BBeast

Sanctuary

It's getting exciting.

I have a few questions. One about these events specifically and a couple about this world in general.

Are these shuttles armed? If so, with what?

Hosts gain spirit by taking it from other hosts. When they gain this spirit, does it add to their maximum levels, or does it only stock up their supply with a finite amount of spirit meaning that it runs out and needs to be replenished by killing more hosts?

It mentioned in the history that the first core found exploded, taking out a mountain. Yet despite this latent energy in cores, there does not seem to be much concern about them being harnessed by anyone as strategic weapons (ie. nukes). Why is this? And, hypothetically, if I melted down a core so it stopped being crystalline, would its ability to hold energy cease and thus it release all its energy catastrophically?

Sanctuary

Patting the side of the nearest shuttle, Zachary replied, "I've given them all a thorough going over. If they don't fly, well, I don't know how they wouldn't."

As Hector moved on Zachary turned to Nal, rubbed his hands together and said, "Time to give them their final test run."

He entered the pilot's seat and went over the controls. The past twelve days had been spent repairing these three shuttles and, when the repairs were done, on optimising their performance. Obtaining parts had not been too difficult, for it was simple enough to send a patrol out on a scavenging mission and Sector Zero had its own stockpiles and machine shop. And the work itself passed with incredible efficiency, for Kaa'is abilities of machine reading and magnetokinesis allowed him to see exactly what he needed to do at a whim and then often do it without having to crawl into the shuttle's engine spaces. He could work so efficiently that he had even been able to help in the maintenance of the Mercenary's weapons, diagnosing problems such as jams and fixing them in seconds at times.

Even with all the engineering to distract him, as the days wore on the consequences of that night were catching up with him. He was twitchy, fidgety and irritable. He would often work late into the night, and he would skip meals because he was feeling nauseous. He could rarely stop thinking about the upcoming battle, the fighting, and he was filled with excitement, desire, blood-lust. Sometimes he would just want to beat someone's skull in with a length of pipe and he would pull at his hair because there was no one whom he could do so to. He hated Kaa'is for turning him into this wreck. He hated being without any outlet. And even more frustrating was that Kaa'is was so quietly smug about it. Kaa'is did not even have to speak for Zachary to know this every time his symptoms afflicted him.

Of course, Zachary kept this to himself and he tried not to show it. As he often worked alone on the shuttles, this was not exceedingly difficult. He had taken to handling a greasy rag to cover the fidgeting, because it could easily be mistaken as just an engineer's habit. How could he bear to let anyone know the truth?

But now respite was just over the horizon. He steadied his breathing and let his mind fill the shuttle. In his mind he did a full systems check. He reached out a flicked each switch one by one, watching as power entered each system and each system spring to life in their various ways. Then came the big one, the power to the propulsion. He had no qualification whatsoever for piloting a shuttle, but twelve days of becoming intimately familiar with every wire, every core, every switch, every computer, every patch of metal and every bolt meant he knew exactly how it worked and exactly how to fly it. Even if he wasn't at the controls he could probably still fly it by magic and feel. At the pull of a switch power was supplied to the main kinetic and gravitational cores and with a roar the shuttle rose from the ground. Gingerly yet precisely Zachary flew the shuttle in a tight circle inside the hangar and gently landed it where it was before.

He shut off the systems, opened the door, poked his head out and said to Nal with a grin on his face, "It works like a charm."

He walked to the second shuttle, and as he did so he was wringing the greasy rag in his hands. Without turning to face Nal, he said, "There's been something I've wanted to ask. I've seen the Wall up close, and looked at how it was made. The military really spared no expense on it. They must have been quite confident that this cataclysm would happen. The Warshiran steel you see is just the exterior. Most of it is constructed from kinetic cores the size of apartments, powering kinetic shields that could probably withstand enough force to level all of Sovereign. And along the foundations are steel fibre cores, enough to regenerate the entire coating of the Wall several times over even if you were somehow able to damage it through the shield. I haven't seen the aerial shield up close, but it is probably almost as strong as the one covering the Wall. With that in mind, how the hell are we going to crack through it?"

Sanctuary

Zachary turned his head to look properly at Nal as he began to speak. Kaa'is took control with the repairs, guiding his hands and moving the metal parts and tools underneath the carriage. The military would be bound to respond if one of their patrols went missing, and if that patrol had radioed in that they had found him before they were killed reinforcements might be here sooner, so Kaa'is did not want to loose any time.

"My name's Zachary Mason. I'm an engineer. This carriage is new, though. Finished it around the time of the announcement." When Nal mentioned fixing a shuttle, Zachary's face lit up. "Ah, yes, I can fix a shuttle for you. You're in luck. Before the cataclysm I was working on designing a new shuttle engine for my PhD. Fixing a shuttle should be no trouble." The flicker of a plasma torch underneath the carriage stopped and a short length of pipe with a plasma bullet hole in it dropped out. "Who knows," Zachary added, "After we get out of here I might even be able to finish off that PhD."

