>>1116363
>rolled 17
Reiko successfully disarms
>rolled 17
and pacifies her doppelganger
>rolled 14
but takes 5 points of speed damage in the process (toes curling, shaky with giddiness, etc)
>rolled 7
then both of them flop over on the cold sandy beach, unconscious and coughing up lemon-yellow smoke.
A ring of shadowy silhouettes clap politely before vanishing.

>>1116361
>rolled 16, 3, 13
Cricket is successfully rescued.

The old man walks over to ask Paprika where the Bryant Street Theater is at this time of year
/ reloads his crossbow
/ pulls a shovel out from behind his back and starts digging
/ feebly tries to drag Reiko and alt-Reiko further away from the pond
/ stares at the sky and says the Iron Wind certainly won't approach while his bones ache like this
/ slides sideways at the speed of a brisk jog, without moving a muscle
/ nods and waits for his turn to speak
/ covers his eyes
It's like watching through a dozen different funhouse mirrors at once. He doesn't seem to be attacking.

rolled 14, 19, 13, 8, 9, 17, 19, 9, 6, 2, 3, 11, 13, 19, 20, 2, 8, 6, 18, 17 = 233

---

Paprika sits cross-legged on the spot to make herself look unthreatening to as many iterations (??) of the old man as possible. Does he look related to the family that lived in the house where the otherspace hatch appeared, or anyone else in Jackson's Launch? Can Paprika conceive of any way to fix whatever broken time affliction this man seems to be suffering from? I'll apply 3 intellect effort toward puzzling this out. (7 - 2 edge = 5 point cost.)

"Not sure. Are you from around here?" Trying to gather information about who this guy is and keep as many of him talking as I can.

>>1116371
>Does he look related to the family that lived in the house where the otherspace hatch appeared, or anyone else in Jackson's Launch?
>rolled 14
No. None of the natives, anyway.
Going by skin and hair color, clothing style, accent, things like that, you'd guess he's feluban - maybe from a city-state called Rachid, way up north past the Jagged Wastes, about 150 miles east of the Great Slab. Supposedly they use words as money, somehow?
Going by more family-specific details, he's either a decades-older version of one particular mummified corpse found stranded in the Beanstalk, or a very close relative thereof - father, maybe grandfather.

>Can Paprika conceive of any way to fix whatever broken time affliction this man seems to be suffering from? I'll apply 3 intellect effort toward puzzling this out. (7 - 2 edge = 5 point cost.)
>rolled 19
>inability at understanding numenera
It's the causal equivalent of a shattered bone that has already started to heal wrong. Ultimate Automender... might be worth a try, but you're not optimistic. If a cure is possible at all, probably needs to be 're-broken' somehow, then straightened back out by some cosmic entity who routinely transcends mortal concepts of space and time. Which, if so, would mean you'd somehow need to get such a being to owe you a favor, then spend said favor on helping someone you don't even know.

In the final minutes of a cramped two-day journey, disembodied datasphere-spirits offer cordial, albeit formulaic, greetings in an unfamiliar tongue:
Zone noire est destinée à l'industrie lourde, la construction en cours n'est pas encore ouverte aux visites
Zone d'ivoire est pour le chargement et le déchargement uniquement
Zone jaune comprend des restaurants et le salon d'observation

First thing you notice when the hatch opens is a millipede the size of a freight train - white with blue veins, like a fancy porcelain vase - coiled on the ceiling.
Second thing you notice is that's not actually the ceiling. You're above geostationary orbit now, so "gravity" points the other way. It's coiled on the floor.
Third, and only clearly good news, is that cyborg bug is either dead, or so soundly asleep that you, and all your stuff, falling out of the elevator onto it didn't wake it up.
Fourth thing is there's scrap metal stacked haphazardly all across the rest of the room. It's a huge space, palatial verging on cavernous, with floor-to-ceiling star-field visible around the whole perimeter.
One of those distant scrap piles has tipped over, punctured a window, and air is slowly but visibly leaking out.

You are in Zone Ivory - Central. Available exits are {E}ast, {W}est, {A}irlock, {S}outh, {U}p, {D}ig, and {N}o Your Other Up.

rolled 1, 6, 13, 8, 1, 20, 5, 11, 2, 20, 14, 11, 2, 4, 8, 12, 4, 16, 8, 6 = 172

---

>>1116398
Which way did my squidbot friend go, when I rode along with it? Any relevant info from thread 3 that could help us get our bearings?

JamesLeng 2025/11/05(Wed)10:01 No. 1116400 ID: 5f5c2b
File 176236570290.png - (707.04KB , 900x540 , The Nightcraft.png )

>>1116399
>Which way did my squidbot friend go, when I rode along with it?
>rolled 1
You didn't see - stayed inside the elevator the whole time - but suspect West, which appears to be the docks. There's a hallway there, sturdy retractable floor and railings inside a flexible tube of thin clear synth about five meters in diameter, leading to the underbelly of... some other structure, hundreds of meters long, shaped vaguely like a manta ray or three-fingered hand. A working starship, hopefully.

>Any relevant info from thread 3 that could help us get our bearings?
>rolled 6
Previously, Paprika and Natalina came in through those airlocks on the north side. There's a whole network of ferromagnetic rails beyond, out in the void, positioned such that someone in a chainpod could drive straight through the lock, barely needing to slow down as iris doors maintain a seal around the spherical hull, then easily reach other habitable areas in Zone Black (aka the Cloud Giant's Tomb) before their pod's air ran out. Ought to be careful about patches of that electrostatic dust potentially interrupting the magnetic link, though.

rolled 17, 2, 18, 15, 8, 1, 13, 19, 1, 3, 8, 7, 20, 7, 4, 14, 9, 10, 5, 19 = 200

---

>>1116090
Natalina doesn't begrudge the good woman her reaction, they were fishing in her home, a share of the catch is only fair! And not braving below freezing temperatures with wet hair was the correct decision. Reiko caught a cold without even entering the water, despite the heat belt!

>>1116267
>During her most elaborate attempt yet, Nat emerges into an unused closet in the aeon priest's clave to find Paprika already waiting for her in the cramped space. "I like this game. Did you already have a plan for what we'd do alone in the dark tiny closet together?"
"Paprika!" Natalina answers in a scandalized whisper, verging on giggles. "What did you even say to explain needing to hide in here?"

>>1116398
>One of those distant scrap piles has tipped over, punctured a window, and air is slowly but visibly leaking out.
Oh... ancestors. That's not good at all, is it?

Natalina quickly moves to investigate. Two level of Speed Effort on traversing the unstable scrap safely, training in perception (and assessing flaws!) to examine the damage, with Understanding applied.

>>1116403
>Natalina quickly moves to investigate. Two level of Speed Effort on traversing the unstable scrap safely,
>rolled 17
No sweat, hopping and flickering from one small stable platform to the next.
>training in perception (and assessing flaws!) to examine the damage, with Understanding applied.
The windowpane seems to already be healing itself, it's just stuck because one girder in particular is porous, like sponge or bird bone. Just need to pull that one back out of the way, or push it the rest of the way through... It'd be a lot easier and safer to move a little stuck pipe like that if you had firm footing, and more space to maneuver. There's a solid, wide-open platform right there, in plain view, less than two steps away.
>rolled 2
Nat hesitates, a heartbeat before starting to phase through the window. Better leverage wouldn't be enough to compensate for lack of anything to breathe.
>rolled 18, 15
Given that the material is self-repairing, that spiderweb pattern is probably some equivalent of scar tissue, stronger than the transparent parts, rather than weakened fractures as it would be in inert glass. Might be as simple as bracing boots against the window and putting your back into it? Or could rig up a block and tackle, to be extra slow and careful. If this pile got tipped over during the fight, it's been leaking continuously for almost a week, so you can probably spare a few more hours.

rolled 9, 6, 10, 4, 6, 19, 17, 18, 8, 6, 20, 20, 1, 1, 15, 8, 4, 7, 4, 2 = 185

---

"Hmm."

Reiko looks around, comparing her Gravity Changer plates to any of the nearby apparatus. There might be some kind of immediate transport between the two gravity-based zones, potentially the kinetic kind.

Also, Reiko casually looks for iotum in the direction of the Dig Site. [Scan For Iotum, Effort 1]

rolled 20, 6, 8, 16, 4, 11, 20, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 16, 14, 7, 16, 11, 13, 1, 11 = 184

---

>>1116403
>"Paprika!" Natalina answers in a scandalized whisper, verging on giggles. "What did you even say to explain needing to hide in here?"
"UGH, priest's had his nose buried in his books the whole time I've been here. Saw you coming, told him I had to take my clothes off, he just nodded, so I left and wandered til I found the room you looked like you were headed for."

>>1116400
Paprika's reshaped her brilliance cloth into a rubbery skin-tight suit. Covers wrist to ankle, with a belt and a little skirt that hugs her thighs, boots and gloves to complete the look. Space outfit! She's attached her new diamond-shaped lightning mourn patch just above her left breast.

Paprika will stick with Nat, maybe give her a hand moving that girder.

"Ensign Prika reporting for duty! Can we explore the space ship first?"

rolled 12, 14, 3, 2, 9, 19, 18, 9, 16, 7, 2, 12, 15, 20, 2, 11, 6, 16, 16, 4 = 213

---

Cricket is awestruck. Not really sure what to do with herself. The whole ride up she was second guessing, feeling like an unwanted add-on, a chore being brought along out of some sense of unearned pity. Now that she's actually up here... she just sits, and waits, and watches. When she's able to scrape her jaw off the cloor a bit, she starts trying to gather some of the fallen supplies and make camp. Part of her wants to investigate the millipede, but she's honestly afraid to even look at it, lest she accidentally messes something up and ruins the whole trip.

For now, just stay quiet, small, and out of the way. Be useful and unobtrusive, and don't mess anything up.

rolled 2, 7, 18, 5, 3, 19, 17, 4, 7, 13, 13, 16, 12, 3, 1, 16, 10, 6, 15, 2 = 189

---

>>1116405
>Nat hesitates, a heartbeat before starting to phase through the window. Better leverage wouldn't be enough to compensate for lack of anything to breathe.
Now that she can walk though walls, Natalina really needs to work on making that kind of instinct habitual.

>Or could rig up a block and tackle, to be extra slow and careful.
Extracting the girder quicklymight be problematic if the window-healing is slow... and the sudden change in pressure or airflow might cause the rubble-piles to shift or fall, which might make standing nearby unwise. Using rope to extract it from further away would be prudent.

Applying Understanding, Learned, a level of Intellect Effort, possibly borrowing Reiko's book on Crafting, and cooperating with Paprika.

>>1116412
No active artificial gravity anywhere inside, far as you can tell. It's working entirely by centrifugal force - like swinging a rock on the end of a long string.

Lot of good potential salvage in all those piles of scrap, though, particularly the terapede.

>>1116435
>investigate the millipede,
>just stay quiet, small, and out of the way.
>rolled 12
Turns out the terapede's interior has been almost entirely hollowed out - it's spacious enough to walk around in there.
>rolled 14
Someone else, similarly shy, apparently also thought it would be a good hiding space. They whisper something about being lost and hungry, but they don't...
>trained in perception
...have an...
>trained in detecting falsehoods, piercing illusions or disguises, and seeing past facades.
...actual face, as such, under those shadows and rags.
>rolled 3
Even without the benefit of surprise, sluggish ambush predator stretches bonelessly and bites a chunk out of her forearm. Six damage, reduced to five by armor. Now it's about 25% larger, and has the shape of Cricket's face - her entire body above the waist, actually, clothes and all.


>>1116267
>aeon priest is still examining the anhedon head
>Any new info?
The head's clamped to a workbench, holes drilled in at several points and copper probes inserted. Apparently those red beams can distinguish trace chemicals, instantly and nondestructively, with incredible detail and nuance, so he's running through a long backlog of oddities and contaminated samples to see what the new data can reveal.

Speaking of contaminated samples, doppel-Reiko's saliva, urine, and even blood contain virtually no water, and the aeon priest suspects that drinking any significant quantity of pure water would be very bad for her health. Conversely, the opalescent cobalt-blue antifreeze her alien organic chemistry IS using as a solvent has well-studied ill effects on the human nervous system - mostly temporary, assuming you survive the seizures, but not something anyone made of normal meat should be casually messing around with. Fortunately there's an abundant local supply, provided she doesn't mind using a hazardous waste dump as an oasis.

>>1116440
>Using rope to extract it from further away would be prudent.
>Applying Understanding, Learned, a level of Intellect Effort, possibly borrowing Reiko's book on Crafting, and cooperating with Paprika.
>rolled 2, 7
Incredibly frustrating to limit herself to moving slowly enough to stay in Euclidean space, while under an audible time limit. Knots keep clipping through themselves due to some hasty gesture and needing to be re-done. Attachment points on irregular pieces of metal have to be chosen with exquisite care, to both balance the center of mass, and avoid ropes abrading on sharp edges. Worst of all, those "how to move heavy things" diagrams in the book almost all assume some stable fixed point to start from, but the entire indoor portion of Zone Ivory doesn't seem to have a single load-bearing pillar!
>>1116414
>Paprika will stick with Nat, maybe give her a hand moving that girder.
>rolled 20
There's a second door in the ceiling, just like the one you arrived through, but wedged open with another piece of debris: a wrist-thick iron bar about four meters long with a small mangled gear at the midpoint, broad flanges on both ends with elaborately textured black synth padding around the rims. similar to https://flakypastry.runningwithpencils.com/comic.php?strip_id=971 or a pugil-stick https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-05-11 sized for a giant Adequate anchor-point for the comealong to clear the punctured window. Once it's pulled out, window seals up and cuts off the jet of twinkling crystals where air was escaping into the void, and the disembodied greeter-voice returns.

Normalisation de la pression barométrique. Libération du confinement d'urgence.

Second elevator door swings wide, padded axle drops out like a cigar from the mouth of someone gone slackjawed in shock.

Le blocage de la porte a été éliminé.

