Nic kept shifting his attention between the surrounding area and the airship above, trying to make sure nothing was going to threaten the people near him that he was trying to protect...but also wanting to make sure Phoenix was going to be okay, as he saw the first new guy pop out and take flight. He didn't like not being up there to help, but he was hurt.

After reappearing on the ground with his last evacuee, the older man regards the descending ship with some concern, and briefly ponders going back.  But the flaming man's instructions were clear, and he seems to know what he is doing... and the older man can sense his laughter amidst the flames of the doomed airship.

Of course, what will become of the forest where the flaming wreckage crashes?  But that must wait, for there are folks in need of healing...

The older man regards Nic and the airship victims with mundane and empathic and danger senses, attempting to discern the best triage prioritization.  But he was uncertain whether or not he could even help with the unique afflictions of the airship victims...

He turns to Nic.

"Would you like me to see what I can to for your wounds?"

UPDATE!

 Away from the fray, Davin hears something familiar, an emotional tone he hadn't felt since earlier that day. It was an emotion only a being can have that has lived for hundreds of years already. It is a bit of melancholy mixed with an edge of apathy. It felt like someone from home. In the noise and confusion of the airship, Davin had nearly missed that one of the people that'd been saved was one of his kinsmen. They were among the unconscious so it was difficult to suss out the identity of the owner without closer and more careful examination. What brought the person aboard this ill-fated airship was perhaps a new mystery. As well as someone else that was approaching the group below, one of the surviving soldiers of the airship.

 Outreach feels a pang of danger from across the snow-covered pasture. At the fence line, he felt danger approach, he'd often found these days that there seemed to be low levels of danger all around. The lucky four Outreach originally teleported seemed as though they were doing the best of everyone present, aside from Outreach himself. Cursory examinations revealed Nic with deep lacerations on his chest, though he wasn't losing much blood. The silvery-scaled woman was still unconscious and though she moved little and her breathing was ragged, she bore no wounds. Much like the last, the dark-skinned man seemed to be reacting with the inhaled gas very poorly.

 Nic feels a hum when he gets close to any of the four with Helen. It's like the hum of a radio that has found an AM channel on dead air, it's a quiet hum of sound, but it feels weirdly like an in-tune choir. His shard is even making it's own hum from Nic's perspective. Each of them look at you at nearly the same time as if each of them is also feeling this. The cyber lad's human hand begins to glow and he slumps to the ground, the young man looked asian with shoulder length black hair and the beginnings of a pencil mustache beginning to grow in, now that you can see him more clearly. Right now his face stares at the glowing spot on his hand uncertainly.

 Phoenix screams at the creatures as fire engulfs the entire section vaporizing it within seconds, an area around him simply combusts, but that wasn't the end. The frame of the craft survives, albeit a smoldering wreckage on a rapidly decellerating arc of flight. The entire craft rolls as it sheds it's blimp disguise, but the exposed dimensional harnesses crackle and sizzle as they rake the forest below in a line of crackling forest fire. It completes rotation and as the nose hits something, the craft snaps in half and that front half explodes, sending the second half ejected by concussive force of the magnetic field failure. Disintigrating as it rushes upward at several gees was enough to test anything's mettle. The Phoenix image ironically froze like a static afterimage in the sky, at an event horizon. Phoenix created a singularity in that moment, two atoms fused and the resulting plasma erupts into a miniature super-nova, the back half is washed away with a flash of light. A shockwave rolls across the hills and forests in the area. By the time it reaches the rescued, it is nothing more than a strong breeze and a fluttering of clouds overhead. But over the ridge, everyone could see the tiny mushroom cloud rising already...and everyone's ears are bleeding.

(OOC: Phoenix, lets discuss what's next for you.^c^)

Davin screeched and went into a dive heading towards the group of survivors, red energy gathering at his wingtips as he accelerated towards the ground. Several quick back wing strokes slowed his momentum above the ground and he transformed back to his more normal shape, the red diffuse energy now around his hands as he landed crouching on the ground next to the survivors.

Nic was distracted a bit but the two simultaneous things happening. He restrained the urge to reach up towards the sliver, to touch his forehead, scratch at, or whatever. But he could feel the connection, the hum. It was...disturbing.

But the crashing of the airship drew his gaze away even as he said absently "Stay calm. We'll sort this out."

He raised a hand to shield his eyes a little reflexively as things started flashing and blasting, even though they weren't that close. He frowned, hoping Phoenix made it off, but not wanting to leave the rescued people alone.

