The gate closes, the order energy quite effective as reinforcing up the walls between realities, a good thing too as something truly horrifying and nightmarish was about to come through. It turns it's attention to Jack a this point and starts launching it's quills at him, including the quills with suffering people impaled on them.

Regardless how he deals with the people sent his way, inhaling the order seams to do the job, the mech starts to rust and brake down as brakes and systems fail. When it finally fails and the horror that is the large spirit of pain and darkness starts to leave it, Jack has absorbed plenty of Order to breath back onto it and calcify it like he had done the smaller spirits it had summoned.... Another statue for the graveyard.

Jack reaches up his hands and using good ol' cartoon logic, pushes the three heads together into one, adding some red and green scales to the sides of his Order head. Annihilating the remainder of the mecha-monster, he brings out his halberd and smashes it down on the remains of the broken monster. Leaving nothing to recover.

Only when that is done does he fly back to the woman he'd been talking with earlier.

"What now?" he asks as he lands and starts to shrink back down to normal person size.

Once free of the pain the people free and heal themselves in various ways.

Jack found the woman trying to start the rig back up, it supttering and trying to start but the engine failing to catch resulting in some cursing from her.

"What? ... Oh hu? You beat that thing?" She shrugs. "I don't know, do what ever you want... You could head to the park and check out some of the various warps and see what suits you the most. Or if you still looking for a fight you could head to the table. Something tells me your not to keen on Down though.."

 Oh, were there still alive people there?! Jack takes the time to use Order magic to put them all back together!

“I mean, what can I do to improve things for you people before some random circumstance comes along and kills me and sends me to another universe,” he explains and looks up at the sky. Maybe he could use his blacksmithing skills to repair the sky? Or find their insantiator thing and fix that?

She stands up and stretches her back out. "Eh kid, I know you got retconed but your really not getting it.... this place is just the way it is, there isn't much changing it... least not for good or any big changes on your own. You got to work with people to make any big changes. People come here because they like it when life kicks them in the balls now and again... they don't want to live some easy cushy ass life. They want the sweat and grease on there hands. IF you want to help some one, find some one who this place kicked them a little too hard or where shits hit the fan. That or find some one doing some art project and help them see it through." She laughs "IF you want to help me you can help me figure why this piece of shit won't start so I can get back to my art, kicking the fucking ass of anyone zip who thinks there faster than me. But hell you will find your place"

She draws a circle with a dot in the middle in the sand "If your helmets got a standard interface it should see the mirror to the park with that symbol.... any mirror with that will get you back to the hub. Take a tour, see how you feel.... just stay out of strange."

Jack looks at the conveyance and remembers the effect that his order breath had on the other machines. “I believe I can fix it,” he tells her and pulls out his halberd and starts to use Order to heal the machine. Tapping it a few times to get its parts all running again, he keeps prodding on it until it starts working.

She seams exstactic about it. "Aw crash, you even fixed the gridshaman steel glyphs that ward off the rust of this place." Jack's actions do seam to have activated a few order magics over the vehicle that are protecting it from the entropy. "Saved me a trip .... shit... you fixed them better than one of them did." She laughed. "Maybe you should hang out with them, there off in the silicon woods, defiantly got the makings of one hell a shaman of steel. I'm guessing you not to skilled with spark drives then though are you? This thing could use a big more of a kick..." You could guess she might be talking about the power supply? It was a compact punk-hazard zero point device giving off a fair amount of chaotic energy..... not the safest means to power a vehicle but it likely made it go quite fast.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:49, Mon 25 Apr 2022.

“No, I have no need for a carriage, I just use magic to get around most places so far,” Jack answers with a smile and then nods a bit. “These Shamans, can you introduce me? I’d love to learn their magic,” he says enthusiastically. Warding off Chaos? He could do wonders with that, he could probably fix this place with the right warding sigils. Or given some time, maybe he could invent some.

She rolls her eyes some. "Psssshhh I only go to them to to get some steel wards thrown up so my baby goes a bit longer with out a need for maintenance. I don't really know them, I just get there help. Most don't even ask for art or info for it.... don't know if they are stupid or just good folk." She shrugs getting in her vehicle. "Just look for them in the big building near the silicon forest.... only damn forest out here that isn't fucking dying. Can't miss it."  Jack had seen a forest of 'trees' made of metal, wires, machines, and solar panels.

“Oh, okay, well, thanks for the information, car-lady. See you around if you head that way to get your stuff re-marked,” Jack says.

Jack then indicates the direction he’d seen the ‘forest’ and once he has confirmation, he nods his dragon head and recasts his various buffs on himself. Just in case, and grows to a proper size for flying. Then he takes off in that direction.