...which apparently means "both sides of the Beanstalk are now open for business."
Another 1 xp for everybody, and the more flexible transit timing means Zone Ivory is now within range of diplomatic downtime actions from Jackson's Launch.

rolled 3, 9, 14, 18, 16, 18, 12, 4, 10, 16, 7, 12, 19, 7, 6, 12, 9, 5, 11, 3 = 211

---

>"both sides of the Beanstalk are now open for business."
Now somehow even more sunshiney after that win, Paprika bounces back across the room. What do the south and east paths look like?

rolled 3, 15, 9, 10, 10, 15, 20, 17, 6, 9, 10, 19, 10, 11, 17, 20, 14, 13, 2, 14 = 244

---

Reiko spends a little time salvaging bits and pieces across the station, casually making her way up to the terapede once Cricket calls out and confirms the metal beast is a 'desert skeleton'.
[Salvage Numenera, Effort 2]

Unfortunately, it takes her a while to realize that Cricket is screaming her head off. Rushing to the terapede, Reiko takes one look at Cricket's mangled arm and the blood-jawed Cricket doppelganger, and promptly shoots at the exoskeleton of the terapede, intending to cave the skeleton upon the enemy doppelganger to subdue them without killing them outright; maybe Cricket can get a cute body double of her own - or maybe she'd like to get revenge personally. [Iotum Beam, Effort 2]

rolled 2, 8, 8, 8, 2, 5, 16, 12, 18, 16, 3, 16, 16, 8, 13, 6, 17, 17, 13, 4 = 208

---

>>1116469
>doppel-Reiko
Does this mean the alternate was conscious and well, conversing, before we headed up the beanstalk? It would be interesting to know if she came from a similar situation. Though given respective supernormal abilities, Natalina is at least a little surprised that if any of them were to stumble across an alternative self, it wasn't her.

>has the shape of Cricket's face - her entire body above the waist, actually, clothes and all.
...surely you can't jinx things by thinking about about them.

To avoid a classic dilemma, applying training in perception, detecting minor differences, and detecting flaws (in the works of shapeshifting mimics) to differentiating Cricket and the ambush predator. Zipping over to Cricket with phase sprint and pulling her back, assuming a defensive posture (trained in speed defense, one level of speed Effort), mainly against further attacks by the ambush predator, but also to reduce the risk of mistaken friendly fire.

rolled 9, 5, 11, 2, 18, 20, 14, 20, 13, 5, 1, 3, 13, 16, 8, 18, 13, 2, 7, 19 = 217

---

>>1116469
Cricket, cursing herself for exploring the millipede when she knew better, attempts to lash out with a poisoned arm blade (debilitating poison applied right before reaching the top of the elevator, just in case) and then uses fleet of foot to dart away backwards as part of the same action. I'll apply a level of whatever effort is appropriate for attacking (speed? might?)

>>1116502
Zone Ivory - East has a majestic staircase leading up to a landing with a reception desk, then those stairs split and curve back around, hugging the windows. It's the main route up (for centrifugal values of "up" which are actually closer to the planet's surface) to Zone Jaune, a fancy restaurant / lounge under a dome for viewing the night sky unobstructed. The earth hangs directly overhead, appearing 80 to 85 times wider than a full moon.

Zone Ivory - South has the tallest piles of scrap, and is where you got banished to another dimension at the end of your previous sightseeing visit. That rift is long since closed, but there's some sort of active energy source...
>rolled 3
...which you can't quite identify, apart from being fairly sure it wasn't there (or at least wasn't active yet) last week.
>>1116562
>rolled 2, 8, 8, 8, 2, 5, 16
Nat circles back through the south side to check out that anomaly, but ends up getting turned around and lost, only finding her way out in response to Cricket's distress call.

>>1116514
Reiko rips an entire leg off the terapede husk, harvesting five units of parts and one of Azure Steel in the course of expediting Cricket's escape.

>>1116591
Cricket is treated to the unsettling sight of a mockery of her own face melting away into shimmering, sickly rainbows as the poison takes effect, then splitting into multiple independent slug-like portions. She sprints to the opposite end of the hollowed-out interior space in five seconds flat, but isn't effectively pursued; by the time she and Reiko return to observe the site of the attack, those little mimetic monsters have either retreated into inaccessible crevices, or found something else to disguise themselves as.

rolled 8, 2, 4, 12, 13, 18, 11, 3, 15, 20, 15, 9, 12, 11, 4, 20, 8, 17, 15, 9 = 226

---

>>1116469
>Paprika's reshaped her brilliance cloth into a rubbery skin-tight suit. Covers wrist to ankle, with a belt and a little skirt that hugs her thighs, boots and gloves to complete the look. Space outfit! She's attached her new diamond-shaped lightning mourn patch just above her left breast.
Natalina's outfit is more reminiscent of her original adventuring garb, with a pillbox hat, blouse and trousers- and an ample selection of pockets for useful items not stored in her pack. The color scheme is differs though- predominantly creams and tans over a darker layer, with the occasional highlight or embellishment in blue. No longer needing to accommodate the leather jerkin acquired by the eye of the sea, she is instead adorned by a set of jewelry on her wrists and ankles comprising her otherspace anchor. The aesthetic is reminiscent of some of the mechanical life the duo encountered on their previous visit—automatons with sleek ivory shells, with colored markers, gylphs and lights. And of course, the arkus is displaying her new patch as well.

>>1116604
>only finding her way out in response to Cricket's distress call.
"Oh, you poor dear."

Natalina will pull out her first aid kit to clean and bind the bite on Cricket's arm, we certainly wouldn't want that getting infected (fortunately, with Cricket around, there's not shortage of clean water). Healing action with one asset.

>those little mimetic monsters have either retreated into inaccessible crevices, or found something else to disguise themselves as
The arkus gives the delegged terapede husk a considering look. "Well, if it can be repaired and cleaned of biting creatures, a cargo hauler could be useful."

"We might want to salvage what we can from the piles of debris now, so later we can push away what's left without worry. If we are to use this location as a base camp, we wouldn't want so many places for ambushers to hide."

> a majestic staircase leading up to a landing with a reception desk
Reception often include information for guests. Does the desk include a computer interface? If so, Natalina would like to apply her familiarity with the area's datasphere to see if it is reporting anything of interest. Local crises, damage reports, alerts, things of that nature. A map or directory? (If information is not displayed using truth or Uxphonese, willing to activate Babel).

rolled 6 + 5 = 11

---

>>1116604
>>1116608
>Natalina will pull out her first aid kit to clean and bind the bite on Cricket's arm

Cricket Moon initially jumps back, leveling a blade and dropping into a defensive stance. After some assurances that Natalina isn't a shapeshifter, she lets her examine the wound. Still flinches away from your touch instinctively, but something tells you that's not related to the mimic.
Using my first recovery roll. Can I choose to take my 10 minute roll now, and save the 1 action roll for later?

rolled 18, 16, 14, 19, 4, 1, 4, 2, 8, 7, 12, 6, 6, 18, 1, 19, 20, 10, 18, 6 = 209

---

"Nat, I left the Microhealer in the chainpod. Bring her over and healing Cricket will be easier."

If Cricket agrees, Reiko helps carry Cricket back to the chainpod, hooks the Mechanic artifact to herself and Cricket, and assists with the healing process.

Afterwards, Reiko stores the Azure Steel, and tries to invent some kind of mimic lure. If they can capture these creatures, they might be useful as a cross-reference for maintaining Doppel-Reiko's health, and they might know things about this station. [Crafting Numenera, Effort 2]

rolled 5, 6, 3, 2, 11, 12, 19, 20, 19, 16, 7, 5, 17, 9, 14, 8, 19, 19, 4, 5 = 220

---

>>1116591
>Zone Jaune
>The earth hangs directly overhead, appearing 80 to 85 times wider than a full moon.
The party hears Paprika's awestruck shriek echo throughout Zone Ivory - Central, and then she's gone. Leaping up stairs as fast as gravity will allow in order to check out Zone Jaune.

If the lounge is less cluttered, it might actually be better to set up camp here?

rolled 9, 1, 14, 10, 16, 9, 6, 3, 4, 10, 3, 12, 20, 3, 19, 11, 13, 4, 7, 18 = 192

---

Cricket awkwardly plays along as Reiko tries to take care of her, then creates a hasty, almost comedic distraction- "wait, did you hear that? What if a mimic got into the medibot and is waiting to ambush us!" then slips away while Reiko looks it over for bugs.

Seeing Paprika bound away, she hesitates- they shouldn't be splitting up, and if any of them get separated who knows if they'll show up with a stolen face... but she should really try to clear out the threats here, and help set up camp before they can regroup...

She goes after Paprika anyways. Following more closely behind than usual; hanging back in the shadows is an easy way to get stolen away without anyone realizing. Looking up at... that place hanging in the sky makes her skin crawl. All that water... it's like she can feel the moisture in her guts, in the air, like she can't get the feeling of pulling, tugging, off of her skin...
she snaps back and tries to focus on what's in front of her. Threat assessment first. Check the angles, the dark and hidden places she would scamper off to. Stay in line of sight to each other at all times. Another dose of debilitating poison on her arm blade, held at the ready just in case.

Searching the room for threats, applying a free level of intellect effort to the task.

>>1116608
>Reception often include information for guests. Does the desk include a computer interface? If so, Natalina would like to apply her familiarity with the area's datasphere to see if it is reporting anything of interest. Local crises, damage reports, alerts, things of that nature. A map or directory?
>rolled 8
Most of the interesting stuff seems to be locked away behind security barriers, or just broken, but there's a map of the facility as originally designed, and a toggleable screen which initially appeared to be surveilance cameras is actually a set of remote controls.
>rolled 2
Natalina can't figure out how to extract those controls from the desk while retaining functionality, or where the things they're controlling are located, besides one.

As for the map, apparently what's now known as the Cloud Giant's Tomb was originally three similar-sized zones, arranged like a layer cake: Zone Black for industry, Zone Ivory for docking and freight-handling, and Zone Yellow for tourists. Following the alchemical symbology, "Zone Red" would then be the remaining length of the Beanstalk. Industrial infrastructure expanded and compounded over time, so now Zone Black is classifiable as a planetoid while the other two stayed as they were.

>>1116658
>If the lounge is less cluttered, it might actually be better to set up camp here?

It's less cluttered, but not by quite as much as Paprika was hoping. Roughly half again as many chairs as there should be - none individually in incongrous spots, just crowded around tables and booths so there's not quite enough elbow room for convenient dining or server access. At least one table has a full set positioned around it normally, upright on the floor, and then another full set inverted as if for closing time.

A three meter tall Locutus-class augmech, equipped for bartending, waves hello and speaks in an oddly-modulated but recognizable version of Natalina's voice. The real Nat is operating it remotely from that desk Paprika sprinted past.

>>1116649
>hooks the Mechanic artifact to herself
>invent some kind of mimic lure
>rolled 18

Reiko unpacks the Mechanic, turns away for a moment to grab a tool needed for fully integrating it with her personal implants, then looks back to see six seemingly identical instances of the artifact in a tidy vertical stack.

rolled 6, 11, 10, 3, 3, 20, 17, 7, 20, 13, 4, 4, 16, 1, 13, 6, 3, 19, 18, 8 = 202

---

>>1116663
"Hey Nat!"

>Roughly half again as many chairs as there should be
Weird! Paprika will poke multiple chairs with her spear. If none of them grow teeth and bite her, she'll run up to the bar.

"Straight whiskey, please. And Cricket's drinks are on me tonight." Paprika waves Cricket over. "Stack up all these chairs, push em off to the side. Much easier than moving all the junk downstairs. And we get to take in the view. What do you think?"

rolled 3, 10, 2, 8, 5, 11, 12, 11, 4, 6, 8, 13, 6, 4, 15, 11, 1, 16, 12, 16 = 174

---

Luckily, Reiko Machine-Bonded to the Chainpods and the Mechanic already... but the party should try to tame the creatures before shooting them.

First things first, Reiko sends a subtle command to the Mechanic, getting a response that lets her know which of the cases is the real artifact (if any).

Then, Reiko throws out a few different cheap objects, and some extra food. Stuff that's not worth picking back up off the floor.

Finally, Reiko gets into a defensive position [Might], and waits for the mimics to de-morph and eat something in the pile. If they try to eat her, she's going to counterattack with the halberd and then direct a chainpod to bowl the mimics over.

>>1116669
>Paprika will poke multiple chairs with her spear.
>windslice spear + combat prowess for base damage 9
>rolled 6, 11, 10
Targeted chairs are either unaffected, or obliterated, depending on how much force you're putting into those pokes.
>If none of them grow teeth and bite her, she'll run up to the bar.
>rolled 3, 3
Squeezing between a pair on the way to the bar, both chairs do in fact grow teeth (1 Might damage each, after armor)...
>rolled 20
...and are swiftly dispatched.
>rolled 17
Paprika reaches the bar without further incident by hopping across tables.

>>1116673
>Reiko sends a subtle command to the Mechanic, getting a response that lets her know which of the cases is the real artifact (if any).
>rolled 3
All six respond exactly as the real one should.
>waits for the mimics to de-morph and eat something in the pile
>rolled 10
Reiko might actually be able to beat a mimetan's patience, but under the circumstances that'll probably result in sitting and staring until someone else gets involved.

rolled 14, 20, 3, 6, 20, 8, 10, 9, 19, 11, 20, 6, 11, 10, 2, 3, 10, 12, 4, 1 = 199

---

> A three meter tall Locutus-class augmech, equipped for bartending, waves hello and speaks in an oddly-modulated but recognizable version of Natalina's voice. The real Nat is operating it remotely from that desk Paprika sprinted past.
Oh, an augmech! Remote controls (especially those fixed in place) are less exciting than piloting from a cockpit, but that's still a gladdening discovery. Natalina quite enjoyed the time with Milaconi's cousin.

>"Hey Nat!"
>"Straight whiskey, please.
Caught up in the moment, and having been cooped up for days, Natalina can't resist playing along. The bar-bot curtseys in Paprika's direction. "Of course, madam. Coming right up."