He hesitated but then turned back to them. "Try to stay calm. What's your name?" to the Asian man.

UPDATE!

 As the light begins to die down, the fires on the ridge begin to slow their burn in the deepening chill of the night. Everyone seems to be caught up in the moment, but the five slivers seem to be caught up in something altogether different. The line of debris however still smoldered and in some places, Davin could sense no other surviving minds in the near vicinity. A smattering of hamlets and farmhouses dot the countryside but here in the foothills of the Alps, there were few sizeable populations.

 The Asian young man with the machine arm looked up from the glowing light, his accent was Japanese but he'd learned English. He furrows his brow, a sheen of sweat apparent on his face even in the cold darkness, he was trying to maintain his calm, "I'm Tagusa Cho, what...is this?"

 The light continued to gain potency as well, the frail man suddenly cries out, his own hand beginning to shine as well.

 Nearby the unconscious scaled woman and the dark blue-skinned man lay fitfully in the snow. There was no physical way of speeding up their recovery, but the man oozed decades of life, a feeling that Davin had grown accustomed to. Fortunately, Davin could easily gain access to their thoughts, should he wish it. Upon closer examination of the man showed black inked tattoos that marked him as one of the Wayfarers of the dark lands, though he appeared to be basically human.

Nic shook his head, one eye squeezed shut after the blast, mouth opening and closing as he tried in vain to pop his ears. He shook his head one more time, blinking several times as he tried to clear things out.

He looked at the now-named young man. He gave a small nod and smile. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Nic Raines."

He hesitated, "Well...so....there's a much longer explanation, but...Here let me see if I can help you..."

He reached out and attempted to...drain off the light energy or cause it to dim.


18:14, Today: Luminary rolled 88 using 1d100.  Light Control?
This message was last edited by the player at 21:50, Tue 17 Aug 2021.

Davin gave a cursory glance at the others before moving to his own kin. Dropping down so he was kneeling above the man's head, he reached out and brought his hands to hover near the sides of the man's head. Then he made contact and reaching deep he started to read his memory of events and send reassurances that a fellow was with him - lesser tendrils reached out to the other survivors and started to listen to their thoughts too.

The older man watched as the ship exploded, stretching forth both mundane and extraordinary senses in an attempt to discern what had happened to the man he had left behind...

When he turned to the others, he noted that everyone's ears were bleeding, on top of the other injuries received thus far.

It seemed that, despite his wounds, Nic was otherwise occupied, as were the others.

But his danger senses suggested that not all of the danger had passed...

He extended his empathic senses toward the direction of the approaching danger, as well as toward his preoccupied companions.

"I sense danger approaching.  Shall I move us to a safer place?"

"If so, please gather together quickly.  I can transport from two heavier to four lighter people at a time..."

Davin only glanced quickly at the newcomer and then out and around without moving his hands from around the head of the man he was kneeling over. "Can you tell in which direction?"

The older man nods, and points across the snow-covered pasture...

"Did you see anything approaching from that direction as you flew down to us?"

UPDATE IN THE PASTURE!

 Outreach feels outwardly with his empathic senses and finds some comfort in a strange blanket of emotion over the area as if Phoenix's last emotion was that of triumph. It was short-lived however because he felt a "cold-will" helpfully pinpointed by his Danger-Sense, also amongst the forest and fast approaching. Only an emotion of cold-blooded determination as if a remorseless entity stalked towards them.

 Davin knocked metaphorically and found the mind of the dark-skinned man almost inviting. He wandered the landscape of his mind easily, searching out where his memories lay locked behind the fog of its subconscious layers. Here he heard familiar sounds, creatures the man had encountered in the past. Finally, he found a clearing in the fog and the forest of his earliest sensations. Here he found the path of the man's life. As Davin walked it, he found he could easily skip past his early days and decades if he wished and find the most pivotal points in the man's life, his identity. In this way, he quickly ascertains that he was the illegitimate son of a Duke, within the realm of Day, forty years old now, but his face didn't look over twenty in human years. His illegitimacy made him something to hide and get out of the way, and as such, he'd been forced into an academy of martial mages, then given several posts as a magister. Finally, he was cast out by his master, bestowed a quest to search out new magic from the multiverse. Once upon the Earth Realm, he'd spend years tracking down Tibetan monasteries, traveling to lost lands, and even to fantastic hidden treasures from other worlds, from other eras. He was about to find the entrance to the inner world, a land somewhere inside of the Earth when he was hunted by the Golden Dawn, and in the end, captured. They had experimented on him, cut him open, and exposed him to many terrible things that no being should be exposed to by another. He lay there, raspy breathing, slowly dying. Nathius of the House of Dawn had been hunted down by a militant cult called the Golden Dawn. Completely ironic.

