Kalath makes her way silently to the edge of the cleared area where the little camp, or village, has been erected.  As she'd noticed before, the grass tops off unnaturally near to the ground, so making her way across it is almost more like making her way over a soft carpet.  As yet, she still hasn't seen anything like an animal lurking here on the outskirts.  She's close enough to a pair of the people that she can hear them speaking to each other -- they are a young fair-haired woman, maybe a bit older than Kalath herself, and an older dark-skinned man with a shaven scalp.

The pair of them are examining a low shrub, similar to what are apparently the cultivated food plants but with much sparser foliage.  Kalath is screened from their view among a grouping of the strange trees.

"It's like the rest," the woman is saying.  In on hand she's holding a flat device like the Traveller's "IPad" and in the other, a short rod connected to the tablet by a twisted wire; she's moving the rod over and around the bush while she reads off the tablet.  "More of this organic polymer, this ersatz cellulose, but constructed in a fractal cellular pattern.  Edible, at a pinch, but not a lot of calories by volume.  Certainly not as designed for it as the fakeberry bushes are."

"I suppose none of that should be surprising," the man says.  "No one has a real good read on what the 'Keeper' is really able to accomplish, but it's like they have a vague notion of Maslow's hierarchy, but they're not really that clever with biological systems.  All of this is more synthesized, or programmed, more than grown per se."

"I don't get why the Commander is going along with setting up this place, just on the Keeper's say-so."

"Do we have a choice?  Best thing we can do is learn until we can figure out what it wants.  It's not like we have a way out, or any kind of sophisticated weapons.  Hell, we've barely got sticks."

A buzzing sounds from somewhere above Kalath in the trees, like the wings of an insect.

OOC: Do you reckon Kalath is armed?

Getting a look at what's making the noise would be an Awareness + Ingenuity + Keen Senses.

She felt uneasy. That noise, didn't sound good. She turned, to try and get a good look at it, her eyes flashing.

OOC:
22:42, Today: Kalath rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 4,3.  Awareness + Ingenuity + keen senses.

She would certainly have her spear. A bow would be a bit more uncertain. She might, but could easily see not as well.

Up in the branches, maybe six or eight yards off the ground, Kalath spots something hovering.  Unlike the plants, this doesn't seem to be making any pretense of being a living thing: it's bronze in color and clearly metallic, shaped something like a many-eyed spider held aloft on four whirring blades -- smaller than the Traveller's flying "scutter" devices, but larger than the communication familiars she'd seen on the Habisphere.

The thing swivels in the air, aiming its various lenses and probes around both at the pair of people Kalath has been spying on, and at Kalath herself.

She froze, not wishing to draw attention to herself, and also not wanting to provoke it to focus on the others either. She just watched for now, though ready to spring into action, her spear at her side.

The pair studying the bush straighten up and step back from it.  They start to turn away and back towards the grouped buildings, but as they do, Kalath hears a dissonant blerp noise coming from the woman's tablet.  "What the shmoo...?" she says.

Then she turns in an arc, holding out the rod-on-a-wire as she does -- and as the arc passes Kalath, her tablet makes more insistent blerp! blerp! blerp! noises.  "Complex organics of some kind, maybe real life," she says, moving briskly in Kalath's direction as she does.  She's still looking at her device instead of in front of her, and if Kalath meant her ill, she'd have been dead to rights.

"Felice, wait, you don't what you're--" says the man.

Even as she's reacting to this new development, Kalath realizes that the hovering device is ascending, hiding itself with the branches of the tree.

OOC:

Well, to be honest I did expect Kalath to do something more proactive with the situation, which is why I had left things were they were for so long.  You can react before they spot you, if you like.

Elsewhere....

Nearly in the shadow of the towering obelisk, a wide, still lake sits bordered by clumps of trees, and turf extending up nearly to the shoreline.  No waves break the surface, no basking waterfowl dot the water and no fish stir it with their motion.

The sound of wheezing thunder breaks across the silent scene.  Ripples suddenly radiate across the surface of the water, as if the lake has only just remembered that this is a thing it's supposed to do.  At first transparent, then slowly solidifying, the shape of a tall blue box with a flashing light atop it appears.  When the roaring stops with a satisfying thud, the box with its battered panels, smoky windows and jaunty American flag logo seems more solid and real than anything else in the vicinity.

