"Is the 'Gathering' the same thing as what is going to take place at the gate?" Drex asked Willa as he look down the passageway that just opened up.

Will turned to Drex and shrugged.  "Wall say Willa must 'immersion.'  Also friends must go 'gathering'. Willa think wall show immersion at gathering.  Maybe is wrong?"
This message was last edited by the player at 21:08, Thu 27 Dec 2018.

Jubei scratched his chin for a moment before he eventually gave a nod.
"This sounds like its an Umbrean thing. But very well, let us go to this... gathering. If I understood correctly we have to go there anyway to receive permission to go to the moon, yes?", he asked looking at Willa.

Willa, shrugged.  "Wall says its."

"Then we should go to it. How urgent did the wall make it out to be? After all we may want to...", he paused and looked to the construct-thing that was carrying Amare's former body. "Attent to this first."

"Willa has some hundreds days." the little oozeling bobbed.  "But wall wants know if telling Keepers we go 'im-in-ent-lee'."

Drex is waiting. Yes Willa you can tell Keepers we are on our way. He processed down the hallway, towards the Keepers. Are you coming!

"Let us move onwards.
If we tarry here longer,
We risk more danger."

Ceba stepped up alongside Drex, mindful of his blisters, boils and other abrasions. The sooner they started moving, the safer he would feel.

Phelan had remained silent as they discussed, frowning slightly in thought. At Drex's call he shook himself and trotted quickly to catch up, still wearing that thoughtful frown.

Jubei furrowed his brows. "No, not imminently... we ought head to the gate first. It might take a few hours before we go.", he spoke then... but started to walk as well.

    The wall informed Willa that she only had to make her way to the Gathering, she would be expected.

  Walking down the broad passage you passed a well hidden niche which held a fierce looking suit of armour, reminiscent of the automatons you had fought only the day before in that great stone and metal building.  Pausing there to inspect the lone figure for danger Drex noticed others like it in the frosted crystal of the walls.

  Certainly if danger threatened those other machines could be released from the wall and there was no telling how many of them might be hidden just out of sight in that expanse of crystal.  After all, you had not seen any other doors or rooms yet, so who was to say what parts of this structure concealed either defenders or chambers.
  Though there fortunately appeared to be no sign did not appear to have any spark of life to them but that could have been only appearances.

  It wasn't long before you reached the far end of the corridor which terminated in a large ring around the center of the spire.

  As you approached this inner wall glowed and a circle formed.  The area within the circle dissolved and through the doorway stepped two tall and spindly humanoids, their bodies were a mostly black, stringy, sticky looking things which sprouted painted, metallic claws at the ends of the limbs where one would expect fingers and toes.  An external rib-cage of the same off-white, painted metal and a head that reminded you of the skull of some vicious, predatory bird.  Each held a metal pike crisscrossed with the same black sinew as their bodies were made of.

  They each stood to the side of the door like guardsman.  A lone umbrean, dwarfed by those who had come before stepped out from the doorway.  Behind him you could see a passageway which turned a corner shortly before the doorway, so where exactly it lead was anyone's guess.

  The umbrean was a dull green, turning to a brighter, more yellow green at its center.  The eyes were wide apart and a third, dull, and possibly blind eye sat atop the forehead. "On behalf of those who sleep we wish to apologize for the actions of our caretakers." she spoke with a slightly slurred common, and gazed at everyone in the party.  Though her gaze lingered on Volon and his burden.  Her dress was a simple purple robe, highly stylized into a broad v-shape starting from the stomach and reaching up to the shoulder with a darker sash around the waist.

Jubei watched those umbreans emerge with the stoic gaze of a dragon.
"We accept the apology and would like to give ours in return. After all we are... uninvited guests. Though I am certain you understand that practically everyone outside the Weyr believed that nobody was actually living here anymore. Finding that to be not the case is hmm a pleasant surprise.", he responded then after that greeting while giving a corteous nod to the umbrean.

    "We had hopped the exterior defenses would dissuaded outsiders but you seemed to have managed to defeat them one after the other." the umbrean gestured to the circular passage.  "Would you like to discuss this somewhere more comfortable?" she asked.

"ere we entered here
Have we little comfort.
I offer my thanks."

That said, Ceba commited all he saw to memory. This was perhaps the most interesting detail he would record since they had entered the weyr.

Willa+ bobbed about in giddy excitement and turned to Amare about to tell him that there were other umbreans on the isles, but quickly lost her enthusiasm when she saw him in his current state.  It sullied her the whole revelationary meeting for her.  She was filled with an irrational anger and she marched forward towards the woman.

