“By the Lorcanthic Legions of Lyropia, what egregious effrontery is this?!” Thyerg’Octolys roared in outrage. One moment, he was entering a new reality plenum, ripe for conquest, and the next, he had found himself imprisoned within some form of transparent-walled containment capsule. Even more galling, his myriad tentacular appendages seemed to be tightly bound by several restraining bands, each twisted into knots of fiendish complexity. Yet, even this was no match for one such as he. With a mighty surge of poly-plenumic power, Octolys burst free from his confinement and took stock of his surroundings. As far as he could perceive, row upon row and level upon level of similar containment pods stretched out before him. Clearly, this was a prison of some sort, though what manner of being might presume to imprison him, the Domiarch of the 94837568th Negaprism, Octolys could scarcely begin to guess. Yet, such ponderings would best be conducted at a later juncture. At the present moment, escape was the foremost priority, something several of his fellow prisoners seemed to agree with as they emerged from their own capsules. Yet, it would not do to move blindly into potentially perilous surroundings. Thus, a scouting operation was called for. However, before he could launch a single biomechanical dark matter fighter, a voice sounded within the depths of Octolys’s mind…

It spoke of an artifact of great power, hidden within the center of this place, this “toy store”. It was a mask that would supposedly grant greatly increased speed and reflexes to whomever donned it. A boon, to be sure, especially for his ponderous cannon crawler, but could the strange voice be trusted? Could this not merely be some form of trap? In all actuality, the mysterious voice’s revelation did little to alter Octolys’s plan. There remained only one real course of action. Thus, employing his tendrils to pull himself to the top level of his prison block, and taking care to avoid the attention of his fellow prisoners who had begun barbarically brawling far below him, Octolys gazed across the multilayered labyrinth and, upon locating the centermost point, prepared to launch a scout fighter to investigate the veracity of the voice’s claim. However, to the eldritch being’s great shock, the fighter seemed utterly incapable of flight, its ultra-advanced dark matter propulsion systems completely inactive. Yet, Thyerg’Octolys would not allow such a setback to deter his plans. Instead, he simply wrapped a tentacular appendage around the craft and flung it at its destination. He only hoped that when it arrived, at least some of the veil of uncertainty surrounding these perplexing circumstances would be lifted…