 Davin peripherally notices the other survivor's minds, the scaled woman was actually from a Mediterranean island near Greece for instance. The four with Nic, including Helen, Togusa, Philip, and Tanya, each had the sound of a tuning fork running through their thoughts. However, each of them had been involved in some sort of explosion, perhaps the huge explosion that took place in Tunguska. The explosion had implanted a sliver of some sort of metal, which each of them had been told was meteor shrapnel. Over recent weeks, the shards had begun to speak to one another after a fashion. Through these individuals, the shards had exercised great power. They were thinking about these events now, as the light began to emanate from their palms.

 Nic watched as each of them began to sprout lights in the palm of their hands now. Helen gasped in surprise as her own palm even lit up to her own surprise and wonder. The emaciated man and woman both nodded at Nic, "Tanya," and the man simply, "Philip."

 Each of their lights begins to join the bit that Nic was siphoning off of. Soon Nic has a sizeable quantity of the accumulated light as Nic felt his shard assert itself, taking some control of the formation that was developing before them. Suddenly a flash, as Helen's eyes begin to glow too, a voice that was not Helen's comes out, deep and resonant with a metal scratching sound like a phonograph record, "Tau, Imoteh, Omikron: Light failing, seeking champions, incursions imminent, five in one to free us of earthly moorings, five in one to take it home."

 The light from the five seemed to be growing brighter, and from the far edge of the pasture they were in, a voice boomed out as a figure made its way through the trees. "STOP!" A simply gargantuan man who stood easily eight foot tall stalked up to the fence through the foliage. Davin was puzzled, he found this man to be a complete blank spot telepathically and Cornelius found only the malaise of remorseless determination edged with a steel will.


(OOC: IF you are going to participate in the possible melee developing, you'll need to roll initiative. Otherwise, you may all try to flee...)
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:58, Thu 19 Aug 2021.

There was some talk happening nearby, and it could be very important...but something else had Nic's full and undivided attention at that moment - and he didn't so much hear the names of the other two with slivers when they introduced themselves as he just knew them, felt them, as if they were part of him, or he was part of them, or they were just all part of some whole.

A whole? Or a hole? Pieces of a whole. A hole in his mind, his soul.

"I..." Another person's palm lit up. "I...can't..." The fourth person's palm lit up. "...there's..." His own palms were glowing brightly as well he noticed finally.

The buzzing inside head, the ringing noise, was so loud then, it was hard to think, hard to be an individual. And then something else spoke, not Helen, not Nic, and it was familiar yet alien. It spoke of things Nic didn't understand, yet felt he should.

But something or someone else was coming, and wanted them to stop. Nic - his eyes blazing with light, palms burning with light barely contained - turned slowly to look at this new arrival, head titled slightly to one side.

22:55, Today: Luminary rolled 7 using 1d100.  Initiative (in case it's necessary).

With a silent prayer, the older man looked from the extra-large foe to the others, rapidly assessing how best to either transport as many others at once as possible to safety, or to try to dissuade the foe...

RPoL Dice Roller:

22:56, Today: Outreach rolled 59 using 1d100+20.  Initiative.

Davin leans down and speaks softly, "Lór-o Aur a Dú. Post hi gwanur. Baudh na-tul-os-at vedui." Even as he speaks he lets the thoughts echo around his dying cousin's mind soothing the pain. Red-black crystals began to form around the prone man as Davin rose to his feet, forming a bier that lifted up the figure until he rested at waist height.

OOC: Davin Mandic rolled 44 using 1d100+40 ((4)).
For those who are interested: "Dream of Day and Night. Rest now brother. Judgment is come around at last."

UPDATE!

 The pasture seems to come to life as the man on the far side of it, hops the fence with ease. As he comes closer, it becomes plain to see that the man stalking towards them was wearing some kind of "person mask" of rubber or similar material. Cold metal glinted beneath the mask's openings like the mouth and eyes. Nic felt he should know this man, and can't shake it. He was large but not like the guy from Berlin, he seemed to be powered on top of everything else though as he raises his hand and the very earth seemed to obey his command. In this instance, it catapults him towards the group.

