[Nexus] AMEN XLIV: Beware Falling Flowers

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis]

"Hmm...if you say so, I suppose. Less corpses would still be nice, but I guess it's just wishful thinking when I have no idea how to refine my technique any further." Something to consider for the future, perhaps. A corpse-eating assistant will suffice for now.

...maybe a vulture instead of a rat? They're not that picky either. Maybe both?

Anyway, Isabelle has thought of another question! "I am curious though, why AMEN? I mean, if all your projects produce plants that are beneficial to people, what brought you here?"

[Slii Arhem]

Atlantis

"Because not all of them are beneficial to humans, as it turned out with the cacti. Those might be refined eventually to be something better suited to symbiotic life rather than parasitic, but for now they are merely dangerous toys. And... well, where else would you go if you're interested in committing murders to further your craft? With AMEN's backing, I have lab space that can't easily be raided by those who are against my methods, and access to a small amount of funds that I would otherwise have to acquire myself through underhanded means. My goals may not by malicious, evil, or nefarious, but most people would consider the way I reach them to be." Shayan turns to the tray of tools and removes a scalpel from it, inspecting the implement for rust. One of the downsides of working in a lab full of so many plants is that it must be kept like a greenhouse, humid and damp for the most part.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis]

"Makes sense I guess. It's a shame people are so against killing for the purpose of furthering your craft. I've had the same problem, and I'm only killing animals. Most people are less concerned about animals dying than people, and yet..." Not sure it's quite the same, there, Isabelle. Your crazy monsters aren't really as beneficial as super-plants.

They're useful to Isabelle though!

...

She's rather selfish with her work, really.

"Does AMEN ever ask anything of you then? They ever had use for plants? I mean, presumably if they help fund your research, they must have use for some of it, or something."

[Slii Arhem]

Atlantis

"I am the nurse here, alongside Professor Cin as doctor. Mostly they leave the results of my research alone though, as I assume their disgust outweighs their interest in whatever benefits it could confer. Having roots under your skin truly isn't for everyone." As much as Shayan would like it to be. She longs for the days when she could just forcibly implant seeds into random people's bodies and see what sprouts from the hole. That really was a simpler time.

"Tell me, once you have your spells perfected on a particular animal, is there any chance of mishap after that point? I only ask because there might be ways of stabilizing the process using medical equipment. I often find that just doing my experiments in a clean environment with medication and monitoring equipment on hand significantly helps the chances of a subject living through what I do to them. Oh! That reminds me." Shayan moves to the center of the room and moves aside some foliage to reveal a large bulbous blue flower sitting on a grate in the floor.

"You asked about plants that directly help people, and so I forgot to mention this one. It contains a potent, sterile acid that it sends out as a fine mist whenever it's touched. You obviously don't want to be present when it does so, or at least you want to be wearing eye and lung protection but it does manage to sterilize a room quite effectively. Smells a bit like lemon as well." She leaves out the part where the plant was originally a meat-eater that digested whatever landed on near it after being incapacitated by the acid through tube-like vines that injected more acid and then sucked out the liquified insides.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis]

"Medical assistance in exchange for the facilities to perform your creeeepy plant experiments!" Isabelle grins, "Sounds like a fair trade I suppose. Can't honestly say I particularly want roots under my skin. I've always been pretty content with myself the way I am. Though admittedly it would be nice to apply some of my enhancement spells to myself." Why, if she could find a way to make her intelligence-boosting spell work on herself, she might actually understand half the stuff Shayan is talking about!

"But, uh, anyway..." My, that's a peculiar looking flower, isn't it? "That sounds pretty useful. That'd simplify my cleanup job after finishing with some research. Or, well, it'd make sure that everything is nice and clean for the next session anyway. Once my spell is perfected, I've never had anything go wrong after that point. If I understood how to use monitoring equipment, maybe in some of the slower cases I could figure out what's going wrong much sooner...but for the most part if I've missed something, it causes an instant failure. When I said the ferrets' brains exploded, I mean they literally exploded moments after casting the spell on them."

[Slii Arhem]

Atlantis

"Probably wouldn't be worth the potential damage to the equipment then. If you could learn something from the readings that would be different, but so short a time between the spell and the brain failing seems to indicate it wouldn't be long enough to get a stable reading. If you'd like, I could give you a bulb off this plant for your own labs. It doesn't really eat at stable solids, but the mist is rather dangerous to mucus membranes, so I hope you would be cautious around it. Maybe you could develop a spell that would protect you from the acid?" That's an option that Isabelle has which Shayan doesn't. The plant mistress usually just shuts her eyes, stops breathing, and then takes a cold shower if the flower accidentally sprays her.

"It's also good for cleaning rusty implements, if you know what you're doing." Raising the scalpel up for Isabelle's inspection, Shayan dips the blade into the center of the flower without touching any of the petals. There's a quick hiss and a bit of fragrant, citrusy smoke, and she removes the blade just as carefully. The metal is now sparkling and new, if a few micro-inches thinner than it was before.