"Car lady... cute, It's Madilne cutie. Got to catch up with the others." She closes the door and takes off at breakneck speeds that are just way to fast for roads in the condition they are in. It seams fairly certain she will wreck if she keeps driving like that but none the less she's off before suddenly turning off road and driving more recklessly off into the distance.

He passes through a few areas where order/choas is weakened by entropy and the color fades from his scales... but it returns as he enters into more stable areas. The forest seams to be a stable area and dose have the ruins of a half collapsed skyscraper near by along with several smaller buildings. Perhaps what was once some kinda research complex considering there look and the forest by them.  The forest has a few mechanical/silicon based life in it to go with the tree's and the buildings seam to be used as hosing and one as a temple of sorts for a group of tribal humanoids. They have various degrees of implants though Jack questions there usefulness... many look more for spiritual or aesthetic reasons. Such as glowing wires weaved through there skin. While most are humanoid few are actually human... most are alien to him.

(Think Sylens from the Horizon games: https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Sylens )

There also a handful of rats hanging out with the humanoids helping out.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:08, Mon 25 Apr 2022.

Landing, Jack turns himself into a normal human in fitting with those he’d seek as teachers and walks forward, looking for someone who looks like they know what they’re doing, something related to their shaman skills. When he finds someone that fits that description in his mind’s eye, he speaks out, “Excuse me, I’d like to learn how to work your magics, is there anyone here that can teach me?”

And older man laughs some as he sits smoking a pipe. "Can one truely teach another art?" He looks up with a smile "We can only guide one who chooses to listen to find what art they already know with the lessons we share."

"Sounds great! I'm ready to listen," Jack says with a smile and seems to be listening to whatever the old man has to say. Thinking of how he looks with his wizard hat, the young looking wizard wonders if he could pull off smoking a pipe as well. He'd look wizardly, but perhaps a bit absurd, since he's so fresh faced. Maybe he should grow a beard. Nobody would know how young he looks then.

He don't have a wizard hat, he's bald with a bit of skull showing actually with some chips and implants directly onto the exposed skull. But he dose have a beard. "Well a good place to start is the primary forces of the universe. There are three grate forces that govern and create all things: Spark; Steel; and Rust. We gridshamans practice the way of the spark, steel, and rust... and are often attuned to one of these forces." He took in a deep long draw of pipe and blew out creating a fog of multi colored smoke that shifted and swirled about chaotically in the air. "The spark is the, well, spark of creation. The eruption of life energy that explodes forth into existence with out form it is the inspiration that drives us. But the spark has no form no shape of it's own... it is life with out meaning or with out purpose on it's own." the swirling clouds start to take shape earth forming, vines growing, buildings rising in the smoke until a city scape rises up out of it. "The steel is the order that gives life shape and meaning, guides it into a form that lasts long enough to remember itself. The order allows life to function in forms that can be maintained and understood but when order is to strong..." the plantlife starts to die out as machines spread and take over, the city becomes more advance but life soon disappears from the scene until the city grinds to a near stop besides a algorithmic repeating pattern of movement in machines and light. "The life the spark brings dies out and there is only stagnation and stasis. This is why there is the rust... entropy works to brake down the forces replacing them with the other seeing that one dose not become so strong that life can not exist.... the rust keeps the system in balance."  the machines brake down, crash into each other and the buildings crumble, and life slowly starts to reclaim the land.

The smoke show drifts apart as he looks off into the distance. "No one is quite sure why the rust has become such a crushing force here... but it is not something that would smother out life here. Maybe the ancients tried to dominate the rust rather than shape it and this is there punishment..... but this is the way of things here and there is a balance to it."

Jack watches and says, “How interesting. I’m not certain that we have that sort of problem in every universe, but that certainly seems to be the case here,” and idly thinks about the nature of his Spark and Steel. He’d need to really dig deep to learn how to use Rust, since he’s an Order Mage, but he can probably do it if he tries hard enough.

"You could make for a talented steel shaman, the steel spirits would listen to you call." He sits back and takes another draw. "Everything has a spirit, though most things the spirits are weak and asleep unaware of there own existence.... The older and more important something is the more likely it is the spirit is awake. There some up in Top that say when something is owned and loved for 101 years it's spirit awakens. Such beliefs help make it so, as dose the care for it. " He offers you the pipe, sharing it with you. The helmet shows it is some sort of drug, rather similar to marijuana only a bit stronger and slightly hallucinogenic. If you turn him down he just takes another draw on the pipe and ether way he continues. "We don't so much do magic but command the sleeping spirits, and make requests of the awake ones. Or guide them to be bound into objects. With some help another spirit can temporarily rest in the physical form of another if you give a point for them to rest. It helps if you add material to the object in question for it to bind to. This more powerful spirit can lend it's powers to the object creating a fetish, an object imbued with spiritual power."  He nodds to some one who is in a trance. "Some even make very temporary bounds to create thorns, weak and lose fetishes that only last a single use.... for even such things as enhancing drugs for a spirit quest." There was some weird magic around the drug the guy in a trance had used but it was fading.