Rolling to, well, provide drinks! Presumably this variant provides augmech shifts to bartending actions? Assuming the locutus can locate or provide uncontaminated, human-safe refreshment, she'll mix drinks (such a specialized model should have sensors for that kind of thing, surely?). If there's nothing useful on tap, she'll have the bar-bot offer a polite apology- catering will be delayed while the freight elevator's delivery is being unloaded.

rolled 13, 12, 7, 20, 5, 10, 2, 7, 9, 20, 19, 20, 14, 9, 16, 13, 20, 7, 5, 11 = 239

---

>>1116676
Okay, time to systematically clear the room. Cricket (hopefully with Paprika's help, so they both get a +1 on the roll) will get something long with minimal value- a pool cue from the lounge or something similar, and start testing various pieces of furniture to check for hidden bugs. 1 Level of whatever effort is appropriate. Intellect maybe? Two, if it's intellect.

rolled 14, 17, 19, 11, 3, 15, 1, 17, 8, 8, 8, 13, 1, 7, 14, 15, 19, 9, 14, 1 = 214

---

>>1116676
>Targeted chairs are either unaffected, or obliterated, depending on how much force you're putting into those pokes.
I'll go with "obliterated"

>>1116738
>hopefully with Paprika's help
"I am not doing shit until I finish my drink. Come on, sit down!"

At Cricket's insistence, Paprika takes the simpler option of activating her flame shroud and hacking away at all the furniture in the room until every chair is in at least two pieces.

rolled 20, 10, 12, 8, 14, 7, 5, 9, 5, 2, 15, 5, 10, 3, 18, 13, 10, 14, 16, 3 = 199

---

Reiko continues to wait and stare at the mimic stack, but also tries to call the party back.

Reiko attempts to communicate with the mimics in the meantime.

rolled 6, 1 = 7

---

>>1116738
>rolled 13, 12, 7, 20
>>1116739
>rolled 14, 17, 19, 11
From the stairs to the bar Cricket and Paprika clear a slightly circuitous path of chairs, tables, or any other suspicious objects. Resulting route is wide enough for chainpods, and crosses a small dance floor, but ends up needing to avoid several chest-high walls topped with potted plants, which Paprika simply jumped over on her initial traversal. Zone Jaune is mostly laid out to favor conversational privacy over rapid movement.

Rolling for how many units of mimetic gel you manage to gather over the course of those hours.

>>1116754
>Reiko attempts to communicate with the mimics in the meantime.
>rolled 20
They're not particularly smart - they can imitate the repair device's superficial syntax, and its physical shape down to details finer than a normal person's eye could see, but utterly lack the technical expertise encoded in nanoparticles of machine-phase matter. Which means they also don't quite understand what it can't do. After what amounts to a rigged game of Simon Says, the five fakes have de-stacked and slithered into the barrel of a rusty but (probably) repairable paint-mixing machine. Reiko could reconnect a few frayed wires and push a button to puree them into an additional unit of mimetic gel.

rolled 17, 18, 6, 9, 12, 1, 8, 7, 10, 6, 12, 13, 19, 17, 4, 1, 13, 14, 7, 6 = 200

---

After what feels like days of contemplation, Reiko decides to puree the mimics. They could be useful pets - if not for the threat of them eating their owners alive and replacing them for a few days to reproduce and spread out into the wild. No, not worth the risk, especially with their lack of higher thought. Hopefully none of the surviving mimics are smart enough to learn from this treachery.

Reiko grabs her artifact and the paint barrel for good measure, and follows the trail of footprints after Cricket and the lovebirds. If they get paranoid, she can just demonstrate her new 'trick'. They have a mimic-eliminating strategy now, they just have to ration it out between rooms.

rolled 5, 4, 12, 2, 1, 12, 15, 17, 17, 12, 5, 18, 4, 6, 18, 1, 7, 18, 9, 9 = 192

---

>>1116734
Natalina discovers the bar isn't stocked with whiskey per se, but does offer ethyl hydroxide, similar to the innkeeper-abbot's shelter ( >>1040931 ) along with non-perishable flavorings for mixed drinks. And the bar-bot is more than up to the task of providing refreshment to the heroic mimitan-clearers.

The arkus-driven-augmech also offers Paprika a brief dance in the cleared space; it's not often Natalina will be the taller of the pair and in a position to lead (a dance).

>the innkeeper-abbot
>Wonder if any of my monster friends can help
Does the reception area have access to internal communications? If so, Natalina could try dialing the life-shelter they visited before, check in with the proprietor. Let them know we're back in the area, inquire if Milaconi's cousin made made it back to her berth (thank them again for the loan) and see if they have any new information on the local situation to share.

>what do
Zone Ivory and Juane have a mimitan-infestation of unknown size remaining: which makes them navigable with caution, but makes the prospect of establishing a base camp (or sleeping here) more perilous. For the moment, can we close the elevator doors, to prevent mimics hiding among (or consuming!) the food supplies we brought along?

There’s still more salvage to collect in the local area, but that could be done at our convenience.

Investigating the hopefully-a-starship is mission critical, but perhaps we should examine the energy source in Zone Ivory South first? It might be someone (or something) else arrived since our last visit, or some system failed or activated.

rolled 20, 16, 8, 10, 10, 8, 14, 20, 4, 11, 5, 19, 14, 1, 16, 13, 9, 10, 13, 2 = 223

---

>>1116920
>From the stairs to the bar Cricket and Paprika clear a slightly circuitous path of chairs, tables, or any other suspicious objects.
Paprika wipes sweat from her forehead. "I think that's a good start!"

>>1117102
>refreshment to the heroic mimitan-clearers.
Paprika almost cries sipping the colorful cocktail. "It's really smooth! I haven't had a drink like this in ages. Thanks Nat."

Paprika nudges Cricket and gestures up at the Earth. "That's where I'm from! City of Needles." She points at where she thinks it should be. "And when I was nine my house burned down and I moved there, Hallux. It felt like another world at the time, but the distance looks so small from up here..." Waving her finger around in a small circle, "Then when I was about your age, I left Hallux and went to all the small towns round the city to perform. I never got as good as my mom, she was famous. But I scraped together enough to get by. Never thought I'd end up going on some grand adventure in space."

>dance in the cleared space
>not often Natalina will be the taller of the pair and in a position to lead (a dance).
Paprika jumps into the augmech's arms to be carried out onto the floor. She's very mushy about it.

>can we close the elevator doors, to prevent mimics hiding among (or consuming!) the food supplies we brought along?
Paprika will try to help ferry our food back up into the elevator, if that's the plan we end up going with.

>perhaps we should examine the energy source in Zone Ivory South first?
"I can't figure that thing out. I'm sure Cricket and Reiko will know what they're looking at. I can show you where I found it."

>>1117014
>[Reiko] follows the trail of footprints after Cricket and the lovebirds
>They have a mimic-eliminating strategy now
"Reiko you are so incredibly smart. Do you think you can get all the mimics to climb in?" Paprika gestures at the thousands of chairs in the room. "We think there's a lot of them."

rolled 3, 11, 5, 14, 9, 14, 9, 15, 1, 16, 4, 3, 4, 2, 12, 10, 1, 3, 4, 5 = 145

---

>>1117257
>when I was nine my house burned down and I moved there,
Cricket blinks.
"I'm sorry." she says, quietly- "I know what that's like".

>"That's where I'm from! City of Needles."
Cricket takes a moment, then points to a small island off the coast of the main continent.

"In a city by the coast, there was a road. The Lord who ruled this city built his offices along the road, and trade was good. Because of this, his neighbors saw his bounty, and they killed him, and his brothers, and sons, and they took what was his and demolished what they could not take. The new lords, not being fools, built a castle on the bones of the trade office, to prevent their neighbors from doing the same.
Of course, the first lord was not as foolish as you might think- the office, between two rivers, was a poor space for a castle. The ground was swampy and cramped, and so they built using an unusual design- a spiral, to make the smallest space require the longest routes to reach the heart.
It was here, in the heart of the blood soaked spiral of a castle on an office on in a swamp, held tight in the claustrophobic grasp of the twin rivers, that I was conceived. I do not remember much of my time here, but I was bathed in something unnatural and otherworldly. My birth was... not natural. I am half native, of the ninth world, half... something else. When I was six, a nursemaid disguised as my mother stole me from that place. We fled for four days and four nights. I grew up in a no-name fishing village, hiding and hoping our pursuers would not be able to find us. When I was caught..."

She trails off, staring off into space (literally!). As she does, she absentmindedly forms a small globe of water in her hands, seemingly pulling it out of thin air, turning it over and over like a worry stone.

"Anyways, once I was older, I had learned all I could from watching others. I decided I needed to set out, to see more, to do more, understand more. I think one day I may go back to that castle. But not today yet. There is so much in the world I still do not know and understand."

After the couple have their fun dancing and drinking, Cricket will silently get up from her spot of contemplation under the bar, and work with Reiko to continue the project of trying to isolate and remove the mimics. One level of whatever effort is applicable, two if it's intellect.

>>1117257
>Do you think you can get all the mimics to climb in?
>inability at understanding numenera
>rolled 20
That specific trick only worked because the mimetans were already in the shape of a machine which they didn't know couldn't climb around like that, but did know Reiko had remote-access credentials for. Maybe... if you could get a bunch of the mimic-chairs to switch to copying the bartender augmech? Somehow? ...but then what would you tell the copies to do, that a mimic can, and a Locutus-class non-obviously can't?

After the dance, Nat climbs out of the augmech's cockpit (yes, even though she was remotely piloting it from the reception desk dozens of meters away, and has no recollection of entering said cockpit - compared to some of the distracted mishaps she had as a teenager, that's nothing) at which point Paprika notices a hexagonal scrap of greenish-yellow paper stuck to the back of Nat's shoulder. It's a note from that shy, spider-ish construction-assistant creature you met in the haunted-house dimension.

>"Hi! Your world has a lot more open space than I'm used to. It's kinda scary, but awesome! Sorry about [untranslatable]ing you >>1116604 I panicked and I've had almost nothing to eat since I squeezed through to here three (?) lighting-cycles ago"

rolled 10, 3, 2, 18, 16, 16, 5, 15, 11, 14, 3, 19, 2, 1, 17, 5, 15, 6, 5, 5 = 188

---

Reiko brainstorms a few ideas, but nothing that can kill the mimics all at once. If they kill a few in the vicinity of others, they risk the other mimics learning 'these are not your friends' and just attacking as a ravenous horde. The party wouldn't stand a chance.

However, they can mimic delivery units. Units that go nowhere important - the risk is the point. Trick the mimics into pretending to be beverage transport units, of some kind, feed them in exchange for whatever garbage they retrieve (and then pretend to make booze out of it, to sell the deception), and send them on increasingly long delivery jobs through rough, elementally-saturated terrain until they get bored and mimic something else somewhere elsewhere, or die walking through a deathtrap.

We can fool them into marching into deathtraps for us. Win-Lose.
[Come up with the plan above or better, Intelligence, Effort 2]

>>1117257
>>1117663
Reiko shrugs and chimes in. "I'm from a tribe of nomads, but..." she points at a small desert, out in the east. "Most of the time, we'd live around there. It sucks as much as you'd expect, but that was kind of the point. Sometimes we took a bad job and needed to let the heat blow over. Sometimes we stooped to raiding what we wanted. People would want us dead, but most bounty hunters and mercenaries would give up before they'd chased us a few dozen miles into a sandstorm.

For a long time, we were just your average, everyday, chrome-obsessed gang. And then we overdosed.

See, my tribe knew about the Vault hidden within the desert. Every other tribe that ever crossed that desert knew all about it - knew just how many foolhardy adventurers died to its automated defense systems. I think it even had an anti-missile defense matrix, or whatever that crown of lights was. Like the other intelligent tribes, we learned how to camp around it, how to convince it to treat us as a neutral entity. We'd spend a few weeks basking in the light of its protection, but leave before it started getting paranoid about our presence.

We happened to be the ones nearest to the Vault when the machine-spirits in charge dropped dead. Scout drones fell out of the sky, the main defense cannon crumbled and crashed to the sands before our eyes. Every light powered down. We only wasted five seconds of jaw-dropping before the War-horns sounded and my battle-brothers devolved into whoops and moans, leaving most of our camp in the sand-dust.

We rushed into the vault, barred one of the entrances with our own defenses, and relentlessly cannibalized the Protector Spirit we had depended on for so long. We craved the Vault's power, and now that its inhabitants had finally died, we stopped caring about our 'sacred pact' with it. After all, at least two other tribes had the same exact idea, invading from other entrances. We were all competing to see who could strip-mine the place the fastest.

We were fools. We wasted no time taking anything that wasn't welded to the floor and welding it straight into ourselves. That's how mad I was when I begged to have a technology-infused spike jammed directly into the back of my head.

And then everything went red.

I woke up in a different part of the desert. Whatever we did destroyed the Vault, or something, because all that's left are a few defense towers and half-forgotten stories. I don't know how much time I lost, and I don't know how I lived, but I never saw a hint of my tribe ever again. Still trying to find out if any of them survived."

Reiko also points at a specific city. "And that's the headquarters of House Youngmason. You could wander the halls for a century and never find everything they've collected down there. I guard the hallway leading to the room of the 'crown princess'." Reiko licks her lips. "Well... when I'm not guarding the inside of the room."

>>1117839
>[Come up with the plan above or better, Intelligence, Effort 2]
>specialized in raider tactics
>rolled 10
Occurs to Reiko you don't really need to wipe out ALL the mimetic horrors, and make this place permanently safe to camp in. If there's a working ship docked here, immediate objective is to load your stuff (plus incidental loot, as opportunities permit) into that ship and go; if there's a broken ship, only need to stick around long enough for necessary repairs.

rolled 10, 3, 4, 11, 9, 19, 12, 11, 2, 17, 1, 9, 10, 15, 15, 4, 2, 13, 20, 3 = 190

---

>>1117663
Paprika quietly listens to Cricket's story. For just a second her eyes fall on the wound on Cricket's arm, move up to the girl's face, then Paprika turns to look back up at the Earth.

"Well with all you've been through, sounds like you'll have no trouble facing down whatever horrors we find up here. I'm glad to have you along, Cricket."

>>1117664
>...but then what would you tell the copies to do, that a mimic can, and a Locutus-class non-obviously can't?
Well, plenty of things spring to mind. Extend its arms? Climb around on the walls? Combine into some kinda augmech megazord?

>Nat climbs out of the augmech's cockpit
Still right where Paprika knew she'd be. Starting to feel like Nat's a fixed constant and the world just moves around her.

