[IC] The Red Furnace: First Contact

[Thanqol]

Astrographical Survey Data: Tanshin System

Star: Yellow Main Sequence
An unremarkable star like billions of others - right up until the point when a long range Aotrs probe entered within 8 Light Days of the system. After that distance was reached a flood of confusing data emerged from the star. More strangely still, from within the Tanshin system, a number of stars only seen through long range scanners appear to have changed colour. Some power has been altering stars of all classifications, with the result that they burn with a distinctive purple hue. The changed light from these stars has not yet reached the home systems of the Aotrs. Tanshin still burns yellow, but the flood of strange stellar radiation from the star indicates that the same force may be acting on it too.

The system is a low magic zone.

Tanshin I
Toxic World
Intense heat, oceans of both salt water and sulphuric acid, heavy metal deposits including massive stores of uranium, hyperium and other advanced metals. Radioactive thunderstorms, cyclone winds render it uninviting in the extreme, but bioscans indicate that the planet is nevertheless thick with life. Whatever survives on a rock as desolate as Tanshin I will no doubt add to the planet's hostility.

Long range scans have identified numerous garbled and ancient distress beacons. The presence of orbital contaminants suggests that numerous starships were destroyed in or around this world over eight hundred years ago.

Tanshin II
HPE-B Class World
It is possible that Tanshin II might surprise you. Worlds with bioreadings like this are sometimes strange garden utopias, perfectly designed to nurture benevolent lifeforms. Far more likely, though, the planet is a green hell.

Notably, the system is home to numerous titanic bioforms - semimobile entities the size of large islands. Two major branches can be identified at this distance: Sedentary land creatures who operate like migratory mountain ranges, and predatory oceanic monsters that emerge in packs to consume huge swathes of the rainforest that has grown near the shoreline. The saving grace is that the planet is only 40% oceanic, putting a solid 30% of the world outside of range of the destructive ocean predators. Tanshin II has a single rocky moon, with several archaeological sites visible from long range scanners.

Tanshin III
Gas Giant, Stellar Rings

Tanshin III is a typical gas giant; solid core, hydrogen-helium mix atmosphere, and vast stellar rings of billions of asteroids. Numerous larger moonlets can be observed, with Tanshin IV being by far the largest.

Tanshin III is unusually close to the star for a gas giant with an unstable orbit. Over the course of millions of years its orbit will degrade such that it collides with the sun, a detonation that will likely be catastrophic for the entire system. In the meantime its gravity is potent enough to affect the tide on Tanshin II in a similar way to the planet's own moon.

Tanshin IV
Tidally Locked Ice-Ocean Moon

Tanshin IV is a water based moon of Tanshin III. The bright side perpetually faces the sun in an eternal day only broken when it eclipses Tanshin III, and the temperature on the surface is warm enough to keep it liquid. The dark side is a single massive polar ice cap covering half the planet. Tanshin IV has signs of ancient civilization upon it - the decrepit remains of old stellar elevators and asteroid mining bases, some of which might be able to be repurposed. Notably, long range surveying scans detect vast quantities of subterranian oil.

The Prize
Tanshin is a resource rich system, with one colonizable planet and numerous locations of archaeological value, primarily around Tanshin IV. However the system is both distant from Aotrs space and lacks any sort of ready-made population base, meaning it's utility as an expansion region is limited. The archaeological sites are interesting but it is unlikely that they will contain technology surpassing the Aotrs' own.

The prize, then, is Tanshin I. The distress beacons are of interest, as is the fact that it seems that a major fleet action occurred in the planet's orbit. Accordingly, Command has dispatched a small reconnaissance force to determine if the system is worth further investigation.

The secondary objective is to determine what is happening to the system's star. The field of purple stars is of concern; a civilization or power that is capable of performing stellar engineering on such a scale is not to be taken lightly.

It is time, then, for an Aotrs Commander to take the field.

[Aotrs Commander]

Stab Voidslay was excited. While the was in general something of a ground-state for the lich, today was exceptional.

It was not just that she was going out on a field mission for the Aotrs Myst Exploration Team for the first time in ages. The last few years had been quite eventful and she'd never been bored, certainly. (Which would have been awful.) In particular, the galaxy-shaking discovery of the facilities the led to the establishment of Damning Echo base, far-off in the galaxy and on a section of an incomplete ringworld had been fascinating. (Getting to play with alien technology - especially old Harbinger robots and weapons - had been the Best Thing Ever.) Nor had the time been entirely short of action, with the invasion by the Brotherhood of the Grey Lizard a couple of years ago. Though fixing the mess they left afterwards was certainly the least interesting thing she'd done.

No, that she was finally getting to go out to explore a new location with the Myst Gate with the Myst Gate - actually resuming the job that Myst Base had been intended to do, before that interruption - was only due a regular amount of excitement. The extra was because this was going to be a first. Attempting to open the Myst Gate to a KNOWN location that had not been linked to before.

Stab ran her final checks on her gear. She was the primary technician on this one, so she triple-checked all her equipment. But this was second nature even to the relatively young lich. (She was a comparitive baby at only 35, compared the her peers who were generally two plus (sometimes plus a LOT) her senior.) And this let the portions of her mind not on the job at hand to reflect.

The General (Grimzephyr Flaywind, Myst Base's CO) had called a briefing a few days ago. Long-range probes had detected some unusual anomolies in the far-off Tanshin system. These warrented investigation. But the distance was significant, even for Aotrs Gate drives - though, granted, not as far away as Damning Echo base was. Still, to make a good investigation required more than long-range scans. And if it was not of interest, sending a full fleet out that far was loads of resources. Under normal circumstances, the Aotrs might have done so anyway, or dispatched a Pathfinder team. But the anomolies had piqued the interest of High Command.

Apparently, it was Lord Foul Skream himself that contacted Myst Base to talk to the Major (Carallan) Scimitar - the base's lead specialist on the gate - about the possibilty of sending a team through the Myst Gate instead. Lord Foul Skream had been following the progress of the AMET project super closely, especially since the trip to the co-ordinates of MGL-045 had turned out to be Fearmore itself, and barely four hundred miles from the Citadel.

(That had been a whole Thing in itself. Stab had been with her usual teammates, usually designated Alpha Squad. All geared-up and ready to go and they had stepped out into friendly territory.

Barely five minutes had passed before first Lord Yeller, and then Lord Foulskream showed up, with an equally amused retinue. (Lord Yeller did not stop laughing for several minutes.) Scimitar had Snowward (ooh, Stab hoped he was enjoying his super-big promotion) run the Astrometrics Analyser for the sake of argument, but as the Major had suspected, it simply told them what they already knew.

Lord Death Despoil himself had arrived within a couple of hours, and took the opportunity to conduct a quick personal tour of the facility. To everyone's relief – and not a little pride – he found things very satisfactory, and even took the time to exchange a few words with each of them. (For Stab, it was a toss-up whether that had been more squee-worthy than speaking to her own personal idol.)

After a quick session with the general and major, that specific set of co-ordinates were command-encrypted for the obvious security reasons. As he left, Lord Death Despoil was already talking with Lord Foulskream about setting up a security outpost around the area of as a precaution. After all, a backdoor directly into your mostly secret capital world practically right next to the Citadel was not something to take too lightly, even if the chances of it being used were small.)

Major Scimitar was a bit bummed, but sort of pleased, as she’d hoped her co-ordinates would take the connection somewhere in the direction of Aotrs space. But it was building on these things, and landing on other known places, that was letting the Major slowly get her skull around the way-complicated spacial/magical co-ordinates the denizens of Myst had built the Myst Gate on.

And, with input from the Lord Foul Skream (and reputedly from The Boss Himself), Major Scimitar has said she was as confident as she was going to be that they could program in some co-ordinates that would take them to Tanshin.

Gear check completed. Standard-issue Mark 14D coldbeam rifle, check. Standard-issue heat shorsword, check. Not-standard-issue, Stab-loves-weapons-requisitoned PP-2 Plasma Puise Pistol (replacing her coldbeam pistol) and personal frost energy whip, check. Tech scanner with her favoured tech programs and her personal cybernetic tool kit, check. Combat armour webbing over standard-issue Medium Body Armour, with three AGF-08 offenseive grenades and plenty of power cells for her weapons and equipment, check. Assault pack, with the her Crypt personal shelter tucked neatly at the bottom, check. Neatly coiled on the side of the pack was the newest addition of the personal gear she was permitted to be allocated: sixteen metres of plasteel cord. While not exactly glamorous, the first couple of trips out with Alpha, no-one had brought any and Stab was determined not to be caught out again.

Satisfied, Stab headed out to meet the squad in the Myst Gate room. She was going to be the last one to arrive (still in plenty of time, of course, because anything other than professionalism was unthinkable). But that was okay, Feltain knew she would double-check her stuff, 'cos he was cool like that. She headed out towards the Gate Room, still reflecting.

It was by no means a certain thing, General Flaywind had explained. (Ooooh, he was so professional! And he was just the BEST at exposition; Stab was sure that was why he got to be in charge; Stab just would go on and on and on once she got started, she'd never been good at controlling that monologuing urge, she'd go all over the place and getted side-tracked and... Wait, what was she thinking about? Right, briefing.)

It was by no means a certain thing. Major Scimitar has estimated their chances of success were no more than 70%. And that was just of hitting the SYSTEM, not necessarily the intended target of Tanshin II. But as Flaywind had said, if it didn't work, then it would be no loss, just an "ordinary" Myst Gate exploration mission. The Aotrs would then just have to send someone to Tanshin the old-fashioned way, like, with starships and stuff. But if it DID work, yay, 'cos it meant they could do the recon in person AND they'd figured out how to get the Myst Gate to somewhere they WANTED to go to, instead of having to link to random places and store the useful settings. (It had taken, like, massive effort to be able to re-open the Myst Gate to places they HAD opened it to before to start with.)

Stab arrived at the Gate room.

The Gate room was large, fifty metres wide, and a hundred long from the furthest point. The walls chamfered in the last few metres into a shallow curved vault, perhaps thirty metres high at the highest point. The floor and part of the walls were covered in the usual hangar-grey metal surface, but above that, the room was mostly stone.

There was ornamentation on the walls in the form of complex patterns, lending the impression that this was some grand cathedral – which was, of course, exactly what it had (sort of) been when built by the long-vanished Myst natives.

