EldritchOne — Roleplayer Guild

Leaving Tsan to await the return of Amaretto and his payment, Scalpel had descended once more into the bowels of his mansion to continue his work. Already his plans were coming into motion, soon he would have to forward his operations to a new location, one which he had already decided upon whilst searching for the most ideal positioning on the maps and data he had gathered from his sources.

This place would be the cradle of his new civilisation, and the beginning of a new world.

However, as of this moment, a greater issue stood in his path.

The Corona Star chamber was filled with the power of harnessed magical energy, lightning strikes of it bouncing off the walls and making the air crackle with power whilst the centrifuge spun and altered itself around a levitating glowing black sphere. Dressed in dark mechanised armour, Scalpel floated before the orb, horn aglow and face set in a frown of intense concentration, lightning crackled and whipped around his form in chaotic fury, but he remained unscathed thanks to the Corona suit.

Created out of both magical and clockwork machinery, the armour like all of Scalpels thinks was heavily enchanted and enruned. However further developments had been created by applying certain principles from the Machine gods first form, and now the suit had a series of miniaturised Tesla coils across each platelet of the armour. The designs rearrangement of certain aspects, including the coils, had resulted in a suit in which magical energies could be redirected around the person in question. In high intensity situations, such as the case of being in a chamber rippling with ambient magic, this would provide immense protection whilst still allowing him to project his power. Lines and circles crisscrossed the entire thing providing an extra magical nexus in which his energies could be fully channelled whilst stray magic could be redirected to the coils, all of it glowed with a deep ominous purple light.

Beneath the plate the device became even more complex, enchanted gears and cogs responding to muscle based stimuli and powered to allow him greater lifting capabilities, whilst also magically lightened to allow him to move unhindered by weight. The entire device could have never been create before the Machine God began to speak to him, but now new horizons were opening up with the gift of knowledge, and the vast branching rivers of ever expanding innovation.

The orb hummed and sang as he alternated the magic which flowed through it, listening for the key tunes from which he could properly enhance the material and thus bend its crystalline structure to his will. The entire thing was made out of matter which had come from the heart of a dead star, launched from the explosive power of its death spasms and flung to earth in a hailstorm of light.

This fallen material had descended the better part of a century ago, and his great grandfather, who had been an astrologer and meteorologist, had collected it and brought its remains to the family mansion. When he had broken it apart after he had discovered these three crudely shaped orbs inside, each slightly larger than a equine heart and made of a strange material which he called “Black Diamond”. Over the course of the next decade his great grandfather had carved the matter into perfect spheres and kept them about his mansion, always muttering about how they “weren’t quite ready yet”, until his sudden death by heart attack whilst smoothing the last orb. Eventually the family removed them and stored them in the depths of the family vaults in this mansion, where Scalpel had discovered them a century later and brought them up for viewing.

Only now did their true purpose come into play, a focusing and immense storing point for magical energies, but still unfinished and unfocused without the correct magical language. Still they had immense potential, and with the right signs and rituals they would provide him with an important instrument in the Apotheosis rite. As he slowed the power of the machine and slowly ended his magical direction, the orb came to rest once more in its place and his face relaxed into a proud smile.

“And soon I shall have the words…”

The room quickly descended into silence as he left through the black steel gateway through the control room, the ambient buzz of magic and heat giving way to the coolness of inactivity. As he continued along the long straight corridor to the outer layers of the Inner Sanctum he wondered about the tremendous power that had been shifted into his hooves of late. He was sure that something was amiss but couldn’t quite put his hoof on it, regardless he would continue in his search for boundless knowledge to further strengthen his ascendency whilst his Nightingales investigated.

Passing into a small pointed arch door he entered one of his more personal workshops which had been scattered around the entire facility. The place was a writhing mess of materials, half finished constructs and objects and wiring, scattered amidst piles of oil stained notes and plans in his usual esoteric scrawl. A great desk at the far end was probably the most organised part of the entire room, fitted with gothic artistry and a high back chair. Ledgers of materials, machinery, and Drones covered the surface amidst tottering piles of copied lore and scraps of text and lore, a mosaic of a bizarre writing black cyclopean star providing an intriguing backdrop to this inner study.

