Vega7285

EDMG Alpha

I'll kick us off.

EDMG Alpha

That works. If you'd like to start us off, you're welcome to, but I can probably write something off that easy enough.

EDMG Alpha

I suppose now there's the obvious question of "where do we start?" Beyond that, not much comes to my mind immediately, just got to decide how to set the stage for the IC stuff and get going.

Also, feel free to add info dumps of your own, as you need.

EDMG Alpha

"Airgetlam, switch on!"

Name:Mana R. Septima
Age: 17
Title: Silver Flame
Device: Airgetlam - An armed device taking the shape of a one-handed sword.
Spells:
Akashic Buster - Mana creates a magic circle and charges it with magical energy, then thrusts her sword through its center, releasing the energy and causing it to erupt in a powerful beam of energy.

Mithral Wave - Mana charges her sword with magical energy and swings it, creating a shockwave of energy which races in the direction of her swing.

Stardust Tears - Mana summons several spectral energy swords and fires them, either rapidly at a single target, or as an area-saturation attack. She can cause the energy blades to detonate for additional damage.

Silverflame Blade - Mana channels magic into her sword, enhancing a strike with greater power and the ability to break through weaker magical barriers.

Pinpoint Barrier - A defensive spell creating a shield in the form of a magic circle.

Flight - Like many magical girls, Mana can fly pretty well.

Telepathy - Another thing every mage can do. Mana can communicate telepathically with other mages.

Personality: Protective of her friends, afraid of being alone, not a fan of the spotlight
History: Mana is a mage hailing from the Balmar Empire. She’s been part of the UGN for years, and made something of a name for herself. She’s credited with taking down the EX-rank Bydo “Gravekeeper” during the Battle of Granzella. She lost several friends and was severely injured during the battle, and is now back in action. She is doing her best to live for the future, instead of dwelling on the past.

Mana is a clone, as is often typical of Balmarian mages, just one of several in the "Septima" line. She doesn't usually bring it up, and hey, that sort of family is normal for her, but she does get upset if accused of being an artificial mage. As one might expect of someone designed for it, most of her life has been spent training to be a mage, and for combat.
Fighting Style: Mana focuses on high-speed midair combat in close to mid range.

EDMG Alpha

Humanity's future is bright. A magitech civilization is flourishing, and has brought a new age of prosperity and exploration. Of course, all that happened a very long time ago, and the Ancient Civilization has since splintered into what we see today, leaving plenty of ruins and Lost Technology scattered about.

Humanity as it is now may not be as powerful, or a single empire spanning a big chunk of the galaxy, but they're still pretty darn capable. FTL travel was never lost, and spaceships ply the old space lanes just as they always have. The modern power blocs now include the Holy Balmar Empire, the Kingdom of La Gias, and the Lyonesse Federation.

Humanity isn't alone in the galaxy. They are beset by an old enemy known as the Bydo Empire. The Bydo are, as far as anyone can tell, horrible space monsters that seem to actively want humanity dead. It's possible we're just in competition for the same resources, but some historians suggest that the Bydo are either created by the ancient civilization, responsible for its eventual fall and fragmentation, or both. Bydo are capable of space travel, and also dimension travel, as they often appear from portals to a strange other-dimensional space they seem to call home.

Fortunately, humanity has a very reliable way of fighting back. Mages have been around probably as long as humanity itself, and magic is quite effective at fighting and damaging the Bydo and their strange cross-dimensional nature, since it can harm both their physical and spiritual forms at once. Magic is also the implement of choice in most law enforcement and similar scenarios, since it can be inherently tuned to non-lethal effects, unlike mass-based weaponry.

Technology

Honestly if it's a staple of "soft" scifi or space fantasy, it's something available here. And if it seems too out there, just make it lost technology someone's trying to dig up or otherwise available as a one-off relic.

FTL travel is achieved either via stable hyperspace gates creating wormholes between linked parts of their system, or ships with hyperdrives installed. Encounters with Bydo in hyperspace are rare, but not completely unheard of.

Cybernetics and cloning are both pretty common, depending on where you are. The Balmarians are particularly adept at cloning and biotechnology, for example.