Sets of columns rose up along the walls. At the base, they were covered by a protective sheath of metal, but about halfway up, Stab could see they were stone. The columns were inlaid by a tracery of metals – a fair proportion of which Stab knew was gold, silver or copper or close alloys of the same, gemstones and sweeping runic-like symbols. Some of the stone was ancient, while in other places it had been restored and replaced.

The ceiling was dominated by a huge structure. It reminded Stab of nothing so much as the spine of some creature, running the length of the ceiling until it curved up ten metres from rear opposite to the Gate. It hung a couple of metres below the ceiling and was five or six metres is diameter. The wall columns rose to meet it, rather than the ceiling. Similar columns coming out from the ceiling met it from above – those ran through higher parts of the building. Where column and spine met, there was a complex lattice of metals around the join, restored by careful engineering work (Stab had helped), where the inlaid designs appeared to leap forth into three-dimensions and blend together.

At the far end of the room, the spine curved down into the Myst Gate device itself.

A free-standing monolithic structure, the Myst Gate device was over half the width of the cavernous chamber, and it ran back to the far wall, which was nearly thirty meters distant. In the cathedral-like air of the room, it was reminiscent of a grand altar structure.

The basic shape was roughly rectangular from the front, but numerous protrusions and indentations visible along the sides made it defy easy description.

The front was dominated by a huge catenary arch imbedded in the surface, whose frame was two metres thick. The arch was not far short of twenty metres high, and not much narrower at the base; easily wide enough to drive a Distant Thunder Heavy IFV through with room to spare. The arch framed a smooth, blank wall. Both were made in a complex pale grey material which looked ceramic but was actually a complex stone ore. The room spine curved back along itself to disappear into the squarish stone just behind the top of the arch.

The base of the arch was raised slightly above the floor with a single step, but a shallow, heavily reinforced metal ramp ran down the centre of the room and roses to meet it – as the initial impression about it being wide enough to drive through was not far off the mark.

Aside from the featureless surface inside the arch, the whole thing was covered with more runic designs and metal traceries. Even the addition of Aotrs technology linking it to the computer system and power sources was discretely woven into the design.

Half-way down the left-hand wall, about twenty-five metres from the Gate, the operations centre jutted into the room. A starship grade bridge window protected the ops centre and a wide balcony projected from beneath it. Gantries either side ran about half-way down the length of the room, just far enough from the wall to skim the columns.

Below those were several blast walls, to provide cover for infantry and the two heavy weapons turrets currently retracted into the walls.

Finally, there were two sets of hangar bay doors leading to the base’s vehicle bays; one was situated between two columns on the right wall, opposite the ops centre and the other was towards the right side of the rear wall.

A few metres from the Gate, a Sentry Drone sat on a launch cradle. A few more metres behind it, the Fallen Soul multirole assigned to this mission sat on a cradle of its own, with the left hatch open.

Stab's squad of eight waited outside the vehicle, clustered near the cradle's ladder under the door. For this mission, they would be designated Alpha Squad - typical for the first squad going out on a new mission - but in composition it was not the same liches she worked with most often. The Myst Gate project by necessity had a more flexible unit set-up, but most of the time, a squad deployed would be the same, plus or minus. For this mission, though, Stab was not under the command of Captain Norath Deathbringer, but newly-promoted Captain Feltain Fleshslicer. (Actually, Norath was still newly a Captain himself, comparatively, he'd gotten promoted with the whole squad for discovering Damning Echo, Stab mused.) Feltain was the one she knew the best of the other seven, though she had - naturally - a working relationship with all the others.

As she appraoched, Feltain nodded to her curtly in greeting, and a couple of the others made little waves, which she returned, with her excitement evident in the larger movements. There was no exchange of "are you ready?" since it was unnecessary; if Stab wasn't, she'd have said so right away.

Feltain had chosen from the resources allocated to this mission to make a typical start: Fallen Soul and the two crew for transport, and a Sentry Drone to perform an initial, local area sweep. The sweep would be monitored, and might last for up to twelve hours. But, of course, as they had no idea what they would find on the other side, so the squad needed to be assembled ready in case they had to go now.

(The Myst Gate's wormhole could only be held fully open for only an hour or two (they still hadn't beaten the record of three hours, nine minues and forty-three seconds), but by closing it down to a pinhole, they could stretch it out to seventy-five hours. However, as in the last two or three hours, the wormhole became increasingly unstable, so the safety limit was no more than 72 hours. Of course, since the Myst Gate opened on a world in exactly the same spot, now they could open Myst Gates to the SAME place more than once, the gate closing "only" meant waiting, out of contact, for twenty-four hours for the recharge, rather than being maybe lost in some forgotten part of the galaxy until regular Gate forces could be sent to fetch you.)

More unusually, an ouside normal Myst Gate protocols, Stab knew that the Traitor-Class Recon Destroyer Crippling Glare would be observing from afar, outside the system. The Crippling Glare had been the vessel to perform the long-range scans as was thus the closest to the scene, currently located in interstellar space on stealth watch - to be joined by a fleet if it became necessary.

As she joined the group, Stab noted Feltain had managed to requisition himself a Mark 18 coldbeam rifle for his personal geat alloted. Stab was deeply jealous. Top-of-the-line, new equipment, it was waaay better than her Mark 14D, which wasn't even the most recent Mark 14. But Myst Base wasn't a front-line combat station, so they were low on the list for the absolute newest weapons, at least for standard issue. Stab probably could have gotten one herself, but it would have taken most of her equipment allocation for her rank and experience, as as a lowly Second Trooper, she didn't get all that much. So most of it had to go on stuff she needed to do her main job, which was primarily cybernetics and robotics. And she wasn't the best shot. This wasn't to say she was a poor shooter, just that her combat skills were only in the upper middling range. While she devoted more time to it than the primary casters and wider-field-technicians usually could, the full-time soldiers were naturally better then she was.

And this time, she would almost be the bottom of the pack, since with only one full necromancer (the freakishly tall Coldblaze Shadowflight, a former elf, like herself), the rest of the group was atypically soldier-heavy. While it was in one way comforting to have TWO Snake Launchers (and, she noted, wth approval, looking at the warhead casings, all brand-new SK-4s), and a coldbeam support in the hands of someone who could best use it, it meant Stab was the only technical specialist. And that was because she was more martially inclined than most of the techs. Feltain had allocated a good amount of the mission resources to help her in particular rush through some emergancy training to get her speed up on the non-robot stuff not in her speciality area. But Stab was completely confident in her ability to handle the job, or she wouldn't have accepted it. It was all soo exciting!

Feltain couldn't have missed the way she was practically vibrating with excitement, judging by the amused light from his eyeglows behind his helmet visor. Nor did Shadowflight; his unusually tall, slender frame shook in quiet chuckle, and he shook his helmeted head. Nodding towards her in indication, he half-turned to the others.

"If we have to wait another twelve hours and she just explodes, do you reckon we get a different tech, or do we just have to carry the pieces?" There was a general rumble of snickers, which deepened into laughter as Stab's own giggle came out a bit more high-pitched and excited than she'd intended.

Further comment was cut short as General Flaywind in the operations centre opened the general comms.

"Alpha. Just got word from Crippling Glare and they're in position. Major Scimitar's also completed her final checks, so as soon as you're good-to-go, we can start ahead of schedule."

"Yes, sir," Feltain replied, saluting smartly and then turning to the squad. "Alpha, in position."

Stab, like the others, immediately schooled herself into professionalism, as if a switch had been thrown. The eight of them climbed into the Fallen Soul and took their seats, stowing their gear. The Fallen Soul's hatch sealed. The comparment was windowless, but instead lit by artifical light - which not strictly necessary, it always helped. The walls and roof also had virtual window screens, allowing them took see outside due to data from the sensors. (Unlike Stab's first trip in a Fallen Soul and through the Myst Gate, where everything had had to be turned off due to the massive EMP.)

"Alpha to Command, Alpha is ready for go," Feltain reported crisply.

"Acknowlegded, Alpha Squad,” General Flaywind’s voice came over the comms. “Gate activation sequence initiated.”

There was a brief pause, and the voice of the female Gate officer, Master Star-Sergeant Sable Onyx, sounded.

“Initialising Myst Gate now.” A warning alarm blared a single note. The columns around the room began to light up, the traceries glowing with blue, green, white and gold lights. The lights ran up into the room spine and finally down into the Myst Gate itself, and it came alive with a multitude of colours.

The featureless surface beneath the arch rippled like the surface of water when a stone was dropped into it. As the ripples continued, the grey surface faded, leaving Stab staring into the now-familiar vortex of red bands of swirling cloud. Some bands whirled clockwise, some anti-clockwise. Crackles of golden lighting jumped at random intervals between the clouds, though none across the eye of the vortex itself. The vortex always seemed bigger than the arch, as if the arch was just a window into it and the vortex extended into infinity.

The voice of the Gate officer continued. “Attempting to connect to Tanshin system.”

No Myst Gate number, Stab noted. That was unusual.

The lights and runes on the Myst Gate started to flicker and change colour in sequence. The vortex seemed to shudder a little and some of the bands of clouds slowed or speed up slightly.

After a few seconds, the lights stabilised. Nothing more happened for several long seconds but then the vortex changed.

The vortex appeared to shrink in length, the infinite disappearing point suddenly rushing closer, stopping what looked like maybe ten or twenty metres from the Myst Gate. An impenetrable curtain of falling red fine mist, a waterfall of crimson cloud, completely obscured the vortex beyond, though Stab could just about make out the sides of the vortex spiralling into it. Simultaneously, a glowing red mist formed at the same level as the bottom of the Myst Gate arch. The mist coalesced into a flat surface of what looked solid dim red light, forming a bridge between the arch and the curtain, anchored in empty space over the swirling vortex around it.

A few of the Myst Gate’s lights and runes changed slightly ocne more and then remained static.

“Connection established,” Gate officer Onyx’s voice confirmed.

There was a minute’s pause, as the command centre conducts the initial sensor scan. Very little could be determined via a scan through the Myst Gate – after all, if that was not true, there would be little need for either Stab's team or the Drones – only some basic information that could be ascertained like atmospheric composition, gravity and obvious background radiation (like the EM spike on MGL-034 on her first trip); not always consistently – but enough to know that the gate had not emerged in a black hole or the heart of a star.

Stab heard General Flaywind again. “Alpha, initial scans are inconclusive. Gravity within up to 2G variance range from standard, EM levels standard. Can't get a clear reading on the atmosphere, but nothing it triggering the hostile parameteres tags."