With the tests completed he figured he’d have a few moments to himself to allow him to develop some of his more extraneous experiments, The most notable being a pair of complex metal legs for Honey. The entire thing was a creation of sublime beauty and care, mimicking the muscle structure of an equine leg and covered in beautiful calligraphy, creating a versatile and complex magical commune between the artifices and their owner which would aid greatly in connecting the brain and the machinery together with seamless reaction speeds. With a few adjustments to the weight changing magic and the local power cells the mechanical limbs would be ready for use, and Honey would no longer require the cumbersome wheels to move about. Instead she would be given limbs of steel and magic, limbs which could crust stone and cripple metal if so needed, but elegant and delicate enough to be more than capable of matching any normal legs in everyday activities.

Soon his niece would walk again unhindered… but it was not what he ultimately desired, for that the true flesh and blood restoration of her legs.

His mood darkened a little with these thoughts, but then lightened when he remembered his successes and the immense progress he was making. The artefacts would be his means of achieving the fundamental goals he sought, and his ever-growing army would march before him in a war which would shake Equestria to its core, and re-establish universal order across the divided realm. Already he had managed with his ever increasing staff of worker Drones to multiply his numbers of servants into the hundreds, and they in turn assisted in the production of more and more!

Furnaces were burning, electrics crackling and magic humming through the air! This was industry, the fires of the future were burning away in untameable fury and intensity, and with him at the forefront. in his mind’s eye he saw a vision of endless marching legions of armoured soldiers, hundreds of siege weapons and instruments of war behind him, driving away the foulness of the civil war and bringing about a new age of prosperity. Weapons both new and old would bend in tribute to the war, he saw legions of pike wielding soldiers, those armed with complex firearms and some even handling strange instruments which launched concentrated magical lightning and other unnameable magic.

The old world shall burn in the fires of the new…

No taint, be it pre-war failure or a malignancy forged in the fires of this current discord must remain to infect the future.

Soon, very soon, armies of hundreds of thousands would march to the drumbeat of the Black Sun, and they would scourge the world of its failings, and herald in a new world of innovation, freedom and prosperity.

And after that?... Equinity would reach for the stars, and then go forth and conquer them.

A Heavenly Empire awaited.

With a creak the door opened before Lens and a small flying orb peered out at her, a giant purple crystal eye inspecting her intensely.

“Oh! You’re the lady from the day before! Hi!” it proclaimed in a cheerful childlike electric voice, “Papa said you would be coming soon, so I have orders to take you down to the outer sphere of the Inner Sanctum.”

The door bobbed open and the Sphere hopped away to let her past, whistling a merry tune as it did so. Even on the surface level the mansion was a hive of activity, with a seeming endless number of Worker Drones travelling to-and-fro, followed by speeding Spheres and the occasional Warrior Drone.

Tsan who was overseeing the movement whilst he waited eyed up the Scholar in front of him, raising an eyebrow at – although somewhat decreased level of - Len’s obvious intoxication. “Follow the Sphere” he stated matter-of-factly, whilst gesturing her to enter “It’ll take you to our Father, I have already sent down a messenger to tell him of your arrival, He should have everything ready by the time you are there.”

The melon sized orb happily began to flitter away at a measured pace, singing some odd little polka song which wouldn’t have been out of place in a Cult of Laughter recruitment tune. Occasionally as it bounced down the stairs into the earth it paused in its tunes to gibber something somewhat irrelevant, like “Don’t go wandering off, the Drones might mistake you for not-quite-so-dead stock” or “You have nice ears, I wish I could wear them”, but mostly kept to its singing.

The stairways eventually gave way to a labyrinthine nest of corridors of stone which were fitted with magically powered brass lanterns, and surprisingly wide for underground tunnels. These were even more saturated by work and industry, with Drones pushing carts of corpses or machinery elsewhere, or otherwise involved in the transport of coal or raw materials from the facilities extensive underground warehouses. These creatures barely gave the two any mind asides from the occasional swift glance and snarl, and even the predatory Warrior Drones barely acknowledged them as they prowled the corridors looking for prey, or otherwise ran past in packs to the secret woodland tunnels to bring in more charnel resources.