Mages

A mage is any human possessing a linker core, and therefore capable of absorbing and shaping mana to create various effects. Magic, in this setting, is well understood as another branch of science. Spells are essentially a set of complex calculations to shape and control mana into its desired form. Most spells mages use could be considered similar to programs or formulae, something memorized that produces the same effect every time, to help ease off on the work of controlling mana "off the cuff," so to speak.

Mose mages use some form of Device to better channel their abilities. A device is a small, intelligent computer system (properly, one could call them "magical terminals") that can take over most of the processing and calculation necessary for magic, and also store seplls the mage has created. Mages who focus on combat often have devices that are weapons in their own right, but outside of military organizations, such devices are relatively rare.

Mana replenishment is slow, but can be sped up by converting nutrients into it, so most mages eat a balanced diet rich in carbohydrates, sugars ,and proteins. Mages undergoing intense training tend to eat much more than the average person. Mana can also be stored in cartridges or other forms for later rapid release. A device equipped with a system to specifically load and utilize cartridges to temporarily boots its output is called an armed device.

Universal Guardians

As a result of the Bydo threat, and other issues such as the dangers of new or misused lost technology or simple factional infighting, humanity has created an organization known as the Universal Guardian Network (UGN), to act as a protective body. The UGN typically has branches in most inhabited systems, and acts as humanity's collective military and defense arm. They defer to local authorities where possible, and tend to only get involved in affairs related to their main charter.

Many mages within the UGN, especially those who regularly fight the Bydo, are considered heroes and quite popular across human space. Some court this fame, while many eschew it altogether. This doesn't stop the publicity related to them, and even if someone doesn't have a fan club, they probably turn up in the UGN Mage related magazines and series from time to time.

The Bydo

The enemy of humanity.

The Bydo, also known as the Bydo Empire, are horrible space monsters that have been a scourge upon Mankind for some time now. For the most part they're kept out of civilized areas of space, but by no means are they not a threat, especially on the frontier. Bydo typically travel space in much the same was a anyone else, using large ships and FTL drive. When established on a planet, Bydo seem to supplant the local ecology with their own twisted version of it, composed of Bydo bioforms and native life that has been converted into more Bydo.

Bydo biology is similar in many ways to any other life. They have genetic code, and all that. Many bydo are bio-mechanical in nature, however, either growing mechanical parts as part of their development, or via subsequent modification. Purely mechanical Bydo also exist, either as the result of production, or Bydo corruption of human technology. The Bydo have a strange dual nature, where they seem to exist as both particle-like matter and a wave-like phenomenon, on the macroscopic scale. It is this wave-like bydo phenomenon that is capable of corrupting machinery and minds.

Are the Bydo mages?
Conventional wisdom suggests Bydo are not, in any way, mages the way humans are. Some organic Bydo possess linker cores, and some Bydo machines contain an essence reactor that serves a similar purpose of absorbing and converting mana, but they do not utilize mana in the form of spells recognizable in magical systems. more likely, the Bydo are magic, either because they shape mana in a more "intuitive" and uncontrolled way, convert it directly into energy or matter to fuel themselves, or possibly are themselves some for of large-scale magical phenomenon. Whatever the case, magic can harm both the physical structure and wave-like (or spiritual) components of a Bydo at the same time, making it a very effective deterrent against them.

Bydo Classification
The UGN classifies Bydo in a few ways. Most smaller Bydo are classified by a "rank" assigned to them, with higher rank/class indicating a more dangerous threat or powerful enemy. Most low-rank Bydo aren't much of a threat, and are nicknamed such things as "popcorn" by some combat mages.

High-ranking Bydo are the realm of dangerous opponents. Some are roughly on the scale of a person, and some are many times larger. Most Bydo on a vehicle scale are classed accordingly, however (examples: very large Bydo, starship-class Bydo, Fortress-class etc). The highest rank Bydo are EX- class (for Expert), and are usually some of the most dangerous opponents.

Ze Balmary Empire

Also known as the Holy Balmar Empire, the Balmarian civilization originates on the planet Balmar (naturally). They have a monarchic government, with their emperor viewed as the earthly representative of their god of creation and justice. Beneath the emperor is a prime minister in charge of domestic affairs, and a council of twelve noble families.