[Earl of Purple]

Atlantis

A young girl is walking along one of the corridors, seemingly lost. She's got a definite elfin look about her, with a delicate face and pointed ears, pale skin and long, almost white blonde hair. She's as developed as an eight-year-old human, and she's wearing loose white robes with several black gemstones of various size embedded into the material. Slung over her back is a red rucksack. Trailing along behind her is a tall man with incredibly black hair; it's more black than natural, or even most dyes provide. He's wearing a smart suit with a sabre slung at his waist and a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis]

"Oh, the solids are irritating to clean up, but it's all the little traces and bits left behind. By the sound of it your plant could clear that stuff up quite easily. And if all I have to do is poke it and leave it to your work, I can easily protect myself for long enough to exit the room. Then just a light sweep of water across the floor, and it'd be nice and clean, right?" That'd work, right?

"That is quite impressive. It would work as a much better way of keeping my tools sharper."

[Slii Arhem]

Atlantis - Corridors

The apparent girl may notice the door to Shayan's lab, which is across from Cin's medical bay, is ajar at the moment. She's free to wander by if she likes, or attempt to gain entry.

Atlantis - Lab

"You just have to make sure not to touch the sides. I make a bit of a game of it." Shayan remarks as she moves back to the table and sets her scalpel back down. It will probably last a few more dunks like that before it becomes unusable.

"It's more that the mist is too diluted to break down skin on immediate contact. If left on, it would probably cause quite a bit of irritation. In larger concentrations it can easily break down larger solids, but that could require milking the plant. I mostly use it to get rid of blood." Shayan doesn't often have organs splattered around everywhere, but she does deal with a lot of blood.

[Earl of Purple]

Atlantis- Corridors --> Lab

"May we come in?" The little girl asks. Her eyes are green with flecks of gold. The man stands behind her and also looks in, though his eyes are still behind the black sunglasses.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis - Lab]

"A game of cleaning your tools? When the alternative could be rather painful? Sounds...like a rather odd game, I suppose." Not the sort of thing Isabelle would do, for sure.

"Milking the plant would require a degree of protection I can't give myself. So I shall have to leave it as a device for cleaning and sterilizing." Organ removal is more time consuming than difficult. In the most extreme cases, bits of animal go everywhere.

[Slii Arhem]

Atlantis - Lab

"Perhaps I should come up with some way of milking and bottling the acid for cleaning purposes. I'll put it on my to do list. Come in!" Shayan says the last part to the two at the door, although there are so many hanging plants between her and the entrance that she can't see Nephrim or Dambull at the moment.

[Earl of Purple]

Atlantis Lab

Nephrim will walk through the plants, closely followed by a nervous-looking Dam'bul. "Hello. My name is Nephrim. In addition to being a member of AMEN, I'm also a General in the Abyssal Hordes, serving Pazuzu whose interested in mortal technology. He has asked me to commission any scientists or inventors or similar into designing flying machines, or similar. He will pay, through me, and give whatever He is asked for, with some limits; He cannot effect anything of the element Earth. Anyway, I was interested if either of you were interested?" Dam'bul, it seems, has nothing to say at the moment.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis - Lab]

"It's amusing, how many people mistake me for a scientist or inventor of some sort. An understandable mistake though." With an apologetic smile on her face, Isabelle shakes her head. "I am a mage, and I only work with animals. I'm afraid I have nothing of use to Pazuzu."

Cedric shrieks in agreement.

[Slii Arhem]

Atlantis - Lab

Shayan tilts her head, once more looking like nothing more than a curious owl as the vines that keep her upright bend and flex gently, bouncing her up and down. She looks around her labs for a moment, as if trying to see what exactly led Nephrim to believe that she was capable of designing a flying machine.

"I am what you might call a scientist, but my field is biochemistry, not inventing or aeronautics. Although now that you've brought it up, I am rather curious as to just how a plant could fly. Is there anything else this Pazuzu needs? I do find myself happy at the opportunity to be useful to my fellow AMENites."

[Earl of Purple]

Atlantis- Lab

"No? Not even vast birds with no need to land? Ones easier to domesticate than the ones already in the Clouded Void, anyway." Pazuzu, as Demon Lord of the Air, has no land in His territory. Or very little of it, and most has been heavily fortified, hollowed out and turned into an airport, factory or palace.

Then, turning to Shayan, Nephrim speaks again. "I have something that may help your experiments. It might not, but I offer it anyway. Spores from a vrock- a winged demon that gives off parasitic spores that grow into small vines when properly anchored. As for flight; sycamore trees and dandelions have managed it. They're the only plants that grow, because there's little to grow on and no gravity for much of it."

[Reinholdt]

Ilpholin undeadtimes with some business to take care of. She searches out for Becky, Orrey, or Shayan. Whichever she finds first and isn't too busy for their player.