Stab nodded to herself quietly. Mot the best of results, but, in the end, that was why the drone went in FIRST. And, if she was honest, sometimes the surprise of just.., Stepping through to see what you found (even vicarously) was exciting all by itself. She flipped her tech scanner on and linked into the Fallen Soul's system so she could watch the telemetry herself. Beside her, she could see a couple of the others, including Feltain, doing the same on their standard scanners.

Flaywind continued. "Sentry Drone, go.”

The Sentry Drone wordlessly rose up from the cradle and its engine ignited. With a whoosh of motion, it jetted foward and disappeared into the curtain of mist.

Now, Stab though, the really big, exciting question was what they were going to find when the drone came out the other side...

[Thanqol]

Translation was achieved in the late afternoon on the northeastern continent of Tanshin II, deep in a Desolation Zone. An incredible stroke of luck, even if the region was eminently unsuitable as a base of operations.

The 'Desolation Zones' are the terrestrial feeding and hunting grounds of the deep ocean megafauna - but they are not the wastelands the name suggests. The local ecosystem is perfectly adapted to the tidal waves, mass destruction and topographical devastation caused by the oceanic titans. From the vantage of a levitating drone the landscape looks like a lush steppe environment with clusters of thin pioneer trees amidst massive tangles of grasses and shrubbery - perfect tank country. However, topography scans warn that the ground beneath is a nightmare. The combination of titanic footfalls and the devastation of trees being ripped out by the roots and the soil being turned by massive digging claws render the soil and rock a chaotic and hazardous network of trenches, ravines, blind deadfalls, and fast-moving rivers. Imagine if WW1 had been held in the rainforest and Mother Nature had been a field marshal.

Dismounted heavy infantry or tracked vehicles will find strategic movement extremely difficult - but on the flipside, this terrain is ideal for light infantry. Cover is abundant, camouflage opportunities are endless, and migratory herds of swift-moving grazing animals will foil most bio or heat sensors. Atmosphere is a normal oxygen-nitrogen mix, though with the density of pollen, disease particles and microcontaminants it's not the sort of place to send anyone with allergies. The Desolation Zone ecosystem is optimized for rapid regrowth after catastrophe and that means flooding the air with seeds.

Gravity is unusually low, at 0.7 Earth standard - no doubt contributing to the proliferation of titanic life forms - but the drone's sensors report deeply unusual anomalies linked to the ongoing stellar disturbances. Apparently local gravity conditions are fluctuating between five times standard and absolute zero, though these are mostly smaller events. These flickers last ten minutes to an hour, with a radius between five hundred meters and a thousand kilometers. It does not initially appear that these bursts are intelligently directed.

So far so unusual - but things really get surprising when the drone switches to scan for power sources. And there, burning in planetary orbit, is an absolutely blinding power spike. It's the output of an unshielded battleship reactor at maximum burn, a frankly ludicrous output of energy - and not least given that it seems to be coming from a cruiser sized object that is not engaging in combat operations. Currently the object is operating on the other side of the planet's orbit, making getting a good look at it difficult with the drone, but with that reactor output scanners could sense it from anywhere in the system.

Whatever this object is, it seems to be inert. There are no signs of directed movement, no active scanning pulses. From the scan results, it is about as reasonable to think that this is an ejected battleship reactor core as it is to assume it is a starship.

[Aotrs Commander]

Habitable, then, Stab thought, and they were lucky enough to have landed at the right spot. Perhaps not the best of vistas (Stab had noted a penchant for the Must Gates to open on a higher spot looking down, bot the top of a low rise seemed be about as high as this area could provide. Looking at the atmosphere, she was glad they were sealed in. Not because any of the allergens would affected them, but they'd be, like, manky, and since becoming a lich, she'd become rather used to not having to do much personal cleaning now she didn't generate any waste. Some liches still liked an occasional shower just for the feelign of water over their bones, but Stab wasn' among them.

As the initial scan reports came in - and were transmitted to the Crippling Glare - and the drone moved off from it's hovering initial position, Stab and the team settled in for the long haul, patiently waiting for the Sentry Drone's sweep to complete.

A Sentry Drone was primarily optimised for ground-coverage scans, with the majority of it's detail sensors directed downwards. A standard terrain sweep scanned an area of up to 0.49 square miles (1.28 km²) per hour and the its optimum scanning cruising speed, scanning a forty-metre wide strip at a speed of twenty miles per hour. A full twelve-hour spiral pattern sweep covered approximately a 2.73-mile (4.4km) diameter circle, with an area of roughly 5.93 square miles (15.36km²). While is was quite possible for the Drones to fly much faster, the faster it went, the less information the scans gained. At the slow optimum speed, the sensors had full chance to properly determine detailed data - sufficient for the battlefield level, including picking up hidden vehicles and potentially infantry along with, as pertinently for the AMET teams, any other structures or points on interest within the immediate area as a local starting point for exploration. It was more thorough, more so than in a combat situation was possible, but it ensured that the fixed exit point for the Myst Gate was secure. (And it not, and the drone was shot down, that was useful in itself.)

Stab was almost always interested enough to watch the scan data. She was fairly sure that Feltain would have the Fallen Soul investigate the power signature while they were out there, but there might be other areas on interest too. If the Drone's scan didn't pick anything out in the immediate vicinity (or in the distance as it swept from its other, omnidirectional sensors), she predicted after a quick look in person around the local gate exit point (to be absolutely sure), they'd probably pick a direction towards the space anomoly and head out. She figured Feltain would have them keep low to start with and then fly up underneath it, at least until the determined if it had any active defences.

Feltain looked like he was also going to monitor the sweep too (while not strictly necessary, since the data would be being gone over by the base's specialists too who would understand it best, Feltain was clearly of the school of thought that he ought to anyway) as did a couple of the others. The rest of the squad relaxed, along with two crew of the Fallen Soul - see could see one of her squadmates - she was paying too much attention to the data to be exactly sure who - quietly discussing with the Fallen Soul crew whether they though they could kill one of the titantic creatures if they had to, woth a particular emphasis on whether the Fallen Soul's function as a boarding ram would be feasible. She could heare a couple more flicking on their scanners to play games (the sound of the games discretely limited to inside their own helmets, of course).

Liches, shorn of the bilogical imperatives, not even needing rest save to recharge the mana pools, could be interimidably patient, and those training by the Aotrs more so. With her professional detechment still solidly in place, Stab's gaze remained fixed on the stream of data until it was time to move.

[Thanqol]

The reconnaissance mission proceeds without interruption. As night falls over Tanshin II finally the space anomaly comes into view.

It is a sphere - as geometrically perfect a shape as an advanced shipyard can construct. It is also heavily damaged. It looks like it has endured an extended barrage from kinetic weaponry or high speed asteroid impacts and there are massive rents in its structure. It is indeed Cruiser size, and it does indeed emanate an absurd amount of waste heat and light. Its reactor output is frankly ludicrous for a ship of its size, and no less so for the fact that it seems to be venting power externally to no effect. All of this would make sense if the ship had been critically damaged in battle, was venting plasma and was mid-way through a critical reactor meltdown, but hours go by with no fluctuation in the power output, let alone explosions.

But then the eye - or skullglow - is drawn to what at first seemed like the debris field around the sphere and it becomes apparent that it is not debris at all.

Around the Cruiser sphere orbits four smaller spheres, each around about the size of a Destroyer, in a strange miniature model of a solar system. One of these spheres demonstrates even more intense damage than the Cruiser, torn almost entirely in half by kinetic impacts, but the others are completely intact. Each sphere, large or small, is marked by a strange glowing band around its equator, a repeating symbol like '>>>' running in a full circuit around the orb and emanating a faint light blue energy glow. The smaller spheres are also almost electronically dead - they do not have reactors on board, and so presumably operate off battery power. Perhaps they refuel from the larger sphere, hence its disproportionate output?

None of the vessels compromise their spherical design, even for the purposes of weaponry or sensor arrays. Large sections are painted in midtone blue, and others reveal golden alloy metals of unknown composition. However, as observation continues, even smaller craft become visible - spheres again, but now fighter and heavy shuttle sized. In an organized but unhurried way they detach from the large craft and descend down onto the planet, and then hours later rise up. There's something uncanny about the way they move - these vessels do not have thrusters, do not leave engine trails, they just float with perfect silence and stillness. Even in atmosphere they are eerily quiet as they descend down to a distant point on the surface, unload, and depart again back to their carriers.

As unusual as these ships may be, the act itself is profoundly familiar. This is a bulk landing operation. A huge quantity of materiel is being shipped from orbit to the surface. The pace of operations suggests that this is a planned maneuver, but the visible damage to the ships suggests that it might be an evacuation. The site they have chosen as a base is nestled in a mountain range - an extremely defensible location. Even though there still has not been any signs of active scanning - not even radar pings - drawing much closer involves increasing risks of detection.

[Aotrs Commander]

The Sentry Drone completed its recon sweep. Feltain had elected not to try and use its sensors to get a better look at the alien craft - not they Sentry Drone's scanner really had the range anyway - but instead concentrating on making sure the immediate areas was safe.

After the sweep completed to Feltain's satisfaction, and the Myst Gate momentarily opened to let the Sentry Drone back through, the captain reviewed the final results for a moment, clearly formulating his plan of action, while Alpha settled back into their ready positions.

"All right." Feltain was not just briefing them, as would be typical, but the open comms to operations, to keep them appraised on his plan. "Alpha, we will proceed through to the planet in the Fallen Soul. If they pick us up right away, we'll be within running distance of the Myst Gate. If not, we'll start moving closer. We'll skirt around their ground forces initially, and get a bit of distance from the Must Gate. We'll see if we can take a closer look at those ships first, maybe try and active scan. Depending on what happens, if we stay undetected, we can perhaps get closer to their base and take a look-see.

"Shadowflight, you've got enough power for a Gate or two, right?"

The tall lich nodded. "Yes sir." He continued, not speaking as much for Feltain's benefit, nor the commands, but for Crippling Glare, which was linked into the communications and wouldn't be familiar with his capabilities. "It's not my speciality, but I'm rated at level 9.7 on Gates. I can manage up to Gate X, which is a bit of a strain, but we could come in from nearly a hundred miles; on foot of course. If we can get within ten miles, I can use Gate V, which would be better - or IV if we need to take the Fallen Soul - in or out - in a hurry."