 Nic noticed the sphere continuing to grow, the voice that'd been given them was continuing to do something. Light spread around between the five and a holographic topographical map seemed to shimmer into existence. A red flash appears to the west on the map as the view expands to greater than the continent. Somewhere deep in Russia, the red dot blipped like a warning. The view is replaced by a view of the slivers, before each person. Slowly they began to come together between them, to create a whole shard of crystalline. The lines of the puzzle pieces are healed, signifying some kind of unity.

 Outreach sees all that transpires and feels twinging danger not only from the man now but from the bunch of people with him too. Saved as they might be, he didn't think they'd do him any harm on purpose, but something was happening between them and he'd already witnessed some of them use remarkable powers...

 The faux-man shouts again as he flies through the air, "STOP!"

(OOC: Outreach, Davin, Terranean, Nic)

This message was last edited by the GM at 01:08, Fri 27 Aug 2021.

Nic turned towards the shouting newcomer - and everything outside of the five of them felt like time was moving very slowly. It wasn't really, it was just that feeling when the mental capacity far outstrips the physical, thoughts rapid firing in his brain.

Who is that man? Why does he keep yelling for us to stop? And why do I feel like I know him?

But the thoughts were washed quickly away as the sphere continued to grow. And...a map? His eyes widened as he looked at it but only for a second. Then the slivers, familiar, enveloping, joining.

As if speaking from somewhere far away, no emotional inflection in his voice, he stated the very obvious. "Something...is happening..."

As if not consciously thinking about it, his hand started to rise up as if to stop the oncoming angry earthmover.

The older man considers the scene rapidly as he prays silently.

Something is happening with the sphere folks, and the approaching man seems to want to stop it.  Therefore, transporting some subset of them away would actually assist the approaching man.

He could attempt to transport the others, but the flying man seemed to be able to take care of himself.

He could attempt to transport the approaching man, but he suspected that target might be too large to transport reliably.

Therefore, he instead reached out toward him with his empathic senses while holding out his hand commandingly...

"Halt!  Bleib jetzt stehen!^*"

RPoL Dice Roller:

23:21, Today: Outreach rolled 83 using 1d100.  Emotion Control: Submissiveness.

OOC: Ooo!  Yellow Result!  :D

^*"Stop!  Stand down now!"
This message was last edited by the player at 06:40, Fri 27 Aug 2021.

UPDATE!

 The man halts in his approach, he lands hard a few meters away from the group. The ground shakes as everyone feels the weight the behemoth carried. As he stands upright, emotions seemed to be playing out across the rubbery face mask, as if made from animatronic engineering a hundred years hence would create, so lifelike and yet, so very mechanical.

 However, the thing must possess a mind, for Outreach could feel the influence working on the machine in the shape of a man. It was wrestling with emotions, perhaps being overloaded with it, for it could not seem to express itself properly. Frustration began welling up within the consciousness.

 The fake-man speaks in a low resonant tone, almost compartmentalized from the emotional turmoil he was going through, "You five must STOP, you are sending a signal by uniting the slivers. You are calling out into the Void!"

 Nic watched as the sphere of light in his hands swells and reaches some kind of critical mass, and begins to become a little squirrelly, nearly slipping from the grasp of his powers, he needed to channel it somewhere and soon or it was gonna blow up in his face. He looks up at the other four and they are being enveloped in light, now, and beginning to join the rest of the sphere's growing pool of liquid light.

(OOC: Intiative: Outreach, Davin, Terranean, Nic

Outreach, you feel like the man is being submissive to the best of his understanding while trying desperately to retain his power of speech.)

This message was last edited by the GM at 07:20, Mon 30 Aug 2021.

Davin looked up from his study and glanced at the growing sphere of light with a growl, "You!" He was pointing at the newcomer, the teleporter. "Teleport two of them away from here, then another two in the opposite direction before we are all covered in light." Davin's left hand begin to glow faintly in black-red light as he points at the apparent human whose mind he can't read, "While he is doing that, you start talking."

The older man observed the increasingly unstable light in Nic's hands with some concern.  It looked like damage could be unleashed in a less-than-controlled fashion at any moment, and it wasn't entirely clear just how much control or awareness Nic had.

Meanwhile, the huge man appeared to be more controlled for the moment, and brought relevant tidings.  His proclamations of danger from the activity of the sliver-bearers did match the blip of his own danger sense.

Davin's urgings were similar to his own, but the most immediate need was to remove Nic alone, since anyone near Nic could be injured or killed if his unstable light exploded.