[Slii Arhem]

Somewhere

Shayan can probably be found outside her labs, plotcloned and ripe for talking to. She happens to be carrying a heap of vegetation back to Atlantis in a sack, probably hoping to use it in some of her experiments.

And she's whistling rather loudly, happy for some reason.

[Reinholdt]

Somewhere

Ilpholin approaches then. "Hello Shayan. New friends?" Ilpholin asks, looking at the vegetation.

[Slii Arhem]

Somewhere

"I needed something that eats poisonous chemicals for a project. This seems to fit the bill." Shayan replies cheerfully, changing her whistle to a low yet bright humming as she pauses to allow Ilpholin to catch up.

[Reinholdt]

Somewhere

"I see. And how was the raid for medical supplies? Were you able to get what you needed?"

[Slii Arhem]

Somewhere

"Most of it, though the MRI machine we recovered still lies in disrepair as I don't have the funds to hire someone to repair it on my own budget. I'd also need someone who can repair it that's vetted against revealing AMEN secrets, and such people are in short supply as you must already know. What drugs I couldn't find I decided to grow plant alternatives to, which has been going well if a bit slowly." The plant mistress turns herself slowly, shuffling her vines in a circle so she can peer at Ilpholin more directly with her wide, nearly perpetually vacant eyes.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I suppose I should have asked this first. Is there something you needed?" Decorum had escaped her for a moment, but it seems it's back in full force.

[Reinholdt]

Somewhere

"We could easily spare the money for a MRI machine if that's it." Didn't want to buy the whole stock and barrel, but that should be fine.

"In truth, I wanted to see how your implantation experiments were going. Last we talked you were ready for testing?" All puns intended. I think Shayan was ready last time anyways, though she might have been sidetracked with stuff.

[Slii Arhem]

Somewhere

"The MRI was the most expensive thing on my list, and the reason I didn't fight to purchase everything wholesale. If you're willing to just buy one, then I can use the pieces we have as spare parts in the event that something goes wrong. I'll need an empty room to house it in, in any case. It can't be near anything magnetic or ferrus that could throw it off." Having a fully built MRI machine would make things a lot easier to track, and speed up the rate of her live testing phases significantly. It would have medical uses too if she could ever get a Moff to hold still long enough to diagnose their insanity clinically.

Maybe if she bribed them with promises of crazy pills... ah well, "Truthfully, I tested implanting my own plant on several terminally ill patients in Riverside, and came out with two positive results out of three. The second subject died of his own illness before the seed could take effect, due to a seizure at an inopportune moment. I'm as confident as I can be that the process is safe to be used on non-expendable people, and I've begun adapting it to other plants I feel could be beneficial as symbiotes." Shayan hefts the bag higher on her shoulder to demonstrate what she means.

[Reinholdt]

Somewhere

"Think we can spare it. Need to bug Moff and Mag about that raid they went on." Maybe they have more money than the tons Merciano gave them. "At the very least you can have Mister Squiggles look at it. He's good at that stuff." Doesn't know how. Every time Mister Squiggles starts chittering about mechanics and programs and wires it causes Ilph's eyes to glaze over a bit.

"Other plants? You mean besides the one you've got?"

[Slii Arhem]

Somewhere

Shayan seems confused for a moment, "Yes, besides the one I have. I didn't expect to be finished the symbiosis tests with my own plant this quickly, but I had always planned on branching out to other beneficial plants after completing my first project. I could hardly call myself a biochemist if I only had one trick to rely on. I've been crossbreeding plants to coax them to grow in flesh, rather than soil, so they can share whatever chemicals and properties they have with the host. So far most have turned out as parasites initially, which makes them useless as anything other than weapons for the time being. Isabelle has actually been rather helpful, suggesting I test new breeds on animals rather than humans, to avoid being attacked during trials."

[Reinholdt]

Somewhere

"Hmm... let me know when you do. I'm interested in the different options you'll come up with." She guesses she can hold off on getting some of the troops implanted until choices become available.

[Slii Arhem]

Somewhere

"For now I'm working on something that relies far less on a full rework and meshing of the host and plant, and can be easily removed when it's unwanted. Also, despite my first assumptions my situation is not normal for a symbiosis between a person and musk creeper plant. Though the regeneration is common in all cases, external markings seem to be rare, especially ones as large as mine." Shayan gestures to her vines with a hand, stroking one almost lovingly before letting it drop to her side.

"To get such rapid growth, you'd need an application of healing magic at a precise moment while the plant is still infantile. The process is more volatile when done like this, and there is a larger margin of error."

[Reinholdt]

Somewhere

"Whereas your process is different?" Ilpholin asks. In general it seems Shayan is saying she'll be one of a kind. Fine with Ilpholin really.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Atlantis - Lab]

"Vast birds? Well that's an interesting idea. I've never tried to make something become as big as you'd need though. Hmm...maybe something to try out at some point." But not something she could do now.

Who knows how long it'd take to perfect that spell?

Quite a while, probably.

Isabelle falls silent, pondering her new idea, leaving Shayan and Nephrim to discuss things.