Feltain turned to Stab. "Voidslay, initial impressions of the alien tech?"

Stab had been ruminating as she'd been watching, so her answer was immediate.

"My first guess would be gravitic technology of some sort, or TK-based, like the Jalyrkieons use."

"Right," Feltain grunted. "they got those little balls on the back of their ship units instead of engines, don't they?"

"Yes, sir" Stab replied, her eyeglows softening a little in a grin at the description. Then she sobered as she spoke. "From what I recall on the intelligence reports, those extra-galactic alien drone-dude-thingies on the rim" - Stab didn't feel bad about calling them that, since no-one yet had given them an official name, since so little was known - "use a simalar system, too. Heck, sir, if it wasn't for the location and there's SOME visible features on those ships, I'd had said they looked a bit like the ovoids seen by those things. And I wouldn't rule it out, since what we've been able to snag data-wise says those things are just automatatons." It has been one of the reasons Stab had looked up the report. The idea of an alien race sending drones across a whole galaxy to terradform worlds for them was quite intreguing.

"Sir," Shadowflight interjected. "As we know so little about those, it IS possible they might be related. If so, we should be wary, since they use a mix of magic, technology, psionics and bio-engineering, so they would certainly be able to detect our own magic."

Stab nodded. "That's correct. However, if it IS those things, the automatons at least were very passive if not interferred with. But we're making a big assmuption - and even if is IS them, the species behind them might not be.

"They're also really close together." Standard Aotrs distances for starships, like much of the galaxy tended to be at distances of sixty to eighty thousand kilometres. Much closer than that, and you ran the risk of being close enough that even the short-lived beams and bursts of energy weapons could track over more than one ship at once, nevermind the vulnerability to cluster weapons. It was not like the movies - though it was an easy mistake to make if you actually looked at starship's combat informaton holoprojector. In order to be visible to the crews at such distances, the 3D holotables exaggerated the real-time imagery enormously, so that it LOOKED to all intents and purposes, that they were only a few hundred metres apart. (Stab had, like many before her, noted that the real thing didn't look that dissimilar to the computer games, for the obviously convergeant reasons.)

"You only get that relativisitcally close if you needed to dock, tow or unload. Or their weapons are really short ranged. Or the little ships need to be that close to the big one to draw wireless power from it. In which case, we might not really be looking at several ships, but, like, one ship which has disconnected parts."

Feltain nodded in satisfaction. "My gut feeling says whoever these guys are, they either had a major malfunction or came out a fight. They're probably focused on getting themselves entrenched right now so if they don't have Shardan-level sensors, they probably won't notice us until we're pretty close. Once we're there though, maybe the Fallen Soul sensors can see if there's any commications chatter."

"If they don't use telepathy or something," someone rumbeled.

"Point," Feltan conceded easily. He directed his next question to the Crippling Glare. "Captain Whisperbleed, I don't suppose you're getting anything like that?"

The slightly gravelly voice that replied suggested to Stab that Whisperbleed had likely been a Orc or Half-Orc. "Sorry Fleshslicer. We're still too far out for detailed scans. But," she continued, "I think it might be wise for us to close in. If they don't pick you up immediately, we can probably take it as dead they don't have super-sensors, so we can pop in a bit closer and go back to stealth. Obviously, we can't do any serious scanning until we're in the same system, but the closer we are, the sooner we can get to you if something goes seriously wrong."

It was a risk, of course, against an unknown enemy. A Traitorwas far from toothless, but it wasn't a heavy combat ship and outnumbered, unless the Aotrs turned out to have a significant technological advantage.

"I concur with your collective analysises," a new voice said.

Stab's control was pushed to its limits not to gasp with excitement, and she wasn't able to control the brightening of her eyes glows. HE was listening to them! Oh, well, of course he was, this was super-important, and especially with the alien ship being there!

Even Feltain was for a fraction of a second taken aback.

"Thank you, Lord Foul Skream."

"General Flaywind," Foul Skream addressed the oprations. "If Alpha is able to get any scans, please alert your team that I will be joining them on their analysis remotely. With this many unknowns, I figured another pair of eyeglows won't hurt."

DAMMIT, though Stab, now she was super-duper jealous. For half a mment, she actually regretted not staying behind.

"Will do, my lord," General Flaywind said. "and thank you. They'll be delighted. Alpha, any further input?"

Feltain glances around his team. Stab silently shook her head, as did Shadowflight.

"No, sirs, ma'am, milord," Feltain said. "Then with your permission?"

"Good to go, Alpha," Flaywind answered.

"I don't need to say it," Lord Foul Skream called. "But I will anyway - don't get killed, Alpha, you're too valuable to lose."

Stab felt a warm glow in her soul.

Fallen Soul Nightsabre lifted off the cradle. With a quick burst of the engine, they were through the Myst Gate and out the other side.

Now, Stab thought, we see how good their sensors are, and whether this little adventure going to be over before it even starts...

[Thanqol]

The approach continues without any sign of awareness from the alien ships. No active scans, no change in behaviour, no sense that they have any awareness of you whatsoever. Interestingly, there also doesn't seem to be any communication chatter - nothing on radio, no wireless signals, nothing on the electronic spectrum at all. Absolute silence, lending an uncomfortable credibility to the idea that psionics might be in use... right up until a close observation of one of the docking ports is made. There is a sequence of rapid direct blue laser lights blinking on the edge of one of the ports, sending a tightly focused beam at one of the incoming spheres which blinks back a rapid signal of its own. So: these vessels do communicate each other over direct optical transmissions. It's possible that they have some technology which enables complex communication over these links, but from here it looks eerily similar to a combination of morse code and 19th century naval signal flags.

Decoding the basics of this cipher is trivial. A whole host of basic navigational signals will take mere hours of observation for the brain trust back at xenolinguistics, but the simplicity of the codes also implies that they can't be assumed to be permanent. With a simple code system like this it's entirely possible for a force to rotate its codebooks, potentially extremely rapidly. Still, though, compared to the encrypted military communications of an AI-enabled species this is frankly amateur hour. Aotrs signals intelligence will have essentially no trouble decoding these communications...

If they have a direct visual on the emitter nodes. And that's where an interesting problem in the core-and-orbit system of the alien ships becomes evident. These nodes are all over the ships and the ships are in constant motion. Without a 360 degree visual on the alien craft it's possible that invisible exchanges may happen on the 'dark side' of the ships. There are also great numbers of these emitters and it's possible that they might launch massive bursts of decoy signals, with the 'true' communications only known to the aliens. These are ultimately extremely low-tech solutions, though: the aliens are foregoing all high quality data transmissions between their ships and all ability to communicate complex information. There may even be severe problems issuing basic commands to fighter wings performing combat maneuvers just because of the difficulty of 'hitting' them.

For a species to adopt a system of communication like this implies firstly a massive decentralization of authority, and secondly a massive concern about being in a hostile information environment. Similar systems are most commonly seen in species that have endured an AI uprising or are engaged with a civilization with enormous hacking power. Direct laser communication is as unhackable as a typewriter.

As this observation is taking place, one of the destroyer-spheres performs an unusual action. It detaches from the rest of the formation and begins to accelerate its orbit around the planet. This occurs without any engine spikes or thruster activity - it just slips seamlessly from a geosynchronous orbit into a rotational one, directly around the planet's equator. More unusually, the speed of the vessel seems to adjust up and down without any sort of electrical activity.

It's an eerie motion. This is not how spaceships should move. But, combined with the observations of the rest of the alien craft, suggests that Stab had the right idea. This is a gravitic drive.

Many species utilize various artificial gravity systems for their starships so the concept is not unthinkable. The idea is, simply put, that you arrange those artificial gravity systems externally to the ship. With such a system you could change the direction of up and down as far as the ship was concerned, making it 'fall' in certain directions as its primary propulsion. Further, by increasing or reducing the effect of gravity on the vessel, it could be made to speed up or slow down. An interesting blackboard theory, but not one that ever seemed worth the time or money to develop at the expense of conventional thrust drives.

This alien species seems to have thought differently; this is gravity-control technology taken to a state of absolute mastery. Though the top speeds of these ships seem to be slower than an Aotrs ship, their turning circles are ridiculously tight, making even the larger ships seem as maneuverable as starfighters. Of course, the great theoretical problem with grav-drives has always been "What happens if you fight outside of a gravity well?" The further these ships get from a planet or a star the more sluggish and unresponsive they will become, and in deep space they would be essentially becalmed. But here in orbit around a planet they move with an eerie grace, and if they operated around a gas giant or star they would be blisteringly quick.

The last observation of interest, then, is what exactly the destroyer is doing. When it slows down at regular intervals around the planet it releases a cloud of glittering crystals. It seems to be quite deliberate about this, taking the time to carefully target their orbital positions, and then moves on to the next point after half an hour at location. Like much of what these aliens do, this is a coherent action expressed using bizarre means and technology: This is clearly some sort of parallel to establishing a network of satellites around a planet. But what purpose these odd crystals serve - if they are some sort of mine or other weapon, or if they serve a role in communications, or some stranger or more mystical purpose - can't be determined without acquiring some for study.

Estimates are murky, but the destroyer seems to have launched over a thousand of these crystals, most smaller than human sized. If you weren't there to observe the process they would have seemed just like random space debris. At the end of its orbit, it resumes its position orbiting around the cruiser.

[Aotrs Commander]

Feltain moved over to the front of the troop compartment and spoke to the Fallen Soul crew.

"Deathblight, work up an intercept for one of those crystals if you can, preferably one which keeps us least exposed to them. I want to get close enough for a scan; maybe try snagging one with a Gate," he looked over at Shadowlight, who considered and then nodded.

"Aye, sit," Deathblight, the gunner/commander nodded and he and the pilot set to work.

Stab shook her head as she watched the alien shps communicate.

"Whoever they are, I don't think they've encountered any powers which significantly out-tech them before."

"Oh?" Feltain said looking over.

"This communication system. Assuming it's not an emergancy back-up... Sir, our sensors can pick up the laser flashes emitted from any point on the sphere, because we don't strictly need LOS at detail-scan ranges, right? So against us, their only means of stopping us intercepting their communications is by putting out enough signals they exceed our ability to translate them."

Feltain seemed to think a moment and then nodded, "Right."

"Well... What would happen if they ran into someone with much more advanced technology, with universal translators much better than what we have - like the Strayvians or the Shardan or the Blastarons?"