As he got another length of piping and was heating the end with a blowtorch and hammering it to make it narrower, he said, "Give me five minutes and this carriage should be able to move again, and then you can lead me to your base or wherever."

In those few minutes he welded the pipe in place and then jury-rigged the controls to a functional state. The result looked much the same as it did before, but the difference came when he pulled the start lever and the carriage, with groaning metal and shuddering pipes, rose slowly off the ground. Once it was there it stopped groaning and shuddering quite so much, but it still looked quite precarious. Zachary returned the heap of scrap to the trap core. Then he got in the driver's seat and the carriage lurched down alarmingly with the added weight, although Zachary was not fazed as with his machine reading he was keeping a close eye on its performance. He could tell that if he pushed it much faster than a walk his repairs would probably fail and the carriage would stop abruptly, but until then it would work well enough.

"OK, ready when you are," Zachary said to the Mercenaries.

Sanctuary

When the gunfire towards him had stopped Zachary also hesitantly stopped shooting blindly over the carriage. He peered through a plasma hole and saw in the entrance to the alleyway a number of men, who also appeared to be soldiers but definitely not military. When they spoke, it took Zachary a few moments for it to click that these were Golden Mercenaries. Zachary rose up and stepped out to the side of his carriage, holding his plasma rifle by his side.

"Am I glad you guys came along. Thank you very much," Zachary said, quite relieved to not be on the brink of getting shot at.

He took in the situation again. There were eight Golden Mercenaries here, and he could see beyond them the corpses of soldiers with their throats slitted and blood pooling on the ground. This sight made him twitch momentarily, but then he subtly averted his gaze from it. It was not that he had much of a problem with the Mercenaries killing the soldiers, it was simply that killing by knife was a memory that he would rather forget.

He looked back towards his carriage, and his heart was touched with sadness seeing the state his carriage was now in. The plasma had riddled it with many molten holes so it now looked to be a wreck. "It's hardly two days old and this happens." He stepped towards it, laid a hand on its blistered side and knelt down to inspect it. While the shell on that side had been ruined, the controls shot and the chassis was damaged, the engine and works hidden within the undercarriage was mostly intact, save for a few discrete points of damage. He reached over to the controls and turned off the engine, and there was a thud as the back half stopped being aloft and fell to the ground like the front half had done earlier.

More military will be coming. We have to leave it, Kaa'is said to Zachary.

It won't take long. I can see what needs fixing. A pipe needs replacing, the front focus needs a quick patch and I can bypass some of the controls. It will be borderline, but it can be done, insisted Zachary.

Zachary stood up and rummaged around the back of the carriage for his tools. "Was there anything I could do to thank you?" Zachary asked of the Golden Mercenaries. He pulled out a welder, hammer and trap core. "I'm just trying to get this machine running again. It shouldn't take too long," he explained.

At a push of a button he dumped the contents of the trap core behind the carriage with a flash of red light and a pop of rushing air. The contents was mainly scrap metal and spare parts. He reached over and, out of view of the Mercenaries, a rounded piece of Sparker, a core casing, rose to meet his hand. He took this, hammered it flat on the ground, then he reached under the front of the carriage and started welding it into a hole in the machinery. While he was doing this he kept the corner of his eye watching the Mercenaries, just so he could see them and know if they made any unexpected movements.

Sanctuary

In the morning Zachary promptly awoke and found that breakfast, mainly cereal, powdered milk and fresh bread and toast, was available even at the relatively early time he had arisen. He found that because everybody had different duties everybody had to have breakfast at different times, so it was available early in the morning until some time approaching noon. He quickly ate his breakfast so he would be able to get busy with engineering to take his mind off the thoughts which had driven him out of bed.

After a few more hours of work, Zachary completed the device. The base was shaped like a large upturned bowl, and was actually significantly weighted to keep it on the ground when in operation. Out the top came the wind core atop a heavy metal spring, with a sheath of metal half-covering the spring. To be slotted into that sheath of metal is another metal covering over the wind core, which would direct most of the sound in the opposite direction. Out of the side of the device came an insulated wire about 5 meters long leading to a hand held switch. When not in use that wire can be coiled up and hung on a hook on the side of the device. At a flick of that switch, the circuit will be closed, a current will run through an oscillator and then to the wind core, producing air vibrations of about 2500 Hz with a loudness well over 120 dB.

That was in theory. It worked on paper, and his machine reading allowed him to ensure that there were no faults in the assembly, but certainty can only be obtained through testing. Tentatively, Zachary put on earmuffs and safety goggles, took the switch, moved the full five meters away then flicked the switch. Immediately he curled up to protect his ears from the sound, even though he was still wearing the earmuffs. Dust was shaken from every crevice of the shed and the device was vibrating so much that it was slowly moving. Less than a second later Zachary turned it off. With his ears still ringing and himself surprised with the effectiveness of his device, he approached the machine to inspect it for damage.