>note from that shy, spider-ish construction-assistant creature you met in the haunted-house dimension.
>had almost nothing to eat since I squeezed through
"You think she's got an appetite for mimics?"

>>1117839
>average, everyday, chrome-obsessed gang
>mad
>begged to have a technology-infused spike jammed directly into the back of my head.
Paprika feels a little uneasy after hearing Reiko's story. "Why'd you do it? I mean...what made you want that? If it's something you can explain."

>"Well... when I'm not guarding the inside of the room."
"Nice, a princess? How'd you go from a gig like that to working in Hallux?"

>>1117934
>immediate objective is to load your stuff into that ship and go
"I've been dying to check out that ship since we got here anyway. Anyone else ready to go take a look with me?"

>>1117946
>"You think she's got an appetite for mimics?"
Those lack essential nutrients, to say nothing of aesthetic appeal. It would be like a human trying to live on a diet of dry rice, clay, and seawater.
Also your contact doesn't know how to salvage the useful gel from them. Could be taught, as a downtime action.

>>1117946
>"Why'd you do it? I mean...what made you want that? If it's something you can explain."
"Peer pressure? Yeah, peer pressure. My tribe worshipped augmentation. When I was a cub I got to see a live heart transplant. I got my arm before my period. My first 'boyfriend' replaced his junk with a fleshlight. It was - it was heresy to reject augmentation.

And then the Vault died. We had the opportunity to graft ourselves with the stem cells of a god. We weren't thinking straight, we thought we could become demigods, and only if we were faster at augmenting ourselves than the other tribes.

I guess the threat of eternal madness and incomprehensible brain damage wasn't as scary as some other tribe seizing the full godly power of the Vault first, and then torturing us with madness and mutilation anyway because we had committed the grievous sin of being in their way."

>"Nice, a princess? How'd you go from a gig like that to working in Hallux?"
"Social tip: there's no law against baking pastries with alcohol. Well, maybe there is, but the aristocracy doesn't care for it. I nabbed a few croissants at the banquet gala I was on guard duty for. Not sure what was in them that got me hammered, but by the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late. Last thing I remember was getting frisky with some visiting business-guy's concubine. Still don't know why that got me banished; she was into me for some reason and covered in tattoos that would have made a barbarian recoil at the crass language on display! Definitely not the wife. I dunno, maybe I spilled Youngmason secrets to her, or maybe I got even more drunk and barged back into the gala. Point is, I accidentally got drunk, and did something that pissed my employers off. So I got 'banished' from the Youngmason Estates. Again. I wandered around for a few months, did some merc jobs here and there, but I was getting close to broke. Hallux had help wanted ads posted all over the entrance gates, they offered a six-month contract for apprentice mechanics. I thought it would be a good skill to learn. And then one day, he fired all the other mechanics! And he blamed me for screwing up, and it was never his fault that I couldn't finish my apprenticeship and learn half of how the Volcano Tamer worked! And I wanted him to hire the mechanics back, but he punished me for asking by making me do even more mechanical work across the spa! He and his wife would gossip about me all the time, and that meant the whole town looked down on me! I can't tell if he was senile or if he hated me for existing, but I bet it was both!" Reiko realizes she's been ranting about Paprika's home. "Sorry, I had to vent that out. I'll stop."

"I'm really glad Tayle and your mom are in charge now. I always knew Hallux could be more, but the old farts held it back. Now they've got new blood, newer cornerstones, and a living god for a patron. My tribe prospered under those conditions, and I think your home will too."

"Say, your siblings are pretty... energetic. I saw them doing some kind of hopping dance for a whole hour. What are they planning to be when they grow up? Dancers, or glaives?"

rolled 6, 8, 13, 18, 16, 7, 16, 16, 7, 1, 15, 20, 10, 16, 19, 14, 17, 4, 8, 9 = 240

---

>>1117950
>Those lack essential nutrients, to say nothing of aesthetic appeal. It would be like a human trying to live on a diet of dry rice, clay, and seawater.
>Also your contact doesn't know how to salvage the useful gel from them. Could be taught, as a downtime action.
Sounds like we need to find our spider some food first and foremost. Is the conundary perceivable, or in the same room as us? Feel like I would know this IC since we met before, or at least have an idea, but I haven't looked up the monster manual entry or anything. Would be nice if we could get a message down the beanstalk and have the town send up some livestock.

>>1117958
>"Peer pressure? Yeah, peer pressure."
>"brain damage wasn't as scary as some other tribe seizing the full godly power of the Vault first"
"I see. That makes a lot of sense."

>"So I got 'banished' from the Youngmason Estates. Again."
"Well if it's already happened once and you found your way back into their good graces, maybe you can do it again? Sounds like this princess really likes you, at least. In the meantime, I'm glad we get to travel together."

>Reiko realizes she's been ranting about Paprika's home. "Sorry, I had to vent that out. I'll stop."
"Hey, it's fine. I still have a lot of mixed feelings about that place. Nothing you said surprises me. Small towns are like that, just nonstop gossip. And I remember the mechanics who worked at that volcano tamer were always complaining about how it was run. Sorry you had such a rough time there."

>"I'm really glad Tayle and your mom are in charge now."
Paprika groans, "I really hope they didn't end up going through with that organ harvesting scheme, but it's out of my hands now. Maybe you're right though, all those big changes might be good for the town in the long run."

>"Say, your siblings are pretty... energetic. I saw them doing some kind of hopping dance for a whole hour. What are they planning to be when they grow up? Dancers, or glaives?"
"Hahaha, hard to say! Their dad's a flute boy, maybe he taught them some moves. My biological mom was the dancer, she died in the fire. I don't think Mia could dance to save her life."

"The 'glaive' thing was always kind of a joke. Saoirse started calling me that when I was basically playing bodyguard for her. That girl just loves getting herself into trouble. Guess she did it to make me seem more intimidating. It worked! She's really good at making things stick."


>what do?
spaceship spaceship spaceship

rolled 9, 2, 7, 10, 7, 10, 7, 3, 2, 14, 18, 12, 1, 15, 5, 12, 3, 1, 2, 7 = 147

---

>>1117257
>Paprika almost cries sipping the colorful cocktail. "It's really smooth! I haven't had a drink like this in ages. Thanks Nat."
"I'm more partial to tea myself, but this does make a nice treat. I'm glad you like it."

>>1117663
Cricket was a princess? Well, associated with one or both of two ruling families, at least. Small (ninth) world.

>I think one day I may go back to that castle.
"I remember 'saving the world' being pitched as an excellent opportunity to restore familial legacy."

>>1117839
>guarding the 'crown princess'
Small ninth world indeed.

>>1117664
>Nat climbs out of the augmech's cockpit
Oh, it does have a cockpit, wonderful! Hmm. Do the remote or internal controls take priority, Natalina wonders, if they're both used at once?

> a note from that shy, spider-ish construction-assistant creature you met in the haunted-house dimension
> I've had almost nothing to eat since I squeezed through to here three (?) lighting-cycles ago
Ah, back to the game of talking out loud and waiting for an indirect response. "Should we offer them something to eat?" Preparing a meal for a larger-than-human would put a dent in our supplies, but from the sound of it, they may not need to eat as often as we do. If they require live meals, we'll have to get more creative.

If they accept the offer, Natalina will attempt to prepare something for them; one level of Intellect Effort and an asset from the cookbook.

>>1117950
>Also your contact doesn't know how to salvage the useful gel from them. Could be taught, as a downtime action.
The idea has merit. If they plan to settle in this area, that could help control the mimitan population, and provide the shy spider with iotum trade-goods. Something to consider the next time we're on a downtime cycle.

>>1117963
>I really hope they didn't end up going through with that organ harvesting scheme
"I tried to dissuade master Tayle by explaining the drawbacks when the ethical concerns escaped his notice. Your loud and public condemnation of the plan might have done more to prevent it."

>what do
>spaceship spaceship spaceship
Assuming Paprika's spider-contact was the energy signature, there's checking the spaceship is probably a higher immediate priority than clearing all the salvage sites in the vicinity, or delving deeper into the orbital installation.

>>1117966
>checking the spaceship is probably a higher immediate priority
>rolled 9
Seems like a clear, open path down the five-meter-wide docking tube, but before you get within a hundred meters of the ship, a spotlight on the ship's underbelly swings over. Clear synth walls ripple like a sail in shifting winds as it passes, and when it shines on you, you soon feel too heavy to move.
>>1117963
>spaceship spaceship spaceship
>rolled 6
Paprika sprints past, trusting in her antigrav conditioning to push through what seems to be a level 7 gravity turret, but instead falls flat on her face and can barely breathe - it's almost like partly negating effects of gravity made the problem worse.

Neither of you are injured, and the immobilizing excess weight dissipates after a minute or so, but accessing the ship seems like it'll require more effort than just walking in the front door. Could try zigzagging to evade the spotlight, or circle around through the airless outdoors, or maybe something else?

Ship is resting on a flat grid of girders which becomes steadily more sparse as it extends further from the pressurized region of Zone Ivory - portions right outside the window mesh tightly enough a finger could barely fit between them, but further out there are gaps wide enough for those solid segments of the ship's gradually-rotating halo to slip easily through.
There are four contact points - arranged in an oval or diamond - between the mottled semi-organic material of ship's main hull, and the dock's vacuum-welded steel: the narrow end, the wide end (with the halo), and two tusk-like protrusions flanking the ship's arched midsection. Under that midsection are the two visible entrances: a horizontal iris door on the flat underside, thirty meters above the 'ground,' which the clear synth docking tube leads up to, and a much larger vertical... cargo bay, possibly? ...resembling Venetian blinds, or the mouth of a baleen whale.

rolled 16, 9, 2, 15, 8, 13, 1, 4, 12, 20, 14, 13, 11, 19, 11, 19, 1, 12, 20, 1 = 221

---

>Could try zigzagging to evade the spotlight
Doing it! Three levels of speed effort.

(cost 7 - edge 1 = 6 total)

>>1118308
>fleet of foot
>speed pool 18/18
>rolled 16, 9, 2
This time, Paprika successfully crosses about four-fifths of the horizontal distance before that spotlight catches and pins her. Oddly, it doesn't interfere at all with the return trip. Her Speed pool is down to zero, though, meaning she's impaired, and she got close enough to see for sure that there's no ladder - just a tube of open air roughly the size of a ten-story building, straight up to the hatch. Need to fly, or maybe jump, unless somebody trusts those flimsy-looking clear synth walls to bear weight.

rolled 9, 6, 9, 5, 6, 19, 15, 18, 10, 8, 14, 5, 16, 1, 11, 5, 13, 17, 13, 14 = 214

---

>>1117966
>Ah, back to the game of talking out loud and waiting for an indirect response.
No response? Perhaps leave a note accepting the apology and asking if they need help with a meal.

>>1118307
Oh that's terrifying. If that catches her while she's not entirely here, she's going right through the floor into the void.

Is there just the one turret? It might not be able to handle a spread out group. Or can we see anything that looks like cameras, or other sensors it might be using for targeting?

rolled 3 + 3 = 6

---

Chest heaving, drenched in sweat. This is the most disheveled Nat's seen Paprika since the two got tossed into the sky in Hallux. Paprika collapses at Nat's feet with as much elegance as she can manage, "hah...just needa... minute..."

Recovery roll! All to speed.

>>1117966
>Natalina will attempt to prepare something for them; one level of Intellect Effort and an asset from the cookbook.
>rolled 2
Results are disappointing - tolerable enough by wilderness-camp standards, maybe, but you've got fresh ingredients and, in the backrooms of Zone Jaune, a nearly intact commercial-scale kitchen!
>>1118329
>No response?
>rolled 9
>trained in negotiation

After some further discussion, Natalina figures out that the conundary is deliberately teasing to get a rise out of her, and further manages to deduce that its nutritional needs are at least as much mental as physical - can't feed effectively on mimetans, despite their potential to be transformed into almost any material substance, because their minds are too simple.

>Is there just the one turret? It might not be able to handle a spread out group. Or can we see anything that looks like cameras, or other sensors it might be using for targeting?
Looks like there's a ring of emitters, maybe six or seven spaced evenly around the hatch. No more than one of them lit up at a time, though. Might be able to disable the whole system by severing that ring? Assuming you don't mind risking damage to the airlock of a ship you're planning to ride around in.
As for sensors... during Paprika's run, Natalina kept an eye on the spotlight's procession, and she knows as well as anyone how Paprika thinks mid-fight. Each time, another emitter started to light up as soon as she decided which way she'd be going next, before there was any clear outward cue. Consistently aimed ahead of her, at the next place she was intending to go, without regard for feints. Only reason she managed to dodge as far as she did is it's absurdly slow at ramping up to full power, or traversing to track lateral movement after having done so - much too slow for something actually designed as a point-defense weapon, considering what shinspinners managed with their own energy cannon.

rolled 18, 9, 14, 10, 6, 2, 6, 19, 19, 10, 20, 2, 15, 7, 11, 13, 17, 13, 19, 7 = 237

---

Cricket hesitantly tests the chameleon cloak- seems like it detects thoughts in some way, rather than relying on visuals, but more test data couldn't hurt.

Also... can we see if it can tell the difference between a mimic and a normal object? Applying a level of intellect effort to see if we can successfully test that.

JamesLeng 2025/12/03(Wed)20:41 No. 1118415 ID: 5f5c2b
File 176482329520.png - (94.63KB , 268x251 , The Nightcraft's hangar bay.png )

rolled 86 = 86

---

>>1118401
>rolled 18
>trained in stealth
>trained in understanding numenera
Cricket casually strolls down the gangplank to a point directly underneath the ship's hatch, occasionally kicking a five-gallon clear synth barrel full of angry mimic so that it continues rolling on ahead of her, being careful to think only of the present and the next single step. So far so good, no response from the spotlight. Now for the tricky part.
>chameleon cloak eases sneaking and hiding by two steps
>rolled 9
Silver wings unfold and Cricket flies straight up, pointedly staring at the floor as it recedes under her feet. Something moves in her peripheral vision - from all sides at once, panic-flinch of "surprised, surrounded, where am I going?" disrupting her concentration, spotlight starts to flicker on... but she's already through, inside the ship.