Feltain winced, getting it.

Catching the tilted heads of the some of the other troopers, Stab elaborated. "Unless their language is encoded, like, better than a Cybertank's brain, at that level of tech, sorting out the chaff from the real data is not even going to be a blip.

"Honestly, I'm not even sure how well it'd hold up to an analysis from the magical translation spells WE have, if we set up a proper team. But we can't know that until we can get a proper detail scan of one of their transmissions, instead of just catching the visible light, since there may be subtle permutations to the frequency we can't see until then."

"Which we're not going to do unless when can safely get closer," Feltain said. "We're too out-matched otherwise." The chance existsed their technology was such an overwhelming advantage for the Aotrs to functionally out-of-context-problem the aliens existed, but until it was a certainty, no-one would be taking any chances. "We might get a better shot at it from the ground near their base when we do our recon."

As the pilots worked, Stab idly wondered if you could make an anti-G-Well generator. Presumably a regular G-Well generator - whatever effect it had on their FTL system - would make them more maneuverable, would an anti-G-Well lock them down? The Aotrs had never developed a G-Well system (though she suspected Lord Death Despoil almost certainly had one they'd captured squirreled away somewhere), but they did have anti-grav... So could you build one big enough...?

As Feltain and the crew finished conferring and the Fallen Soul began to move again, Stab amused herself with some scroll-back calculations, trying to see. She concluded that no, it probably wouldn't be practical, as Aotrs grav technology almost certainly couldn't get enough power to extend the field out far enough to be worth it (never mind actually having to manufacture one), but it was an interesting diversion.

[Thanqol]

The line rings true. Nothing about these aliens indicates they have ever encountered a technologically superior enemy before. It's a subtle thing, only visible in the implications of things they don't do, but the impression will build up over time. For as exotic as much of their technology seems there also appears to be massive and basic holes in their development. For example, there don't seem to be shield emitters anywhere on their starships. They certainly have the power output from the cruiser to fuel quite a good one but there is no indication they have any ability to project one, and that seems like such an easier technology to master than the gravity drive they use.

How strange must their technological development have been, to master gravity before working out a 1.0 deflector dish? Or is it a conscious choice?

The impression continues after one of the crystals is bought in from a long range Gate. This crystal is incredibly designed - it's a magnificent crystal lattice made to microscopic specifications; a starburst of jagged spikes set to some incredible artistry. The manufacturing capability to produce something like this is the work of a high tech production fab. But it's also dead and inert. It's not a store for magic, there are no microchips, no spells on it, nothing that would obviously make it a weapon.

The purpose of these remains a mystery until the aliens start testing their array. The orbiting spheres fire their communications lasers into one of the nearby crystals - and then, brilliantly, the beam is cut and reflected through a grid of a thousand mirrors. The laser flows through the nodes over seconds and then descends down onto the planet, pulsing down a sequence of blinking lights to the base on the surface. Further tests see them place laser dots at various places in both the planet and in space.

The ability to design and manufacture these crystals and perform the orbital mathematics to set up this optical relay grid again speaks to an advanced species, and the decision to not use radio for the same purpose implies bizarre priorities. For the purposes of planetary communication this is frankly garbage; the bandwidth is sharply limited and messages can only be sent to or from certain locations. It's resistant to military strikes but even then only through quantity of targets. Again the typewriter analogy comes to mind.

*

Ten kilometers out from the base visual contact is finally made. A work team of around fifty aliens are building something.

They are setting up a large empty hoop five meters in diameter. The interior side of the hoop is marked with the same glowing '>>>' glyph pattern as the exterior of their spaceships, and the whole thing is held five meters off the ground by metal pylons. The structure is unpowered but nevertheless those symbols glow.

The work crew themselves are heavily armed and armoured despite engaging in physical labour, and the physical strength they are demonstrating is superhuman. Some of them are carrying those five meter metal columns on their shoulders like they're weightless. They have a set of five more of those large hollow rings, hovering off the ground on some kind of sled made from four antigravity orbs, also marked with the '>>>' sign.

The majority of the aliens are bipedal canine-like creatures. Many of them forego helmets, showing thick fur and wolflike facial structures. Their armour is painted in dark blue tones over a golden metallic substance. They are all armed with spears and tower shields in a curiously bronze age set of military kit. However, each trooper is also armed with a one-handed grenade launcher and wears a bandoleer of ammunition for it. Their armour is unpowered. Their entire formation is unpowered; no electrical signals from them at all. Finally, in addition to packs filled with miscellaneous gear, each soldier has a... spike on their left shoulder. Some sort of antennae looking thing, about thirty centimeters tall.

There is an officer for every ten soldiers, marked with a distinctive crested helmet and a lighter shade of blue armour. And there is also the unit leader who is a different species entirely. This is a serpentine naga creature, wearing elaborate and segmented armour a brighter blue still than the wolf officers. It's clear it is the leader but it gives few orders to its subordinates, leaving most of the talking to its subordinates. Upon its shoulder, coiled alongside the spike, is a small crystalline dragon, scales similar in sheen to the orbital crystal encountered earlier.

[Friction: roll 1d6 1-2 means the Azura have an advantage, 5-6 means you have an advantage, 3-4 is a mixed result
Friction Roll: 5 The Fallen Soul has evaded Azura observation during this first contact and can observe, bypass, or ambush this work party as desired.]

[Aotrs Commander]

Stab and Feltain, covered by the squad from further back, slunk over to a vantage point to watch. Like Stab herself, Feltain had some zero-G training - more than her, in fact, and so the lower gravity was less of a hinderance to them. Their visual scatter patterns were active - the aliens seemed like they might be primitive enough for it to work on, or at least they didn't have any visible scanners.

They both lay flat only a fifty metres of so away from the aliens, their scanners out. This close, they'd switched over to entirely internal communications in their helmets.

"Some sort of teleport portal?" Feltain murmured, as he directed his scanner towards it.

"Seems likely. Maybe the crystals are there to help locate something for point-to-point temeportation?" Stab mused. She was intent on scanning one of the canid-like aliens first.

Feltain's plan was to get as much sensor data as they could from this group, before the squad moved past them. Shadowflight had made sure he'd set the co-ordinates of the Fallen Soul, so if they needed to, they could make a shapr Gate exfil to right inside the vehicle.

He was scanning the hoop structure. They were close enough now to be able to get a full detail scan: composition, surface features, thaumic readings, everything. At this range, it would take longer than the usual minute or so to get it all (ideal range for speed was ideally within a couple of metres of so), but caution was the watchword.

"Hazarding the wolf-dudes might be some sort of servitor race," she said.

"Mhhm," Feltain noncommittally concurred. "Odd mix of weapons though. Most powers with access to firearms or energy weapons tend to skip melee weapons unless they're quite long-lived, just 'cos it's not that easy to train with 'em."

Stab eyed Feltain's magical sabre in its sheathe. "Uhuh. Which suggests that these guys are long-lived and well-trained... Or are, like cannon-fodder with minimall training. Though it's strange if that's the case to give 'em grenade launchers."

"Yeah. Spears and shields, too, which is good if you're fighting in a shield wall, but against modern weapons... Way too exposed."

"And these guys don't exactly strike me as being Defilers-level," Stab mused. "I mean, if they were, and they wouldn't have let us get this close."

She completed her bio-scan, and switched over to do a full scan of their gear, starting with the shield - since first off, she wanted to know what that thing was made of, and pertinently whether it was going to stop a bullet or a cold beam. Though, she mused, in the latter case, even if it did, it was going to get very unpleasantly cold to hold VERY fast...

A quick glance showed Feltain now scanning the serpentine alien and it's... Familar? Pet, maybe? Could be some sort of crystalline construct or golem, which would suggest some sort of magical or psionic capability. Feltain's scan would show.

She focussed her attention back to the dog-dudes. Shield scanned; now onto her second-favourite topic after robots... Weapons. What was she going to get from those grenade launchers...?

[Thanqol]

Firstly the results from scanning the shields and armour, and this is definitely eyeglow raising. The material composition is ludicrously advanced. The data from analyzing these alloys is incredible. It's not even that they've just got access to some unobtainium either - there is an inner layer of a metallic liquid in each plate which will expand and harden on breaches, and the mesh joints flow around muscles like water. This is craftwork. And what's more surprising is that those same alloy readings can be detected in the skin and bones of the aliens. The baseline level of durability for the aliens is incredibly high. Whatever else is going on with them they appear to have mastered materials science to a level that significantly outstrips what even the Aotrs is capable of.

This isn't a 'don't even bother shooting' situation, though. While this material is tough and the soldiers are highly biologically augmented, this is still breachable with sufficient firepower. The analysis also suggests that the armour is particularly well designed for countering kinetic impacts; a coldbeam sidearm has a better chance of penetrating than a direct rocket launcher hit, and a physical slug won't even scratch the paint.

The melee weapons are made of similarly advanced material, but the readings from the grenades is particularly interesting. The chemical compounds within also defy easy analysis, but the gist seems to be that it is a combination nerve agent and highly vicious acid gas. That follows - if their armour plating is so good as to render projectile weapons harmless then using a weapon that can corrode armour and incapacitate a warrior directly is a neat bypass. This stuff is nasty - it'll kill unaugmented humans and can corrode vehicle armour. The aliens don't even bother with gas masks because it'll go right through them. You'd need full environmental sealing, and that seems incompatible with the no-electronics vibe of the aliens.

So what you're looking at, then, is incredibly tough, durable, and superhumanly strong bio-engineered super-soldiers armoured in high tech metal plating. They seem to be clueless about any form of electronics - there are no robots, no comms uplinks, when they want to talk to each other they need to yell. There's something curiously post-apocalyptic about all this. This is starting to read more like a high technology species that has, for whatever reason, lost or abandoned entire scientific concepts.

So for the material assets. Now for the magic. Now that you've got a chance to examine the hoop structure in more detail you can see that those glowing glyphs are a form of potent divine magic, highly correlated to gravity control. You can see the leader snake directing the floating carriage spheres with precise gestures they seem to move with his intentions. The circular and spherical shapes seem important for this spell matrix; the alien aircraft and sphere-tech are all as close to exactly circular as they can be made. There's a lot of advanced and idiosyncratic design to this, no doubt directly relating to the god or gods who provide the magic. In a way it's comparable to Gate technology, although it's followed an extremely different path.

