 16, 11, 5, 7, 1, 19, 12, 11, 2, 5 = 186

---

As the weeks pass, Reiko's new workshop hums and grinds to the tunes of her whimsical experimentation. Most of her work is centered around replicating the fine-tuned components of the chainpods, with the occasional request from the weary townsfolk for something she doesn't think is important like an aneen fence or a bakery. As the last component is cannibalized from the former Volcano Tamer, Reiko recommends to Mia Xan that they turn it into some kind of fire department as a (literally) practical joke. Or at least a major storage area so the next disaster doesn't starve everyone.
(Timeskip is spent developing Parts and improving/repairing the chainpods)

The calm after the stress-fest has given her enough clarity to realize she may have been blowing her personal problems out of proportion - but it was her new friends that found violent, hilariously improvised solutions. Reiko concludes that she likes this new party and would join them even if this temporary contract didn't pull the fur out of her arms.

A fortunate function of her brain implant created a neural copy of the manual she downloaded from the datasphere was kept intact. This copy is linked to her mental experiences when viewing the files rather than the actual data, and so will only work for her. It managed to compress and encrypt the copy in time to delete the raw evidence, lest the Archive she downloaded the manual from confirm her data theft and send out a cease-and-desist order for evidence of copied data - which usually means sending assassins.
Unfortunately, the Archive's cybersecurity has a creative way of dealing with hackers - they counter-hacked her implant and purged the file containing all the encryption keys. And then managed to forge evidence they had simply erased a folder of porn - that constitutes a lip-service fee for the Archive and a headache for Reiko. It's going to take time and resolve to decrypt all the files.
What little she has decrypted... it's not pretty. Most of the schematics are viewed in proportions to other components, and copies of the same objects used in various blueprints were stored and compressed in separate files, most of which are not decrypted, so most of the schematics are jumbled messes of 3-dimensional scribbles and File Not Found tokens.
(4XP - Crafting Numenera)

>>1045669
>developing Parts
>rolled 14
A full barrel of parts is only 80 units, when they're sorted and packed safely. Could plausibly gather more than that, by some combination of scrounging under the Eye of the Sea and early-completion bonus from the King Under the Mountain, but if you're sharing three single-seat vehicles with five other people (Saoirse ran off - something to do with that duke of the Beyond to whom Eliznyabeth sold a hundred-ton pack animal) there's already not much room left for luggage.

>and improving/repairing the chainpods
Each of the three pods is, more or less, a two-meter hamster ball with gyrostabilized throne inside, ominous sealed box under the seat, handspan-wide textured belt like the bastard spawn of a sawblade and a monster truck tire wrapped around the outer circumference, serving as both access hatch and traction surface. Cruises up to eighty miles per hour over good roads, half that on rough terrain or submerged. Typical humans will need to surface for fresh air every four hours or so. Any single pod can only roll along under its own power for five hours before needing to rest in direct sunlight for an hour - clear canopy gradually darkens, reaching full opacity when exhausted. However, pods can magnetically link up in a chain (hence the name) like a string of beads. Leader pulls while allowing the others to rest. Three is just enough to keep moving nonstop, provided it's not too cloudy around dawn or dusk. The seats and controls seem to have been originally intended for humanoids almost three meters tall, hunched up into a fetal position.
The three chainpods you've got access to have consecutive serial numbers, suggesting that they were produced as part of a single batch. Based on comparison to the "official" design (which you've reconstructed from a combination of datasphere glimmers and ransacking one of the pods' own internal memory), and careful nondestructive scanning, that box under the seat is a solid block of amber crystal, serving as both power storage and buoyancy control.
>inability at understanding numenera
>rolled 4
...but it's much larger than it needs to be, given the extraordinarily high purity of the crystals in question. Assuming perfect gem-cutting, and abundant supplies of the other ingredients, should theoretically be possible to build twenty or thirty adequate chainpods with the amber crystal from those three. Maybe there's some secondary function?

Anyway, you get the volcanic ash residue all cleared out, confirm lack of other urgent maintenance problems, and rig up more efficient interior cargo storage.

rolled 9, 17, 14, 3, 10, 9, 14, 20, 16, 5, 2, 11, 3, 9, 10, 19, 10, 1, 11, 10 = 203

---

>>1042427
>Based on what's spilling over into the augmech's communication queue, immediate vicinity of the farspeaking pylon seems to be very crowded from the datasphere side, like the line outside a popular nightclub, or the office of a politician who just made a very unpopular policy decision.
>>1045410
>Local datasphere is still very crowded, but seems to be making progress toward clearing the queue.
Natalina is quite pleased their effects have apparently helped their invisible data-compatriots. There are more people (or close enough) up here than she first throught.

>>1045410
>Fourth attempt: last linked pod, fully functional, empty, and wide open to the sky. Shattered wall of a building - one you recognize as among the few in Hallux which were completely intact during the eruption's immediate aftermath - and to the other side, greasy smoke rising from out of frame in front of the wrecked volcano tamer. Reiko is laughing somewhere nearby, but it doesn't seem like the happy sort of laughter. Several other voices, crying or shouting, mostly unintelligible. A not-quite-humanoid silhouette approaches. Bright red eyes flicker "This confirms that you survived." Reaching toward the 'disconnect' button, a finger of angular stone.
"...I am having second thoughts about helping you pick flowers for that. In fact, I think I would be quite happy to never see them again." Natalina reacts, shakily. "Maybe... wait for them to move away, and then keep trying to see if we can reach someone helpful and find out what happened? We're too far to help, and it's a long walk back to the inn."