Entry hall is almost as organically curvilinear as the outside. Roughly trapezoidal, two stories high. About as wide as a small palace or two basketball courts awkwardly wedged together. Circular patterns on the floor seem to imply the central hatch could be made to open up MUCH wider, if necessary, and some of those fixtures on the ceiling vaguely resemble what Paprika and Natalina said about the shrine where they found Milaconi's Cousin.

There are four other visible exits, all on the second floor, which otherwise seemingly consists only of two relatively small balconies or stair landings. A recessed track across the ceiling leads from the sole door on the narrow wall, to the middle door on the wider side.

Rolling for chameleon cloak depletion. On a 2+, it's fine.

rolled 7, 9, 20, 3, 5, 10, 9, 9, 17, 12, 2, 5, 8, 1, 11, 11, 16, 4, 13, 15 = 187

---

>Well if it's already happened once
"Fifth time. No, what really worries me is if Saharnya makes good on her promise to ensure my banishment. I like Saharnya, so I'm not going to drag her down. I have to rise up alongside her, prove I'm not expendable to the company."

>Sounds like this princess really likes you, at least.
"...Yes. That is literally the point I was trying to make. I'm gonna be blunt: I don't expect we'll get married, but I'm shooting for a spot in her future harem."

>Cricket was a princess
"Wait what? Is that what - wait, where'd she go? Again?"

"I wonder..."
An eye that stops the one thing that it stares at.
A room full of mimics.
An artifact that's too tempting to the mimics to resist mimicking.
And an anti-gravity plate to climb the ladder.

Reiko lets her ears twitch mindlessly as a plan comes together. By the time she's ready, another clutch of mimics have amassed into a stack on top of the Mechanic.

Reiko's plan is simple: Order the mimics to move (in a silly, David O'Reilly's Everything kind of way) in a spaced line formation towards the big juicy saucer. (Make sure the Mechanic artifact doesn't get taken along for the ride, that would be expensive.) Observe the effects, see if the ship escalates its response or is forced to stall each mimic one at a time.

rolled 1, 8, 18, 19, 15, 13, 11, 8, 2, 8, 1, 12, 2, 6, 2, 5, 8, 19, 16, 3 = 177

---

>>1118415
>About as wide as a small palace or two basketball courts awkwardly wedged together
Cricket Moon has frame of reference for at least one of those comparisons.

>There are four other visible exits, all on the second floor
Alright, time to put her Jack skills to use. Sneak in first, disarm the traps, unlock the castle gates, and let down the drawbridge. Lets try the entrance that seems to go towards whatever she guesses the "bridge" is, try and shut down the grav beams first. If she can't find any obvious controls to let the others on up, work clockwise through the rest of the openings until she can find something useful to do.

Lets say 3 levels of Intellect and Speed Effort (Intellect for disarming and figuring out the controls, speed for if that goes wrong). That should cost me 4 int and 6 speed, putting me at 13/11/12. Ha, funny that.

rolled 9, 3, 19, 11, 12, 6, 9, 4, 2, 11, 12, 16, 6, 14, 11, 6, 10, 12, 16, 12 = 201

---

>>1118309
>Paprika successfully crosses about four-fifths of the horizontal distance before that spotlight catches and pins her.
>Her Speed pool is down to zero, though, meaning she's impaired
Natalina sighs in relief when the spotlights make no effort to prevent Paprika's return, not stranding the arkus where the rest of the ground can't reach. "Are you all right? You're looking winded there."

>>1118340
>Natalina figures out that the conundary is deliberately teasing to get a rise out of her
Well, understandable, if they're bored and hungry up here. (Of course that's how one of Paprika's friends reacts).

>>1118415
>cricket is goat
"I'm not sure if applauding would be the correct response? That was impressive, but it feels somehow inappropriate to express appreciation for stealth with noisemaking."

>>1118459
>I'm gonna be blunt: I don't expect we'll get married, but I'm shooting for a spot in her future harem.
Caught off guard, Natalina lets out an undignified giggle. "Well, ah, it's good to know what you want?"

>Order the mimics to move [...] in a spaced line formation towards the big juicy saucer.
"If the mimitan haven't managed to board the ship, perhaps we shouldn't help them board? Though occupying all the spotlight emitters with distractions might allow someone else to pass."

If the beams truly are intent based, Natalina might be able to pilot the bartender bot into approaching remotely- her intent would be by the control panel rather than approaching (assuming the the remote controls reach that far outside the bar). Doesn't seem worth attempting at the moment though- she doubts that flimsy synth could support the large machine attempting climbing.

JamesLeng 2025/12/14(Sun)20:10 No. 1119086 ID: 5f5c2b
File 176577180463.png - (175.63KB , 688x265 , The Nightcraft's main gun.png )

>>1118469
>Lets try the entrance that seems to go towards whatever she guesses the "bridge" is, try and shut down the grav beams first.
>3 levels of intellect effort
>trained in understanding numenera
>trained in clock unmaking
>rolled 1

Lone portal headed toward the narrower end of the ship seems as likely as any to lead to the bridge - or even if it doesn't, sweeping that area first means not needing to worry that something hostile is lurking there to emerge and outflank you while exploring the rest.

Door opens easily, revealing a cylindrical passage resembling the pneumatic mail tubes which connect upper-floor offices back in the City of Needles, but scaled up wide enough to accommodate chainpods. Exactly wide enough - there are even ferromagnetic rails in the walls, and traction strips matching the rim-tread contours, around each access hatch in the walls.

Said hatches lead out from the central tube into a swirling bird's-nest of baffling machinery. Power conditioning and field-shaping, maybe, spread out for maintenance access - sheer size implies that the weapon you're looking to shut down is capable of a lot more than it's currently doing. Somebody might hide by burrowing into all that, but they'd fry when whatever it's supporting energizes properly.

Tube curves just enough that you can't see down the whole length at once, but sure enough that wide spot visible from the outside (near where the narrow end of the ship rests against the dock structure) corresponds to a proper control room. Clearly not designed for human proportions - knee-high consoles, and a ceiling nearly five meters high with what look like touch-activated controls all the way up. Main interface seems to be a web of floating fist-sized synth orbs interconnected by intangible lines of light. Each such line has a string of 'beads' on it, evenly spaced like a measuring tape, with occasional sigils of some unknown language.

Fortunately the function Cricket is looking for doesn't require adjusting any of that. There's a great big knife switch, right in the middle of the room, which practically screams "main power on/off."

Results are quieter than one might expect, though far from silent. First, an aura like the southern lights - or Elanyah, once she re-learned how to dance - condenses around the ship's narrow portion. (The neck, if you're thinking of it as a bird with forward-swept wings, or the tail if it's easier to conceptualize as a manta ray.) Coruscating ripples shimmer in and out of phase, visible analogue to an orchestra tuning up, then the final synchronized pattern is exponentially amplified, coalescing from the 'shoulders' down toward a single point just beyond the pointy end... which loses all cohesion as it intersects the dock, and explodes.

Screams of failing girders are felt in the feet and gut more than the ears, like an oddly high-pitched earthquake. Hundred thousand tons of spaceship descends two dozen meters, tilting about thirty degrees, as half the floor crumples out from under it. Overpressure equalizes along the now-shorter passage tube as a brief, gentle breeze.

>>1118485
>rolled 9, 3, 19
>inability at understanding numenera
>trained in using the Datasphere of the Giant's Tomb
>trained in tasks related to knowledge of current events and history
>trained in all tasks related to perception, detecting differences, and noticing minor flaws (or strengths) in the works of others
Before caches expire, Nat seizes the opportunity to request a formal incident report, with before-and-after snapshots of all of Zone Jaune's furniture. Lots of chair-mimics probably flinched in response to that disturbance, so such documentation should provide an asset on identifying them.

rolled 10, 13, 8, 7, 15, 11, 10, 4, 3, 2, 4, 11, 1, 12, 12, 18, 12, 17, 2, 17 = 189

---

Reiko stares at the crush landing.

"...That just happened."

She slaps her forehead, double checks to ensure the mimics fled the scene, then rushes to the ship (with the mechanic and any other loose luggage around) dangerous as it may be to move towards the wreck, she'd rather be inside the ship once it crashes even further, rather than just outside the potential hull breach when it gets kinetic.

Once inside, Reiko does a quick search of the area, trying to find out what went wrong as soon as possible so the party can stop any further movement that could widen the breach.

rolled 7, 5, 10, 20, 13, 11, 17, 16, 4, 5, 7, 3, 8, 8, 4, 19, 7, 6, 17, 7 = 194

---

>>1119087
"Is everyone all right?"

Not exactly the result expected, but Cricket certainly succeeded in making entrance easier. Natalina will advocate for getting onboard quickly, before it has a chance to move again, potentially separating them from Cricket. Once we're sure the situation is stable, we can worry about loading it with the larger cache of supplies back by the elevator.

Now that the door is so much more accessible, the first order of business is to attempt to close it behind us. Let's try and ensure no mimics migrate into what we can hope is a mimic-free space? Not in any particular rush, so applying Understanding. Training in Perception might be relevant to finding the control, or in the datasphere to operating... though the inability in using numenera may as well.

>a formal incident report
Behold, the power of proper protocol!

rolled 5, 2, 13, 8, 3, 7, 2, 9, 20, 1, 14, 11, 11, 6, 6, 7, 4, 9, 2, 2 = 142

---

>>1119126
Cricket Moon is a disheveled jumble on the control room floor when the rest of her party finds her.
"You need chain pods to reach all the controls properly" she says weakly.
Once she's recovered, she tries to help Reiko figure out how to stabilize the ship and get the take off zone safe.

One level of intellect effort.

>>1119206
>"You need chain pods to reach all the controls properly" she says weakly.
"You can fly, can't you? Though on second thought, your restraint in keeping the controls from getting wet is reasonable caution."

>>1119095
>double checks to ensure the mimics fled the scene,
>rolled 10, 13
Reiko doesn't see anything in or near the passage tube which could plausibly be a mimic, apart from maybe the extendable floor grating itself. Given that Cricket walked along the whole length without being attacked, such a possibility seems remote. Mimics of this type would take five or six minutes to cross that distance at the slug/inchworm equivalent of an all-out combat sprint (whereas a reasonably athletic human could do so in 20-30 seconds), or at least an hour if they were being at all sneaky. As such, perimeter seems secure for the moment.
>then rushes to the ship
>rolled 8
Gravity spotlight is still active.

>>1119126
>Cricket certainly succeeded in making entrance easier.
She simplified step 2 of entry from "fly or jump onto the roof of a ten-story building" down to an approximately horizontal gap that someone could reasonably hop across with a running start, or bridge with a portable ladder,
>rolled 7, 5
...but step 1 hasn't yet been fully resolved.
>Let's try and ensure no mimics migrate into what we can hope is a mimic-free space?
>rolled 10
If that spotlight has been keeping them out all this time, it probably still can. Main risk is infiltrating as supplies when those get loaded onboard.
>rolled 20
After a few more frustrating minutes pinned to the deck by unnaturally amplified weight, Nat doubles back to the reception desk, where the automated incident report compilation process has apparently initiated...
>Cricket Moon is a disheveled jumble on the control room floor when the rest of her party finds her.
>"You need chain pods to reach all the controls properly" she says weakly.
...a video call with one of the key parties responsible.
>>1119206
>Once she's recovered, she tries to help Reiko figure out how to stabilize the ship and get the take off zone safe.
>One level of intellect effort.
>rolled 5
That sort of tricky maneuvering would best be attempted from the main bridge, which Cricket realizes she's not actually in. Based on video call's captions, the ship is classified as a mineral-prospecting scout, and this control room is for the drill.

rolled 12, 4, 3, 19, 10, 16, 4, 17, 2, 3, 14, 18, 4, 12, 16, 9, 17, 14, 19, 12 = 225

---

Reiko groans and lugs her way back to the chainpods - and tests each of them for signs of being replaced by mimics or worse. She quickly pilots one of the chainpods (others in tow) back to the loading dock.

"Okay, where's our entry point? Around the ceiling, or across the hull?"

rolled 8, 6, 7, 19, 16, 17, 18, 18, 1, 6, 13, 1, 12, 16, 17, 13, 9, 6, 3, 1 = 207

---

>After a few more frustrating minutes pinned to the deck by unnaturally amplified weight
"I suppose we were premature to assume the path was clear," Natalina sulks. "Any desire I might have ever had to visit the Slant Milieu has been quite disabused."

>...a video call with one of the key parties responsible.
"Are you quite all right?"

>Okay, where's our entry point?
"We... could approach this like the laak and barm river-crossing riddle. Reiko, you could pilot a chainpod at range, couldn't you?"

Assuming Reiko linked with the chainpods for the purposes of her Machine Bond power: Natalina could use the augmech remote controls to have the barbot carry Reiko to the ship. So long as Reiko focuses on something else, there will be no intent to trigger the spotlights. Then, Reiko can remote-drive chainpod(s) with Natalina and Paprika onboard, and so long as they're distracted, there should again be no detectable intent (...she just conceived a plan where makeouts would increase the likelihood of success. Should she be proud of that?).

Applying Understanding to applicable rolls.

rolled 11, 17, 9, 4, 13, 2, 2, 1, 14, 3, 1, 13, 12, 7, 12, 11, 6, 5, 1, 14 = 158

---

>Looks like there's a ring of emitters, maybe six or seven spaced evenly around the hatch. No more than one of them lit up at a time, though. Might be able to disable the whole system by severing that ring?
Would focusing on destroying the ring count as intent to enter the ship? Could I just walk up and hack the ring apart with my windslice spear?

Failing that, Paprika will politely ask her conundary friend if it can do something about the gravity turret. "If you can help us onto that ship, we'll get you whatever food you need! We'll get you food anyway, but we really need this."

>>1119506
>Would focusing on destroying the ring count as intent to enter the ship? Could I just walk up and hack the ring apart with my windslice spear?
>rolled 11, 17

While Reiko and Natalina are arguing over a complex multi-step plan involving rigging an autopilot for one of the chainpods, Paprika simply walks up to the fallen behemoth's underbelly and chops a notch into the docking ring.

The ship is yours; it has no further noteworthy active defenses. However, until that seal is repaired, slow air leak means the hangar bay will be depressurized shortly after you're away from the dock - an hour at most. Atmospheric entry might instead see that space temporarily filled with fire.