This isn't a portal, then. This is actually more like a booster. If a grav-drive ship flies through this hoop then the localized gravity pulse will allow it to accelerate massively in speed. What the aliens are setting up seems to be some combination of a rail gun and a train track.

The other thing, surprisingly, is those spikes on their armour. It takes a while to work out what those are. They don't seem to have any sort of known blessing or enchantment on them, no communication spells, nothing that makes sense as a thing to voluntarily put on a soldier. It's not until the field is widened that it abruptly becomes clear that those are curses.

Not a curse like might make up part of a weapon. This is a curse like a divinity might put on a species it particularly dislikes. Physically, those things are basically just dead metal, but they're also vectors for some terrible dark magic and it's directed against the aliens - you can see where the blight attaches to their very souls. There is no way to tell what exactly they do, just that whatever it is, it's going to be bad.

The final bit of information from this work party is related to the biology of the canids. While they can and do speak to each other, often quite casually, in their native language, there does seem to be some more subtle information flow between them through pheromones. Oftentimes they will demonstrate an uncanny synchronicity of action following the release of olfactory agents from glands in the neck. Pack instinct, dialed up as far as biotech can take it.

The leader snake is surprisingly similar to the wolves on a basic biological level. This is a case where both species were upgraded to a baseline of strength and durability using the same biotechnology. If they perform differently in combat it will be due to training and social factors, not because they are different orders of being - though notably the snake lacks any sense of the pack instinct that directs the canids. It does seem to be able to direct the spheres, though, so it is quite possible that it is a divine spellcaster of some kind.

[Aotrs Commander]

Ah, Stab thought, there was the other shoe.

"Okay, those shields are like our body armour, kinectic impact resistant," she informed the squad, flicking the internal channel over so Myst base and LORD FOUL SKREAM could hear her as well. "they've also got the material in the skin and bones too, clearly genetically engineered. They'll be shrapnel resistant, so if we end up shooting a Snake at 'em, don't set it for cluster mode." In standard mode, a Snake, like all the S- series missiles, was ulitmately a shaped charge - well several, usually - so it was the energy of the blast that did the damage, not the fragments. "Treat them like power troops or droids," she said. "They're going to to need coherent fire to bring them down. Actually, if they use those shields, they'll be very like War Droids, since they aren't going to be able to use cover very easily, and I bet they'll try to make some kind of shield wall like, well, our War Droids have their shields."

"Grenades are acid gas, so watch yourselves - closest easy comparison is GT toxin rounds, it'll burn through armour and likely shields given time, and you won't regenerate from it."

"Spears are low threat, non-magicial." Piercing weapons were largely useless against skeletal liches, since there weren't any organs to hit. And the alien's super strength would likely actually hinder them more than help in that regard, since it was more likely to reach high enough velocity to trigger the Medium Body Armour's own kinetic deflection. It PROBABLY wasn't going to be high enough to hit like a vehicular railgun. (Bullets were not all equal in the end, of course, and something like a Hammer of Hatred's can-opener was in a different league to assualt rifle or even heavy machine gun rounds; there was a limit to what Kinetic Armour could actually stop).

As Feltain made his similar reports, Stab mulled over her thoughts, paying just enough attention to stay alert to the conversation.

As he finished, she ventured an observation.

"I think their fiction sucks."

Feltain, surprised, only managed a baffled "Wha?" at the apparent non-sequeituer.

"This whole don't-use-powered-tech thing they have going. Seems to the point of paranoia. It does feel like they, like, got done over in an AI rebellion or something like it."

"Okaaaay..." Feltain replied, clearly still not following.

"Well, sir, thing is about "robot uprisings" is that pretty much everyone who ever had robots and AIs had the idean of them rebelling against their masters in fiction since, well, before robots were a thing, right? I mean, I know, I've read so much of it," she added in an undertone, hearig the faintest grunt of amusement from Feltain and the admission. "So that, by the time it got to the point where, like actual AIs were gonna, everyone took steps, because they were, like 'shit, I've seen this movie!' So it mostly never happened."

This time there was a short chuckle, from Lord Foul Skream. "I concur with Voidslay's assesement from personal experience, since as I recall, Yeller and Daggerheart both used nearly those exact words... In unison as I recall."

Oh dear, Stab thought absently, if I float out of cover will they see me?

"Looking over the data, sir," Shadowflight reported, "I would hazard those curse-spikes could be a form of control, or at least an assurance of control, over the soldiers. Though it is also possibly, given Stab's suggestions, they are also a body-destruction switch, to ensure the bodies are destroyed on death, so they cant be used or assimilated - or raised from the dead, since they appear to have divine casters."

"Noted," Feltain said. "It occurs to me that whatever the purpose, it might also be able to be used to make them explode offensively. I don't think we want to find out, so despite the relatively smaller danger those spears present, try and stay at range. Spears and shields don't make good gear for getting theough undergrowth, so try and keep some of it between you and them if it comes to a brawl."

There was a rumbling of assent from the squad.

One of the technicans from the base, who had also been looking over the data, spoke up. "Captain, their communications with simple language and pheromonal complexity puts me in mind me of the way the Lazerblaster's instinctive engineering works, albiet a bit more obviously. They somehow manage to work, almost hive-mind like, on engineering tasks, using only the simplest casual conversation, but at a level of co-operation that is well beyond that that should be able to achieve. There's a lot unspoken, and no-on has ever figured out how it works, given that it doesn't follow any obvious normal vectors. If this pheremonal communiction produces similar results, they may manage a level of tactical co-ordination that we might only see in controlled animated Undead or in extremely experienced units like the Defilers."

Good point, Stab thought, she wouldn't have caught that herself.

"Okay," Feltain said. "Unless we want to stop these guys from... Setting up their transport infrastructure? At eight-to-one odds - which I don't," he paused, giving their listening superiors chance to give orders to the contrary, which they didn't, "I think we're done here. We'll circle wide around and see if we can get further in. There's nothing to suggest we can't Gate back to the Fallen Soul at the moment, so we'll move deeper in and see what's closer to the heart of this place.

"It occurs," he went on, "that both of these two species might be subserviant ones, given the level of genetic engineering, so there still might be a master race somewhere, and I want to see if spot anything."

She and Feltain made their way slowly and cautiously back to the rest of the squad, and then stealthily, they moved onward towards the alien's central drop-point - or at least as far as they could go...

[Thanqol]

[Friction roll: 5. Once again the Aotrs scouting team avoids unwanted contact]

It's nightfall when you reach the alien camp. Even with the advantage of drones and long range scanners, this is a highly patrolled region in the mountains. It's an extremely defensible spot with lots of long, clear sight lines and so there's a sharp limit on how close you can get without revealing your presence. Still, though, the aliens do not seem to be expecting company and their defensive doctrine does not seem to take into account the assets available to the Aotrs.

Whatever else is happening with the aliens their logistics are galaxy class. Each shuttle that descends has its cargo attached externally in sphere-containers marked with the grav-drive >>> symbol, like clusters of grapes. With a series of gestures like an orchestral conductor, a serpentine officer is able to cause the entire cargo to detach in a single massive movement. The spheres then sort themselves into rows and columns, instantly forming a warehouse grid. Not only does this represent the equivalent of a modular AI-enabled storage warehouse but the storage containers are even arranged for secondary benefits: Walls of low-priority goods are used to form mobile exterior defenses for the base, while dangerous goods are stored in specially dug pits and covered with water.

It's not just a specialist function either - proper OH&S, handling, labeling and storage is drilled down to the bones of everyone here. But more than the high level of competency on display, good logistics is a means that can be used to achieve a variety of ends: larger troop formations, more heavy vehicles, and so on. The overwhelming focus of, at least this stage of alien logistics, seems to be the establishment of infrastructure. A great deal of material is being sent out in order to construct more of the acceleration rings increasingly further away from the base - the relevant spheres are levitated up to a ring and when they pass through the gravity pulse sends them zooming away like a missile, reaching their destination in minutes.

Scans reveal two major points of interest in the base. Firstly, the aliens have constructed a number of extremely large versions of the curse spikes seen on their infantry. Firstly, an enormous tree is felled, stripped of bark, had several ritual preparations performed, and hauled into position. Then one of the aliens sits in meditation underneath it and using some unclear magic they project the curse on their soul into the dead wood. They have established eight of these massive spikes so far, along with a host of smaller ones.

Secondly, the aliens are constructing a temple complex. This is no prefabricated structure - this is an intense labour involving primitive tools, local materials and highly skilled artisans. Work has begun on sculpting a trio of statues in the centre of the site, and small shuttles are crossing the planet to bring marble cut from various locations back to the base. Spiral pathways are laid and elegant gardens are being planted. At the rate this is going it will take weeks but its completion seems to be the central priority for all industry here. Seemingly, the primary purpose of the base entire seems to be to supply and defend the temple.

This observation gives you an extremely good idea of their numbers and composition - and they are substantial. The aliens have landed over 50,000 living beings, along with masses of material. There are some vehicles in use, mostly engineering and construction based, but no heavy armour. 30,000 of these soldiers are the canid legionnaires, and mostly these are dressed in the low-status drab blue colours - mainline combat troops who are doubling at most construction and engineering functions. 10,000 are various uncategorizables - more specialized bioforms of all kinds of shapes and sizes, auxiliary branches made to fulfill a variety of secondary functions. 5,000 are the snakelike aliens, predominately dressed in higher-status bright blues and operating in various leadership roles. And the remaining 5,000...

You've gotten so used to looking at blue that the bright yellow of their rubberized robes seems jarring in comparison. Despite their bright colour you almost miss them at first - their robes seem designed specifically to defeat sensors, ward against magic and conceal what's underneath, making them only really visible to direct optics. Visually, they are a strange and misshapen bunch - dozens of shapes and sizes, including one so large that it looks like a train engine with a yellow tarp thrown over the top.

These have nothing to do with the others. Not with the temple, not with the spikes, not with the logistics. They are building a specialized hub half a kilometer removed from the base, in an even more defensible position further up the mountains, all under the cover of sensor-baffling material sheets. After getting so much information uncontested it's a surprise to learn that at least some of them understand how to keep a secret.

With complete strategic surprise, a lightning raid on the yellow position without engaging the main base is possible if desired. A covert infiltration will require specialized intelligence assets.

[Aotrs Commander]

"Any idea of what they might have under there, sir?" Stab queried.

"You're the literal genius," Feltain replied. "You tell me."