The door of the TARDIS opens and the Traveller pops out, looking around her, followed very shortly by the smaller blue form of Smoke Alarm.  To both, the surroundings have an unfinished feel.  To Smoke Alarm, this reminds her of animated videos she's watched on the TARDIS' picturespouts, but one that the creators brought right up to the very verge of realism, but failed to quite finish the job.

To the Traveler, the effect is rather different.  The environment is plainly real and physical -- her seventh and eighth senses provide her with that much of a feel for the objects around her -- but it's also just as plainly fabricated, and while she gets much a similar sense of a thing unfinished, it's also fairly astonishing to her just how elaborate the creation is and how much effort is going into maintaining all of it.  A planetful of Logipolitans with their abaci all a-clacking would be hard pressed to maintain the scope and depth of this place.

Trav of course adjusts her glasses. "This is all math. Well, everything is math, but this place is big, very big. Someone really likes Minecraft. It's the base algorithms that are beautiful, even though this place has very much a Super Famicom aesthetic. I wonder how it all holds together without power?"

Trav is scanning with her glasses, seeing if it's safe to go beyond the bounds of the TARDIS' atmosphere field and gravity. It would be pretty laughable if they all died because the makers had forgotten to code in air.

Ingenuity+Science?

It's trivial for the Traveller to establish that her surroundings are capable of sustaining herself and her passengers normally.

What she's able to discern of the structure and the plant life around her suggests that in its present state it's perfectly coherent matter, though the plants seem to be built to mimic normal CO₂ / oxygen respiration rather than properly photosynthesizing.  Everything looks like it's built up out of proper compounds and molecular bonds that aren't reliant on being externally sustained, but they seem more like they've been assembled by God's own 3D printer rather than grown organically.

OOC: 19:44, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 20 using 2d6+14 ((3,3))

Smoke Alarm footed out of the talkiphone box and outlooked around her in mazement at the cartoony not-real-ness of the place. It even skipped right over her unboldness at being in the great outdoors. But was she really even in the great outdoors, if she was really in a picturespout, when everything was made-up? Mayhaps not. 'Icehot!' she gasped. 'It really is a wallscrawl world... Vinsen! Is this the place you were lost in?'
This message was last edited by the player at 02:35, Sun 03 Mar 2019.

Vinsen is peering cautiously out through the door of the police box.

"This is it; you got us here," he says, an unspoken I hope we can still make it back. beneath his words.  He points up at the structure towering above them.  From this distance, Smoke Alarm and Trav can see that the ruby-colored surface is made up of thousands of interlocking planes, like a many-faceted jewel.  "The others, the people from the base, said that was the home of the lord that rules this place, maybe the one that was bringing us all here to start with."

With that simple show-and-tell, Smoke Alarm's wonder suffered a sudden wipe-out, like running into a wall or hitting the ground too hard. 'The lord?' she repeated blankly, asking unbravely 'Is it a caretaker? Or a great architect?' Her outlook became as clear as clean glass. This was a made-up, built place, all the way down to the grass, no rough and messy bits anywhere. Mayhaps this wasn't a wallscrawl world. Mayhaps this was a blank-walls world.

"Not a great architect, more like a great fingerpainter. See, my people made worlds like this all the time. We call it block transfer mathematics. Sweet Boy himself is made out of that math. But when we designed things, we made sure it didn't look like the Lego movie. See, when we careen through time the math that makes up Sweet Boy keeps us safe, like a nice woven carpet. This stuff, though, seems literally like someone is... just fooling around. Like a big gigantic wallscrawl. The technology isn't weird to me, it's the aesthetic, but it matches what we know about the Warpsmiths of Phaidon. My people the Time Lords were all harumph and serious in their architecture - even I was when I built my Genesis Arks. This seems more like play - someone seeing if they can do something."

Trav sticks her foot out, and upon testing the "soil", takes a few steps out of the TARDIS.

"Remember, someone was trying to erase the writings of Raccalan and the Warpsmiths. Whoever made this place and lives here could be in great danger. In addition to getting Research Station Hecate's people home, we have to warn them."

She calls back to the guests. "My friends, if you'd feel safer in my ship, please feel free to stay. If we're not back in 24 hours, just hit the big red button on the console, and my virtual agent Chibi will come on line and take you back home. However, our aim is to find the rest of your people and have a very crowded TARDIS taking your comrades home." She aims her sonic towards the panel, setting up a scanning sequence for Sweet Boy's sensors to thoroughly analyze this place while they are gone as well as plot the way back home.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:47, Sun 03 Mar 2019.

