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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 2191656" data-attributes="member: 726">Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 227Ignis Ex MachinaKibi teleports a couple more times to retrieve Flicker and get him past the lightning plane.  Dranko pries a fang out of the ice-dragon's mouth.“How did it end up in so many pieces?” asks Flicker.“Ironstorm Chain Lightning” say many voices.The party starts to explore the coliseum, noting that the temperature is warming up without the lizard around.  Behind one of the pillars Ernie finds the remains of something like a smashed machine.  It’s vaguely reminiscent of the thing Aristus was working on.  It’s a lump of gears and chains and tubes and wheels and spouts, jumbled together and smashed.“Hey wizards,” he calls.  “What do you think this is?”“Is it loot?” asks Dranko.“It’s mechanical looking,” says Ernie.“Dragons should have hordes,” says Dranko.Some bits might almost have been meant as feet, to assist movement where its wheels wouldn’t work.  There’s no indication about its purpose.  There’s no blood, but there’s some black oily liquid on some nearby rocks.  Nothing about it is magic.Further searching reveals the skeletal remains of several halfling-sized creatures.   Morningstar shoos the others away and casts thought capture, and (not surprisingly) picks up a fearful thought of someone about to be eaten.  A second such spell cast near the machinery reveals a thought of powerful hunger.“I hate hungry machinery,” says Dranko.“I think that’s the dragon’s thought,” points out Aravis.“Yeah.  I knew that.”“It’s still getting warmer,” notes Step, and it’s true.  With the cold lizard dead the temperature has risen steadily, while the enormous sun glares brightly in the sky.“I think the dragon broke its chain a long time ago, and not just to fight us,” says Flicker, examining one of the tethers.  Meanwhile Dranko and Ernie examine the most intact of the skeletons and conclude it belonged to a winged humanoid, though there are no signs of wings. There’s not much more to scout.  The Slice turns out to encompass little more than the arena itself.  Fortunately there’s a second blue Way in the far entryway (in addition to a gray one high up in the seats), so it’s clear which way they’re headed next.  “You know,” says Dranko to Aravis.  “I always imagined I’d be fighting in a coliseum someday against a terrible draconic beast.  But no, it had to be you, didn’t it.  You had to steal my glory.”“I’m not sure I’d call that fighting,” says Morningstar, shaking her head at the holes in Aravis’s clothes.“Sure it was,” says Dranko.  “Aravis, you were attacking from inside.  You got inside its defenses.”“Inside its toothy maw, you mean,” says Flicker.  “But Dranko, if you want, one of our magic types can summon a monster for you to fight.”Step jokingly volunteers to be polymorphed into a Dragon.  “Here’s the problem with that,” explains Dranko.  “Years from now when I’m telling the story about the fight with the evil monster, people will ask, ‘So what kind of monster was it?’  And I’ll say, ‘a paladin.’  And they’ll say ‘oh, so YOU were the evil monster.’”There are no magic items among the remains, and no reason to stay any longer.  They finish healing up from the fight and head for the glowing blue exit.  Dranko goes in first, rope tied around his waist and the rest counting out the standard five Abernathies.There’s black sucking void, followed soon after by forest.  It’s darker than Green Valley, shaggy, old, and mossy.   The air is filled with the sounds of birds.   Dranko quickly looks around himself but sees only thick trees and vegetation.  The undulating ground is covered with leaves and mossy rocks.  And the...Yoink.  Five Abernathies are up and the others pull him back.“It’s a very attractive old forest full of carnivorous birds and evil druids,” Dranko tells them.“You saw all that?”  asks Aravis skeptically.“Well, I heard the birds.  And it was definitely an old forest.”“Carnivorous?” asks Grey Wolf.“Evil Druids?” asks Morningstar,“Well... no.  But I thought there might be.”A minute later the whole Company stands on the mossy carpet of the forest.  There’s no sign of intelligent life besides themselves, though admittedly they can’t see very far in any particular direction.  There are no signs, no trail, no tracks, just dense dark-green woods.Dranko scampers up a tree with unexpected difficulty.  The tree-trunks are slick with moss and moisture, and the lower branches are few and weak.   While he struggles, Grey Wolf’s monkey familiar Edghar clambers up Dranko’s back and hops into the treetops.  When Dranko reaches the top a few minutes later and pokes his head above the canopy he sees no signs of man-made habitation.   It’s just leaves (and the occasional parakeet) as far as he can see in every direction.  Edghar sniffs the air and sadly notes the absence of other monkeys.With no better plan Morningstar casts find the path to the next Way and gets a direction.  At her request Step detects evil before they leave.  It’s negative, though he allows his gaze to settle on Flicker for a couple of extra seconds, and then breaks into a chuckle when the halfling looks taken aback.It’s mighty slow going.  The forest is littered with boulders, some only a few feet across, some a hundred feet or more in length or height.  There’s plenty of scrambling, stumbling and slipping on slick roots.  Kibi grows so weary that he casts xorn movement to travel more easily through the ground, but finds that just as tedious since the roots block him there too.  Dranko, in a telepathic bond with some of the others, scouts ahead.  (But not too far ahead – Morningstar needs to see him to make course corrections when necessary.)  Edghar parallels him high up in the trees.For a couple of  hours it’s an uneventful slog, save for a brief encounter with a deer-like creature.  It’s alien-looking, with elongated eyes, six legs, and four sets of antlers.  It responds to Dranko’s questions by scampering off into the woods.The monotony is broken when Edghar says to Grey Wolf:  “There’s something up here you’re going to miss, if you keep going in that direction.  It’s in the trees.”Grey Wolf relays this to the others, and Dranko again slowly climbs upward, until he sees what Edghar was talking about. About 150 feet away, and 60 feet off the ground, is a small tree house.  At the base of that tree, Morningstar casts detect thoughts and Grey Wolf detect magic, and neither turn up anything unusual.“Hello?” calls up Morningstar.  There’s no response.  Dranko and Flicker climb the tree.  There are no ropes, ladders, or any other visible means by which someone could reach the tree-house, but that doesn’t deter the pair of rogues.   They climb up the trunk until they find themselves right below the wide wooden platform that serves as the little building’s floor.   The radius of the platform is longer than Dranko’s arms, so he clings to a branch with one arm and wraps his whip around the closest branch on the next tree over.  Flicker goes hand-over-hand along the taut whip until he clears the platform, and then flips himself upward onto it, landing on the thin ledge between the platform edge and the near wall of the house.  Before Dranko can loose the whip, Edghar climbs up the half-orc’s back and scampers across to the other tree.  Flicker edges around the ledge until he finds a doorway and slips in, reporting over the telepathic bond that it’s abandoned.“There’s furniture,” he calls to Dranko, “sized for a little person, about my size.  Lots of moss, and bird-poop everywhere.”“According to Flicker,” Dranko relays, “this place was once inhabited by small anthropomorphic birds who sat on chairs.”“How did they get up there?” asks Morningstar.  “I’m telling you, they were bird-people,” says Dranko.  “I’m actually being serious.  And Flicker says there’s bird poop everywhere.”“You may be sort of right,” admits Morningstar.  “Remember the skeletons we found in the coliseum, that had wings.  They were humanoid, but they flew.”“There could be a whole race of the things around here,” says Dranko.“Or maybe there was only that one left, and he got lonely, went out, and got eaten,” says Morningstar glumly.There’s a second floor of the house, but Flicker doesn’t think the flimsy floor will hold his weight.  Edghar scampers up and looks around, reporting to Grey Wolf that he sees a bed.  He also finds a bird’s nest with small eggs in it.“I wonder if they’re edible,” wonders the monkey.“Don’t eat them,” advises Grey Wolf.   “They could be poison, or unnatural.  Remember that ‘deer’ we saw.”“Whoever heard of a poisoned egg?” complains Edghar, licking his lips.“We shouldn’t risk it,” thinks Grey Wolf.“Wait,” says the monkey.  “I have an idea....”Flicker’s voice comes from the lower floor of the house.  “What the...hey!  Aww, yuck!”“Well, it’s not contact poison,” thinks Edghar to Grey Wolf.“Edghar!  Get down here right now if you’re just going to be a pest.”It’s clear that nothing has lived in the house for years.  Dranko mutters a small prayer for its former inhabitants, and back on the ground cleans off Flicker with the decanter of endless water.  That sparks a strange discussion about where the water comes from in Het Branoi.  Could it be from the part of the Elemental Plane of Water they’ve already visited?   And now that they know fish live there, they wonder why fish never come flying out of the decanter.Edghar keeps exploring while the humanoids hold this vital discourse.  He finds another half-dozen tree-houses, all abandoned and rotting.  “They must have fled ages ago,” says Dranko.“Or died off,” adds Grey Wolf.“But they wouldn’t have aged to death, right?” says Kibi.“Why is that when we find abandoned houses, they’re not full of gold and jewels left behind by treasure-loving monsters?”  complains Dranko.“I don’t have an answer for that,” says Grey Wolf.   “I’m sorry.”*  *They keep going, keeping their previous course even though the find the path has expired.  It’s only twenty minutes later that Dranko hears a very strange noise coming from behind a large mossy boulder still fifty feet away.  He motions for everyone else to stop, and the rest of the Company hears it too.  It sounds like a repeating rhythmic buzzing sound, alternating with a weird beep.   Had anyone in the Company known what it meant, they might have used the word “hydraulic” to describe the sound.“Sounds mechanical,” says Aravis.“Sounds like something we’ll have to attack,” says Grey Wolf.“We shouldn’t, unless it provokes us,” says Dranko.“Like I said,” says Grey Wolf.  The Company moves closer to the boulder to investigate.   The sound continues, but now they hear something new – a sound like an automatic saw-blade spinning up, followed by a noise of splintering wood.  Grey Wolf lifts his eyebrows.“Maybe it’s chopping down trees,” says Dranko nervously.“I’ve got an idea,” says Flicker brightly.  “Whatever it is, we’ll capture it, take it back to the coliseum, and Dranko can fight it to the death!”They reach the boulder, a round hunk of rock over twenty feet in diameter, and the strange sounds are still coming from the other side of it.   Now that they’re closer, they can hear that it’s actually two sets of sounds, nearly identical.  Click, buzz, whir, beep.  