It actually takes a while for Harmonia to recognize Saul on his way past given his disheveled state but even when she does her only reaction is to sigh and shake her head as he and the mob run past to sort out whatever their own problems may be.

When Jak seems done with his exchange she comments on the whole thing.  ”That doesn't look promising, we will need to figure out why there are so many people with that kind of free time that can't get food instead.”

 Were he an actual part of their coterie, Jak may well have extended a secure protection to the fleeing would-be ecclesiarch but under the circumstances, it would be opening quite the string of difficulties if they were to interfere in a possibly justified lynching...

 ...and in any case, the authority for such intervention lies with Harmonia, to whom he queries "Does the action of the missionary not fall under your authority, and is the trigger which initiated this incident not one which interests you?"

Harmonia shakes her head sadly, then turns away from the now departing mob.  ”While I have no doubt that any forthcoming after action report will be worth reading carefully they have chosen to act without supervision and in direct opposition to the standing mission orders, so until such time as that report is filed they are no concern of mine.  We should press on as soon as the disturbance has passed.”

 "We are waiting upon the operator of the malfunctioning Cherubim. They indicated that a representative would be heading to collect us. Assuming that they will not react with automatic hostility to our arrival, remaining in this location represents the optimal path forward at this juncture." Jak replies, continuing to watch the missionary charge off into the distance with his angry followers in tow, although the Tech-priest does place his axe in the path of one of the rearmost pursuers and inquire "What was the transgression of the one you are chasing?"

The last of the pursuers goes tumbling as she trips over Jak’s axe and would have just jumped up and ran on if someone hadn’t restrained her.

When asked she does not know what a ‘transgression’ is, but once the question is rephrased she ignores it, grins with her few remaining blackened teeth and announces ”we’re gona eat im.”

The whole conversation had been difficult because she had a strange accent and a dialect that bordered on an foreign language.

While contemplating this a bus turns up. Old and a bit battered but obviously well cared for it slides to a halt beside the party and the door in the side opens. Within, where the driver would normally sit is a grey box with a human head fixed on the top and connected by many cables, wires and tubes. The inside is dripping wet and smells strongly of disinfectant and the seating is well worn sheets of perforated metal, supported by metal tubes and contoured to be comfortable for the average human. The water doesn’t matter as the party are still soaked from the traffic accident but the seats are distinctly uncomfortable to anyone who deviated even a little from what the designer thought of as an average human.
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 "Ah, then it is simply that he represents food. Good to know." Jak answers, handing over a small pack of corpse starch from their survival kit by way of 'encouragement' for the answer he's been given and then releasing them to their pursuit in order to board the bus when it arrives, explaining as he does so "The presence of cannibal groups aboard the Manufactorum will necessitate extensive purges, particularly with the risk of contamination from the Immaterium. Depending upon their extent, this may go so far as to require vacuum exposure of sections of the structure. This we will be able to discuss with the command structure when we encounter it."

When the bus shows up Harmonia is among the first to enter, unconcerned by the strange conditions and very nearly the size of an average human even including the bulk of her armor.  ”I am sure we can find ways to bait them into controlled sections of the station before that becomes important.”

The bus ride takes about an hour, traveling at a moderate speed mostly along various highways but slowing for the last twenty minuets as it navigates smaller tunnels and a more complex route. During that time there are areas that seem devoid of life or movement, others that look more like the underhive because of vandalism and gang graffiti. At one point there the road takes an arial route across a vast coal yard where machines and men are hard at work, but many more machines lay idle. Conditions are better in the narrower ‘streets’ towards the end of the trip, here there is evidence of the cleaning and maintenance that has taken place, and more activity, mostly from servitors.

In a passage that is only wide enough for one vehicle in each direction the bus finally pulls in to a dedicated stopping place where it becomes wide enough to let other vehicles pass, here a young lay servant of the mechanicus waits, an excited looking and slightly overweight boy in his late teens.

He greets you with polite informality but does manage a bit of a bow for Jak as he descends to the pavement.

”Hello, hello, this is so exciting, never thought we’d see the day, and so many of you, this way please the master is waiting , and welcome, did I say that? Welcome, this way.”

And he leads off along a side tunnel.
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 "That would be the most economical operation, although it would deny their ready collection for servitor conversion after the cleaning." Jak observes, musing over the possibility while transmitting a report back to the gun cutter team to keep them updated (he can't reach the ship from here of course, but they can) and letting his autocognitive systems keep track of where they are relative to their starting point.