Balmarians are essentially human, although their extensive use of genetic engineering has brought out desirable physical traits in much of their population. They embrace genetic engineering and cloning in their society, and many Balmarian leaders are clones of one another. Although they all share the same genetic donor, most clones are adjusted to some extent, so they are rarely completely identical across a series. The Balmarian military also makes use of cloning to produce lines of soldiers or mages intended for specific missions or other purposes. People from other societies who know of this may consider many Balmarian mages to be "artificial," since they are often clones in which magical capability was likely engineered, rather than being natural born talents.

The planet Balmar is defended by a lost technology system of 12 artificial satellites known as Neviim. Each satellite is 40 km in diameter and contains an artificial environment so its inhabitants can live as if they are on the planet's surface. Collectively, they form a network of battlestations that act as the primary planetary defense network.

Malevolence from Beyond (Vega7285 and LuckyBlackCat)

Malevolence From Beyond

An eldritch horror magical girl roleplay

The world is far greater than we know. Even as far as humanity has come, there are things beyond understanding, and threats that the police cannot handle. And you just learned a lot about that the hard way. A powerful ritual has gone out of control, and through some quirk of fate, you've survived an ordeal meant for another and bonded with an eldritch symbiont from another dimension. Like it or not, you're now part of the occult side of the world, and are on the front line of a secret war. And so, the curtain rises...

---

The Setting

The setting for this roleplay is Kojiki Arcology. The time is 2085. Your home combines architecture and ecology into a single three-dimensional urban structure. The arcology is more sprawling than most, covering several green spaces and temples. Residences, parks, schools, and workplaces are all designed to be close together, and aside from emergency vehicles, few vehicles are permitted aside from bicycles. Most people get around using public transportation monorails, or by walking. Much of the city's architecture seems to take cues from art deco, and overall there is an odd mixture of the old 1920s style and the ultra-modern holographic displays and so-on. Wireless communication access is near-ubiquitous, and everyone has their ultramodern smartphone handy.

Like all arcologies, Kojiki is built with security in mind. Scanners and checkpoints at every entrance scan for contraband and undesirables, including inhuman or monstrous infiltrators. Contraband still manages to sneak in and there is a black market for everything from weapons to magic tomes, if one knows where to look.

General Setting Info Dump

Current Technology

About fifty years ago, the Ashcroft Foundation shocked the world by going public with the following: magic was real. And they had used it to develop new technology capable of generating steady, clean energy. This Dimensional Engine soon propelled mankind forward by leaps and bounds. Finally, we had the revolution in energy futurists had anticipated would come with the atomic age. Soon after the development of the D-engine, antigravity systems were also developed, and humanity has leveraged them both to usher in a new age of exploration. Powered armor and even larger humanoid mecha have been developed for both peaceful purposes like construction and for war.

Additional advances in fields such as cybernetics, nanotechnology, and biological engineering have led to revolutions in medicine and everyday life. One can generate just about anything with a nanofactory...provided one has access to it. Medical cybernetics exist, although far more common are replacement tissues created using a person's own cells and then attached with the help of nanomedicine or beneficial sorcery.

The Eldritch Society

Founded by renegades among the Children of Chaos who stole the Ta'ge fragments, The Eldritch Society is a loose society of sorcerers, psychics, and others who know of the hidden truths of the world and act to protect it and humanity from these darker influences. The society has developed the Rite of Sacred Union from information contained within the fragments, a ritual similar to the Rite of Transfiguration that does not force one to lose their mortality. Instead, it calls out into the universe, to bring a mortal and a "higher being" together in symbiosis. However, participants in the rite would be "judged worthy". Tagers, as they have come to be called, are mortals who have undergone the Rite of Sacred Union and survived. They are monsters with the hearts of men, and are the Eldritch Society's greatest warriors.

The Chrysalis Corporation and Children of Chaos

The Chrysalis Corporation is one of the world's most influential and largest megacorporations, often chief competitor to the Ashcroft Foundation itself. It is also rotten from the inside. Decades ago, Chrysalis rediscovered the Rite of Transfiguration, a powerful ritual that transforms a human into...something else. This attracted the attention of the god Nyarlatheotep, and it gathered its mortal cult, the Children of Chaos, and silently took over. Most Chrysalis employees are completely unaware of the cult's existence, or any other darker influences, although eventually cult initiation and promotion are one and the same.

