Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Orta     The transition through the warp gate is intense. Taking a single step out of the shimmering gate, formed seemingly in midair as a rippling heat haze, meets with a blast of heat so intense that it actually stings, and a breath full of air so hot, dry, and gritty with microscopic dust that it feels like sandpaper to the throat.

    The landscape all around looks like it wouldn't be much better. The terrain as far as the eye can see looks to be natural badlands, alternating vast stretches of amber sand and high rises of rocky canyons and plateaus sculpted into strange shapes by the wind.

    Behind, the sand grows all-consuming, scorched by the same sun that, while absolutely midday bright, fails to really blind anyone off the golden dunes. Up ahead, the earth packs down more solidly, and becomes host to strange scrublands of plants both familiar and not, interspersing tough grass, spiky shrubs, and water storing bulbs, with sparse groves of tall, curling tubers that glow with blue-green light,short, fractally branching, totally transparent trees, and bone white ferns that would look better in a jungle if they were green.

    Far up ahead, there are faint signs of human civilization, judging by wisps of wood smoke and black dots on the horizon that are difficult to make out in the shimmer. The signal, whatever it is, is at full tilt, overloading electronics designed to receive data, until its many frequencies are laboriously filtered out. Listening in sounds like nothing but harsh screeching and chittering.
Victor Xix      Victor does not like this place.

     Of course, the reason he doesn't like this place isn't its fault. It isn't some form of discomfort - the huge, ancient, Original Greaver has no trouble with the hot air or the sandpaper throat, or at least, none that he vocalizes or puts on his face. When breathing becomes a problem, he simply pulls the tattered red cloak he wears around his mouth like a scarf and soldiers on.

     He does not like the natural badlands, the alternating high rises, the beautiful amber sand. That beauty is lost on the ancient Greaver - he lacks both the ability and the interest necessary to cogitate such affection. As he pushes forwards into the sand to form a natural sandbreaker for the rest of the League behind him, a great bulwark shattering the wind on his massive, muscled, body, all he can think of is how much it reminds him of Tellus.

     That simply puts him in poor spirits.

     Without words, the huge Greaver points towards the the wisps of smoke and black dots. He makes a motion over his shoulder.

     He is pretty sure humans are that way, and humans are usually civilized.
Henry Jekyll "Interesting location, right, Victor?" Henry Jekyll's voice appears before his presence, which materializes a moment after. He's ditched the suit for a bedouin style outfit, but otherwise looks no different from normal. He taps his radio device a moment, just to deal with the amount of data it happens to be receiving. "I do hope whatever we find at the source of this signal will be interesting enough to justify the inconvenience."
Crys Gattz Warp Gates? That was something that she was long used to. It was odd the war that had consuemd almost her entire adult life was over and she as mostly drifing. The Paladins would have been a dead end for what she needed, she had no stomach for god kings so that left out the conford and while she's not overly fond of her state in the League? It still has what she needs or at least can offer it. Sides she alway was one for adventure better not waste time she didn't mind the heat at all either as she exited out and she looks at Victor for a moment and falls in with him.

"Right we should check that out. Dr. Jekyll? Shall we? We won't find the source lounging about getting a tan."
Mihk Lihzeh     The miqo'te is not normally one for venturing far from the Safehouses dotted around Eorzea, nor is she oft pleased to go far from her homeland, where Aether is more difficult to shape and use. But here she is, her knowledge of more arcane communications practices mean she may be able to sort out what the technological means may simply be too swamped to fathom.

    The deserts and heat make her choke briefly, before she pulls her robe up at the top, wrapping a hood about her head, and a band of cloth across her mouth to staunch the dust and keep the sun from her head... though the hood has a pair of holes for her ears to poke through, the little fans of cartillage flitting at nearby sounds. "This reminds me of the deep deserts outside of Ul'Dah... if this is anything like, we must be careful of things lurking beneath the sand." she offers, pulling her tome from her belt, and beginning some spellwork. "This will not offer much solace, but perchance a Protect spell will help, even a little." she explains.