 Dismounting from the conveyance, he pauses for long enough to invoke a modest blessing upon its tired machine-spirit then turns to the lay servant as his team disembarks - the two triads of specialists and his own two guards - and form up around him, before he returns the bow with a polite nod and addresses him directly "You did. But it is understandable under the circumstances that you are less familiar than you might otherwise be with diplomatic niceties."

 As he heads off, everyone (and presumably Harmonia) of course follow along.

Reading the local man's familiarity with the machine style people as a prediction of the future Harmonia lets Jak take the lead.  While it is nearly impossible for someone in any kind of regalia to blend into the background she doesn't mind the opportunity to observe and keep her eye on the surrounding area, particularly watching for people who don't fit the techie mold well enough.

The team are led to a vast gothic hall, its high, vaulted ceilings supported by ornate cast iron pillars and its walls plastered with control panels. Spherical lumens suspended by long chains spread a warm glow over and array of desks and stations manned by servitors and a few young lay assistants. There is a bustle of industry here, all it looks neat and efficient, paint is fresh, brass is polished, lenses gleam, the smell of sacred unguents hangs in the air along with a sound track of subdued voices humming machinery.

The stooped form of an ancient Magos resides on a dais across the hall, a wide range of different appendages and mechandrites protrude from the front and hem of its scarlet robe and great hanks of tubes and cable trail along the floor to various devices arrayed around it. The head that turns to greet you, is a thing of steel, brass and ceramide with dozens of lenses arrayed over a bronze grill from which comes a contemplative humm.

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This message was last edited by the GM at 18:04, Thu 17 Aug 2023.

 The supremely comforting scent of sacred unguents and blessed oils mingled with the soft crackle of electrical arcs and ozone, with the scent of polish and the soft binaric chitter of communing machine-spirits washes over Jak as they approach the dais, a celebratory paean of inquiry and greeting rolling from his personal noosphere, wrapped around with identifying data-packets and digital seals of achievement and responsibility - augmented by those of the two lesser priests in his retinue.

 Verbally, so as to include Harmonia in the greeting he offers a polite, if catastrophically understated "Well met Magos. I believe we have much to discuss."

Taking care to stand behind, and a bit to the side, Jak in a position that speaks more of support than control Harmonia clearly intends to let the specialist manage at least the initial interaction with what are obviously more familiar types of people to him than anything she could claim knowledge of.

”Greetings to you Explorator, I am quite busy, as you can see, what is it you wished to talk about?”

Activity around the Magos continues at a frantic pace, although it might look calm and serine to Harmonia, to whome the myriad of pulsing lights and flickering dials mean very little.

There is a loud clatter somewhere behind them, neer the door, where a servitor, carrying a tray of small parts, falls on his face and lays still, the lay servant who showed you in curses quietly, and quite blasphemously to Jak’s ears, and rushes over to the prone figure along with two others from around the hall.
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 "Indeed, and yet it seems improbable that there are higher priority calls upon your time than the arrival of the first void travelers in your system in generations, particularly given the difficulties that both the manufactorum and the system in general are labouring under." Jak replies with strict, emotionless tone making no accusations and producing no judgement, instead going on to propose a simple solution "The most productive use of your processing cycles would logically to share with us a comprehensive briefing on local conditions and priorities which we can view so that our conversation going forward will cause a minimum of unnecessary disruption."

”Your arrival is an unwelcome distraction,” the Magos replies with a similar lack of emotional content as he continues to operate, ”and I fail to see any purpose in this ‘comprehensive briefing’ as you suggest, or what ‘conversation going forward’ you think is necessary.”

The bulky figure shifts with surprising speed across the dais and an mechandrite reaches out to operate a series of switches on a panel to one side.

””

 Observing the high levels of stress the Magos is operating under and the extreme precision of the adjustments it is necessary for him to make on a continuous basis, Jak renders his arguments into the shortest, clearest possible format in a string of short-form statements, stripped of all but the most basic data-canticles.

"You and your resources are finite".

 "This manufactorum operates on the knife-edge of failure state."

 "We and our ship represent a means of securing additional perspective and resources."

 "An upload of key logs from the stations operation - or data access to such logs - represents the minimum use of your resources for the maximum gain in utility of our presence for your work."