Dhoanoids

A mortal undergoing the Rite of Transfiguration is changed into a form "more suiting to his masters." He becomes a shapeshifting monstrosity known as a Dhoanoid. Although they walk around like men, their true form lurks just under the surface. Utterly inhuman in body and soul, a dhoanoid is easily discovered by genetic scans or mystical means. Essentially the natural enemies/opposites of tagers. Also essentially the monster of the week villains in a tokusatsu show. Right down to stuff like "snake monster guy" and "bat monster guy" as potential aesthetics. There's some I can and will borrow from the CthulhuTech books, but one can pretty much invent anything appropriate and get away with it because that's more fun anyway.

The Black Lodge

The Black Lodge is a cabal of sorcerers founded in America that has since spread tendrils of influence across the world. All members of the Lodge are dedicated to the practice of sorcery unrestricted by moral or legal boundaries. Many of its members are powerful maestros of evil enchantment, who have traded away their humanity for even greater heights of power.

A source of weird antagonists who aren't the Children of Chaos, basically. They're probably the source of at least some of the shenanigans going on, and collaborating with the local branch of the cult, but their primary goals are their own weird magic (or science) stuff, more than anything.

The Care and Feeding of Extradimensional Symbionts

Tager common abilities

Tagers can shift instantly between their human and alien forms, and no physical objects or restraints can stop the transformation. The symbiont simply destroys anything in the way. At least your clothing is instead stored in another dimension, instead of being shredded every time.

All tagers enjoy enhanced physical attributes compared to a normal human. Speed, strength, agility, perception, and even mental fortitude are affected. While tagers enjoy a small boost in their unshifted human form, they gain far greater boons when in heir shifted, alien form. The extent to which a tager's attributes are boosted does vary by individual type.

Due to your mystical connection to your symbiont, it influences you in subtle ways. Some of its own personality traits, so to speak, might begin to bleed into your own. When you are in a stressful or dangerous situation, your symbiont may try to manifest itself partially or fully, whether you want it to or not.

Abilities by form

Human form

In mortal human form,

• Minor enhancement to strength, agility, and so-on.
• Regenerate from injury at a slow but steady rate, recovering in only hours or days from most wounds. Any injuries suffered in your mortal form heal at this rate, even if you later change forms.
• Detect Dhoanoids and other nonhuman beings. This takes about a minute of observation. While dhoanoids are recognizable as such, anything else will simply be registered as something "Other."
• Communicate telepathically with tagers (shifted or not) within 100m. Sense other tagers within 10m.

Shifted Form

In their clearly alien battle form, all tagers have the following abilities.

• Full enhancement to strength, speed, agility, etc.
• Ability to leap great distances with little effort.
• Stick to and crawl on walls and other sheer surfaces.
• Life support: your mortal form is mystically protected and you can survive in space or the deep oceans.
• Armored and more resistant to injuries.
• Regenerate rapidly from injury. You cannot shift back until any injuries suffered while in your alien form are healed.
• Every tager has a variety of weapons and other supernatural abilities, although the specifics differ between symbionts.
• Limit Weapon: A unique and powerful attack that you can use once a day, often to devastating effect.
• Communicate telepathically with other tagers within 2 km. Automatically sense other tagers within 100m.

Hybrid Form

Tagers can also manifest only part of their symbiont. Although this takes an act of will under most circumstances, your symbiont does appreciate the value of discretion. When active, a tager's still appears mostly human, although their eyes take on a clearly inhuman appearance, such as becoming pitch black, blood red, or segmented like an insect's. You gain access to one of your natural weapons or supernatural abilities, can leap great distances, and can cling to walls like in your shifted form.

I'm not sure what else to put here. The info dump sections will probably grow with notable NPCs and their connections or other major plot tokens and things as they come up. Though NPCs and their ilk will also likely go in the character tab. The arcology itself probably deserves a tab eventually, tracking notable locations in it and why they're important. But for now, it's time to become the heroines neither Kojiki nor The Eldritch Society expected, much less wanted.

