Alyn considered before typing some other commands into the prompter.


WHERE IS NEAREST RECHARAING STATION

HOW DO I OPERATE THIS MECHANICAL TITAN USING MANUAL CONTROLS

WHERE CAN WE GET A NEW SENSOR MODULE

WHERE IS THE CLOSEST LOCATION THAT MIGHT HAVE A NEW SENSOR MODULE

The Duke having seen the most important thing on the magical screen knows enough and saunters off to find those field rations. If they where so old they had to be good after all.

A little smiley-face pops up on the screen. :) HI! I'M SMILEY, YOUR ONBOARD DIGITAL HELPER! YOU SEEM TO BE TRYING TO SPELL WORDS CORRECTLY! WOULD YOU LIKE SOME HELP?

I THINK YOU MEAN: RECHARGING STATION! IS THAT RIGHT? :)

IF SO... MEMORY BANKS SAY THAT THE NEAREST RECHARGING STATION SHOULD BE APPROXIMATELY 30 KLIKS TO THE NORTH. :)

HOWEVER, SENSORS DON'T ACTUALLY DETECT THAT RECHARGING STATION WHERE IT SHOULD BE! MAYBE IT'S BEEN DESTROYED BY THE ENEMY :)




Smiley keeps helping you, since you didn't actually tell it to stop:

FOR THAT, PLEASE PROCEED UPSTAIRS TO THE HEAD! :)



HMMM... I'M NOT EXACTLY SURE ABOUT THAT, BUT MY SUGGESTION WOULD BE TO TRY THE NEAREST SUPPLY POST! GOOD LUCK! :)



THE NEAREST SUPPLY POST IS APPROXIMATELY 49 KLIKS NNW! :)

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN HELP YOU WITH TODAY? :)



The Duke finds nothing that seems particularly edible. Maybe upstairs?

Of coarse one does not store food near destructive lasers. So the Duke saunters on causually pushing against stuff theat might open and makes his way further into the giant robot to find these mysterious supplies.

Alyn grins.

SORRY CUTE SMILEY FACE...I WAS TPYING TOO FAST BEFORE. YOU SEEM TO BE FUNCTIONING A LOT BETTER THAN THE REST OF THE QUERY SYSTEM, THOUGH.

He considered.

IS THERE A WAY THAT YOU CAN REGISTER OWNERSHIP OF THIS TITAN UNIT TO MYSELF, AND ALLOW ME TO REGISTER MY FRIENDS IN SOME SORT OF ALLIED-PEOPLE LIST SO THE DEFENSES IGNORE THEM? A LOT OF TIME HAS PASSED AND I'M ALMOST CERTAIN YOUR ORIGINAL OWNER IS LONG GONE.

He figured he'd at least ask. Because this way, maybe they could get the coolest form of transportation ever! And if the thing was unable to be repaired right now they could at least prevent anyone else from accessing it and potentially accessing dangerous data. Like those seeker robots and such.

PLEASE ADVISE.

Ajakstu limps around, taking inventory and looking for a way up. He also looks for a way to secure the way back down, in the very least blocking it with some debris.

HEY, THAT'S WHAT I'M HERE FOR: FUNCTIONING! :)



(Oooooh, interesting, Alyn... roll Charming, please, I think.)


Meanwhile, The Duke finds a new set of stairs, leading up, behind a sliding door.

Meanwhile, Ajakstu blocks the way downward as best he can with the various large pieces of weaponry that The Duke ripped out of the walls.

OOC: It's a neat idea with a lot of possible implications, so I thought I'd give it a try and see what happens!

16:24, Today: Alyn Reed rolled 8 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 2,4.  Charming.

The Duke curious about those rations bravely pushes on. If the doors just open then thats it but if not he will help them with a little kick or punch.

YOU'LL NEED TO GET A COMMANDING OFFICER TO DO THAT FOR YOU... OR, YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET AUTHORIZATION IN THAT WAY AT AN AUTHORIZED BASE! SENSORS INDICATE THAT THERE'S ONE APPROXIMATELY 25 KLIKS EAST OF HERE! :)

---

Upstairs, The Duke finds what's basically a mini-barracks, with bunks and lockers and a rather confining shower.

He finds no food that's still edible...

Having blocked the stairs Ajakstu turns back to ensure the Kalsk and his companion are not trying to kill them. He also notes the absence of his meat shield.

"Perhaps a better command post at the summit?" he suggests.

The duke angrily calls down.

"No food here!! Just bedrooms. I'll look further."

And with that the Duke searches on till he reaches food or the top.

Hearing The Duke's call, Ajakstu shrugs and calls to Rake. Once his companion is perched on his shoulder he heads upwards to join The Duke.

Alyn nods and heads with the others.

"After we leave here, I want to check out this outpost thats supposedly to the East. 25 Klicks isn't that far actually with our vehicles. I wanna see if I can get this robot working potentially...but even more important, they may have food for Duke to use to restock our stores. And maybe other things of use." he said.

"I doubt it's active but the remnants of such a place could be useful to us." he added.

He followed after the others.

"And Duke? Don't forget something alive is in here somewhere and we haven't found it yet!"

When Alyn goes upstairs, Vult and Kalsk wave him over. "Maybe you could use this. I think it's maybe a portable version of the computer downstairs?" They hand him a bulky sort of black tablet-screen thing, about the height and width of a sheet of paper, but about the thickness of 200 sheets of paper. They've already turned it on, revealing a touch-screen keyboard and a waiting cursor.