"Apology is no accepted!"  She barked and turns to point at Amare.  "Friends of Willa hurting cause of 'caretakers.'  Who is caretakers?  Why fight Willa and friends of?  Why umbreans needs taking cares of, anyways?  Also, whys trapping inn-o-scent spirits in machines - like dragon was!?!"

Drex eye's widen at Willa's outburst, hoping that this doesn't offend our hosts. He is really not in the mood or physical state to fight again.
Willa I do not think that all that has transpired here was the caretakers or the hosts falt. Drex said in a soft but quick snap at Willa's accusation.

    "Then what do you want from us?" the umbrean asked earnestly, her expression questioning as she looked at Willa.  "Do you not guard yourselves from dangers?  Surely the world has not changed so much in three centuries that all is peaceful beyond the mountains?"

  She pointed at Phelan and Cebakaala with a gaze  "You're people wrangled us up like cattle from your lands and threw us all into one great pit in a place you believed no one would ever find us nor where we would bother anyone else ever again."

  "Your people hunt us for sport in memory of the rites you performed for your masters." she said as she looked at Jubei then to Drex and Volon "And your kind is new to us." before turning back to Willa "You are fortunate to have found some kind of kinship with the Others but even you must know that it is a thing that will not last.  Nor were you so fortunate at your birth to know parents, kinship or kindness.  Like us you were thrust into this world, by waking and awareness not your own but drawn from those around you.  The world has never been kind to us so are you surprised by are caution?  Our guard?  Our natural desire to secure ourselves, our homes against those who have throughout all living memory have done nothing but bring us suffering and harm?" she spoke sharply and accusingly.  Her voice rang off the walls.

  "One life and scraps of those before is all you have.  But we." there was a crack in her voice.  "We remember over twelve millennium from this day since the dragons used the Monument to restore the gift of our collective experience to the Great Gathering."

Willa looked between her friends as their people's oppression of hers were laid out.  She was wide-eyed and quiet.  It seemed her 'persecution' paled into insignificance compared to what her ancestors had faced from even the likes of the supposedly advanced Narayah.  And he was extremely old too!  Could he and Ceba have actually participated in this...containment?

Willa was silenced for a good few moments until she realised why she was angry in the first placed.  Her explression suddenly changing from one of shocked awe to extreme grump.

"Is still no right!  Willa think people's made to be trapped know better than trap other for purpose!  To make do against will.  To hurt and not know why.  Should be better than others!  Not same be!  Poor spirit almost dying in machine!  Torn from home and...and..tortured!  Is like...like...no, *is* slaveringly!"

"Also,"  She paused and looked to the ground in consideration, "Other umbreans leave.  Flee here's?  Why?"  A moment later, she deflated.  "Ah, is sorry.  Willa happy to be meeting first reals umbrean ever.  Is pleased, really.  Just been...busy days.  Painful days.  Only to find not big-bads inside.  Always watches.  Always possible to helps.  But slaverings still bad is!  Must to promise Willa never to do agains!  Please..."

Then quietly, pleadingly, whilst glancing over at Drex: "Please...umbreans must be good.  Must bes good peoples.  Willa always believed so.  Did very much to protect secrets.  Stuffs to make even friends of, very angrys at."

    Shaking her head the umbrean had regained her composure.  Leading the way with her two keepers beside her she spoke "Spirits are unreliable, and coercion does not make for lasting or beneficial alliances.  These are our observations of millennia.  This is why we are served by sophisticated but simple machines.  No more intelligent than a trained animal.  Most of our own design others were of the old narayan make.  As impressive as they are durable they are but the makings of a novice in the craft." she looked at Willa when she asked "You spoke of a dragon like machine?  Journeyman Gearcaster Drixos was this one a like to the old display models used in the museum?  We took those down and put them in storage millenia ago though there was some flaring interest in ages past to make such things for a joining but the Gathering ultimately Decided against it.  As it had before on similar problems with our draconic ancestry.  If you were attack be one it was not of our design."

"We faced the machine in a collosseum of sorts. The spirit that was forced into it was forced to do so by an entity we confronted before, which apparently did not forget us.", Jubei spoke and shook his head. "Either way, I understand you have a means to reach the moon?"

Phelan was frowning thoughtfully as the question was directed to him. "It... was like the old models. But someone had worked on it, made a lot of modifications. It was fully set up to replicate the combat abilities of a full dragon. He paused, his voice having taken on the tone of a researcher explaining their discovery. "The modifications themselves were pristine, either magically preserved for a very long time; or they were only built in a few years ago."