Magical Girls, Mecha musume, Mythos horror, and some other things

I'm once again dipping my toes into the whole 1x1 pool for RP. It's a way for me to possibly do some things like explore some characters or little stories I'd want to, but without all the stuff for a bigger, organized RP. Or at least, that's how I see it.

I'll start with a little about me. I'm used to RP more on chat-based things like IRC, primarily also using tabletop game rules. So I'm often not the sort to write long novels for a post, and more the sort to lean toward "as long as it needs to be." I'm a grad student working on my dissertation, so I might eventually disappear for reasons related to becoming Dr. Vega, but I'll keep anyone posted as best I can, there. And shouldn't need to sacrifice everything else upon the altar of getting it done. However, that being said, I'm a distractable and laid back sort, so the sort of posting speed I'd expect is more once or twice a week, instead of daily. Things can go fast some of the time, but don't have to go fast all of the time. I tend to play female characters, although I, myself, am male. I can play guys just fine, it's just for whatever reason, I usually don't.

I mentioned tabletop, and that does sometimes color how I RP, as some expectations of GM and players distinctions. I'm aware that's not really a thing in 1x1 stuff, but it's something one should be aware of. I'll probably do a fair bit of OOC planning and discussion for things, in terms of figuring out how things should go, or what might be fun to add to a scene or just how things should develop. I'm also not expecting long, epic plots. I'm more looking for or expecting short stories or possibly several vignettes between characters who exist in a greater setting and story, but we're not really telling that, so much as just what's happening when they're together.

So, there's some expectations and such. I'll say, as far as potential ERP, smut, or NSFW content goes, it's not something I usually write, but that doesn't mean I won't try it or it can't be fun. obviously, I'd prefer a partner to also be 18+ in that case, for obvious reasons. Given the shorter stories or vignettes, probably best to not make sex scenes and lewdness the only point, though. I'm happy to discuss kinks and such and set boundaries there, as particularly with anime and Lovecraft influences, things could get weird fast. Basically, could do anything from completely ordinary heterosexual things or yuri to letting tentacles get involved.

General Genre interests
And here's the actual stuff for RP, that I can hopefully write up well enough. Some might be old ideas I've tried in group stuff and never went anywhere, others might just be more genres and characters, but hey, let's see what fun might be had.

I really like the magical girl genre for one reason or another. Though, mostly, I prefer things like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha or Senki Zesshou Symphogear, for the overall style. Big, flashy fights with friendship lasers flying everywhere, possible dimension-hopping settings with military undertones, that sort of thing. I'm not too big on going for big dark deconstructions and such, and do prefer playing things mostly straight.

I'm also a big scifi fan, whether that be cyberpunk, or space adventure, giant mecha, or whatever else. I like Lovecraftian Mythos stuff, either as actual horror, or as flavor for anything else, to make for fun shenanigans. Because while I do like the proper horror elements, I also find misbehaving with the mythos tropes equally fun.

Mecha girls (or mecha musume) are another thing I like design-wise, but other than a character design quirk, there's not too much to say there, I suppose. Same goes for monster girls.

I'm happy to combine various of the above, of course.

Specific plots and fandoms or the like
Some more specific stuff, in brief, mostly available for jumping-off points.
Magical Girls

• Pretty much the standard sort of stuff as mentioned above. Magical girl meets magical boy, magical girl meets other magical girl, that sort of thing.
• Weirder stuff like what's probably more eldritch horror guyver, just with the characters being otherwise typical magical girl protagonists. I may have a big write-up for this stuff I can share from an attempt at running it as a group RP that fell through.
• My own pet setting's sort of Nanoha crossed with ideas from Super Robot Wars and/or old shmups like R-Type. You have been warned.
• Speaking of that, I do have a sort of dark magical girl character. She works as either going purely antagonist or friendship wins out/has won out and she sticks with the heroes.

General Scifi

• AI meets human, or digitized human consciousness meets human. Could be Eclipse Phase's setting, could be something more like Expelled from Paradise.
• Arpeggio of Blue Steel...IN SPAAAAACE.
• Cyberpunk shenanigans. Either classic Gibson (and by extension, Shadowrun) things, or something more unusual.

