A Spire Amongst The Thorns - 7 Report

The Top Level

The party continued up the stairs, Fulgur trying to recapture his lost memories. The next door proved too much for them, however, and neither electronic nor physical hacking at the door or its controls seemed to yield any results. The idea was proposed to backtrack through the teal-webbed room to try entering this new room via the secondary staircase, but ultimately the group decided to push onwards to the final door and possibly return to this room on their way back.   The final door was successfully rewired and opened into a brightly lit open space. Everything was coloured a cool, clinical off-white and gilded with intricate metalworked designs, from the tiles across the floor, to the seats and desks at workstations along the low exterior walls (maybe two feet high), to the walls themselves and staircases that led up to a second level. Curving up from the low walls and up over top of the second level was a huge, transparent dome (possibly glass) that let in the early afternoon sunlight which so brightly illuminated the space.   As the party started to spread out to investigate the room, Fulgur took a moment to focus and try to dredge up his lost memories once again. Rorra, noticing him in some kind of mental distress, made an attempt to bolster his spirits and her symbiotic enhancements helped Fulgur break through that mental block once again. In a rush of synchronicity, the memories flooded back and Fulgur rushed to spew out the information before he forgot again:  

• The party is currently in the Administration Tower which is one of three towers of a Yesk Ambassadorial Colony
• The colony was established by Vysk’Ka, ambassador to the Trians, and her team
• The entire facility is full of Yesk technology
• The scientists have left a trail in the tower’s logs and it shows that they are currently in the recently reactivated Research and Industrial Tower

  Fulgur relayed these notes and continued urging the party that they should return to collect the white-skinned automata from the lower levels before they leave as they constitute Yesk technology. After a couple minutes however, the strain of staying synchronized to the tower’s mainframe was too much, and Fulgur’s memories were lost once again as a migraine incapacitated him for a few minutes.   Everyone split up to poke around the place. Looking out through the dome, the point of a second tower could clearly be seen poking up through the mess of brambles that had overgrown this place. Rorra’s keen eyes could pick out some creatures clambering through and across the brambles, tentatively identifying them as the squid creatures you had fought previously. Dosa, Gladwyn, and Euric mapped out each level, finding banks of projected monitors and control consoles and the door to the secondary stairwell but little else of immediate interest. Forgin and Fulgur, true to form, immediately tried to access some of the control consoles and were able to cross-reference and confirm some of the data that Fulgur’s mind meld had acquired as well as find some new data of a similar variety. Everything appeared to be “read-only” however and anytime either engineer tried to modify data or send a command, they were directed to use alternative consoles around the room which, of course, insisted on the users providing proper authentication.   Dosa, by this point, was meandering around the center console on the second level and was soon joined by Forgin. This seemed to be a set of primary control consoles that ringed a column covered in some gelatinous material, similar to what had been in the programmable game room a few levels down but less fuzzy. An identical column coated in the same material could be seen jutting down from the center of the domed ceiling. Both columns were also ringed with some kind of unknown equipment.  