    Once she finishes drawing Aether into the correct Geometries, she 'picks up' the glyph, and 'throws' it out, in a gesture to cast the created spell. A field of blue hexagonal panels form around each person present, offering some very minor protection from the blasting wind and grit, but it's not much.
Staren     Staren steps out of the warpgate and quickly starts coughing. The heat is even a bit much for his protection charm. He reaches into his bag for something -- it looks like a folded-up piece of cloth or plastic or something with a little tank. He shakes it loose into what looks like some sort of jumpsuit...

    <<Staren, wouldn't your protoabstractum armor be more convenient?>>

    Staren shakes his head at his own forgetfulness. He half-stuffs the jumpsuit back into the bag, then turns his belt buckle, armor sort of resembling his combat armor forming over his body before he takes a deep breath of filtered, temperature-controlled air, and then offers the light vacsuit to the party. "It's got its own air and temperature protection, if anyone wants... Ugh, what is that? It's jamming everything..."
Flamel Parsons     Agent Parsons is very glad he always wears sunglasses. He is always glad about that, but he's especially glad right now. Somehow, even when traversing a desert, he manages to look exactly like one would expect the agent of a vague, yet menacing government agency to look: Heavy sunglasses, a thick almost gasmask-like mechanical dustmask, and a loose, much more desert-ized version of his classic man-in-black suit, one that wouldn't look too out-of-place in a weirdly themed nomadic Mad Max sort of way.

    "Noted." He says, nodding to Victor Xix. He puts a hand up to his earpiece, tapping at it as he often does. "Repor--Ow!" He winces at the noise in the receiver, and it sparks in his ear with a quick burning sensation, until he filters it down to psionic transmissions. "Reporting. Potential data source sighted. Allies have noted smoke." His tone brightens up as he speaks to the group, speculating on things that could be worth the trouble. "Data like that has to be coming out of some powerful transmitting technology! In the middle of a desert, near some crappy fires. Who knows what it could be! I'm hoping it's one of those black-budget government spontaneous combustion transmitter facilities that all didn't exist and got lost."

    He shakes a head at Staren. "Thanks! I need the head open for now, though." He puts a finger on his temple, and opens his mind very slowly, just a little, to take a tiny taste... He doesn't know what the transmissions are, but he's going to see if the broadcast contains any traces of psychic signature. If it's being broadcasted by a sapient being, rather than just a sapient being operating external equipment, he might grab a trace of a psyche, but otherwise, it's unlikely he'll get much info out of it. Just probing, as best he can, to see what clues there are to find, as he follows close behind the League windbreaker.
Orta     Somehow, covering the mouth with scarves and clothes doesn't seem to help much. Sure, the visibly sand collects in the folds in the cloth rather than going down someone's throat, but the scouring itch seems to penetrate it regardless, as if somehow too fine to be filtered out by normal cloth, like miniscule fibres of glass or something. Regardless, the Protect spell seems to wall it out, and make an adequate job of keeping the travel forward bearable. Sealed environment suits have little trouble either way.

    Thankfully, the warp gate has deposited everyone at the very edge of the desert to their backs, right on the threshold between both areas, as a convenient point for anyone insane enough to go into the dunes. After less than an hour of walking, it becomes relatively safe to breathe, perhaps due to the strange flora catching whatever it is in the air, and somewhat cooler, without walking on scorching sands. It's still hot, dry and harsh, but bearable.

    That explains how human beings have settled down at all, as they definitely have at the end of the journey. A couple of hours away lies what could be best called a village, though it is surrounded on all sides by high, bleached sandstone walls of absolute minimum complexity, simply pressed into shape, with small, circular, cross-barred windows dotted along its length, and sharpened stakes over the top.

    There seems to only be one way in, as a crude gate through several feet of white stone, but today, it has been left wide open, as covered wagons come in pulled by strange, bipedal beasts of burden, like armless, scaleless lizards, decorated bone and cloth trinkets and wrappings. A couple of burly men in brightly dyed clothes check visitors at the gate, wearing sleeveless shirts that show off their muscles, along with sashes, head wrappings, and tall boots, but the atmosphere is relaxed and they give anyone little bother. The wrapped objects at their sides that might be guns are left untouched.