Fandoms and such
Note that I'm the sort who prefers just using the world from existing stuff and making our own characters who'd fit into it, instead of playing existing characters. It just never sits well with me for some reason. Obviously, anything I've already mentioned counts here.

Lobotomy Corporation/Library of Ruina - I really like Project Moon's utterly bizarre world that appears to be a cyberpunk dystopian hellscape mixed with actual monsters and all manner of other weirdness. I am not, however, an expert on every single aspect of it (still playing Library, for instance). Could be anything from Lobotomy corp. agents' daily lives trying not to die while managing the abnormalities to something more abstract like fixers trying to make sense of things.

I think the only thing I haven't mentioned is doing some sort of Victorian setting. Could be for Gothic horror, could be for Sherlock Holmes style investigation and such.

I do also have some ideas for modern-day yokai or spirit hunter stuff. Though not much to really say about it there.

And that's everything that comes to mind at the moment. Thanks for reading.

Legion of Heroes

The ninjas easily dodged the haphazard return fire of their own projectiles, but it was still enough to put them on the defensive. And Miria was already closing the gap. Really, all she needed was to get through, but there was little reason not to pause and deal with the current opposition anyway. They wouldn't chase her down, that way. And even if she probably could outrun a few humans at a dead sprint, if only from sheer endurance, there might be more traps or the like ahead.

Miria leapt into the air, launching a flying kick into the chest of the first enemy directly ahead, knocking him off his feet.
Two to the left, two to the right, one above. Miria gets a Klein field up just in time to stop the attacks. "I can do this all day," she says, sounding bored enough to make the point. She steps further ahead, turning to face at least some of her opponents, and with a thrust of one hand slams a wall of force into them, knocking them both flying down the corridor back the way she had come. Three left. Before the fight could continue, one of the ninjas throws something on the ground, and it explodes into a massive cloud of smoke. By the time it clears, the ninjas have vanished.

Nothing for it but to keep going. As it turned out, the entire facility was some sort of maze full of traps. Most of the rooms and offshoots were just more of the same, or full of ninjas. Except for that one break room full of puppies. That was nice. Eventually, after far too many explosions, pitfalls, rotating knives, and large pendulums swinging from the ceiling, Miria had found something more interesting. It looked like a control room of some sort, manned by a single security guy.

Just an ordinary security guy, with how easy he was to take out. Clearly, Miria hadn't found her way to the lair of one of the true masterminds of the place, but she had found its nerve center. It didn't take her too long to find the other heroes making their way around, and start shutting down any traps nearby. She also found the intercom. It was a risk, but it wasn't like she'd be undetected forever anyway.

"Hello," she says to pretty much the whole facility. "I've managed to take over the security hub. This facility is now under my control. I'll do what I can to support you from here." Some of the heroes might recognize her voice from the previous night.

Legion of Heroes

The previous night's adventure behind her, Miria returned to her apartment. She could just return to her ship, but a fair part of observing the events on Earth involved immersing herself in its culture. At least the electronic records systems were easy enough to get into and fabricate an effective identity. The details of dealing with a civilization not part of the Alliance were...difficult, to say the least. It's so much easier when more universal identifications are recognized and there's no need to jump through nearly as many hoops. Or at least the hoops to jump through weren't new and unusual ones. Establish one's prior history, identity, citizenship with the local governing body, income, etc. It took a bit to set up, but the effort was better than simply appearing one day, fully formed from the ether. She could alter records, but not memories.

The next morning, she had some unexpected mail. Looks like someone was aware of her activities the previous night. And well informed enough to track her down. This was, in and of itself, enough to follow up on. There was more to send a stronger message, but really, if one is going to invite someone in as a hero, one already knows what they're doing.

---

She arrived pretty early in the morning (got a scoop to chase down, villains related to the whole attempted museum heist, easy sell to go missing from the office). Volcano insurance. Really. Better be a brand name and not the actual business. Grailham wasn't even located in a region known for its tectonic activity. At least it was a more interesting front than an import/export warehouse or the like. Miria walked into the place still in her more civilian appearance. She ignored the staff and made her way to the elevator in the back. It looked ordinary enough, buttons for all the floors. And after some inspection, additional buttons labeled in Chinese characters hidden behind a panel and leading even further below ground. Time to jab a few and see what happens.