She was, and she had the paperwork to prove it. but...

"No clue sir. Could be technology, could be a weapon, vould be some sort of ritual device... I have no clue."

"So we sit tight until the bosses decide what they want us to do."

"Yes, sir."

The next several hours passed quietly. While their superiors discussed the plan, Alpha settled in to do the part of reconnaissence that drones could not replace - finding the right spot, and, fundementally, quietly counting vehicles.

With only eight of them, taking any further action other than observation was suicidal odds, even with Gate exfil (since it would only take one wrong hit to disable Shadowflight and they would be trapped).

Stab knew that their superiors wer debating the next course of action. At the moment, they still had no idea why the aliens were there, nor were they any closer to solving the myster of the star. The alien technology was novel, but in and of itself, that wasn't likely, Stab thought, to be reason to commit the significant force required to take it, especially as the Aotrs still had no clue as to how large the alien's power was. In any other circumstance, Alpha might have tried finding a terminal and trying to hack it for data... But the complete lack of the powered technology made that a non-starter. The only way they were likely to be able to get any kind of information was MAYBE from a prisoner, but that would be tipping their hand.

(Perhaps if one of the native creatures attacked, they might be able to snag one in the confusion.)

The option of simply asking was, of course, open, but Stab suspected like herself, doing so when the aliens had such massively overwhelming force seemed nearly as dangerous as picking a fight. Nothing about the aliens particularly suggested them being generally benevolent. If anything, given their super soldiers, curses and apparent paranoia, they seemed very much like they'd react rather poorly.

After an hour or two, Crippling Glare reported in was closing in. The plan was now for Crippleng Glare to enter the system in the gas giant's ring and go dark, using its stealth armour. If the aliens didn't spot it, good. It'd still be out of scanner range for an active scan, but it'd be close by. Then, they could later gate in closer, perhaps take a proper scan of the star and see what reaction the aliens had when the footing was closer to even.

They meanwhile, were instructed to shift position to watch the Yellow Position in particular, and it was the work of the better part of an hour before they had worked themselves into a suitable spot.

Presently, the light on her HUD indicated command changed to green, showing command was addressing them again.

"Alpha, we are sending a specialist reconnaissence element to your location via Gate. They will then proceed to investigate Yellow Position. Crippling Glare will arrive in system in four-point-seven minutes. You are to remain on station, but be prepared to execute your exfil if the situation becomes hot."

"Acknowledged," Feltain responded.

Via Gate? Stab mused. They'd already located a little bully just deep enough for a person-sized Gate to open withut attracting attention, which was only a few tens of feet behind the outlook she as Feltain were lying on observing.

Must have gotten a high-level caster, one that could easily open a gate from the Myst Gate to their location easily. Not the sort of resource AMET usually had access to on a mission, but this was hardly a usual sitation.

She glanced behind her at just the right moment. She could just make out the point of white light - usually muted, she noted - appear and swell to the gate flat, white rectangular Gate... Actually, was it a bit smaller than the usual two-by-one-five metres? Stab could have sworn the streamers of roiling colours that spilled out from the Gate were slightly more muted too.

Their reconnaissence asset was smaller than she expected - it was a Kobold Commando, in full armour, the slightly oversized helmet covering the large ears and nose. She'd never seen on in person before - but, she supposed, that was sort of the point, wasn't it. The commando moved smoothly and soundless to their position, and the Gate, without no cerimony, disappeared.

The commando crawled up between them. they were good, Stab noted, she was right next to them and she hadn't heard a sound. He hadn't even bothered turning his visual scatter pattern on.

Feltain was clearly impressed - he was a originally commando himself by training, Stab recalled - since his voice was respectful when he quickly appraised the kobold of the situation.

"That's them there. Still no clue as to what they've got under there. Whatever it is, we'd need to be right up next to it to be able to see through the sensor baffles. I've got a planned infil route, just in case we were ordered to do this ourselves, but I wouldn't want to presume."

"That okay," the kobold replied. (Male, Stab idly noted.) "Already worked out own route. Smaller, so will be different. Setting off now. Crippling Glare coming in now, want to be closer to see what reaction will be if they spot it."

Stab resisted the urge to tell the kobold to be careful.

"Rather you than me, sir. I mean, there are an awful lot of them... Er... Anything we need to do, sir, in case, well, like... If you get unlucky?" She ventured, hoping she didn't sound like he was calling his competance into question, because, that would be SUPER rude. She noticed Feltain stiffen ever so slightly and tried not to kick herself.

"Get unlucky?" The kobold just sounded amused. "That not be necessary." He patted her shoulder lightly.

"Me already here."

[Thanqol]

The Yellow encampment answers as many questions as it raises.

The most curious part was that the vibe here was overwhelmingly... civilian. Academic, even. From closer angles it could be seen that those rubbery robes had numerous small details and elaborate fractal-code badges, but there did not seem to be any clearly defined internal hierarchy. There was a great deal of small talk, both verbally in what seemed like at least three distinct languages, and optically, in tight-beam optical laser communication. Some stood on boxes and gave lectures. The atmosphere was a combination of camaraderie, rivalry and paranoia.

Detailed scans are not safe in this environment, though. There is far too much uncertainty about the hidden capabilities of the robed aliens to take the risk.

The most obvious thing that is under here is the alien vehicle pool. One hundred heavy armoured vehicles await in various stages of maintenance, armour plating stripped away to reveal the mechanics underneath. This area at least answers a mystery about the alien spheres: they transform. In order to deploy weaponry or other assets a sphere will split open in order to reveal a central cannon or other device. While some warspheres have obvious use as heavy combat vehicles, a quarter of them have more unusual designs that involve webs of heavy tubes dangling from the bottom.

The second thing of note appears to be an arsenal of relics. These defy description - devices of all shapes and sizes, weaponry, jewellery, ever-shifting fractal patterns contained in stasis tubes. These devices are not exactly stable either - many of them seem to require ceaseless maintenance, attention or ritual. There are few commonalities amongst them in either design or style; each piece seems a one-off with its own bespoke care routines and handling protocols.

The third area is an alchemical lab. This is set up for local production; materials go in one end and potions, formulae, and other compounds come out the other. This is a highly advanced system, blending biotech and various kinds of magical processes tightly together, and the output is large racks of chemical rations that are sealed inside logistics spheres. Some of the area is given over to research but this seems to be happening in an undirected and idiosyncratic way, mostly looking at the local flora.

Finally, and most unexpectedly, is the computer. After the utter aversion to electronics such a thing seemed impossible, but - well, here it is. There is no electricity running into this device - even here they don't make that compromise. Instead this seems like a manically advanced inheritor to a WW1 battleship fire control computer. It's an elaborate Rube-Goldberg machine of clattering gears and clockwork and spell runes, it's the size of a small house, and attendants move along it, performing observations and maintenance constantly. It outputs reams of paper which are collected, bound in dark orange folders, bound with string, and carried away to different parts of the compound.

All of this, though, raises an interesting question. What are they hiding?

A huge amount of the material is visible just by coming inside and walking around. And all this stuff is secret, but once you're inside few additional steps are made to keep it secret. And yet there's a constant wariness and watchfulness on behalf of the saffron-robed aliens. It doesn't click for a while that what they're keeping secret is their own personal identities.

There are several seemingly empty curtained-off areas throughout the facility. From time to time groups of three to five will enter one of these areas together and disappear behind a wall of sensor baffles. Then they will emerge, and when they do, their physiologies have changed. The short have become tall, the inhuman have become human, and the patterns on the robes are different. Either they are performing secret teleportations behind those screens, or they are altering their physical shapes beneath the robes so that their silhouettes are different. Trying to watch any individual is like playing constant shell games where they are randomized and randomized again.

They're afraid of something.

[Friction roll: 1. An Azura counterintelligence asset has been activated]

[Aotrs Commander]

"You totally knew, didn't you?" Stab grumbled quietly, and Unlucky moved off.

"You couldn't tell from the height?" Feltain replied with amusement.

"I was lying down! And I haven't met too many kobolds and... Wow, he's just gone!"

"Yep. What did you expect?"

* * * * * * *

Unlucky slunk quietly into the curtained-off area. At this point, there was not too much point in being invisible. Visual scatter was all well and good, but at the end of the day, there was a reason cloaking did not work in atmosphere; not even super high tech cloaks.

Invisibility was one thing. The Aotrs even had a stealth tank, the Wraith Hawk, with what was charitable called a "cloaking device." In practise, this was just stealth technology, with an improved visual scatter coating that also difracted further into the infrared. It was not, ultimately, a cloak, and for good reason. First of all, cloaking did nothing to hide your sound. You could muffle sound with technology, and magiclaly you could, of course, use silencing spells. Which, against low-tech or nonmagical opponents, worked. But neither of those things were effective against scanners or sensors, which you had to actively block away. (And in the case of magic, just the use of it meant you could DETECT the magic.) In space, the very emptyness of it meant that you could do that (so a given value of how effective your cloak was verses their scanners) and the distances so large that unless you somehow knew deliberately where to go, you were never going to have something accidently get inside the cloaking field.

But in atmosphere? No amount of cloaking fields could hide the fact that, ultimately, YOU WERE STILL THERE. If you had a high-tech cloak like the Shardan or the Lazerblasters, sure, you could certainly hide everything in the field...

Right up until the point you had to MOVE. Or it rained, or was windy or there was anything at all that moved outside the cloaking field, because cloaking only worked - ever - up to whatever was inside the field. So, with modern scanners, the heat left by your engines, the displacement of the very air (let alone water or plant material) as you moved gave you away the moment your field stopped covering it, just as certainly as an invisible rogue standing in a cloud of flour a foot deep in water.

(Unlucky had has this happen often enough to him personally, with his luck...)

Ground-side stealth packages and "cloaking" devices were, then, really just a way of making you hide better electronically - but they did not, as with proper, space-based cloaking device, obviate the need TO hide.

(Granted, you could SLIGHLTY more plausibly get away with using a cloak on a stationary facility if you set up appropriately, but it never a garentee.)

Which is why Unlucky didn't bother trying to become invisible via technological or magical means (the latter of which would, of course, potentially set of any magical sensors). He relied entirely on his own phenominal mundane stealth skills to reach the Yellow encampment.

After slinking around enough to get a general gist, he retreated to a small space for a momentary pause.

