SavageRifts.com

***

With Sula’s permission, Vivian reached out and touched her horn. “Cool,” she said, running her finger along the hard shaft in a gentle stroke. “Does it...do anything?” she asked, staring at it with fascination. Definitely not something one saw in the Burbs!

“Thanks!” Vivian said. She looked over at Heracles. “See? We didn’t hurt her!”

Vivian climbed back onto Kidemenos for the ride down into the quarry. As Viv got down again, she noticed two dents in the ground, one about ten feet wide, the other five. There was a collapsed pathway, and then the mysterious object.

“So let’s check this out,” Viv said. She looked up at the dragon. “No opening locks on this thing, unless you can do it delicately,” she warned Kidemenos. “We don’t want to smash it.”

Viv went over to the box and moved around it, just observing it for now. “Looks like some parts are burned out,” Viv noted. “It will need to be repaired.” She looked for a computer access port or something to plug into, or any locked panels or hatches that would give access to the interior.

***

Looking around at the human looking artifacts Kidemonas thinks to himself. 'This all looks like broken garbage, why would they rather come here and look at broken stuff when we could have gone straight to the cave.' Absently poking at a few things or messing around a little bit Kidemonas asks out loud. "So this was like a mining machine or something? Did it pull out the gold and gems from the ground?"

Savant, too, gently toys with poor Sula's horn. "Oh, this is an interesting texture..."

Then she addresses Kid. "From what I understand, it had some sort of magical function, actually--it was added here after the quarry was dug, if I understood Freya correctly." Savant shakes her head. "It seems to be another part of the mysteries this town is built on."

Viv looks at the circuitry and components in the device and wonders if this was constructed by a child. A lot of the parts make no sense, there are several crystals in odd places, parts that should not be in an electronic item on this type and as for a power source, she can’t find one. It is truly beyond her ken how the heck this thing could even emit a light, let alone anything

***

Vivian shook her head as she finished looking over the device. “Yeah, this thing is...not making sense,” she explained. She was no mechanic, but even she could tell this thing wasn’t able to do anything. “Nothing connects where it should. And what the hell are all these crystals for? There isn’t even a power source that I can see.”

***

Mica comes riding up on her bike. Too many people to ride a dragon. She gets off the bike and lifts her visor. "So what's this artifact you guys found?"

Heracles rolled his eyes at Viv. "I did not say you would hurt her...I was more talking about the fact that you were possibly making her feel uncomfortable, as well as directly pointing out her differences. I have heard others do that more often." He smiled innocently, the slight dig softened a bit. He was teasing, of course...mostly. Her question about whether the horn 'did anything' or not made him roll his eyes again slightly, though he gave a slightly exasperated chuckle.

He then hung on to the back of the dragon for the ride down. He looked around slowly. "So...should we go and bring one of the Techno-Wizardry talented people from town to look at it? Or is it something more magical?"

Savant considers. "I believe you said you smelled something down here--something with the scent of sulphur? Can we track that any better, now that we are closer?"

Sula lets the pair feel up her horn. "It aids in healing and purifying. All Monokeri have the ability to manipulate elements because of it."


After they are transported down and people are looking at the device she looks at the dents in the ground puzzled. "Did there used to be buildings or something here?" She points out the dents in question.

Seeing what Sulu is pointing out Kidemonas is curious what is under the stone work and sets himself to digging. Between his claws and tails moving so much earth is relatively easy as he pushes it out of the way and digs what needs dug out.

As Kidemonas’s claws and mighty thews easily begin digging out the rubble, it does not take long for the first signs of what is buried to appear. It is not initially obvious considering there is a dragon hurling rocks around, but the sharp eyed spot some specks of dried orange ichor on the rocks. The smell of sulphur is much stronger to Heracles.

As Kidemonas continues, the amount of ichor increases substantially, spread underneath many of the rocks, dried on or stained until about a quarter of the way through, lifting up a rock reveals a large clawed hand, from something probably about ten feet in size you estimate, jutting out. There is a large amount of ichor on the rocks and what appear to be small bits of something leathery and approximating flesh.

Savant doesn't spot the ichor--not entirely surprising, since color-differences don't really matter to her, and there's enough dust being kicked up by Kid's digging to obscure her ability to discern texture. Still, she certainly notices the final result as he finishes. Still, even then, she only discerns the shape of the thing, not its substance, so she must inquire....

"Pardon me, my friends, but is that a statue, or is that smell we've been picking up rotting flesh of some sort?"