Further unfortunate news is that said hangar bay serves as hub between the ship's four habitable internal sections. Engine room and main cargo connect to each other directly, but if you want to move between the engine room and the bridge, or the bridge and the crew quarters, only apparent options are traversing the hangar bay, or phasing through a wall. To cross between any of those and the control room where Cricket is, even wall-phasing isn't really an option - best case it would take hours, and there's energetic machinery in the way.

Similar to Zone Ivory's access points to the rest of the Giant's Tomb, this nightcraft's internal doors can stay airtight while allowing a chainpod through, so that isn't a totally unworkable situation... but it'll surely be inconvenient somehow.

Everybody gets 2 xp for reaching and unlocking the ship.

Internal layout, clockwise from the route Cricket started with, each arrow is an airtight door:
hangar => spinal power conditioning maintenance access => main drill control room (Cricket is here)
hangar => crew quarters (upper plaza) => crew quarters (lower maze) => storm shelter / cold storage
hangar => decon hall (not for pedestrians) => main cargo => portside sensor tusk access
----------------------------------------------main cargo => engine room => drive halo exterior access (emergencies only)
----------------------------------------------main cargo => starboard sensor tusk access
hangar => external comms / navigation => neural interface throne

rolled 11, 6, 16, 6, 7, 13, 1, 7, 18, 16, 14, 9, 1, 15, 1, 5, 14, 4, 16, 17 = 197

---

Reiko wanders from room to room, sniffing around for a control panel or obscure access point she can hack into. After a few minutes, she finds one hiding inside the neural interface throne room. Rather than linking to the interface, she links her implant to the neural translators instead.

A few minutes are spent walking in the ship's sub-datasphere, until Reiko comes across a large library file. It's dictionary that attempted to categorize various numenera according to their inherent functions and sub-processes related to those functions. Though the file is grossly wrong in some aspects, there's an effective scientific methodology that the file adheres to analyzing numenera, one which the implant allows Reiko to adopt.

[4 XP - Understanding Numenera]

Once finished, Reiko runs various queries on the ship's status; how well it has detected the hull breach, where the other hull breaches are, how much fuel the ship has, if the ship can scan its surroundings for the fuel it needs, how the ship maintains life support, if it even has life support, etc. She spends max effort, pushing her concentration to ensure that she has a fully accurate status report to print out and shove in Natalina's face.

rolled 19, 19, 19, 16, 15, 20, 10, 20, 12, 7, 15, 4, 6, 16, 6, 6, 3, 5, 1, 5 = 224

---

Okay, once they're all safely within the hangar, they have a few mission priorities:
1) Secure the hangar for safe habitation
2) Figure out ship controls
3) Repair damage to ship and hangar
4) Fly off and shoot things that are bad?

For my initial intrusion xp, I award... uhh, lets say Paprika, for good hustle getting the rest of the team in.
Then, I need to purn some so I don't overflow. Should have done this earlier, meant to, and then forgot.
4xp to train with armor, reducing the speed penalty by one, and 4xp to train another noun of my tier or lower- that'll be "Find the Way" from Delve.

For mechanical actions, I... don't actually really know the best way to go about advancing my objections. I think that results in Cricket Moon following Reiko around, a bit subdued, trying to learn about the ship and help her get familiarized as well. One level of intellect effort.

rolled 12, 2, 12, 10, 19, 2, 19, 16, 16, 18, 14, 19, 15, 18, 17, 19, 8, 9, 13, 9 = 267

---

Spending 8XP to move Paprika up to Tier 4. Here are my purchases:

Advancement track purchases:
- Extra Effort [4XP]
- Increasing Capabilities (+4 speed pool) [4XP]

T4 Glaive selections:
- Skill With Attacks - Medium Ranged
- Amazing Effort (Might)

T4 Focus selection:
- Nanotech Resistance (Alternative to the halo of fire T4 power. Described on Numenera Discovery page 333)

Paprika's already taken to calling Nat "Captain."

"Captain! Permission to sweep the ship for hostile lifeforms?" She'll start with the crew quarters, exploring all the way to the storm shelter / cold storage. After that, she'll look around for EVA equipment since she'll likely be the one performing space walks. Drive halo exterior access seems the most likely starting point?

rolled 20, 6, 7, 3, 6, 11, 17, 18, 8, 5, 8, 9, 18, 12, 11, 12, 5, 18, 16, 6 = 216

---

>Paprika simply walks up to the fallen behemoth's underbelly and chops a notch into the docking ring.
>The ship is yours; it has no further noteworthy active defenses. However, until that seal is repaired, slow air leak means the hangar bay will be depressurized shortly after you're away from the dock - an hour at most. Atmospheric entry might instead see that space temporarily filled with fire.
"Um, good work, love. Reiko, would you be a dear and look into what we need to make the ship vacuum-worthy again?"

>to ensure that she has a fully accurate status report to print out and shove in Natalina's face
"I'm sorry, have I offended you?"

>"Captain! Permission to sweep the ship for hostile lifeforms?"
"Granted," Natalina answers, with an indulgent smile.

>What do
First priority is the controls for the door we're using- it would be good to close it behind us to prevent any (hopefully unintelligent) mimetans or anything else from wandering onboard with the spotlight system offline.

If the decon hall isn't safe to traverse on foot, that "branch" can wait until we double back for a chainpod. While Paprika goes ahead to the storm shelter, Natalina will search the upper crew quarters, see if anything was left behind that might be of use, and ensuring there's no threats that would impede our using it.

Training in perception etc. from Cultured may be useful for either search, training in the datasphere of the giant's tomb might be useful for any interfaces (unless this counts as a different, unfamiliar system). Inabilities in numenera may kick in for some thing. Taking it slow and applying Understanding to rolls. Walk through walls might be useful if there's any sealed lockers, strongboxes, etc. in the crew areas.

JamesLeng 2026/01/03(Sat)03:55 No. 1119601 ID: 5f5c2b
File 176744132535.png - (52.69KB , 1000x600 , The Nightcraft decon hall side view.png )

>>1119577
>If the decon hall isn't safe to traverse on foot, that "branch" can wait until we double back for a chainpod.
Not exactly to scale - the incoming lanes have more of an S-curve shape, close to vertical at the midpoint.

>>1119513
>Reiko wanders from room to room, sniffing around for a control panel or obscure access point she can hack into.
>rolled 11, 6, 16
Comms and navigation room seems like a fairly standard CIC https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/controldeck.php#cicfunct apart from, first, design clearly optimized for people about four meters tall (leaving Reiko with the uncomfortable sense of reversion to a small child intruding on a sanctum meant for adults), and second, surreal dream imagery on most of the screens rather than legible data. Fractal black thorns, lurid flowers sprouting from rotten meat, clockwork half-melted yet somehow still functional.
Everything seems suspiciously clean. Spots close to the floor that ought to be access panels are sealed tight, and climbing up higher risks triggering unidentified buttons with your feet.
>After a few minutes, she finds one hiding inside the neural interface throne room. Rather than linking to the interface, she links her implant to the neural translators instead.
Wary of losing herself again by diving straight in, Reiko crawls around into the mass of cables behind the throne, mapping interconnections and speculating on the wider systems they correspond to.
>queries on the ship's status;
It's alive. Those aren't mechanical subsystems, for the most part, but organs.
>how well it has detected the hull breach,
Like a splinter in the soft tissue between teeth.
>where the other hull breaches are,
Lot of bruising but nothing else torn. Only exits besides the way you came in are the vast cargo bay - like the maw of a baleen whale - and emergency drive halo access.
>how much fuel the ship has,
Severely malnourished, outer skin is NOT supposed to be that color. https://pocketss.tumblr.com/784279836855271424/houseplant-type-friend
>if the ship can scan its surroundings for the fuel it needs,
The memory transfer process is two-way, though the ship-mind is not particularly self-aware or lucid - more like a sick dog noticing how your pockets smell like bacon.
>how the ship maintains life support, if it even has life support, etc.
Most of that air-and-organic-food functionality is entangled with the crew quarters. It wants to fly down to Jackson's Launch, rip that entire shell casing / poison-pond out of the ground and transfer it to the cargo hold. There's easily enough room - like adding a bedroll, or moderately large canteen, to a broad framed backpack.
>specialized in raider tactics
Problem is, as Reiko patiently explains to this hundred thousand ton drowsy-manic nightcraft-puppy, the order of operations. If full repairs require the sludge from the pond, and lifting the pond requires the gravity polarizer's maximum exertion, and the gravity polarizer requires full repairs... there's a hole in my bucket, dear liza, a hole. You can't go sprinting hundreds of miles across the desert to steal water and medicine when you're already badly hurt and dehydrated. Start smaller.

>>1119565
>mission priorities:
>1) Secure the hangar for safe habitation
>2) Figure out ship controls
>3) Repair damage to ship and hangar
>4) Fly off and shoot things that are bad?
>rolled 19, 19, 19, 16, 15, 20, 10, 20
While Reiko explains how repairs aren't currenly possible, Cricket is making progress on those same repairs.
>trained in clock un-making
>create various types of poison
Hangar bay door seems to mostly be a big iris - spiral of thin, overlapping, curved segments. Looks cool, but jams easily, and nigh impossible to get a true airtight seal. Paprika cut a notch into it, plus there's pre-existing patches of crud. Mold or something, but it sounds more like a rust-related jam when it tries to move. Maybe just try... filing down the visible burrs, solvents and gentle polishing for rusty spots, antifungal spray on the mold?

"Rust" absorbs the solvent near instantly, spreads out to twice its initial diameter, then fades into a pattern of yellowish veins, without leaving a single loose flake on the polishing rag. "Mold" seemingly rejects the antifungal spray like sweatdrops on a swamp lotus, but gets steadily darker, thicker, and spongier when massaged, until whole patches peel off as strips of black rubber with the consistency of salted fish, crackling and sizzling like frying grease even as they turn cold to the touch. Whatever the heck that stuff actually was, Cricket's efforts apparently worked - hangar bay door can now open and close on command.

Expedition supplies and chainpods are hauled in to the ship... except for that one crate of individually-wrapped tofu snacks which the four of you had eaten about half of on the elevator ride, which has "mysteriously" refilled itself, and is prudently discarded.

>>1119568
>She'll start with the crew quarters, exploring all the way to the storm shelter / cold storage.
Upper crew quarters can be confirmed clear at a glance - all one big brightly-lit open space. Sweeping the lower deck with certainty will take a lot longer, and probably at least three people. There are two sets of stairs leading down, at opposite corners, and it's a literal maze. Walls, floor, and ceiling are a continuous yet non-repeating pattern of diamond-shaped ceramic tiles. Dark green wider ones, pale blue pointier ones, creating the vague visual impression of a forest canopy with sky peeking throuh. Dim light and high humidity... a jungle-themed locker room. Dozens of cubbyholes, varying sizes and positions, including some that you might be able to climb into if you curled up. Set an item inside one, it floods with what looks - and to anyone else, feels - like gravity-defying vantablack molasses, but that goo or forcefield withdraws when you reach your hand in again, allowing the item to be retrieved. A few already have something in them, from before you arrived.
>rolled 12, 2
Unsure what those contents might be.
>After that, she'll look around for EVA equipment since she'll likely be the one performing space walks. Drive halo exterior access seems the most likely starting point?
>rolled 12, 10
Steering a chainpod through the decontamination corridor isn't difficult, but it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride.
>>1119601
Down a pit, hit a flap which causes another flap just ahead to pivot out of the way, back up and across the other pit for folks coming from the opposite direction. Seems like it was designed to block direct line-of-sight while simultaneously preventing head-on collisions.

Then that narrow pinball tunnel abruptly opens up into the cargo bay, with only a thin steel tightrope underneath - chainpod mainly clinging to a groove in the ceiling. As spacious as those crew quarters seemed, they're like a tiny tongue on to the roof of a mouth that could swallow ten-story buildings.

Engine room door admits the chainpod as far as its equator, but gives a familar "access denied" honk https://questden.org/kusaba/graveyard/res/1034928.html#1039869 rather than allowing Paprika through. Interior is visible, though, dominated by six tall cylinders filled with swirling mist.

>>1119577
>Natalina will search the upper crew quarters, see if anything was left behind that might be of use,
There's a food dispenser, but all it seems capable of is a sort of... semi-translucent salmon-pink hockey puck. Ugh.
Paprika reports that she's found adequate sanitation facilities on the lower deck, including at least one pleasantly warm shower easily large enough for two people.

Dry puddles on the floor at first seem to be ordinary cloth - when touched by any sapient being, even indirectly through a rigid pole, they drape and flow normally - but then when released, the fabric instantly rigidizes. This rigidity seems to be a function of the room rather than the cloth, since it doesn't work when brought out to the cargo bay, but resumes upon return.
With the right setup that could be an almost ideal privacy curtain, even capable of deflecting thrown rocks, yet collapsing to reveal eavesdroppers who get too close.

Stack of hexagonal metal plates leaning against one of the walls turn out to be tables, and possibly also chairs. Whenever they're within 45 degrees of horizontal, anywhere inside the ship (or at least, in the crew quarters, entry hall, and navigation / comms room, since the plates are slightly too wide to fit through chainpod-only corridors), whichever edge is currently lowest acts like a hinge. Let go of one and it'll lay flat with an audible click, no matter how high off the deck.
>inability at understanding numenera
More complicated behavior when those plates are touching a wall or ceiling, which Nat hasn't quite figured out all the nuances of yet.

>rolled 20
Ceiling itself is initially blank, and almost painfully bright, but moderates and redecorates itself in response to certain gestures. Some of the resulting symbols are relatively persistent, but others rapidly decay, or modify adjacent symbols. https://thecodelesscode.com/case/184

rolled 9, 8, 17, 6, 15, 13, 9, 13, 10, 18, 7, 10, 3, 14, 5, 20, 2, 16, 18, 13 = 226

---

>>1119790
Well, dang. Reiko ponders about how, ironically, they could have shaved some time if they brought her doppelganger along for the ride. But they don't have 'Wonder Twin Powers Activate' to swap pla...
A wacky idea begins to form in Reiko's head. Those blueprints for a Transdimensional Body artifact. The one that lets her shift herself or others with alternate universe types, sisters with minute differences that could make or break a mission. What if, in one of her timelines, she nearly overdosed on antifreeze while getting acquainted with her doppelganger but survived, or simply took some antifreeze as a curiousity? And what if, in that universe, she has a glut of antifreeze but her ship-puppy needs a resource that Reiko currently has? Could they trade resources? Would it even work?