The Hand

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It is unclear who exactly triggered the security alert as both Forgin and Fulgur were attempting to access restricted areas of the data network, but with one failed passcode too many the equipment around the center console blinked to life. The puddle of gelatinous material changed shape, almost appearing to be pulled upwards from the center, until it formed a slightly quavering conical shape. The gelatinous material on the ceiling produced a similar, but inverted shape. Emitters embedded in the ring of equipment projected light into the space between the gelatinous cones which formed a holographic image of a left hand. Indecipherable text, to everyone but Dosa, floated in mid-air around the hand and an artificial voice spoke out from the direction of the hologram. Switching between a couple different dialects, the voice settled on a clean, if stilted, version of the local trade language and commanded the party to cease all unauthorized activities and wait to be detained for questioning. The party decided this was not in their best interest and proceeded to pack up and make for the exits to the stairwells.   The first to reach a doorway, Dosa tried to pass through into secondary stairwell but was forcibly pushed back by some kind of invisible field. Sounds could be heard coming from both stairwells as unknown entities approached. As the party spread out to cover different angles of attack, without much warning the tiled floor behind Fulgur began to undulate and, manipulated by a complex network of pistons and mechanisms beneath the surface, reached up towards the human in an attempt to grasp him and pin him in place. Leaping out of the way and initiating a counterattack, Fulgur managed to evade.   Almost simultaneously, a construct of about medium size, hovering a few inches off the ground and appearing to be built out of elongated, hard-light, diamond prisms, floated through each stairwell doorway. The construct that approached Dosa suffered little damage under the rat swarm's initial attack but, though appearing to be unarmed, phased its hard-light arms through the swarm dealing enough damage to knock the collective unconscious as it tried to flee up the steps to the upper level. The second construct engaged with Forgin's canine companion, swiping at the robot with a large, subtly glowing trident. As the rest of the party took pot shots at the new arrivals, the holographic hand, and the animated floor (including a second patch of floor that began undulating towards Dosa and Gladwyn), the hand made a cryptic gesture and a cloud of holographic lights exploded like dozens of tiny fireworks around half of the room. Mesmerized by the display, Rorra sunk to her knees on one of the upper level bridges while the rest of the party shrugged the effect off.   Although not trained in the traditional arts of healing, Gladwyn raced over to Dosa and by the power of kisses, and dusting the rats with a liberal amount of clotting powder from her medkit, she managed to stabilize the collective before they took a turn for the worse. Attempting to lead the approaching collection of floor tiles away from the unconscious rats, Gladwyn leapt off of the upper level steps and, with an incredible display of acrobatics, bounced across the top of the reaching and clasping tiles to reach safe and stable ground again on the other side.   Forgin, unable to assist Rorra, decided to try to engage the holographic hand in the center of the room. As they began manipulating the equipment to figure out the best way to damage it, the hand gestured again and a static charge leapt out from the central console. Forgin managed to doge the electrical burst but the unmoving Rorra was hit. Fortunately, it seemed to snap her back to her senses and, quickly gauging the situation, she began to move away from the hand and towards the still unmoving Dosa.   Meanwhile, the rest of the party found themselves embattled with the two hard-light constructs and the tiled floor that continued to try to encapsulate Fulgur. Relying on his suit's armour to take the brunt of deflecting the reaching tiles, Fulgur continued to back away and retaliate with empowered strikes of his thunder gauntlets. Forgin's metallic pet traded blows with the trident wielding construct nearby while Euric tried, with moderate success, to strike at the floor's mechanisms with his weapons. Deciding he might need something more substantial to gum up the works, Euric galloped towards one of the consoles at the side of the room, gripped the metal frame supporting the projected displays, and mightily began tearing it from the wall.   On the other side of the room, Gladwyn continued to battle and distract the second patch of animated floor but found herself swallowed up and pinned by the grasping tiles. Rorra managed to reach Dosa and expedited their healing. The rats quickly regained consciousness and scrambled up the flight of stairs to the upper level to put some distance between them and the animated floor tiles. Choosing a more brute force method, Forgin unsheathed their hidden blade and proceeded to destroy a section of the control consoles surrounding the holographic projection, drawing the direct attention of the hand which formed a finger-gun and fired a blast of hard-light energy towards the Trian. Maintaining their focus, Forgin brushed aside the effect and continued circling the hand with an eye to destroy another set of controls.  

The Projected Creature

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Without warning, the image of a multi-armed entity projected itself into the hologram of The Hand . With streaks of red tones and unstable flickers and magnifications, the new hologram struck the party with a new sense of unease.   Trapped within the floor tiles which threatened to squeeze her to a pulp, Gladwyn hacked and slashed as best she could at the mechanisms but with only limited success. However, her keen eyes managed to spy a small gap forming between two of the tiles and she managed to wriggle through to freedom and quickly sprinted away. The patch of animated floor, bereft of its victim, began to shift towards its next closest target, Rorra, who quickly took to the air and hovered, flapping, out of reach of its flailing tiles.   Dosa scampered across the upper level towards the center console and attempted to peer into the thoughts of this new, foreboding creature within the holoprojection. They found that the creature was in the process of updating any available constructs to now be under the authority of MINING and additional new directives to be patched through shortly. The projected creature also seemed to find this work highly tedious and very much wanted to have it complete so that it could return to its preferred work of searching for something (possibly information, possibly a person, possibly something else?) elsewhere in the facility.   As Forgin continued to slash at the console's controls, the Hand would periodically reappear and shoot more hard-light blasts at the Trian. Eventually, one of the blasts fully connected with Forgin and they found themself wreathed in a holographic crown and battling an internal, mental force that tried to rob them of their some of their agency. Fortunately, the engineer was able to stave off the worst of the effect and continue their assault.   Down on the lower level, Euric took the metal frame he had ripped from the wall and jammed it underneath the tiles that continued to grasp at Fulgur, gumming up the works and rendering most of the pistons ineffective. With the combined onslaught of Forgin's robot and Fulgur's flamethrower, the animated floor was reduced to motionless rubble.   The projected creature's update seemed to complete and a pulse of electromagnetic energy could be seen through the clear dome. The pulse seemed to originate from the approximate location of the Yesk outpost's third tower and, as it expanded and coursed through the command and control deck, it applied some kind of update to the hard-light constructs still battling the party. The energy also seemed to overload and temporarily deactivate the mechanisms of Forgin's dog and Fulgur's suit. Dosa, still listening in on the projected creature, could interpret that the update had been successful and that MINING's first new directive was to treat all organic creatures as hostile. The creature seemed to recognize that Dosa was eavesdropping on its thoughts and turned to the swarm, inviting them to consider joining it in the search if they crossed paths again before vanishing from the hologram.   The party was able to mop up the two remaining hard-light constructs and disable the Hand's projection console (deactivating the remaining animated floor in the process) without too much difficulty. Retrieving the trident dropped by the one construct, the group collected themselves to decide on their next course of action.