Dranko scrambles up the boulder, crouches down when he nears the top, and peers over.He sees right away that they’re intact versions of the smashed machine the Company found in the coliseum.  There are two of them, each about six feet in diameter, trundling slowly along.  They look like hodgepodge collections of machine parts and metal plates, rolling on wheels when possible and scooting on feet when necessary.  Each has four strangely-jointed metal arms ending in sharp spikes, and assorted other moving parts – spinning tops, rotating gears, belts, tubes and the like.  Dranko is reminded of the Apparatus of Aristus that the gnome was working on back at the Eye of the Storm.As Dranko looks at them, one of them notices him, stops moving,  and “looks” back.  Something inside spins quickly, and a bright light shines in Dranko’s eyes.  He instinctively shields himself with a hand and turns away.“What are you things?” demands Dranko, calling down to them.One of them makes some inscrutable semi-vocal sounds – clicks and buzzes interspersed.    It sounds sort of like language, so Dranko casts comprehend languages just in time to hear the word “...engaged.” From a spout somewhere inside the thing’s body, a wide jet of flames shoots out at Dranko.  He just manages to duck out of the way, crouching behind the boulder as moss is burned from its top.  Dranko smells the burning tips of his own hair.“I think it’s hostile,” he announces to his friends, as he clings to the side of the boulder away from the strange machines.  He can hear their strange voices, which repeat over and over again:  “Bzzzz.  Self-defense protocols engaged.  Bzzzz.  Self-defense protocols engaged...”Craning his neck, he shouts over the boulder at them:  “I AM NOT ATTACKING YOU!   I AM A FRIEND!”They just repeat themselves, one right after the other, like an echo.   Then, yet another new sound.  Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop.   It quickly gets louder, until Dranko sees one of the creatures rising up above the boulder on the other side.“Holy crap!” shouts Dranko, who sees it first.  “It’s levitating upward and swinging swords around its head!”When it crests the boulder it announces once more:  “Bzzzz.  Self-defense protocols engaged,” and sprays the entire area around the waiting Company with flames.  Smoke rises from burned vegetation and various party members.“What the hell is that?” shouts Flicker.  He fishes out his sling and lets fly two bullets, but they just bounce off some of the metal plates.  Wisely, the party starts to scatter as well as they can while they return fire.  Grey Wolf pegs it with an acid orb, setting the thing’s metal bits to hissing and smoking.  Snokas fires off an arrow that’s deflected like the sling stone.  Kibi uncorks a lightning bolt, and for a split-second electricity plays around the whole “body” of the machine.  But almost instantly the electricity rushes down a thin cord dangling from the machine-creature and dissipates harmlessly into the ground.  “It’s immune to lightning!” calls Dranko from the boulder.  “It’s got some magic cord hanging down that nullified the electricity!”“It’s grounded,” calls back Aravis, understanding.“No, it’s flying!” returns Dranko.  Can’t they see it?  “We’re the ones grounded!”Aravis sighs.  It’s just not worth the explanation.The grounding wire seems to have no effect on Morningstar’s flame strike, which brings down dark flames on both the metal beasts. A wonderful idea comes into Dranko’s head as he watches the “whirling swords” of the machine.  On his first trip to the provisioners,  the day after being summoned to Abernathy’s tower, Dranko had purchased himself a fishing net.  Having carried it around all these years, here’s finally a chance to put it to use.“Net,” he calls, and it comes into his hand from his magic widemouth pouch.    He grips one of its weighted edges, hefts it in his hands, and flings it at the flying machine.  It’s not a perfect throw, but the leading edge goes just far enough, and the whole net gets twirled into the thing’s propeller.  A horrible wrenching sound comes from the machine, right before it drops from the sky and lands with a metallic thud.“Self-defense protocols engaged,” comes its emotionless voice.“That was good,” says Grey Wolf.  “That was very, very good.”Step, closest to the second machine, charges toward it.   The machine has the same idea; it extends its own propeller and shoots toward step, hovering a few feet off the ground.  As it flies it unfolds its four spike-tipped arms and drives three of them right through Step’s armor.  Blood pours from the holes.  With careful and practiced placement, Aravis and Ernie pound the machines with a fireball and flame strike respectively. Dranko hears a whirring saw-blade sound from the one he netted, and in several places the net pops away, cut.  From a nozzle it spews flame over half the party.  Roots, rocks and clothing are blackened.“Self-defense my ass!” Dranko exclaims.Grey Wolf pegs the netted machine with another acid orb.  He’s rewarded with even more hissing and smoke, and then the propeller droops down, melted, while a jet of steam shoots out the machine’s back.  “Defense protoccccclllllllpffffff...” it says, before shutting down at last.The other machine is soon overwhelmed.  Snokas drives a pick into its gears, Kibi nails it with a coldfire, and Step, emboldened by a popular healing circle from Morningstar, hacks it with his keen broadsword.  He severs enough important tubes and wires that it abruptly stops talking, falls five feet to the ground, and lies still....to be continued...</blockquote>

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