The vehicles were, perhaps the least surprising. Transforming vehicles were uncommon, but hardly unknown, especially when technology or magic was advanced enough (or circumstances mandated it enough) to require it for aetherics or some other purpose. Heck, the Lazerblasters and, from what they could gather, the Yrgynela both naturally had vehicular transformative abilities (the latter more sophisticated, though with the advancement of their technology vastly outstripping their natural resiliance, it was almost a forgotten aspect). Actually, come to that, it was not unlike his own shapeshifting talent, when you got down to it.

The computer was interesting, but did not look especially hackable, at least not with any degree of surreptitiousness. Unlucky did know, in his massive repatoire of spells, a few various translation spells (and a universal translato device squirreled awayd for good measure), so there was a passable chance that if he could snag a folder (or see one looked at), he could read it.

The artefacts suggested to him they contained some sort of highly active magic. His initial though was that they were perhaps containing something deleterious - he thought of the KPS Division. Though it could also be they had friendlies or civilains contained in a preservative fashion... Perhaps keeping their souls from going on, or survivors of some catastrophy.

Or, they could be some sort of highly volatile weapon or tool.

Those warrented his attentions, since he was pretty sure he wasn't going to get chance to do everything, as his luck would run out immediately. (Other people might have said "eventually" but Unlucky was nothing if not self-aware.)

Still, the place was quite busy, so getting all the way up to one to have a very close scan might be more difficult. (Unlucky was not going to touch one, since that ABSOLUTELY garenteed that the moment it did, something would break off it and at the EXACT same moment, he'd be spotted, because that was How Things Worker.)

So, hiding in plain sight was perhaps plausible option. The alien's desire to constantly shift might work in his advantage. Illusion spells - or in particular, DISGUISE spells, were in his repatoire too.

(Along with almost all of the High Command's, who occasionally wanted to move around in living socities. Though they'd never been able to break Yeller out of the idea that doing so somehow made everything into a cheesy spy movie, though and distressingly, the universe seemed to agree, to the inevitable delight of "Lance Thrashnikoff.")

He patiently observed the aliens for few more minutes, to get a better feel for a disguise phsyiology. Then he very carefully and quietly cast both a translation spell and Facade V, which would last for tens of hours and would cover sight/sound/feel/taste/smell - those were only the senses he KNEW to emulate with the spell of course - at at only level 14 had a very low signature by design. It would only make him apper to be something within a fifth of his own size (he went for larger, being quite small himself, despite his height advantage over other kobolds), but that was close enough for the job, he hoped.

Waiting for a moment where his appearance was unobserved, he stepped out and moved towards the artefacts - not to quickly, not to slowly, but as if he was going there because he had something to do.

Something would Go Horribly Wrong of course, he could feel (centuries of experience had given him a sixth sense of his own when his titular ill-fortune was going to interfere), but at least he was as prepared as he could be.

[Thanqol]

Behind two inches of reinforced glass and numerous warding glyphs is the first artifact: a single cigarette, still smouldering, never losing matter no matter how long it burns. Before it sits a saffron robed adept reading aloud to it from a book of, according to the translator, romance poetry. Descriptions of sun-kissed scales and the spires of a distant worldcity that orbits no star come in an endless, flowing cascade. Two backups stay by the adept's side, and ten minutes before the shift is due to end one of them joins the narration until their voices are completely synchronized. Only then can the first reader stop, stand, and take a break. The story continues without interruption.

Sealed in another container is a clockwork woman with a glass mirror for a face. It is unpowered and chained, with a single robed adept standing before it with a wooden long rifle aimed directly at its forehead. The ground before it is covered with goblets so full of wine only surface tension stops the liquid from spilling. Another box contains a set of plant seeds, little sharp needle slivers, and these rest atop piles of salt crystals. Yet another box contains a single disembodied human heart and sticking all over the glass in seemingly random patterns are childish drawings of flowers and suns and written exhortations to 'cheer up! It's not that bad!'.

And on and on like this it goes, over about fifty exhibits. Having this many items so clearly dangerous stacked up near each other is obviously no one's idea of good artifact handling but the base is simply too new for proper containment cells to have been created yet. There is an extremely high degree of tension in this sector of the base - if Unlucky goes about his business without causing any incidents the staff are too focused on their tasks to question him.

None of the artifacts, however, seem to be marked. There are some basic safety instructions - DO NOT APPROACH, REPORT SUSPICIOUS NOISES and the like - but no numbers, charts, readings, or explanations as to what the contents do. Furthermore, the labyrinthine complexity of the magic involved, further complicated by the various wards, makes it difficult to get a good reading.

Not all of the artifacts have custodians though. Stealing one is possible. Not knowing what you're setting free, though, is a risk.

[Aotrs Commander]

Unlucky nodded to himself. This confirmed it - this section, at least, was basically Alien KPS Division. He'd read many of the KPS reports himself, of course, and the apparently random containment features reminded him very much of the Divison's own - not a few found by trial-and-error, since among the dangerous paranatural things and phenomena stored there were things that Aotrs science and magic COULDN'T explain (not could safely destroy). As well as little, inconsequential things like sealed gods and the like that they understood perfectly well, but needed VERY solid security... (Whatstherefaces, the five the Aotrs had trapped on Temnis before Unlucky was even born and whose names escaped him - if he'd even known them - must be pretty pissed by this point.)

Though it begged the question of why bring it HERE, to a planet, rather than, as the Aotrs had, move it to a nice, safe facility in orbit like the KPS base in orbit of Kalanoth's sun. Again, it suggested some sort of retreat away from something - perhaps a major failure at their old primary facility? But even so, why not keep this stuff in one of the orbs and drop it off in orbit, either near the sun - or, as was an increasinly alarming possibility, if this star was itselg and unexplainable paranatural phenomenon, at the other end of the solar system.

Unlucky looked for a promising candiate to have a very close look. Again, there was NO WAY he was going to actually touch one, especially if this was KPS-Division stuff, but if he could slip into the containmnt chamber for a minute (long enough fo a good scan), that would do.

(And, assuming that didn't result in Problems... He figured, back to the computer.)

[Thanqol]

The seed containment seems like the best choice. No active monitoring and if the effect is biological undead immunities might simply render its danger moot. Unlucky carefully cuts the wards and slips into the glass case, coming closer and closer to the artifact...

And then there is a click. And a hiss. And the ominous ethereal rush of a null magic zone reasserting itself.

Unlucky glances over his shoulder. Standing by the edge of the containment cell, having just pulled off an expert repair of the containment wards, is one of the yellow-robed aliens - perhaps. Skill recognizes skill, and even through the heavy plastic sheets you can see that this is not a civilian technician. This is someone extremely skilled, moving with utmost precision.

It gives you a cheerful wave and steps back from the glass to observe.

Behind you, the seeds are sprouting. Within seconds wood and root and leaf and branch begins to form into a terrible monster shape. An animate plant monster, twisted and jagged and terrible, and instinctively it lashes out...

[Friction: 5]

... But you chose well and your theory is borne out. Without organic material to manipulate, there is a sharp limit on how swiftly the creature can grow, and without breath, body heat or moisture it will fight you blind and without its most dangerous weapons. When an individual tear of limbs is 'killed' it swiftly rots and collapses back into the form of a seed where it cannot suffer further damage.

Still, though, you are fighting with an audience. What kind of show do you put on?

Upshot is that from that point there's plenty of time to scan it. Surprisingly this isn't any sort of biotech - this is a planar outsider from some unknown dimensional realm, aligned to life, growth, and positive energy. In the right conditions, with time to feed and grow, this thing would be nasty. Set it loose on a highly forested environment like this planet and could deny a broad swathe of territory.

But what's more unusual is that the creature is highly attuned. There are multiple layers of binding and channeling riven into it magically. Not only would these taps allow for direct control by the controller, but it could even have elements of its magic extracted remotely. Imagine a process by which a powerful demon was captured, bound, and converted into an energy source for a single spellcaster to extract power from.

[Aotrs Commander]

Unlucky scowled internally. Unfortunate, with the null magic zone - quite impressive, it was much easier to suppress via anti-magic, rather than drain an area to null-magic - there was little chance of even attempting innocent disembling, having shut down his illusions. It also removed - temporarily - many immediate options.

Still, he had his coldbeam pistol (and cold would probably not do the creature much good at all), and while in the null field the large amounts of enchantments on it wouldn't work, it was still a top-quality Mk 17 made by Foul Skream himself. And there were plenty of other options to hand too...

Unlucky dodged through the first attacks, letting his body flow naturally into habitual seeming incompetance and just barely dodging. He kep hold of his scanner in his left hand while he deceptively fumbled around, pretending to panic a little. Buy some time, let the scanner keep going, see what the watcher did and how he reacted. (If he was really good, whether he could spot how much was show.)

As he blundered around, artfully fumbling out his pistol into his hand as if he barely knew one end from the other (grabbing and holding it by the barrel), his eyes scanned around. To create a null-magic zone artifically was just like anything else - you needed some sort of system, magical or technological. Something that was, pretty much invaribly, breakable. The question was whether it was in reach - and how prepared their aliens had made their structures for dealing with privative energies that were entirely mundane in nature, since he had at least two options. They were likely in the walls (or floor or roof), of course, but there were still all the same principles, and with a bit of effort, he might be able to back-calculate the positioning required from the type of wards they'd have to use and gauge where they be placed, in his head, while a plant outsider tried to kill him, while acting like a dupe and also not getting killed.

So, a moderate challenge, then?

(And if not, there was always plan B.)

He tripped over his own feet, tumbling into a roll, leaving him upside down as the flailing tendril flashed over his head. It was not intentional, but his luck coming into play - but Unlucky knew from long experience how to lean into that, let the bad luck flow and when and where to override it. (That his luck seemingly ignored null-magic had been something of a surprise when they'd first found it out. But no, it merely made it so the most ludcriously improbable things tended not to happen, and merely mundanely statistically implausible things tended to inconveniantly happen.)

Unlucky rolled aside from the next strike at the last fraction of a second with an apparent paniced flap of his right arm and use of the coldbeam pistol (still grabbed by the barrel) as an improvised lever. His scanner pinged, having completed the scan. It, naturally, slipped out of his hands at that exact moment and clattered away to lie near the door. Unlucky fell over backwards, ending up at the opposite corner of the room, under the window, flat on his back, looking up as the next tendril swung down. In that frozen moment, his mind continued to process the ward problem and his eyes flicked over to the watching alien, so see what it was doing...