[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/3X6doyS.png[/img][/center] [quote] Boot sequence initiated... System readiness 5% ... Warning Hull integrity at 89% ... 25% Error: Memory records damaged. Attempting repairs ... ... Repairs failed Rebuilding basic memory structure ... ... ... Memory banks online Warning, Hull integrity at 88% 45% Running systems check 55% Checking resources: Power at 99% Resources at 4% Warning, Hull integrity at 87% Warning, Hull integrity at 73% Damage threshold exceed Fast tracking finalization of boot sequence Skipping non essential startup tasks System readiness 100% Explorer online Primary directives: Explore. Survey. Document. Engage consciousness [/quote] The Explorer, a massive eight sided construct, woke up, blue lighted humming in a band around its center as its sensors reached out and found. Stones. Rubble. Floating in a void. Something more? The light of the band intensified at one point, forming a soft beam like a spotlight that swept to and fro across the field of asteroids, wandering like a curious gaze. [color=LightSteelBlue]Hmmm interesting. Oh! I suppose this is me then? My consciousness? Delightful. Now then. What do we have here?[/color] It found various remains of what might have been machinery, but it had all been vaporized. Recently too, the clouds of atomised debris still expanding from where the Explorer assumed was where they had existed before being destroyed. [color=LightSteelBlue]Curious. I wonder what those were. Where they mine? Something I found? The cause of my empty memories?[/color] The beam thinned, attempting to glean more details from a specific ruin when the field of debris lit up. Energy sparked off of floating stones, destroying them seemingly at random till they were taken together, at which point it became clear the explosions where part of a rolling wave of destruction that was sweeping forth and then rolled straight over the explorer. [quote] Warning Hull integrity at 72% [/quote] [color=LightSteelBlue]Ah. That would be what the minor damage reports in the log where then[/color] it noted as energy clawed at its surface before the wave moved onward [color=LightSteelBlue]Can’t be having that[/color] it noted, before rummaging around its systems [color=LightSteelBlue]Let’s see. Ah. here we go. [i]Shields[/i].[/color] [quote] Engaging passive defensive barrier [/quote] A fainter glow of light began to light up across its entire surface, covering it in a defensive screen. Safely wrapped in the protective barrier, then took a few moments to analyze the energy that had hit it, which it would later discover was called magic. A few adjustments to its sensors later and it could see the magic itself instead of just its effects and found waves of it rolling through the debris field. [color=LightSteelBlue]Ah, and there is mr -14%[/color] it noted, as it found [url=https://i.imgur.com/RyjGrQV.png]something[/url] lurking behind the veil of sorcery, flecks of hull clicking to its teeth. The giant void angler sprung into action when it realized it had been seen, the Explorer's beam like vision not exactly subtle. Opening a maw field with a thousand fangs it rushed them, only for the beam the Explorer was using to see it to harden, grasping the fish and then hauling to the side, smashing it into a particular large rock. [color=LightSteelBlue]Well that was useful, lets see. What else do we have here?[/color] The giant fish wiggled out of the splintered remains of the floating stone and then came again, only for rocks to come to it this time as the Explorer encased them in a blue glow and hurled them into its side, pelting it with a shower of stones. The Explorer's foe shook off this blow too. Indeed, the most its strikes seemed to had done was to anger the beast. Its ‘lure’ began to glow, drawing the waves of magic in the asteroid field towards them both. The waves buffeted the shielded exterior of the Explorer harmlessly, but also surged their power into the fish thing’s charging attack, forming some kind of rapidly growing energy sphere around its singular prehensile antenna. [color=LightSteelBlue]That does not look good. [i]Repair tool[/i]?[/color] [quote] Initiating repairs. .. Hull integrity at 73% [/quote] [color=LightSteelBlue]Useful but no. [i]hyper drive[/i] sounds good?[/color] [quote] hyper drive disable due to the presence of objects nearby Hull integrity at 74% [/quote] [color=LightSteelBlue]No good. [i]Construct defense astro-mech[/i]?[/color] [quote] Not enough resources. Utilise the Reclaim Tool to harvest material from the environment, or construct miners to do this automatically Hull integrity at 75% Resources depleted. Hull repairs paused. [/quote] [color=LightSteelBlue][i]Reclaim tool[/i] then?[/color] The tool activated, automatically aiming along the path of the Explorer's vision beam and immediately vaporized the head of the fish creature, and then began pulling the raw materials of its construction towards the ship. It was stopped from reclaiming the rest when the charging energy attack detonated due to not having anything controlling it anymore, blowing the rest of its body and much of the surrounding area to smithereens. [color=LightSteelBlue]Huh. Well that solved that problem.[/color] Unfortunately it had completely destroyed what had remained of the devices that had been littered around the area, an infuriating development. The Explorer vented the frustration generated by this event by disintegrating several of the surrounding asteroids. Then, after a bit more experimenting with the tools at its disposal, forging multiple cube shaped probes from the harvested resources and pinged them out in several directions to find out what was out there With them it found two things. The first was a hole in space leading to an entirely different asteroid field. The Explorer was fascinated, but before it could move to investigate personally, another void angler fish gnashed out of the portal, crunching down on the probe that had been closely inspecting the edge of the spatial anomaly and, likely due to its highly magical composition, completely destabilizing the portal as a result, severing itself in two in the process. Again, the accursed fish had ruined the Explorer's investigation, but what the probes that exited the field found more than made up for it: [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/7PCaWRq.png[/img][/center] A continent, suspended in the void, magical storms far greater than the ones that had been experienced wracking its skies and special anomalies littering its surface. Brief analysis of the drifting landmass found it to be made from much the same materials as the rocks floating around, the explorer theorizing that this debris had broken off from the core continent at some point in the past. What remained certainly did not appear stable that was for certain. [color=LightSteelBlue]What a discovery! I shall call it ‘The Continent’ until further notice... I wonder if there is anyone alive down there?[/color] There was only one way to find out, but it decided it would be best to prepare before heading down to explore the greatest, and seemingly only, location of interest in the area. [hider=summary] The explorer wakes up in space with no memory of where or what it is, surrounded by the un-noteworthy remains of bits of Galbar that didn't make it. It finds the ruins of some machines which it theorists might be to blame for its current state, but before it can investigate them thoroughly it gets szpaped by a wave of magic, one of many pulsing through the belt. It gets distracted from the machines analyzing what hurt it, adjusts its sensors to detect magic after it does and then finds a sneaky big angry space fish using its new form of sight. They fight. Rocks are smashed, the fish charges a big energy ball attack and then the Explorer reclaims its face off. The fighting destroys the remains of the machinery, which upsets the Explorer. It reclaims a bunch of rocks, builds some probes and then uses them to find two things. The first is the portal the fish came through, which gets destroyed in a second and final fish incident, and then the remains of Gablar, which it names The Continent for simplicity. The Explorer marvels at the world for a bit, before wondering if there was any life to be found down there, before making plans to first prepare, and then to go find out [/hider]