When The Duke goes upstairs, he finds that he's in the Doomwalker's head... Two eyes look out onto the landscape, their glass or whatever used to enclose them now broken-- they're wide open, not that there's any real breeze out there.

Inside the head (or "bridge," I guess, really?), there are chairs and instrument panels for one to three pilots to operate the Doomwalker.

(The Duke, roll Insightful, please...)

ooc: Well so much for that. But that xp gives me a lvl. It took so long i have to look where my advances are hidden.

 01:19, Today: The Duke rolled 6 using 2d6+1 with rolls of 3,2.  Insight.

Before The Duke realizes it, he's under attack.

Little bugs are fluttering down from the ceiling and... affecting... his... mind... everything seems to... slow... down... like... he's... under... ...water...

(The Duke, roll 2d6+1.

Since your Insightful and your Scary/Weird are at the same level, you'll roll the same thing whether you try to fight back physically (because that's not possible right now in a Forceful way-- you'll have to use Scary/Weird) or to resist mentally (Insightful)...)

The Duke roars and starts lashing about like a madman howling in fury and frustration as the little bugs are to small so simply smash between his massive hands and most of them simply fly off between his fingers after the hit.

ooc: Someone has a can of raid? The Duke cant do it alone the poor thing.

10:48, Today: The Duke rolled 6 using 2d6+1 with rolls of 4,1.  Atrocity.

The Duke is affected by the bugs, who go on nibbling on his mind...

(The Duke takes no damage yet, but does have a -1 ongoing penalty to all rolls while he's under attack... and it could get worse if allowed to continue...)

Downstairs in the upper torso, everyone else hears The Duke (very slowly, to their ears) howling in fury... It's a song that sings a slow droning dirge of frustration, a whale's cry of glacial distress...

Upon hearing the disconcerting noise from above, Ajakstu turns to Alyn.

"So, I am assuming that your mental powers allow you to see what is going on up there without any of us actually going up there?"

"Thanks Vult and Kalsk." Alyn said as he took the tablet/ipad thing.

Alyn nodded at Ajak.

"Yes...if I focus correctly. But I think I'm just going to go up there and try some pyrokinesis or something on what's eating him and see what happens. Hopefully I don't blow us all up or something. I don't do this often. But you're a lucky sort of guy so I'm sure we'll be fine..." Alyn said as he headed up the stairs to the Duke.

Then he saw the bugs.

"Oh brother!" he exclaimed as he saw the horde of bugs.

He prepared to actually try some pyrokinesis like he was joking about, but was afraid he might hurt Duke in the cross fire. Then he decided to try something else. What could his new powers actually all do? Really...he was still unsure and pushing his boundaries every day to try and learn more.

He wondered to himself. These bugs were surprisingly well-coordinated and had some interesting effects on those they attacked. Could he use his mental powers to take into this buggy connection and win them over or even make them submit to him, he wondered? He never tried something quite like THIS before.


16:55, Today: Alyn Reed rolled 12 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 4,6.  Charming.

Alyn is attempting to mentally hack into the bugs' hivemind, and if he rolls well enough to actually hi-jack/subvert it and try and tame them as their swarm-king or some such.

"I am the luckiest boy in the world, much luckier than you," Ajakstu recited as if from a script.


22:22, Today: Ajakstu Gul rolled 5 using 2d6 with rolls of 1,4.  LUCK! Alas, the universe hates this heroic paragon

The duke roars in slow motion and keeps slapping at the bugs like a frenzied victim of a wasp attack. The Duke had no flight instinct only fight and he was as violent as he could to these bugs and anything nearby.

ooc: Keep being mean even in slowmotion ;-)

10:21, Today: The Duke rolled 8 using 2d6 with rolls of 6,2.  Keep stomping on the things (Atrocity -1).
This message was last edited by the player at 20:56, Sat 05 Mar 2022.

Alyn tries to access the... the mind-moths, his brain fills in, and the first round is a standoff, but one where Alyn has the advantage. He breaks into the mind-moths' mind-space with ease... They attack him psychically... but fail to harm him at all.

Sensing another mind like his and The Duke's (okay, not exactly like his, and no one's mind is like The Duke's, but, you know, maybe sort of the same or similar species), a large section of the mind-moths swarm down and attack Ajakstu, kind of physically but mostly psychically. Maybe they'll take over this guy, they think, and make him attack his allies...

Rake thinks mind-moths are yummy, though. He crawls excitedly around his human's head and shoulders, munching them as fast as he can... which isn't all that fast, however, there's so many of them.

Meanwhile, The Duke manages to crush some of the bugs. Not all. Not even most. But an impressive amount. Say 25%. But the fewer there are, the harder it is for him to keep swatting them, because they get more spread out...

(Ajakstu gets 1 new XP, but comes under mind-moth attack.

Roll Insightful, Ajakstu. The results will determine if you start attacking your friends, and if so how effectively, or if you just take Harm... (In other words, you're not gonna like the results, but how much will you not like them, and in what way or ways...?))

"Go Rake!" Ajakstu shouts. Then, as the moths swarm him, "I can see through time!"

22:41, Today: Ajakstu Gul rolled 9 using 2d6+1 with rolls of 2,6.  Insightful.