Reiko ponders a little more. How much antifreeze does the puppy need to get the automated repair systems running? Reiko can't remember if they packed some antifreeze to tinker with. She'll double check their current supplies. Maybe something else can act as a less-efficient replacement fluid, at least until they can get the real stuff...

[Scavenge (Primary: Something to replenish the fluid systems, Secondary: Mimics) Storage Areas, 2 Effort]

>Tofu snacks infested with mimics
"Aw. I wanted to finish those. Can we at least-"
*sound of crate thrown out the deck*
"-grind them up into gel okay fine."

rolled 20, 4, 4, 14, 15, 19, 19, 7, 10, 20, 11, 3, 8, 4, 3, 11, 16, 16, 6, 9 = 219

---

>It's alive.
"Does she have a name? ...is it a she? I believe ships usually are, but I suppose human convention might not apply here."

>Paprika reports that she's found adequate sanitation facilities on the lower deck, including at least one pleasantly warm shower easily large enough for two people.
Certainly welcome news, and something to look forwards to, after days in the elevator.

> when touched by any sapient being, even indirectly through a rigid pole, they drape and flow normally - but then when released, the fabric instantly rigidizes.
>With the right setup that could be an almost ideal privacy curtain, even capable of deflecting thrown rocks, yet collapsing to reveal eavesdroppers who get too close.
Might allow for some creative artistic displays, as well. Out of curiosity, if Natalina attempts to phase through the fabric, does it detect that as touch?

>ceiling
Ooh! Is... it a language? (I have no idea if the arkus Babel power is meant to be applicable to programing languages, much less a Turing-complete cellular automata, but it could be interesting to attempt!)

rolled 2, 6 = 8

---

>>1119841
>is it a language?
>Babel power
>rolled 20
A tiny subset of the possible symbols have effects on the life support settings - Nat manages to assemble a looping floral pattern which yields both pleasant background music and a localized warm, dry breeze. Somewhat larger subset of possible symbols can be used to reprogram the food printer...
>inability at crafting, salvaging, and understanding numenera
...but prior experience with the innkeeper-abbot revealed that random organic chemicals are likelier to be deadly than delicious, and you've still got plenty of stored food, so experimentation there can afford to wait on more thorough research.

>if Natalina attempts to phase through the fabric, does it detect that as touch?
>rolled 4, 4, 14
Felt like just a few minutes, at most, and an exhilarating rush - skydiving or ski-jumping or sprinting for the sheer joy of it, rather than the usual slog of phasing through thick walls - but everybody else agrees Natalina was gone for at least two hours, and there's a snail-trail of nearly microscopic Bayeux-tapestry-style embroidery from the entry point to the edge where she escaped, correlating with things she remembers reminiscing about. Take 4 intellect damage.

Paprika's conundary contact can weave more of that fabric out of the translucent-pink-edible-hockey-puck material. Seems downright eager to, actually.

>>1119817
>scavenge, 2 effort
>rolled 9, 8, 17
Picking through the conundary's former lair in Zone Ivory - South (on the assumption that Paprika's monster pal will be coming along with you in the ship, so anything left behind is fair game), middle roll fails (yielding 1 unit of parts), but the first succeeds with effort, and the third would have even without. Rolling to see what you've won.

rolled 8, 5, 7, 3, 2, 10, 9, 4 = 48

---

rolling for iotum type, and quantity of shins

>>1119847
7 units of Responsive Synth, 2 cubes of Quantium, 3 plates of Psiranium, 13 shins worth of surgical-grade plumbing fixtures (complete with intact sterile packaging!) that could be used for giving the ship a blood transfusion, and a further 14 units of parts

rolled 12, 18, 5, 4, 9, 2, 10, 4, 4, 4, 5, 3, 2, 19, 13, 12, 11, 1, 8, 3 = 149

---

>>1119790
>A few already have something in them, from before you arrived.
Can I push through the goo hard enough to retrieve the items? I'll apply a level of Might effort.

>Engine room door admits the chainpod as far as its equator, but gives a familar "access denied" honk
Paprika goes scurrying back to Reiko to ask if she can get the ship to provide access to the engine room.

>pleasantly warm shower easily large enough for two people.
Paprika is visibly very excited to show Nat the two-person shower.

>>1119817
>"Aw. I wanted to finish those. Can we at least-"
"Sorry Reiko. I can crack open a crate of something else, if you're hungry?"

>>1119846
>everybody else agrees Natalina was gone for at least two hours
Nat's startled by Paprika immediately pulling her into a tight hug when she emerges. "Sweet Pikachesus, Nat. Warn a girl before you go disappearing like that. Are you ok?" Paprika's been picking up a lot of Reiko's weird vocabulary lately. Seems like she's been waiting right next to the weird fabric the whole time. What did my Nat senses tell me while Nat was gone?

>Paprika's conundary contact can weave more of that fabric out of the translucent-pink-edible-hockey-puck material. Seems downright eager to, actually.
"Huh. Does that...solve your food problem?"

>Paprika's monster pal will be coming along with you in the ship
Of course, unless they don't want to for some reason.

Did I find anything neat in cold storage?

>>1119856
>Can I push through the goo hard enough to retrieve the items?
>rolled 12
Not without breaking part of the wall or figuring out how to hack the biometric lock. It's not actually goo, but rather some sort of stasis field.
>I'll apply a level of Might effort.
>rolled 18
Do you want to break part of the wall? You definitely could.
>access to the engine room
>rolled 5
Reiko explains that right now the engine room is not a good place for people who are made of meat to be breathing unfiltered air, or leaving skin exposed, if they plan on living to see the next week. Something about borated synth fabric and an inner layer of gold foil? Apparently the ship's hearth has been ill-tended, feverish, so its exotic embers need time to cool, and fumes dissipate.

Cherenkov-blue light coming from under water means you shouldn't dive in, but might be fine a few meters away. In open air, very bad news - you may have taken a mortal wound already, before even noticing. But such a light from hard vacuum simply indicates that a tachyon accumulator is working at all.

>What did my Nat senses tell me while Nat was gone?
She was inside the cloth, same as phasing through any other wall.

>Does that...solve your food problem?
"Not directly," the conundary says, while slurping on that embroidered section like a popsicle.

rolled 7, 13, 12, 16, 10, 18, 19, 8, 18, 18, 13, 18, 13, 11, 9, 12, 19, 3, 17, 9 = 263

---

>>1119846
>on the assumption that Paprika's monster pal will be coming along with you in the ship, so anything left behind is fair game
The crew quarters are certainly spacious enough to accommodate another, and a construction assistant would be quite welcome on a ship in need of repairs.

>>1119846
>an exhilarating rush - skydiving or ski-jumping or sprinting for the sheer joy of it
>lost time
>Take 4 intellect damage
>Paprika's conundary contact can weave more of that fabric out of the translucent-pink-edible-hockey-puck material. Seems downright eager to, actually.
Huh. Did she... accidentally discover the extradimensional travel equivalent of a recreational drug? (Possibly only for insect-adjacent extradimensional powers? She only has the conundary and herself for reference). Natalina isn't going to stop their arachnid companion from partaking, but will council caution, in case it experiences similar symptoms.

>>1119856
> Warn a girl before you go disappearing like that. Are you ok?
"I didn't mean to! I was just curious if the cloth would would still sense me and go limp if I was out-of-phase. I hardly expected that[i/]," the arkus replies while returning the hug. "I'm well; I'm sorry to have worried you."

She [i]really needs some way to check which walls are safe to walk though- which are dangerous on the other side, or inside. Something like a specialized redlight chip or hoop staff?

>>1119858
>It's not actually goo, but rather some sort of stasis field.
Not interested in losing more time, Natalina is not going to attempt to wall-hack her way post those.

>>1119790
>Spots close to the floor that ought to be access panels are sealed tight, and climbing up higher risks triggering unidentified buttons with your feet.
"Oh! I found something that could help with that", Natalina says, showing the levitating hexagonal tables/chairs to Reiko. Seems simple enough to set one high-enough in-air to reach the upper panels.

rolled 16, 1, 16, 11, 2, 19, 17, 7, 8, 10, 17, 9, 6, 13, 20, 16, 9, 3, 10, 18 = 228

---

Hanger bay doors working means we can now attempt to seal and clear the rest of the zone. Start by clearing and organizing any junk scattered around the room. Search it, catalog it, and put it in some semblance of a stockpile. That seems like it will primarily be intellect, for searching and organizing, but might or speed may be involved as well? One level of effort for whatever is needed, +1 if it's intellect.

rolled 7, 7, 6, 16, 19, 14, 9, 12, 19, 12, 17, 2, 7, 15, 18, 5, 20, 16, 13, 12 = 246

---

After an hour of writing up inventory, Reiko concludes that there's no quick fix to the ship's motivity systems, but they can start working on helping the ship mentally. Maybe the ship has a solution in their databanks, but is too feverish to remember it.

Reiko spends downtime in the sub-datasphere using her Mechanic and implant to help the ship heal their mind. [Repair Numenera, Effort 3]

>>1119856
"Do we still have those salami burgers?"

rolled 15, 14, 4, 6, 2, 13, 17, 9, 1, 7, 3, 9, 18, 1, 15, 4, 12, 10, 11, 18 = 189

---

>>1119858
>Do you want to break part of the wall? You definitely could.
Hmm, no reason to go breaking all the furnishings already. I'll just make a mental note to ask Cricket to take a look at it when she gets a minute.

>Reiko explains that right now the engine room is not a good place for people who are made of meat to be breathing unfiltered air, or leaving skin exposed, if they plan on living to see the next week.
Paprika listens attentively to Reiko's entire explanation, though she doesn't really understand the blue light thing. "Well thanks for not letting me get myself killed, Reiko! This is all a little over my head."

>"Not directly," the conundary says, while slurping on that embroidered section like a popsicle.
Paprika watches with mild unease until something else catches her attention.

>>1119871
>"I'm well; I'm sorry to have worried you."
"It's alright. I'm just glad you're safe."

>>1119875
>"Do we still have those salami burgers?"
Paprika cracks open the crate in question and sits down with Reiko for a quick meal.

"I didn't realize the ship was alive. And sick too? I feel bad for hurting the poor thing." She shifts, a little self-conscious. "I think it's amazing how much you know about fixing spaceships. Honestly Reiko, I feel kinda useless. Is there anything I can do to help?"

>>1119871
>rolled 7
>Did she... accidentally discover the extradimensional travel equivalent of a recreational drug?
More like the telepathic equivalent of a second degree rug-burn, then a vampire bat licking the carpet clean afterward.

>She really needs some way to check which walls are safe to walk though
>rolled 13

>showing the levitating hexagonal tables/chairs to Reiko. Seems simple enough to set one high-enough in-air to reach the upper panels.
>rolled 12

>>1119875
>After an hour of writing up inventory, Reiko concludes that there's no quick fix to the ship's motivity systems, but they can start working on helping the ship mentally. Maybe the ship has a solution in their databanks, but is too feverish to remember it.
>Reiko spends downtime in the sub-datasphere using her Mechanic and implant to help the ship heal their mind. [Repair Numenera, Effort 3]
>rolled 7, 7, 6, 16, 19

Natalina can phase through any of those sealed panels, benefiting from Reiko's insight into the underlying design to know in advance which ones conceal potentially dangerously energies vs. which could benefit from some quick internal manipulation - or from leveraging previous goodwill with local datasphere-spirits to keep the noise down and let this ship's feverish mind re-focus, at least long enough to crawl out of bed without further tripping over the sheets.

>>1119872
>rolled 16, 1, 16

Cricket Moon finds three cubes of Quantium and five units of parts. Just as she's holding up that third cube into a sunbeam (to check that it's the real thing, rather than mere sparkly blue glass, or whatever the deal is with Paprika's heat-exchanger oddity), she sees a Locutus-class augmech descending the stairs with a huge crate full of wine bottles... and a shoulder-mounted slugthrower it didn't have before, which shoots that iotum right out of her hand.

Sixty seconds earlier, Cricket is careful not to distract her one-minute-younger self while pilfering the partially accumulated salvage, then scampering off to warn the others. So, overall net gain of five units of quantium, ten units of parts, and a brief head start on fleeing from Last Call, Lord of the Supernumerary Chairs.

By the time she's sprinted all the way back to the ship (along with one last case of tofu snacks, which somebody seemingly forgot)...

>1119933
>Is there anything I can do to help?
>rolled 15
...Paprika is sitting in lotus pose next to the door, with a long coiled tube linking the inside of her left elbow to a coolant duct in the disabled gravity-spotlight system. Apparently, to jumpstart the process of healing itself, ship needs something that can most readily be obtained from her blood. Supposedly it'll be a mutually beneficial trade, after everything's settled, but when Reiko warned that there might be itching (and importance of repressing the urge to scratch) she didn't say it'd be inside bone marrow. Or, intermittently, outside her own actual body, invisible stripes woven across the floor.

Wreckage disentangled. Tachyon halo spun up to minimal maneuvering power. The ship is as ready for departure as it's going to be today, or probably this week.

rolled 1, 12, 2, 4, 2, 3, 11, 13, 10, 2, 11, 13, 11, 2, 8, 15, 3, 19, 14, 15 = 171

---

"I believed I was being responsible, you know, leaving the culinary augmech at the bar, where it could be used, rather than appropriating it for good. How kindly restraint is repaid!"

As she offers her facetious complaints, Natalina rolls up her sleeve on one arm and applies the injectable speed boost cypher, followed by a sharp breath as she feels the drug take effect.

"I don't think I can fell that thing on my own, but I can take it's measure and delay it's arrival."

Natalina isn't going to be able to deflect metal slugs with her rapier—so she picks up one of the hexagonal metal plates to use as an off-hand shield. The prior-world chair disputes the usurper-mimic's claim to chair lordship! Assuming the Jack doesn't object, she'll also snag one of those cubes of quantium from Cricket as a fallback.