Heracles began rubbing his nose and covering it a bit after taking one big sniff. "Oh. Ugh. Yes. That is it. Like...sulfur? Brimstone? Rotting onions? I am not certain - but it smells somewhat terrible." He shook his head. Then when the claw was revealed and then more, he nodded with a grimace. "I think...that may be it." He lamely stated the obvious.

He glanced at Savant and shook his head. "No statue, friend. Something...else. It used to be alive...or at least not dead. I am uncertain of how long it has been dead, but I can comfortably say quite some time."

***

As Kidemenos started digging, Viv settled out of the way. “Hey! I see something!” she said. “It’s orange.”

And then a clawed hand appeared.

“Oh, shit! What is that!” the Burbs’ thief exclaimed, jumping up and crouching, ready. “So it’s...dead. As in, not going to crawl out and eat me?”

***

Savant grins at Viv. "In this world, those two things are not exclusive. Still, this one seems to be inert, which is better than dead for 'not eating people' purposes." She turns to the dragon. "Well done. Do you think you can dig it up more completely, or is the tunnel too fragile to withstand your might?"

Looking over the edge of the quarry Hoof's gruff voice speaks can be heard as a distant yell

"What's going on down there? All I ruttin' see is rubble bein' tossed around with a bunch of gore'am talking an no shootin"

After taking a few moments to gag, and affix a makeshift breathing mask from her cloak, Penny resumed her inspection of the site. Of her many talents, healing was barely as such, and engineering wasn't at all, so she didn't do much else but gag.

"So, a device that doesn't work, and a body that isn't alive, and a smell like rotten eggs - " She paused, and smiled under her mask, and waved at White Hoof, happy to see him once more. "Found a body! And a machine that doesn't work!"

Hoof grunts nods. "I'm on my way down to get a closer look"

The cybernetic Minotaur begins to leap down from his location from ledge to ledge to get to the floor of the quarry.

Heavy thuds emanate as Hoof walks to the group. "let's take a look"

Notice roll

As investigation is not really his strong point Hoof grunts

"Yep... that's a goopy mess."

Savant grins again as the cybernetic minotaur joins them. "Oooh! Introduction time! Viv, this is White Hoof. White Hoof, Viv. White Hoof handles security, and in a way, I suppose you do, too, Viv." Then she turns to Sula. "White Hoof, this is Sula; Sula, White Hoof." A pause. "You both have horns." A nod, as if this were sufficient for them to be fast friends from this day forward. Then she continues. "We were trying to decide if it was safe to continue excavating the body in the ground, or if we should just excavate it anyway."

Looks at the two that were introduced and gives them both a nodded grunt.

"Okay, so we have established that we have a gore'am mess here. What else are we doing other than standing around and marveling at someone else's grave misfortune?"

As the smell got stronger the teen looked a bit green around the gills. Well at least this time it wasn't her fault. Then again, thinking that made her think of the one that was. She shook her head to force the thoughts back. Now wasn't the time to think about that.

She looks at White Hoof. "Oh ah, um...hi." Normally she'd say it was nice to meet him but generally it wasn't nice to meet people while finding a dead body.

"I, er, hope it wasn't someone you guys knew. We should at least get the body out and give it a proper burial if nothing else." She was helping with far too much of that lately, burying people, watching them go crunch or turn into dust or...no! Bad Sula. Oh right. Penny's here now. "Penny, I should tell you about my latest visions. You were in one of them." It was something to focus on and not let her mind wander.

Garnet Town/Quarry
Afternoon

Vivian looked up to the lip of the quarry when the large minotaur sheriff she had met earlier on her arrival yelled down at them.

“We found somethin’,” Viv called back, stating the obvious. She watched as he nimbly jumped down to the quarry floor.

“Hey,” Viv greeted the minotaur when he joined them. “We met briefly earlier, when I first arrived,” she told Savant. Damn, he’s big. Though, of course, next to the dragon he wasn’t.

Viv noticed the unicorn lady looking a little sick. Honestly, the smell was kind of atrocious, but Viv had seen worse. The Coalition patrols sometimes let their dog boys tear a body apart after they hunted a criminal down in the Burbs, leaving body parts lying around until someone could gather them up.

“Here, this might help,” Viv offered helpfully, holding out a stick of gum to the Mononoki. “Ginger flavored. Helps some. This too.” She dug out a small little makeup container. It had a super strong menthol smell when she opened it. Viv dabbed a bit of the jelly under her nose. “Helps when you have to go through sewers. Don’t use it if you’re trying to evade dog boys, though.”