Eventually the corridor gave way to one of the great factories beneath the earth, showing a huge network of furnaces and endless tables and forges directed to the production of machinery and weaponry for the army of Scalpel. Immense numbers of mass produced limbs, swords and armour lay in great organised piles, numbering in hundreds if not thousands already under the ministrations of the workforce. Worker Drones were everywhere, perhaps consisting of over two hundred individuals moving back and forth across the factory, or forging the materials, or bent over work tables fixing the finer details of the equipment in mechanical precision. On miniature rail systems immense piles of coal were carted through to feed the forges and furnaces, which in turn made an atmosphere of powerful heat, only alleviated by the developed ventilation system which had been installed with the factory.

Anyone with good enough sense could tell that this was not the industry of a vague disorganised experiment.

The master of this house was preparing for war.

Winding its way through the flurry of workers, it cleared a path for the two of them until after some time I made its way to the end of the factory were two Warrior Drones guarded a great arched brass door. Pushing through the door, the Sphere made for another long corridor which branched off deeper into the underground industrial complex, happily calling after itself “This way!” as it did so.

After a dizzying number of twists and turns they slowly began making their way into the Inner Sanctum. The first sign was the thickening of the air as it grew heavy with the hundreds of traps and enchantments which crisscrossed the place like a spider web, with the unfortunate travellers beginning to feel like the flies within it. The humming of the Sphere became much quieter, and it became much more nervous as it approached the first apparent change in the facility. The Stone walls of the previous tunnels gave way to walls of carbonated iron, heavy with enchantment and fitted with more exquisite lamps and an intensive nexus of magical symbology. The very atmosphere of the place took on a different tone as well; the sounds of the industrial section long since faded by distance and silencing spells, and cultivating an almost monastic intonation. There was very little traffic in this section, and only the occasional Sphere of Worker passed through, with books levitated or carried on its person, furthering the sense of meditative isolation.

The feeling was broken by the heavy footfalls of an armoured giant as it rounded the corner, the mechanical form of Lambda making a steady jog through the facility on some unknown task. As he passed it was revealed that he was far from alone, a small white and gold maned pony with no back legs sat on his back reading a book as he effortlessly sped past. The two of them quickly disappeared into the distance, but not before the young pony had glanced up from her book and given Lens a small thin smile, and delivered a long curious stare from her blue-green eyes.

The spirits of the orb seemed to rise at the sight of the pony, and it turned around and seemed to almost waved at her as she disappeared, shouting at the disappearing figures “Have a good day Mistress!” before nodding to Lens once again to follow it round a corner.

After another few minutes of progress they eventually turned the corner into a great central hallway which seemed to disappear far into distant blackness and hurried onwards. Eventually they came to the same doorway Scalpel had entered earlier, and the orb stopped and hovered before her in anticipation.

Knocking on the door it turned to her again and announced in a cheerful way “The Master will see you now, but I must go, I will return when you conclude your business to lead you the way out. Toodley Pip!” With this the Sphere bobbed once in the air, did a little flip and zoomed off into the network of tunnels, only the sound of it humming giving any direction to his presence in the maze before even that was swallowed up by the silence.

Disturbing that silence however was the sound of a brass coated door creaking open and a familiar face peering out at her through big catlike eyes, the face of Nocturne.

“Hallo Lens!” she proclaimed happily, her face crinkling into a smile, “Herr Doktor is expectink you, please come inside.”

With this Nocturne opened the door further, revealing the full extent of the workshop and study, and the armoured figure of the Doctor at a far desk, frowning over piles of paperwork. Nocturne herself was wearing a heavily bloodstained lab coat herself, but overall hadn’t changed clothes since their meeting beneath that. With a gesture Nocturne ushered the pony in and gave her a big apologetic grin, “Sorry about not tellink you sooner, Herr Doktor likes to keep his associates connections secret in ze public.”

With that she turned to him and raised her voice so Scalpel could here “She has arrived Doktor!”, before turning to another corner of the room and trotting off to continue fixing a portion of an experimental weapon.

Scalpel turned his eyes up from his work and gave Lens a genuine smile “Why Ms Lens, I didn’t expect you to return quite so soon. Welcome to the Inner Sanctum. Now! I understand you have a book you wish to trade with me, and I…” he levitated a heavy tome up into the air, the same one which he had shown her the first time “…Have my part of the aforementioned trade.”

“So Ms Lens…” he finalised, leaning back from his desk, “Shall we complete our arrangement?”

EldritchOne Member

Nephren-Ka Was Here Bruh.

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