Phase sprinting to engage Last Call. Trying to see what the range on the slug thrower is; when it takes a shot, two level of Speed Effort, trained in Speed Defense, asset from a shield, and another asset from phase sprint should ease Speed Defense by 5 steps (which should cost zero Speed). Will also attempt to catch it with Scratch Existence as she passes. Unfortunately, that's Might-based so Speed Effort can't help there. The light-weapon attack-easing from her ancestral rapier might, if it's the scratching-implement of choice?

If we get that far in a single post, Natalina's plan is to switch to drawing attacks to cover allies once Last Call closes enough to fire on them.

rolled 16, 13, 13, 13, 18, 2, 4, 2, 10, 8, 10, 12, 7, 15, 2, 3, 20, 7, 11, 7 = 193

---

This is really bad. The last time Reiko had to deal with a homicidal gorilla-sized android chef, she was working with fourteen of Youngmason's seasoned glaives and they still took major casualties.
Whichever Arch-Nano cursed all culinary machines on the planet to have a small chance of going rampant at the mere mention of 'Crème Brulee' needs to be thrown into the sun.

"Aw damnit, not again! Need backup need backup need backup-"

Reiko rushes back to the neural interface throne, plugs herself back into her personal port, and speedruns a quick skim of the ship's abilities, looking for anything functional in its capabilities that could be used as a weapon or distraction.

[Intelligence - Max Effort]

rolled 11, 20, 10, 9, 20, 11, 17, 11, 6, 13, 12, 11, 5, 18, 11, 16, 17, 17, 5, 19 = 259

---

>>1119992
Let the rain fall.
Okay, got a lot of actions, and I'm not sure how many I can do before the mimic-bot shows up. First thing is to activate Kingfisher Shroud. 11/16 Int. Then, I need to put down Rising Riptide at the entrance it's coming through. Then, prep another debilitating poison. If it's a mimitan construct, that should disrupt it's cohesion. One on my wrist blades for if it gets close, one on my dart thrower. Then, hide near the entrance- her shroud should help her avoid injury and help deal with mimitans who get close. After her screw up with the mining laser, she's looking forward to this as an opportunity to prove her worth and regain any respect she may have lost. After that, if there's time left we need to strategize with Natalina. Want to prepare more area denial with Rising Riptide but avoid hindering Nat. Further, if she can land a hit and poison the big guy, they should be able to make short work of the small fry- is there some way for Nat to help her get an alpha strike off? I'd be happy to spend effort but I wanna stack as many bonuses as I can, so if Nat can distract it and Cricket Moon goes for a sneak attack, or if flanking provides a benefit, or anything like that, I wanna set up for a not-quite fastball special with her.

Awarding one extra xp to Reiko for her help getting the ship up and running.

Round 1
>>1120087
Natalina intercepts Last Call at the entrance to the docking tube, 150 meters from the ship.
>rolled 1, 12
>intrusion rejected, reroll
No time to build an adequate shield! Gotta work with what's already here. Nat lifts the (likely contaminated) tofu-snack box out of Cricket Moon's arms with her off hand, lobs it overhand, aiming to jam the augmech's forward sensor array in the manner of a slapstick pie while sliding between its legs, then grab the lid which broke off from Reiko's paint-mixer as it shook itself apart. Sturdy, buckler-sized, handle in about the right place, known with certainty to be indigestible to mimics.

This works out almost, but not quite, exactly according to plan. Rather than being directly blinded, Last Call slightly lifts the crate of wine bottles to parry. Tofu telefrag sends fermented fruit juice spiced with shards of wood and glass spraying everywhere except directly behind it, where Nat is.

>>1120286
>kingfisher shroud
>rising riptide
>rolled 11
In the moment of the explosion, something suddenly becomes clear that's been itching at the back of Cricket's mind since they dropped out of the elevator: it's far too quiet up here, and too dry. Fragments tear her exposed skin, dark vinegar soaks her clothing and hair, but rather than pain or disorientation it feels like coming home. Projectile from Last Call's shoulder-cannon clips her collarbone - the exact spot corresponding to that mounting point, as if acknowledging a peer. (Eight damage, reduced to six by armor. A 12 would have been enough to dodge.) With an act of will she picks up most of the spilled liquid that she's not already wearing, lifting it through the floor grating as if running the burst backward, gathers it into a ball to engulf and hinder Last Call's head and limbs.

Rounds 2 and 3
>>1120087
>Will also attempt to catch it with Scratch Existence as she passes. Unfortunately, that's Might-based so Speed Effort can't help there. The light-weapon attack-easing from her ancestral rapier might, if it's the scratching-implement of choice?
>rolled 2, 4, 2, 3

Oldest book in the family library, memory-crystal transcript of an incomprehensibly ancient original:
>The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you must parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. Is it essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able to actually cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him. You must thoroughly research this.
> —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Water Book
Certainly thought she'd thoroughly researched that. Turns out if you think only of tragically spilled ancient vintages, and second-guessing every step you take to avoid stumbling through soft windows into hard vacuum, that ALSO means you will not be able to actually cut him.
Good news is, Nat did manage to draw Last Call's attention - even while Cricket's having a full-blown floating-amid-swirling-sparkles magical-girl transformation sequence (over there at the '120 meters from the ship' mark) - and that paint-mixer lid works great as a shield. A slug that otherwise would have hit bounced right off, and it's light enough to maneuver easily, yet hefty enough deflect what would have been a bone-jarring (or -shattering) kick after she returns to melee range.

>Trying to see what the range on the slug thrower is
It didn't try to shoot Cricket until closing to within about 30 meters, even though it had a clear line of fire, and started pivoting at the waist to engage Nat right about the same moment she got that close from behind (after equipping the shield). Low-velocity projectiles might need a relatively high arc that would've intersected the ceiling? Or it might have trouble tracking fast-moving folks further away than that.

>>1120286
>debilitating poison
>dart thrower
>rolled 20
Crushing it with hydrostatic pressure isn't working. No head-holes to drown or force-feed. A pair of mimetic horrors are trying to bloom from the wound on Cricket's shoulder - she absently crushes and twists them into a cloak of snow-white feathers, then stanches the bleeding. Aha, of course! If the armor's too solid, what you need is a drill. Shards of glass and frozen flash-distilled alcohol form up in a spiral around the humble dart launcher, the churning wine-dark sea around Last Call's upper body opens a narrow channel, liquid tendrils briefly link up as a hundred foot long single-use linear accelerator, ramming the dart through a weak spot on the pseudo-augmech's hip joint, then flooding the breach with nerve-disrupting chemistry.

The most potent poisons Cricket can formulate on the fly are only level 5, while Last Call is level 6. Imitation barbot remains sober.

As for physical injury... base 2 for a light weapon, +4 for major effect from the natural 20, +9 for maximum Effort on a single-target attack (which is free, also thanks to the 20) adds up to 15 damage, reduced to 11 by armor. Last Call stumbles, falls to one knee, grasping at the gaping hole where part of its pelvis used to be. One more hit like that, it'll be down for sure!

On its own turn that same round, Last Call lobs a slug at Natalina, which she parries (partly thanks to hindrance from Rising Riptide), and mimetic gel - along with some pink glassy stuff, halfway between cotton candy and fungal mycelia - pushes back into the wound, beginning to close it up, healing 2 damage.
Maybe... two more hits like that?
>rolled 11
Cricket's next dart plinks off of Last Call's armor ineffectively. It swings a leg out to kick at Nat while regaining its footing, and healing another 2 damage.

Looks like in round 4, it's going to spend its action tearing free of the Rising Riptide, then resume advancing toward the ship.

rolled 20, 9, 11, 14, 11, 20, 13, 3, 16, 10, 20, 13, 12, 18, 2, 2, 2, 8, 10, 5 = 219

---

>>1120308
Okay new plan, she gave it her best shot, and it didn't cut it.

Current pools are 7/13 Might, 17/17 Speed, 11/16 Int. Putting down Rising Riptide and using Fleet of Foot will hopefully allow Cricket Moon to outpace their assailant and make a fighting retreat. One speed effort on defense per attack, don't wanna burn my whole pool but should probably put at least a little effort into staying safe since she can't take two more of those hits.

"I don't think I can pull that trick off again, and my poison isn't slowing it down at all. We need to get back to the ship and group up or get out!"

Round 4
Last Call breaks free of the Rising Riptide, advances to 147 meters from the ship, heals 2 more damage.
Cricket Moon applies a new Rising Riptide, then retreats to 105 meters.
Natalina studies Last Call, setting up to apply Understanding next round.

Round 5
Natalina uses Scratch Existence, applying Might effort for more damage x1, more targets x2.
>rolled 11, 13, 10
Hits all three times, for 4 damage each, ignoring armor. Last Call's health is reduced to 5/22, but you're not sure it'll actually stay down at zero.
Nat continues past Last Call to 120 meters.
Last Call heals 2 more damage (7/22), and shoots at Cricket, who...
>rolled 20
...catches the projectile intact. Contaminated Slug Sample x1 can be immediately broken up for ten more darts, or brought back to a proper lab to formulate poison that'll be effective against Last Call, or salvaged for a random cypher up to level 6.
Cricket creates a third Rising Riptide at the 135 meter mark, retreats to 90 meters.

Round 6
Last Call breaks free of the second Rising Riptide, advances to 142 meters, heals 2 more damage (9/22)
Nat briefly meets up with Cricket at the 90 meter mark
Cricket retreats to 60 meters

Round 7
Last Call advances to 135 meters, gets caught in the third Rising Riptide, heals 2 more damage (11/22), spawns a slower-moving minion
Nat retreats to 60 meters
Cricket meets up with Paprika at the 30 meter mark

Looks like you've got at least five more rounds before it catches up, but it'll be back to full health by then.

rolled 17, 5, 11, 11, 5, 13, 10, 15, 8, 10, 17, 19, 5, 10, 17, 13, 10, 4, 1, 5 = 206

---

Paprika's been on her knees, teeth clenched, watching the fight in absolute agony. Fire seems to engulf the docking tube and all of Zone Ivory beyond and she can do nothing but watch another catastrophe unfold, taking two more people she cares about away from her forever.

>>1120398
>Cricket meets up with Paprika at the 30 meter mark
Paprika speaks in a low drawl, dropping her usual bubbly demeanor. "Girl, you tore that beast apart. You're really something special. Now help me pull this thing out of my arm."

>Looks like you've got at least five more rounds before it catches up, but it'll be back to full health by then.
Paprika will sever the transfusion, however she can.

>you're more than just a glaive.
Then she'll burst into flames. Revenge was never the point, though not a single day's gone by that she hasn't dreamed about it. The ninth world is full of monsters, and she needs to be ready to face them.

Change of plans! Sticking with flame blade. Gonna hack this thing into molten chunks. Fleet of Foot to close the distance, one speed effort on dodge actions. One might effort on attacks and three on damage. That should work out to 17 damage per hit, before armor. Here's the math:

8 (windslice spear) + 1 (combat prowess) + 2 (flame blade) + 6 (3 levels of effort) = 17!

rolled 5, 3, 9, 1, 7, 1, 11, 15, 7, 5, 4, 12, 18, 8, 17, 11, 8, 10, 10, 2 = 164

---

Reiko's review of the ship's offensive capabilities: it's a crate of lemons... that can talk. The comms systems are still functional. Every other weapon has some flaw or damage that can't be fixed in a few turns.
Would have been better if she'd just fought on the ground, but there's no time to regret her choices! Reiko uses the ship's network and hacks into Last Call to jam everything she can find with recursive code!

[Disable Machine, 3 Effort, Repeat until Last Call is dead]

>Paprika will sever the transfusion, however she can.
Before Paprika can, her girlfriend's gloved hand blurs into place on her arm, heedless of the fire. "Please. It's not worth hurting yourself."

>>1120400
>rolled 17
>inability at understanding numenera
>+1 to rolls when fighting alongside Cricket
>support from Natalina
That pink fuzzy stuff in Last Call's almost-fully-healed wound... you've seen it before, or heard of it at least.
>>1064824
>Actual structure is two layers of armor-grade ironwood sandwiching a layer of fluffy pink stuff - looks like cotton candy, tastes like itchy razor wire, completely inorganic but grows when exposed to fire, similar to (but even faster than) the way mushrooms grow when it rains.

hm... link formatting trouble. Should be https://questden.org/kusaba/graveyard/res/1064679.html#1064824

>>1120410
>Before Paprika can, her girlfriend's gloved hand blurs into place on her arm, heedless of the fire. "Please. It's not worth hurting yourself."
All of Paprika's fire, which had even started creeping up the handle of her spear, winks out in an instant. She's crying.

"Nat I'm sorry! Did I burn you? I'm so sorry...I don't know what to do! Should we run?"

>>1120411
>That pink fuzzy stuff in Last Call's almost-fully-healed wound... you've seen it before, or heard of it at least.
Paprika starts pointing at the approaching mimicbot and rambling on about meeting a slug who asked her to set a house on fire. Seems like her fury has fully reversed into panic.

rolled 5, 7, 3, 1, 20, 4, 7, 17, 15, 3, 16, 17, 17, 3, 17, 2, 18, 10, 16, 1 = 199

---

>>1120413
>I'm so sorry...I don't know what to do! Should we run?"
"I believe in you."

>Did I burn you?
Ah. That would have been hypocritical of her, wouldn't it? Thank goodness for fireproofed armoring cloth.

>what do
Going to take a recovery roll and proc Understanding while we let Last Call close to within Paprika's tether. When Paprika goes on the offense, Natalina's going to follow with Phase Sprint, and focus on drawing attacks.

rolled 6 + 3 = 9

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Recovery roll.

rolled 12, 19, 10, 20, 10, 5, 11, 9, 10, 18, 7, 18, 9, 4, 10, 7, 15, 1, 11, 3 = 209

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>"I believe in you."
Paprika's suddenly all steel and confidence again. She retreats back to the ship with Nat and Cricket, ready to lure Last Call into melee range.

Change of change of plans! For the sake of record keeping, after some discussion and in response to Nat's intervention, I'm going with Nanotech Defense after all.

Gonna cut this thing into room temperature chunks. No flame shroud, but effort applied in all the same places.