Willa was tumbling from anger to confusion.  She only half-understood the conversation as it was, but at least managed to gather that the umbrean was claiming the dragon-prison-machine-thing was news to her.

"But voices come to heads in dragon place after dragon dead.  Was like voices know where was Willa and friends of Willa.  Is co-incy-dent?  Or Voices not of keepers' being?"

    The umbrean pressed a hand  against a crystalline wall, only a minute or two's walk from the hall you had entered.  "After the repeated failures of the Caretakers to apprehend you and the expense they had gone through to do so there had been a review of their activities.  We decided this morning to engage in friendlier dialogue and spent some time composing our message and assembling the device which allows for such psychic messaging." a familiar circle lit the wall around her hand, and circle of darkin text around that. 

  She frowned towards Phelan "The Gathering will have to be informed about this and a investigation launched into such activities though I would guess it was something assembled by the expedition we sent out some centuries ago." an area of the wall beside the umbrean lit up and dissolved into a large doorway.  She removed her hand and stepped through into the large room beyond.

  The room was sparsely furnished and smooth.  A great circle of a room which gave the sense of being suspended in the middle of a giant crystal.  As the walls, ceiling and floor was all the same frosted crystal.  Red and orange rugs had been spread across the floor to help break up the uniformity and some tapestries had been hung around the chamber as well.  There were no other doors in the room.  Several chairs of various sizes and a very, very large cushion has had been arranged in a circle at the middle of the chamber.  Four of the ant-like machines you had seen in the gatehouse were busy maneuvering some of the chairs into place.  While eight others were crawling into a hole in the floor at far side of the room.  The chairs all seemed freshly made from wood and stone.  While the tawny cushion was plump and almost as tall as a man.  The skin of the cushion seemed to be made from soft, woolly hide.  The cushion looked decadently royal and far too inviting for its own good.

  Jubei recognized the peculiar shape of the cushion as one specifically made to comfortably support a sitting kaetyma.  He had seen some expensive and exquisite seats before in the Free Cities but those paled in the sheer size and subtle artistry of the seat he saw in that ring of chairs.  The hide looked thick enough to not be cut or damaged by his armour or claws.

  "Please make yourselves comfortable, we had prepared these some time ago for visitors." the umbrean sat herself down onto one of the smallest chairs.  It was remarkably plain and unadorned but like each of the chairs there was a small styling to it.  Something geometrical and angular like a the facets of a jewel.

  As you each found a seat she spoke to Jubei "I am quiet sure adventurers as successful as yourselves have greater foes to worry about then our humble, isolated colony." she rested her hands on her legs and leaned back into the hard chair before she continued  "We maintain several teleportation circles between weyrs like this one where other gatherings dwell and to the Conclave Citadel.  Though going there would be complicated and something we had wanted to discuss." she seemed a bit reluctant to broach the subject.

  One chair, the same size as the one Drex sat in stood empty but Volon was not far behind.  Still cradling that statue that was Amare in his arms.

It was difficult for Willa to get to her chair as she tiptoed between the rugs, trying her best not to sully them with slime.

"Expee-dish-on be is what Willa see?  Is memory, no?"  She looked at the statue of her friends as it was brought in and rubbed her hands together in concern.  "Friend Amare say Willa is maybe only umbrean on isles.  So maybe also is all remains of exppee-dish-on?  What for expee-dish-on is?  Willa can to help?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:42, Fri 25 Jan 2019.

  Drex made his peace with the battle with the mechanical dragon. He harbors no grudges, nor does he wish to find out anything more about it. But it would seem Judie's comment agitated Drex. He moves uncomfortably around in his chair, as the conversations continues. Which he interrupts as he stands up, no longer able to keep it to himself.

  Drex caries himself with determent-authority, but with a polite courtly demeanor. He bows to their host, before speaking.
"I must apologist for my rude behavior, but I must interject this discussion. As an Avenger of the Aurelians, custodians of civilization, I feel that I must do my duty! If only to bare witness, as a representative of the Aurelians, to this monuments moment."
  He looks at the statue, then to his party. "Amare is important, how important I don't know. And I do not believe even the wises sages could tell us that. But he is a statue now, and not changing from that state. So he is save as long as Volon is here to help us look after him. But I cannot in good faith abandon my obligation to my gods, and be there at the meeting, weather to mediate or to bare witness or to apply swift justice, if that is called for."

  He firmly takes his seat once more. Addressing every one. "So I want to request postponing the moon trip till after the meeting, please." Glancing at Willa and Jubei in particular.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 22:11, Sun 27 Jan 2019.