@TerminalLocation: Roleplaying Discussion, Guild City Limits
Activity: Holding Back the Tide
Guild City was one of many islands within the vast cosmological structure known as The Web. In the beginning, the First City had been built as a sequestered extension of another, larger ontological mass. After the First Guildfall, when the whole of the First City had been dissolved and remanded to oblivion, Mahz had then endeavored to create a new City - one beholden to no other, and which could stand for itself. Rather than attaching the New City to any other entity, he instead used three Astral Anchors as the foundry for his great work.
Beyond the boundaries of the city, where reality bled into empty zero-void, perceptual constructs such as direction and space lost meaning. There were three anchors, and Guild City was built upon them, but at no actual point did the anchors or the City physically connect, and the anchors did not occupy any particular area - yet simultaneously all existed in the same place. The curious nature of the anchors made it possible not only for Guild City to hang, freely suspended and independent in the void, but also for traffic to come and go from the city. People came and went from other islands in The Web, some merely visitors, others looking for a new home.
As the City had grown though, it had garnered attention from other powers - foreign and alien, with perhaps comprehensible agendas but incomprehensible methodology. Two in particular, the powers responsible for the invasion of robotic drones, were entities of temptation. One offered material goods and steadings while the other offered immense wealth at the hands of Chance's whimsy. Both entities desired to tempt the populace of Guild City. What they decided to do to further that end was to send autonomous golems to the City, to make all the people there aware of their greatness while degrading the environment in order to encourage emigration.
Their servants, better at doing one of these things than the other, entered Guild City by way of the Spam Sector. Having been pushed from there, and since the placement of the anchor they used to enter was fuzzy in any case, they now were using the Roleplaying Discussion Sector to enter Guild City.
Within one of the Sector Hubs, a massive, mechanical terror began to materialize.
A titan of reinforced triple-composite armor that bristled with artillery, weapon mounts, arcane sensors, and an inhuman intelligence. Its smallest movements sent a keening, metallic echo throughout the entire surrounding area. Its sensors, numerous and powerful, filled the area with an electric hum as they penetrated through metal and walls to peer into various electronic systems that might be suborned.
The behemoth moved, its six legs carrying it out of the hub and into the Sector Streets. A dreadful, low tone joined the cacophony of malice as its weapons powered up -
Without any fuss, it then vanished into thin air.
Up within the Sector's central tower around which all the hubs were built around, an entity within the top floor's panorama looked down at where the monstrous machine had just stood. The being's form was made up of a clay-like material, vaguely shaped to approximate a humanoid design and bearing no discernible features.
"You..." A clay-like digit tapped on the window pane as the thing's synthesized voice echoed from somewhere around its neck. "...are new."
Terminal added the registry data for that particular S-KBot to an already lengthy list that had been assembled within a floating, holographic screen within arm's reach. They then moved across the panorama, occasionally losing their footing and simply dragging their feet and legs across the ground like an eerie puppet as some inexorable force dragged the body across the room. Looking down at another one of the hubs, Terminal passively watched as two S-KBots materialized within another hub - one already known to them, and the other being the new one that had just been targeted with the Modkit.
Terminal simply targeted the first one to cross the hub boundary, temporarily banishing the construct back into zero-void without any notable flair or fanfair. No sense in discriminating and letting the enemy employ stalling tactics that would add precious minutes to the Modkit's cooldown period. The second S-KBot, unperturbed, moved between the buildings within the Sector proper and out of Terminal's immediate line of sight. The moderator could still see the machine through surveillance, but a jamming suite was preventing acquisition of the Registry Data the war machine had used to gain entry to Guild City. Now it was loose, and Terminal could not afford to keep an eye on it when there were already eight more already causing mayhem elsewhere. Somebody else would have to report its coordinate location and registry data later.
Terminal spent the next few minutes scanning through surveillance feeds on the holo-screen. Turning to the West, it then targeted an incoming artillery shell, the munition seeming to phase directly through the tower as it vanished just before impact. Below the tower in one of the hubs, five squadrons of N-KBots materialized and scattered into the Sector while the Modkit was still recharging.
"...Pissants!" Terminal hissed. Despite the massed destruction the S-KBots were capable of, it was the N-KBots which were causing it the most trouble - they kept suborning or else destroying security systems, including the surveillance feeds Terminal was using to keep track of the biggest threats and to spot and neutralize incoming artillery. Soon, the tower was going to be hit by a shell they had not seen coming. Things would then become decidedly unpleasant.
Looking out from the tower to the East, Terminal targetted a sub-sector they suspected one of the S-KBots might be in and neutralized all of it. In a single uninteresting instant, every building, survivor, and bot in that subsector vanished, leaving a plain of canalized terrain, marked with the occasional spire of concrete denoting the presence of networked City Systems. The buildings could be rebuilt, and the survivors were all being shunted through zero-void into the hub of secured, safer Sectors. Unfortunately, the S-KBot had not been there - but at least the surveillance feeds had been reclaimed.
Terminal's thoughts were interrupted by the holographic screen chiming, indicating an incoming call - from a phone in the Casual Interest Check Sector.
"So heeeey, this is uh... Jay Kane. I'm currently fighting against those bots at the border of General and Casual Interest check. Is there anything in particular you'd recommend us doing? Like how do we use that modkit? I think they're getting ready to fire at u-"
Just as he said that, Lucius could hear the Kbot L right above him fire off a huge shot, followed by an equally huge explosion. He couldn't see where it hit, but he could certainly feel it.
"They're shooting at us now. Help?"
Terminal switched one of the surveillance panels opened on the screen to show an overview of the bridge from one of the strut cameras. Sure enough, there was a group of N-KBots clustered around one of the three L-KBots that they had gone out of their way to announce. Like nearly every other KBot in the city, a jamming suite obscured its registry data, preventing use of the Modkit.
"You must provide me with the registry data the L-KBot used to enter Guild City. These are autonomous robotic platforms, and so are required to have their registry stamped clearly on their chassis in order to pass through one of the anchors. Get close enough to find it, and then call back. It has likely been placed somewhere on the chassis that is difficult to get a good look at from most angles, but it will be instantly recognizable. The typeface is a highly distinctive, glowing, golden coloration."
Terminal disconnected the call then. Either this 'Jay Kane' would get it done, or else would shortly be killed, and either way there were other things to worry about-
The panorama exploded as an artillery shell smashed into the top floor and detonated, the rooftop disintegrating into a plume of ashes and dust as the walls of the lower floors collapsed. Shards of glass and hunks of shredded steel rained down onto the streets below, and the entire Sector was filled with the groaning noise of twisting metal as the whole tower swayed slightly from the strain.
Now located four floors below where they had been previously, Terminal's claylike body rose, shifting a collapsed steel beam and two overlapping sections of drywall from their body in the process. With an errant wave, the smoke and dust obscuring the air around the tower dissipated. They approached the lip of the tower, stepping over ruined debris, and peered down at the city in the direction the shell had come from. One of the S-KBots peered back, steaming air still coiling from the barrel of its artillery cannon.
"Nice try." Terminal's synthesized voice hissed. In the next moment, the S-KBot vanished. Conjuring the floating holographic screen once more, Terminal paused as they saw the additional L-KBots that must have entered the Sector when the shell had hit.
"Pissants." Terminal said, their synthesized voice utterly deadpan in tone.