Jack listens to how it is done and nods slowly in understanding, receptive to the lessons about how this spirit based magic works. It seems odd to his way of thinking, to rely on spirits to do things.

*Jack learns Spiritual Shaman of Steel, Rust and Spark*

(Saizho too if the writer is fine with that, though it won't level easly)

The man explains that he is best to start working with awoken steel/order spirits that he can deal with. Offering up some of there spiritual energy or to compleate tasks for them that they can not in exchange to them to teach some of there power or a task from them. He tells Jack controling sleeping order spirits will be easier for him when he's able to sense there and his own spiritual energy.  Rust shamanism will be harder for him, and he will find the spark to be the hardest as his tendency for steel is so strong.

He notes "Spirits treat those that aproch them with respect and that offer up gifts, making offerings for there services much more appealing than those that might try and be forceful... even when controlling a sleeping spirit offering up your energy to it and using a guiding hand rather than a forceful one is best. Being forceful may get results but you will find more and more resistance as the spirits turn on you.

He offered an drug after altering it in a way that added a fair amount of order energy to it. He laughed a little "You are young and seam to wish to learn quickly, it's the equivalent of diving into the deep end before you know how to swim.... but this will help you learn to sense spiritual energies.... it will put you on a spirit quest and you will be aware of things more as they are, you may even enter the spirit world. But we will be here watching you. So it won't matter even if you don't have a recent backup."

If Jack isn't comfortable with a drug he offers to get people together for a ritual but it will take a little longer. Drugs are just a part of the culture in the mess as they have little long term affects that can't be countered by the instantiator system.

"I'm willing to try," Jack says.

The ritual / drugs help exspand Jacks senses and he starts to see the spirits in things and around him. Old buildings draped in old fadding strands of order like spider webs as spirits moved about, tending to them trying to keep them from collapsing, while other spirits fed on the strands causing them to strain and brake away. There feeding releasing small burst of chaos to balance things out that weak plant spirits desperately took in. He could see the air sparkling with the life of the weak sleeping spirits of the nanites. And he could feel the entropy in the area....

But the more he felt the more he could feel an underlying chaos, shifting and flowing and as he looked on it the rest seamed to fade away as under it all he saw a purple sea of sands with jaged crystals rising out of it and a large multi faceted crystal hanging over head like a moon/sun in the sky. Though the more he looked the more the sands under his feet seamed like broken up crystals tiny as they where he could see into there facites ... he could see his own reflection and a scene playing out before him... one drawing him in.

Then a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him, making him stagger back and to his senses. He was no longer with the shamans or the strange entropic dystopia but in the purple sanded exspance fully and it seamed real to him as anything else. "Are you crazy?!?" A nine foot tall Jackal man in Arabian garb asked him. "You do realize your trying to ingage in a spirit quest, a very intense dream like vision, while you are inside an intense dream vision... inside ANOTHER PERSONS dreams." He just looks at Jack dumbfounded. "Look I know that dreamseption movie was popular and everything but this kinda behavior is dangerous. I know a lot of young magi come to the asteral realm or play around with oneiromancy because they think poking around is safe place to learn and train, but the dreamtime is not as safe a place as one would think.... we should get you back to your own dream."

The perception of spirits in things is interesting, and he wonders how common that is. Not very, he surmises, on a multiversal level, though he's always open to surprises. At the arrival of the Jackal to expel him from the dream-dream-dream, he looks up in consideration.

"I just wanted to learn something, but I suppose I did get to see spirits a bit more clearly. So, at least I saw something while I was here," Jack says to the Jackal-man and lets himself get shoved back to wakefulness.

The man rises up to the vast crystal like sun/moon and he shows a face of the crystal for jack to touch. "This will lead you back to your dream." If he is paying attention he notices a faint sliver strand of light leading from the crystal to him, which is likely how he found the spot to take him.

When Jack returns to his dream it's quite easy to wake up when ever he wants, and in the waking world still find he has the Imilexene cube in his TARDIS, and can see and talk to spirits (just about anywhere) if he tries to.