”You intend to assist us,” a small note of surprise is detectable even through the mechanics of Mages artificial voice box, ”in that case you shall have our fullest cooperation.”

The Magos provides Jak with a series of access codes for various documents and files.
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 Jak goes silent for several long minutes. One by one, the other tech-priests around him likewise go silent, their heads falling to their chests as the burden of processing the data that they've been given access to is shared out amongst their cogitators and their attention-span. The two cyborg warriors remain staunchly alert to peril as they do so, and in due course - after some ten to twelve minutes of furious examination - Jak's head rises and he states - in Gothic - without sideband expansion.

 "Priority Alpha 1344 was used to produce a stellar shield to protect the inhabitable world of Gelron from a nearby Xenos conflict. The records imply a stellar nova but orbital mechanics render this improbable. A stellar flare of Gelron's primary seems more likely, given its emplacement and orientation*. One hundred and fifty three standard years ago, the stellar shield successfully protected the planet, but the manufactorum suffered extensive damage, erasing records and rendering mission-critical personnel inoperable. Since no survivor was capable of rescinding or modifying the Priority, construction has continued."

 This, having been primarily for the benefit of Harmonia (and packaged for retransmission to the Trader) he then communes with the Magos once more:

 "Proposal: My associates and I will donate process time to supporting your endeavours. This will free your process time to consider the current situation and assess the information we have gathered. After a period of one standard hour we shall discuss possible solutions to your difficulties. Do we have concurrence?"

 ---

* You don't put a shield between a planet and a star to block an out-system threat. A big enough solar flare would sterilise a world though, so everything still checks out. ^_^

Only those who know here well would have noticed how close Harmonia had come to trying to offer her help in the negotiation, or the relief that briefly flashes over her features that she didn't need to.

With things under way now she turns some of her attention away from the central area with all the machines and starts to look around at the rest of the space, looking for people of an entirely organic nature or at least empty gaps in the room where they should be that might speak to how this place was intended to function.

When the processing has completed and she gets the update in a non binary language Harmonia asks one clarifying question.  ”Is it possible to determine the type and or qualifications for authority required to simply change the instructions?  If so it is likely we have someone in the crew who can be made to fit that need.”

 "Yes. But such speculation is for after the Magos has had an opportunity to assess local conditions. Our highest chance of cooperation in this situation lies in working with, and through local authority." Jak assesses, being basically in agreement with her, but rather wanting to give the Magos a chance to draw the same logical conclusion before alarming him too much.

Jak recives a reply from the Captain. ++See what you can do to have the order rescinded  or modified to help alleviate the situation, I plan on taking the Lament to the disk to determine what the status of it is and gather as much information as we can. I will also have Vormav work on getting supplies discontinued.++
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 Turning a fraction of his attention from the proposal he's crafted and his companion, Jak hastily retransmits, via the voidcraft:

 "This effort is ongoing, but at this time supply levels on the manufactorum are critical. Until such time as a clear picture of need and supply can be ascertained, I counsel maintenance of as much of the current state of affairs as seems practical. This situation can of course be re-examined in some few planetary rotations."

The Magos considers, but not for long.
”There is a flaw in your assessment, what I do here needs a holistic approach and you have not accounted for the time required for someone to gain that information before they can undertake any relief, the time which would be extensive, even for you.”

”Counter proposal, the task which occupies the manufactorum is redundant, find some way to rescind executive priority over ride alpha 1344. You will need to do a deep analysis and work out what constitutes the authority to do that, and then set such an authority in place, with the correct codes and passwords, not an easy task but doable, if one has the time. Currently that override curtails any operation outside of its own function and until it is revoked, we are limited in just trying to maintain the status quo.”
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 "It was my assessment that you were unaware of the altered situation. That you are instead fully cognizant of it simplifies the matter considerably." Jak states, keeping to minimum-bandwidth forms of communication as he does so, "Fortunately your cooperation provides us with the means to secure data access. Further, we can secure limited processing resources from you as long as we return to you more resources than are expended in their provision. Such as the assistance of my staff. We will notify you should we encounter blocks we are otherwise unable to bypass."

 "The most logical place to commence would seem to be the secure quarters and shrine of the former high magos of the system, the one who did have the necessary authority. Is this region sufficiently secure to explore?"
This message was last edited by the player at 06:07, Sun 03 Sept 2023.