Sharn With Giant Robots Beta

[Nerd-o-rama]

"I'm still not 100% sure what was up with her," Rin says. "She seemed to be here as a spy (albeit a crappy one)...maybe she was trying to gauge us in combat? Or she was just confident enough that her machine overpowered ours, and didn't know about Kara's Gar Adduran."

[The_Snark]

"Is this going to be dangerous training?" Dove asks belatedly, sounding worried. "It sounds dangerous. Dumping acid on sleeping people doesn't seem like a very good idea..."

[Elvith Jars]

Angel ponders what to do next as the realization that he lost his job yesterday due to layoffs she is the granddaughter of Pontiff Jaela sinks in. She lets the hot water rain down her back and occasionally her face to mask another kind of rain as Angel feels particularly alone, out of contact with Tesla (the only other time-traveling member of her team that she remembers and made contact with), and unsure if her plan to join the military and find other team members that might've reverted to type and gone to ground will work. It was definitely a longshot to begin with, but she realizes that all team members were drilled relentlessly to revert to their basic types while still putting out clues that they're alive, for just such a memory-scrambling f***ed up situation she's presently in. The fate of millions will be affected if she fails her mission... if she could only remember what that mission is.

[Nerd-o-rama]

"Well, it's a dangerous mission we're on, Dove," Rin explains. "If we're going to be fighting people as dangerous as the Investigators, we all need to be psychologically prepared."

And not freak out and play dead for half a battle.

"Still, the acid might be a little much. Wouldn't want to mess up Liz's pretty face or anything," she adds semi-sarcastically.

[Elvith Jars]

Angel looks up briefly, sighing heavily.

"What the Khyber do I do now?"

{oops! wrong thread!}

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The Iron Wolf plants its feet firmly into the ground bracing for an all-out-attack. Crowbar seems enraged, letting out a metallic roar at the mecha hydra, a sound he's not made since joining the Mobile Suit team.

Iron Wolf twists at the hip and pushes off with its right leg while bringing the arm-blade down in a vicious overhand chop, then twists its wrist while pushing off with its left leg, pivoting again at the hip to deliver a savage backhand...

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(http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/1928960/ )
Attack: 1d20+14 = 33 (ROLL 19, CRIT!)
Damage: 3d8+13=19
Shock: 1d6 = 3

Critical hit attack:
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/1928965/
1d20+14=32 (Jezus, rolled an 18!)
Damage: 3d8+13=27
Shock: 1d6=6

Gods damn son! I didn't know you had it in you! OUTSTANDING! Maybe the parts they recycled from me into you and this Mobile Suit are doing some good.

Thanks, Crowbar thinks to himself.

[Magnus_Samma]

(Sorry to hear about your job. :/)

Angel might notice the sound from Kara's shower has stopped.

"...Angel? Is that you? Are you alright?"

[Winged One]

"Well, um, that was why I was going to, ah, dilute it. My teacher only threatened to do it, but, er, I'm not very good at lying..." Achille says, worrying for the first time today that he might be going just a bit too far.

[Elvith Jars]

{Thanks. Emotionally it sucks, especially given the recession, but I should be ok. I financially planned for this situation years ago. But my plans to buy a home are on hold. Sorta feels like when the BSG crew finally made it to Earth, only to find it nuked. Not unlike Angel feels right now...}

"I dunno, boss," Angel says across the shower stall, her wickedly advanced liquid mithril fingers curled around the shower stall wall separating her shower from Kara's as she braces herself.
"You ever have one of those days where you think you've got your life figured out and you suddenly discover it's not at all what you thought? That you had a different life than you do now but you can't quite put a finger on what it was? I'm having one of those days."

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax finally rouses himself, looking around, then begins wandering about the ship. He stops in the mobile suit hangar and looks up at one of the suits being worked on there, reflecting on the previous night's events, absentmindedly rubbing his dorje-sheathe with his other hand...

[Nerd-o-rama]

"Ugh. You suck at good cop/bad cop, Achille," Rin says. "Let's just get started, huh?"

[Winged One]

"Sorry..." Achille says, frowning in disappointment in his inability to make Liz suffer through fear. He perks up. "Do you want to have her copy your exercises or hit her with a stick if she can't keep up with mine?" he asks, picking up a stick-shaped piece of rubble.

[Magnus_Samma]

(... you guys are awesome. XD)

Kara chuckles, a little.

"Probably not exactly the same situation, but... yeah, I've been thereabouts."

Her slender but callused hand folds over Angel's mechanical one. She pauses for a moment.