Vivian shook her head when Sula suggested giving the thing a proper burial. “Seems like it’s pretty well and good buried right now. I’m not sure I want to know what the rest of it looks like. But I suppose you can’t really leave it here if you intend to have workers down here.”

***

Savant chuckles at White Hoof. As one might expect, she is completely unphased by the odor, though she clearly is aware of it.

"Well, I believe we are continuing to investigate, determine what this creature was, and perhaps how it happened to be at this location when it died. There's a great deal going on in this town, Sheriff, that seems to be odd. This seems to be the next piece of it to present itself. And for that--" She nods to Viv. "--we will, indeed, need to see what it looks like."

Heracles looked up when White Hoof appeared. His eyebrows went up as a look of slight surprise crossed his face. "Friend Minotaur! Run any good mazes lately?" He smiled widely as he gently teased the minotaur. "Should you not be making sure the town is safe? Or does an inert machine and a no longer functioning odd corpse qualify as something to safeguard against?"

He rolled his eyes at White Hoof. "Your mastery of situations remains ever obvious." He frowned as he looked around. "Well, if we are to dig further, I might suggest most of the group retire back to the surface. If things become unstable, it would not do to have all of us trapped down here." He gave a shrug of his shoulders. "Yes? No? Maybe?"

Kidemonas is very curious about the rotten demon. "What kind of demon do you think it was, perhaps we could use it as a spell component or something. I know that some demon parts have inherent magic."

Dropping it on the ground out of the way a bit from the others he focuses his will through his bracers and examines the husk through his arcane sight trying to discern if there is magic in it or if it is truly lifeless.

Once he is done playing with the thing Kidemonas turns back to the group and says. "So you want me to keep clearing out, or change of plans. I am not even a little tired yet."

It is apparent that with this new curiosity Kidemonas has completely forgotten about his previous pouting.

Garnet Town/Quarry
Afternoon

“Fair enough. I’ll watch safe from up there while the dragon digs it out,” Vivian said. “He seems big enough he hopefully won’t get caught. Rocks fall, Viv doesn’t die is my motto.”

Viv paused. “Though, well, I guess I’ll need a ride back up,” she said sheepishly.

***

*shrug* "I can help the dragon with the clearing"

Mica has been standing top side since noone really reacted to her question, studying the site and listening to to what the others have been talking about. With some of the others being concerned about about the site collapsing as they dig, she gets into a deep though status as she contemplates how best to shore up any weaknessing to prevent it from collapsing. "hmmm"

"A vision?" Penny looks at Sula askance, frowning. "A vision of what? I agree, yeah. We do need to talk."

She looked towards the excavation and nodded at Heracles. "Yeah - a few of us topside would do wonders if there's a problem, like a collapsed mine or a pocket of lethal gas or - honestly, it'll probably be just fine." She is more than happy to let the others do the heavy lifting.

Kidemonas follows the instructions given by Mica assuming she knows what he should be doing. He has never really worried about a building falling on him before. But maybe they are right that it can happen.

Mica finds a few pieces of wood and metal in amongst the debris on the other side of the quarry to shore up the sides of the pathway. It takes a few minutes for the team to install supports, before retreating a safe distance to discuss matters whilst Kidemonas and White Hoof clear the rest of the debris.

Lifting up the largest piece of rock, the walls shake and a few bits of stone rained down, bouncing off Kidemonas' head. The hand flops down as they uncover the rest of the squished remains of the creature.
Having cleared out the pathway, Freya lets you know that she will be able to fix the device, but it will take a few days to get the parts and to carry out the repairs.

There are a couple of outstanding things to deal with or we can progress to the next mission

North to the Cave
http://savagerifts.com/sr/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=2752

Casino
http://savagerifts.com/sr/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=2763

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

Savant looks over the monstrous form, in particular poking her finger against the lower set of mandible/tusk things. "Formidable. I wonder if there are more where this came from." Then she stands up, and nods. "Well done, friend Kidemonas. I knew you would be up to the task. Shall we check out that cave of yours, now?"

Hoof looks down at the creature.

"Poor guy. Gettin' crushed by ruttin' rocks is no way for anyone to go."

She takes the offered gum from Viv with a thank you and helps where she can with the clearing and shoring up. The creature itself looked rather gruesome even without the guts and ichor spread out. While working she tells Penny of the visions.