'Made of math?' Smoke Alarm repeated dully, her blue-haired head whirling with the ideas. To her, math was just numbers on a page she didn't have knowhow of back at the school. But if it could move Lego blocks around and wallscrawl whole places like this, she would have paid more attention. Mayhaps. She still wasn't so egg-sure about the lord or great finger-painter though. 'Is this mathemagic safe?'

Deciding to test out this mathemagic, Smoke Alarm hopped (first one leg, then the other) and jumped, testing the gravity and hardness of the grass. She might not have knowhow of block transfer mathemagic, tetchnology, and warpsmithing, but she had the knowhow to move, and move well. Figuring it had been too many ticktocks since she'd really moved, Smoke took off, running at a tree at all speed, then footed up off the trunk, flipping right over in an arc of blue.

"Maybe this is just a proof of concept." Stanley says as he exits the TARDIS and enters this strange, constructed 'world'. Trav may not be impressed, but Stanley cannot even begin to imagine the amount of resources needed to build or create something like this. "A sketch before they fill in all the details."

"I suppose that all depends," says Murcheson.  "Where are you going?  Our missing people are here, somewhere, according to Mr. Vinsen.  How do you intend to find them?  I imagine you'll have an easier time persuading Commander Alston that you're on the level, if some of us come with."

Gravity seems to work as expected here, perhaps a little lighter than Smoke is used to.  The grass is weird and springy, and it actually makes Smoke a little less disturbed by the open spaces because it reminds her of a carpet.

"You are a brave bunch. Mr Murcheson, why don't you and, if he's feeling up to it, Mr Vinsen, join us? Mr Vinsen, I wouldn't fault you if you wanted to stay back here, but you know this place better than any of us."
This message was last edited by the player at 07:25, Tue 05 Mar 2019.

Carpet-grass, the way it should be.

Following her hop-skip-jump freerunning, Smoke Alarm footed back to the others and made a whirling forward flip on the way, taking advantage of the slightly lower gravity. 'Mayhaps this is where Kalath cameout?' she proposed as she skidded to a stop-sign. She pointed to the high obelisk beside the lake, added 'I think she'd be outgoing to the tower. It's whereabouts I'd be outgoing anyhow.' They'd both grown up in ruined cities and tower blocks after all.

Trav nods. "Right-o." Out comes the phone. Does Kalath show up on her GPS, since Sweet Boy is here? She of course follows Smoke Alarm.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:08, Tue 05 Mar 2019.

Smoke's suggestion makes sense. The obelisk looks like a place someone would head to find out. Stanley follows Trav and Smoke, keeping an eye on Mr Murcheson, Mr Vinsen and/or whoever else came along.

"O-okay," says Vinsen.  "I'll come."  To Smoke Alarm he still sounds unbrave, but then a Kang is as a Kang does.  Murcheson gives a more decisive nod to Trav's invitation.


Kalath's phone registers, all right.  But the tracking function shows it in the middle of a tiny splotch of terrain, separated from the environs of Trav and the others by some kilometers of black terra incognita.

Smoke Alarm eyespied the talkiphone's picturespout. 'Is that her she-are-here?' she tried, really tried. 'Mayhaps I knowhow to track back to her.' Taking the talkiphone and turning it around, Smoke Alarm tried to orient herself and the map to the vast park around them, and find a route to Kalath. But it was tricky, without any neat straight-line carrydoors and streets to guide her, with instead messy, wide-open, non-flat great-outdoors parks where anything could be in the way and anything could lurk, like dogs or cleaners. 'We'll have to outgo thru the icky black stuff.'


OOC:
14:21, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 15 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 2,4.  awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Sense of Direction(2).

Trav of course trusts the wise Kang to do the right thing, and lets her work with the phone.

Smoke Alarm is astonished to realize, as she starts walking with Trav's talkiphone in hand, that the map on the screen starts to fill with color-coded terrain as she moves, and as she peers closely in it she sees at the center of the newly-filled bits a tiny blue pixellated figure.

Looking up to get her bearings she judges that kalath is gong to be thataway, up over a rise beyond the obelisk, where she can see the trees growing thicker.

She went footing off with the others playing follow-the-leader. 'It's okay, the black stuff is outgoing away anyhow.' Smoke reassured them. She squinted at the pixelly blue figure. 'And that must be my you-are-here. Kalath outlooks to be in the trees, not in the tower yet.'