"If you want to talk, I'm right here. Or if you need a drill sergeant I can make you do push ups until you're too tired to angst, but I have a feeling that might not work."

(I'm thinking from your description of the scene that Angel's got her hand braced on the top of the separating wall where Kara can see/reach it. If not then just ignore that part of the exchange.)

[Elvith Jars]

Angel appreciates the gesture, sighs again, unsure of how much to say, especially since at the present time, Breland and Thrane are political enemies.

No doubt by now Breland's intel division knows I worked in Sharn's Red Lantern District and let those in charge around here know too. They're probably curious about why I didn't exist up until five years ago too... But I guess if nobody hasn't yet noticed my family resemblance to the leader of Thrane, that's a good thing...

She speaks quietly, barely audible, like someone going to confession...

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"Oh Khyber, this is gonna be hard to believe. I find it hard to believe and I'm the one living this nightmare. But from what I remember from history, Breland's intel division is one of the best in your day and age- in this day and age. Khyber, who in their right mind would take random adventurers off the street and trust them with their nation's most powerful war machines? They'd do a thorough background check first or use some powerful divination magic real quick if they needed someone badly enough. And by now you've gotta know there are things about me that don't add up.

Ever wonder how somebody with my background took so well to piloting a.. mobile suit? Or had ideas about what mobile suits should be able to do but current arcanotechnology can't reproduce? Or how I got these warforged limbs of mine that aren't like any warforged limbs existing today? I wondered too until I started putting things together. I'm... not from around here.

*sigh* I've heard that powerful that wizards have a spell called time stop that lets them do things while the world around them freezes like still life art. There's even more powerful magic that lets you take a backstep- travel into the past. And change it.

I'm part of a special ops team sent back in time via an eldritch machine discovered in Xen'drik. We were supposed to do something very important. If we failed our mission, millions of lives would be affected. Think of something on the scale of the Day of Mourning, only worse. Something bad happened during the backstep, and the team got scattered throughout history and our memories got scrambled.

If you want to know what the future will be like, I couldn't tell you. I only remember bits and pieces. I can't even tell you what happens to the United States of Khorvaire- uh, the nations of Khorvaire, that requires my team to try and stop it. But something about our encounter with the Investigators is nagging me- they aren't supposed to be running around right now.

So if history, or at least my history's been changed, then the cataclysm might happen sooner. Much sooner. And that's what's bugging me, Kara. I may have information vital to our fight against the Investigators, but with the state that my memory is in, if I do have an important piece of the puzzle, I might not remember it until it's too late."

[Elvith Jars]

Angel thinks back, strugglig to remember.

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"The eldritch machine in Xen'drik... It was large, maybe sixty feet in diameter and made of some kind of coppery gold metal. It had three concentric rings with a hemisphere covered in runes sitting inside the innermost ring. You could stand on the platform that the hemisphere made. The rings levitated above a large pedestal, like the stand for a map of a globe. A control console stood in the same chamber as the eldritch machine, which had a bunch of control crystals.

Once the stairs up to the hemispheric platform rolled away, the console operator activated the machine. The three rings spun up with the innermost ring forming an arch above our heads and spinning like someone spinning a ball on the tip of their finger. The middle ring spun perpendicular to the inner ring end over end, like flipping over a piece of parchment, and the outermost ring spun at a fourty-five degree angle to the floor while rotating counter-clockwise around in a circle.

I remember standing on the platform with my teammates, the rings spinning rapidly, a ball of light expanding in the center of the eldritch machine just above the platform. It expanded around us, blocking our view of the chamber and bathing us in light. There was a sense of vertigo and then freefall. The next thing I knew, I woke up alone and naked in Faerden Brey five years ago. That's where House Lyrandar's 'Lightning Strike' security force found me."

[Nerd-o-rama]

"Mm...for basic stuff, just copy me, Liz," Rin says. "We need to start with getting you to think on your feet when you're in danger, then we can move on to how to make your engineering skills into weapons of mass destruction."

(Bleh. Bleh to my creativity/online acting ability lately.)

[Lucid_Archon]

Liz assumes a form mimicking Rin's in every aspect, save for Rin's distinct lack of a slack jawed grin and double thumbs up. "Fantastic. I haven't had a chance to do anything artifice-y in a while. Will the first part hurt as much as Achille... is trying to make it?"

[Magnus_Samma]

Kara is quiet for a long moment.

"...damn. So they finally got that last room open."

She sighs deeply.

"Angel, for what it's worth, I think you're telling the truth, but... I don't have any more of an idea of how to deal with this than you do. The only people I know who specialize in retrieving lost memories work for Morodoc, and he's the last person I'd trust with this kind of information. If what you're saying is true, then this war or the investigators themselves might all be fronts to distract us from the real problem... whatever that is."