What happens is a death trap. The elevator stopped somewhere between floors, its lights cut off, and some vents near the bottom started pouring water into the elevator. For most intruders, this alone would prove more than enough, but Miria hardly seemed worried. If anyone's watching on hidden camera, they're in for a boring performance, as she hardly seems to react to her situation of a slow death by drowning. Miria at least has the good grace to play along enough to swim to the top of the elevator and get one good breath from the swiftly-disappearing bubble of air at the top of the car. Unfortunately, the emergency escape at the top was locked and sealed shut. No way would it be that easy.

By the time the doors were pried open from the inside, Miria had transformed her clothes into her scifi superhero get-up. She swam out into a room that was fairly well-lit, with walls, floor, and ceiling covered with white tiles. It would almost make a nice swimming pool, if not for the corpses in various stages of decay hanging upside-down from chains strewn about the place as food for the crabs and occasional fish flitting around in the room. There was, at least, a surface here to break. And above it, in the ceiling, there was a grate. That's her way out, then.

Some amount of effort and noise later, and Miria was in the room above the lovely water trap, carefully resetting the grate into the floor. Someone had probably heard that, so she'd soon get to see whatever the next challenge this place would throw at her. In hindsight, she should've just used her Klein field to trap some air. Now, she had it up and ready to deflect attacks in case of more traps, or a welcoming committee.

---

And welcoming committee it was. Miria stepped into a hallway to meet about half a dozen ninjas rushing her way. "So that's how it's going to be," she asked. "I don't suppose anyone knows where I could find a manager? I'd like to speak about a possible OSHA violation on the way in."

A volley of kunai and throwing stars was her response. It stopped in midair, held in place by her force field. Miria narrowed her eyes as she sized up the enemy from the other side of the ineffective missiles. "I should have known better than to try." A quick outburst from her shield sent the projectiles flying back down the hallway ahead of her as she rushed the group.

Qualia: Mission Sub Rosa

Hana Yun

Some time that evening, Nazca would receive yet another visitor, though one prefaced by a visit from the nurse. "Miss Whitehall," the nurse began, "as you might expect, several Polymaths on Bermuda have an interest in medicine, and one has heard of your case and wishes to volunteer her assistance. Shall I show her in?" The nurse waited for an affirmative before leaving to admit a young lady of oriental descent into the room.

Hana had arrived with a small black bag similar to those carried by traveling doctors, and a small bouquet of flowers: Hypoxis, Yarrow, Sage, and other flowers symbolizing health and wellness. She set her bag down, and first set about putting the flowers into a more permanent home in an available vase. "Good evening, miss Whitehall," she began. "I apologize about the unannounced visit, I only recently heard about your situation and was in a bit of a hurry to prepare my things." Compared to most of the visitors for the day, this oriental lady's tone and behavior were at least an attempt at professionalism similar to those of a doctor or other medical staff.

"I'm Hana," she introduced herself, after the apology. "I'm sure you've had a long day, so I'll try to be brief. I specialize in medicine, and one of my preparations should help." She picked up her bag, rummaged around it, and fished out a carefully-sealed vial of liquid with a label printed in her native characters. "This medicine will accelerate the healing process considerably, and should serve to speed your recovery. It promotes the body's natural healing and ah-" she caught herself, "you probably don't care about all the details. Needless to say, it's safe on both Egoists and people or more ordinary constitution." She placed the vial on the bedside table, in easy reach for Nazca.

"I had to ask your doctors a few things to make sure I prepared the correct dosage. Take one vial a day. You may need more rest or be hungrier than usual as side effects." It probably didn't need to be said to just do what one needs to to remedy those particular needs. Hana set out several more vials next to the first one.

"As a volunteer, I can't do more than look in on you from time to time, so please call me if you think anything is amiss as a result of my treatment. Ask for Hana Yun."

She bowed politely in the oriental fashion. "Before I leave, if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them." The way she spoke about her work, it was clear enough this wasn't some experimental treatment, although doubtless anyone volunteering their expertise at a hospital is looking for more clinical data. Past furthering her own research, however, Hana didn't appear to have any particular motives beyond the altruistic. At the very least, she had no intent to stay long, or engage in small talk. Her visit was a professional one, not a social call.