"All of the visions were each a flash of an image more than a coherent story. The first was Fandran, a former beau of Widow Michelson and either extremely long lived or immortal based on the conversation we had with her. He is in trouble and Eir wants me to save him but I don't know where to find him except that he is in a lab somewhere.

The second was a wooded clearing in the dark, perhaps where you met him.
The third was the quarry with the collapsed path here and and the device there." She points as she says here and there.

"Next was you and a tall lizardman wearing robes in a standoff. The lizard is glaring down at you.
Then came a gloomy eerie graveyard with gravestones made of sticks.
Then a mirror taller than any of us, well except Kidemonas of course. The frame is very ornate and it looks really heavy.
Then a drawing of a bearded man with a lot of muscles in well I guess they are clothes. They seem little more than a loincloth.
Next was a flash of a mound of earth in the middle of a wide open grassy plain.
Followed by Traitor to Tolkeen written in blue blood on a wooden wall.
The last one was a flash of a worn set of dog tags with the letters FB on one side barely visible."

Once the creature is fully unburied she grimaces. Then she blinks as Savant suggests going to the cave. "Are we just going to leave it here?" Though really the cave sounds more appealing at this point but it seems like a bad idea to leave the remains where anyone can find them.

Kidemonas says, "Well I can burn it into nothing if you do not want the evil magic left here?" Then if there are no objects he moves it away from all the fragile humans and begins breathing fire until there is nothing left but ash.

Once it is all done, he says. "So now we get to go explore this gave?"

Savant assists as Mica directs her with the temporary supports, in order to let the dragon and the minotaur take on the heaviest part of the load.

After the deed is done, and the body burnt, she smiles at Sula and Kidemonas. "A conundrum asked, and then answered; you two make a fine team! And yes, my good friend, I think it is indeed time to investigate your cave." She looks to White Hoof. "Will you be re-joining us? Kidemonas wishes to make a proper lair of this cave, and there may be other details to be learned there."

Offering a ride to any willing to go Kidemonas lowers his wing to allow them to climb up and get comfortable. Obviously excited to be back on the heading for the cave he had forgotten and hearing the willingness of another to head there.

Once all are aboard he immediately takes off for the cave, landing right outside.

Heracles rubbed his nose. The stench of something demonic or devilish but dead was unpleasant to say the least. He was eager to get away from there, but curious as to what would be done with the corpse. Burn it? Take it somewhere to be studied? Burying it would be a little ironic since they just dug it up.

"Yea, verily, we should away to this cave and see what all the fuss might be about." He reluctantly climbed aboard the dragon.

Kid hadn't even finished asking if anyone wanted a ride before Savant flipped up onto his back. Viv or Sula could very well have ended up coming along for the ride, too, whether that was their intention or not.

“Ew,” Vivian said as Kidemenos got the creature dug out. “That thing is disgusting. What is it? And what’s it doing here?”

Viv followed the others as they climbed on the dragon. It was funny how she was getting used to this. “We really should get a harness rig or something so we don’t fall off,” Viv commented as she looked down at the ground. She wasn’t afraid of heights really, having done plenty of second story work, but it was always nice to avoid accidents, so while she could free climb, it was always better with a safety harness.

"Thank you, Sula. I'll keep all that in mind." Penny frowned as the unicorn recounted her vision. She knew enough to know that magic could see beyond the present time, but she never liked being confronted with it - mostly, because she liked to think that free will was something she still had.

"Yikes, that thing is ugly. Two mouths? That's just showing off. Ugh." Penny clung very tightly to Kidemonas, not wanting to be the bravest person to ever fall off a dragon. "Okay, now - uh - nice and careful - please - "

Mica lingers behind as she rode her cyclone out to the Quarry and watches everyone leave. She looks over the open pit for a bit lost in thought then saddles up on her bike. As night comes, she looks up at the stars in the sky. Or rather the brightest light aside the moon. "Mars... home..."

She puts her helmet on and gives the engine on her cyclone a few revs. She lowers the visor on her helmet. "Gonna be a long nights drive." Then she heads off into the night.

Poking the markings Kidemonas asks. "What sort of creature was this, a robot, a truck, or maybe a demon?
"I have not mastered tracking yet."

“Pretty sure it was a demon, big guy,”Vivian said. “It’s flesh, not machine, so not robot. And it sure smells like it!” She waved a hand in front of her face.