So it was that he reached to touch Nic with a silent prayer... and the two of them disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The pair of them immediately reappeared at the far corner of the pasture... only to have the older man disappear again.

And, in the blink of another eye, the older man had returned to the others...

"All right, the slivers have been separated.  Now, please explain more fully why that was necessary..."

RPoL Dice Roller:

22:13, Today: Outreach rolled 46 using 1d100.  Move Action Teleport.
22:14, Today: Outreach rolled 57 using 1d100.  Regular Action Teleport.

OOC: Woo hoo!  Green and Yellow results respectively...  :)

This message was last edited by the player at 05:42, Mon 30 Aug 2021.

UPDATE!

 IN that quick moment, Outreach blips back and forth, Outreach having removed Nic from the equation temporarily at least. Nic realized only peripherally that the scene had changed. Though his thoughts were now syncing with the others, he could feel them now in his head like the sliver sounds. However, now separated Nic felt the other's energy begin to wane in power, even begin to dissipate slowly, like a slow leak in a balloon.

 Meanwhile, the other four who'd been with Nic drop like wet blankets, unconscious it seems like.

 The man was struggling against his emotional domination, but relaxing since Cornelius had moved Nic, but it seemed that for now at least, Outreach could influence him to remain still at least, submissive. He took Davin's suggestion to heart though if not his head, the submissiveness affecting the man seemed to loosen his inhibitions as well. "I have reason to understand that they are going to send a signal beyond the bounds of Earth. I think it may be my Makers, though I have no memory of them. The Slivers react with my...engineering."

 The man does something that at first seems horrible, he removes his face starting from his mouth and he pulls back the rubbery skin from over his head like a cowl. Beneath was a metal skull, with obvious machinery making all his joints move properly. Clearly far more advanced than anything anyone in the Pasture has ever seen, except perhaps the working of the vessel they'd just bailed from.

(OOC: Intiative: Outreach, Davin, Terranean, Nic

Outreach, now you understand how and why he's experiencing such emotional turmoil. He's normally a cold husk bereft of emotions, and lacks a meaty-mind for Davin to read.)

This message was last edited by the GM at 04:23, Wed 01 Sept 2021.

The older man considered as he glanced to monitor Nic's status, as well as the status of the other sliver bearers.

He turned his gaze back to the Terranean.

"Questions...  What was the purpose of the airship that just crashed?  Why were these people imprisoned there?  How can they be cured from their current afflictions?  And what do you know of Tau, Imoteh, and Omikron?"

UPDATE!

 The metallic being nodded amiably and continued, though continual fighting for control that Outreach was experiencing, he nearly slipped off the "hook" so to speak giving up things he felt he shouldn't. "The vessel was a prototype for a new breed of flying machine, and it seemed to perform that role quite well. These people were being scrutinized for their implants. Collected as it were. However the woman Helen back there, also allowed my mentor, Zola to monitor a most fortunate set of events, the assembling of a multi-national team to investigate the source of all of this. My name is Geo and I've got no issue with you, good sirs," he gestures to Davin as well, "so please kindly leave this place, it's my last warning."

 "Tau refers to the late hour of your coming together, I believe. Omikron actually means small, which refers to the reserves of power I think. Imoteh refers to the designation of the last human they were in contact with, if I had to venture a guess I'd say Egypt, twenty-seventh venture B.C. If you wait the slivers will disappear over time, they'll run themselves out of power and that will be the end of it."

(OOC: Intiative: Outreach, Davin, Terranean, Nic)

Nic was conflicted. Confused. Too much input. He wasn't sure what was correct and what was wrong. Or could be wrong. Or might be bad. Or good. But there was the light...

"AAHH!"

...and then there wasn't. Or at least there was a lot less after a jarring disorientation and movement-without-moving. He grit his teeth, and wondered at the feel of it, the feeling of individuality still, when he was being drawn in to a whole.

"ugh."

He was angry. He was relieved. He was NIC once more. He strained to keep letting the light release gradual instead of in a full blast at the man...the masked m...metal...headed...'person'?

His first instinct was to go check on the others that had been joining with him. Or he'd been joining with them. But...he wasn't sure he wanted to start that up again. And he at least needed to wait for the energy he was holding to die down a bit. Or be used. He looked to the 'other' in the pasture.

"Do you mean to take them captive again? Do you mean to take ME captive?" He faced the being fully, the light still glowing in his hands for the moment.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:01, Wed 01 Sept 2021.