Satisfied that there was none, he had a modification to make. A weapon was no good if it was dangerous to the user as well as the target, so he extended the cable to ten meters, which would cut the intensity by a factor of four. Then for the next trial he attached the metal cowl over the air core, directed it away from himself and tried again. This time he did not recoil, although the sound was still very intense, but he did observe that the opposite wall was vibrating. A few seconds later he decided to turn it off.

As he checked again for any damage, he realised that the whole manor, indeed, the whole neighbourhood probably heard that noise. It did not matter. The surrounding neighbourhood was probably well under Winters' control. The project complete, Zachary removed his safety equipment, put his tools and scrap away, then lifted the sonic weapon off the ground and hauled it over to the manor.

Finding Matthias Winters was not hard, for he had heard the noise just like everyone else and had naturally come to inspect. Zachary explained the operation of the device, how it was not to be used at close range, how the cowl can be used to make the sound more directed, and where the battery is if it needs replacing before the rest of the device. With Matthias' approval, Zachary handed the device over to him, who would find it rather heavy, but still able to be carried with a reasonable amount of effort. Receiving his payment, Zachary bade Winters farewell and took his leave.


Zachary still had some business to attend to before all hell broke loose for a second time in this city. He needed to collect all his stuff and bring it to a central location, perhaps in the Winters household.

He had made it over a skyway and was navigating the streets when a military patrol of 8 soldiers was in his path. They noticed him nearly immediately, but so did Zachary so before they could start shooting him he dived into a side streets, and immediately he realised that he had made a grave mistake. The alleyway was a dead end, and before he could back out the patrol and run to the entrance. Zachary dived out of the drivers seat and took cover behind his carriage, which was now facing sideways, as plasma bolts seared down the alley. They embedded themselves into the side of the carriage, burning holes through the shell.

Zachary quickly took stock of his situation. The alleyway had no convenient doors to flee into, at least not without having to run half way out of the alley through the plasma fire, so he was trapped. There was a dumpster to one side which could serve as additional cover, and a rusted wreck of a carriage heaped with further detritus from the cataclysm at the end of the alleyway.

A sudden burst of molten metal droplets above his head made Zachary flinch. His carriage obviously wouldn't last long under constant fire like this. Quickly, he telemagnetically grabbed a few pieces of sheared metal from the end of the alleyway, peeked his head around the side of the carriage and then propelled them at the soldiers. While normally such projectiles might draw blood, fracture bone or knock over, the soldiers were largely unaffected, and Zachary realised that this was so because they all were wearing kinetic shield modules like his own. He heard shouts about him being a host, but that hardly mattered to him because they were going to shoot him either way. He needed to find another solution and fast.

The plasma rifle. Now is as good a time as any to use it, Kaa'is said.

Zachary had an aversion to using such a lethal weapon, but at the same time he knew that he was literally backed into a corner and there was little alternative. He was too far away to disarm them all. Suddenly there was a loud clunk as a plasma shot struck something important in the carriage and the front half of it fell to the ground. Hurrying, Zachary levitated the plasma rifle over the top of the carriage and started firing at the soldiers. Looking around he saw one soldier collapse as he was struck in the side and the rest make a swift retreat to cover at the entrance of the alleyway.

Now that they were restricted to firing around corners the rate of fire at him had dropped substantially, but he was not safe yet for they were still there. The man he had shot was dragging himself to cover, but Zachary did not shoot him again partly because he couldn't bring himself to, partly because he couldn't justify doing so, and partly because all his fire power was busy providing suppressive fire. He was busy trying to figure out his next move when a grenade rolled in front of his carriage. Swiftly recognising the threat, Zachary telemagnetically forced it away, and it bounced out of the alleyway and exploded somewhere outside the mouth of the alley. For a moment the shooting stopped, and he thought for a moment with a strange mixture of dread and ecstasy that he had killed them all. Unbeknownst to him the fragmentation had incapacitated three more soldiers, but the remaining soldiers were still well and able to fight and the barrage of plasma resumed moments later.

Maintaining the suppressive fire from his plasma rifle, Zachary and Kaa'is frantically tried to plan their way out of this corner without getting shot to pieces. The situation was not looking too well for Zachary, but the fire fight was also quite noisy and bound to attract attention.

Sanctuary

Also in need of resolving is Vates, who has been crushed and is about to die.

Sanctuary

I may get it in tomorrow. Remember the bit planned in PMs

Sanctuary

Nice

Sanctuary

I'm in for continuing. From the sounds of it, everyone else is on board too, so this seems far from dead. We may need to fast-track the taking down of the Wall, though.

I could have Zachary ready to cross paths with the Mercs and help out in two posts (I could probably make it one). I'll probably try and write those in Notepad before they are needed so I can have time to write them in full without pressure.

Dungeon Keepers

I'm waiting for exams to finish so I can commit time to this. That will be in 3 weeks, exactly. Until then I won't be able to do things like write a new OP (which we will need to do) or make a map, or even make full-sized posts. I don't think it is good practise to leave an interest check hanging for three weeks.

Until then, it would be nice to have entries for each nation in writing. Save time later.