She squeezes Angel's hand, gently.

"But we're going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another. You have my word on that."

[Elvith Jars]

"Yeah no Sh!t Kara, Morodoc would take me apart mentally and physically. That guy gives me the creeps.

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Most of the rooms in that complex were cleaned out by the time we got there, except for the one with the eldritch machine in the 'Do Not Use. Bad Bad Bad' wing. I don't know who got the door open, it wasn't my team. The Army put our team together in a hurry though once they figured out what the machine did. I have a vague recollection that someone was yelling at me for volunteering."

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She thinks back, finally piecing some things together.

"I was a.. sergeant, United States of Khorvaire Army... 101st Special Operations Battalion. MOS 18D (Special Operations Medical Sergeant). Serial Number 117-69-0125.

Yeah so, things are really screwed up. From my perspective, we're in the dawn of the mobile suit era. I've a feeling I've seen the Investigators before or read about them... but NOT in this day and age.

So if Morodoc's creep-tacular minions can't be trusted... guess that means we gotta find someone we can trust. You think Thrax can do it?"

[Magnus_Samma]

Kara sighs.

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"I'm not sure who we can trust. I think most of the squad is reliable, considering the way they clustered around Dove like that. Thrax... I'm not sure what his deal is. Not an ordinary warforged, for sure, but I think I trust him. I don't know if he could help you, but it couldn't hurt to try, and it sounds like we don't have a lot of options at this point. What you know might be crucial to the war effort. If the Investigators are stirring up conflict among the nations we have to stop them as fast as we can."

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax shakes his head and makes a sighing noise, then wanders off to find one of the artificers who work on the suits to try and get himself fixed up, since he still has some damage from the previous day's events....

[Winged One]

"Only if you screw up." Achille says with a friendly smile. After all, just because as one of Liz's combat instructors he's made it his purpose in life to make her suffer doesn't mean he doesn't like her. Satisfied that she'll be able to copy Rin, he begins his own routine, though he keeps the stick at hand.

[Elvith Jars]

"Thanks for listening, Kara," Angel says warmly, "Their MO is the same even if displaced by a few years, maybe Thrax can go spelunking in my mind and see if anything in there would help us." She finishes up her shower and goes hunting for sex Thrax.

[Nerd-o-rama]

((I remember having something clever seven hours ago. Then the forums exploded again))

Rin goes through some basic stretches and warmups, not bothering to explain them to Liz, but not going at full speed either.

After a few minutes, she stops and turns to address Liz. "So, first lesson. You have to keep your head in the game at all times. You can get scared, angry, bored, whatever: emotions can help in combat, but whatever you feel, you have to keep your mind focused. You're (for all intents and purposes), a spellcaster, which means you've got to be aware of what's going on, and what you can do to change what's going on."

Rin calmly walks up to the other changeling and tells her "Name all your first-level infusions, fast as you can."

[Magnus_Samma]

Kara, for lack of anything better to do, goes with Angel. The ship's artificers are mostly in the hangar, working on repairing any damage the mobile suits may have taken. They are perfectly happy and willing to top Thrax up as well.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax nods as his frame knits itself back together thanks to the efforts of the artificers, then looks up as Angel and the Commander approach him. He looks back to the artificer who was fixing him up.

"Thank you, my good man. I believe I am wanted by the Commander, and that last spell seems to have fixed the last of the damage."

He turns to regard Kara as the artificer goes back to working on the suits.

"Commander, Angel. Is there something I can help you with?"

[Magnus_Samma]

"Angel wanted to ask you a favor Thrax," says Kara, pausing to glance around the hangar. "...though, maybe we should go somewhere a bit more private first..."

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax nods.

"Lead on, then."

He falls into step beside Angel, glancing at her curiously.

[Elvith Jars]

After finding a quiet spot, Angel repeatedly kicks the forums looks to Thrax..

"Thrax, I know you're a warforged with, well, some kind of unusual psychic ability, are you able to look into someone's mind and recover blocked memories? If so, I've got a doozy of a story to tell."

For Thrax/DM:

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check out the spoilers on page 8, posts 223 and 224 for Angel's story.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax seems...somewhat intrigued by the request at first, but quickly shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, Angel. Most of my talents focus inwards, instead of out, and I don't possess the gifts to look inside another's mind."

He looks disappointed with himself for having to admit he can't help her.

[Elvith Jars]

"I see," she says crestfallen, "Is there anyone you trust that might be able to help then? It's kind of important."