    Inside, the village is much more lively. It isn't much more sophisticated than the outside suggests, as most of the densely packed habitation takes the form of oddly shaped sandstone houses seemingly placed and expanded on at random, with small piles of firewood and pots of oil outside, along with drying clothes and curing meats and berries hung from racks. The people are certainly happy however.

    The streets are actually crowded, for what can be considered crowded with such a small settlement, and everyone is dressed in much the same outlandishly colourful fabrics, probably for some special occasion, judging by the noise of laughing, singing, and unfamiliar percussion and wind instruments from every corner. Doors are painted with complicated, geometric designs, and tapesties hang from roofs and windows, covering up iron stakes and bars. Traders hawk unrecognizable wares from every corner, under shaded cloth awnings on top of brilliantly patterned rugs.

    More importantly, getting this close is teetering on the brink of utterly frying electronics. Comms are hellish static, thermal vision is a kaleidoscope at best, many microchips might shut down, and radar shows hundreds of phantom contacts. Parsons has found something odd along the journey. Intermixed with all the interference, a certain percent of it /is/ psychic; at least close enough he can sense. It's a little painful to turn over in his head, as it is probably not suited to communicating with people. It feels 'beckoning' in a sense.
Victor Xix      Victor shrugs. "If you say so," he tells Henry.

     Blue hexagons dance around Victor, like everybody else. Then, unlike everybody else, the hexagons shatter. The strange magical formations come undone, the geometric shapes twist in on themselves in decidedly un-geometric ways. Victor raises an eyebrow and shrugs again.

     He also glances over his shoulder at Staren, as if to suggest that, no, he is perfectly fine and it will not discomfort or comfort him to be in a suit that is sized for someone half his size and weight.

     No thought is given to the how or why. As the settlement blossoms to life around them, and the harsh and brutal sands slowly break, and the happy people consume what was a desert visage, Victor...

     ...well, he goes over to a stall and takes something to drink, because even with a regenerating throat and a lack of complaints, that was still pretty hellish. He doesn't actually ask the merchant, but he does set down some odd-looking coins on the counter so his intentions aren't misrepresented.

     Then he wipes his mouth and turns back to the party.
Henry Jekyll The properties of the area do cause Henry to raise an interested eyebrow, before going back to becoming incorporeal, spending the remainder of the treck outside of corporeal form, if only to see how much this area would influence him in that form. He rematerializes when they reach the town, keeping his eyes open but letting the others do their part, for all his curiousity, Jekyll's skills in the pursuit of Progress are best suited to the lab, not the field.
Staren     Staren folds the suit up and puts it away again. As for walking for /hours/? Screw that. Once they're out of the desert and the constant sandblasting, Staren pulls a broom out of his bag and rides it. He lands and puts it away again as they arrive at the walled city, undeploying the armor as well and his clothes becoming a blur of threads that coalesces into something loosely resembling the traveling merchants' clothing, favoring a red and sea green color palette to blend in with the garishness somewhat.

    Staren grumbles as his electronics have problems -- acutely aware of it because of the implants in his head.

    Staren follows Xix to a stall selling drinks. He watches what money is being used, and pays as close to appropriately as he can with coins from Creation or Equestria. "Thank you so much." He starts a conversation with the trader as he takes the drink. "This might be an odd question, but I am from far away..." clearly, since he forgot to disguise his ears and tail. "Does the word 'radio' mean anything to you? There are strange transmissions coming from somewhere around here..."
Mihk Lihzeh     Mihk doesn't do well with large crowds, and so, even though she stands out like a sore thumb, her robes aren't 'colourful' nor is her skin particularly 'normal', being a charcoal black, not to mention the deep purple of her ears, nor her tail for that matter.. but she steps out of the group, and settles back to watch, eyes shaded from the sun under her hood. It still hurts, Keepers don't have the slit-contraction that the Seekers do, so sunlight can be painful even in moderation... but she flips open her tome again, and begins to cast, shaping Aether into a different Geometry, one that 'seeks' sources of 'magic'. Aether specifically, but most world's 'Magic' is similar enough to offer some kind of a trace. Not that she's expecting much on her 'Aether Compass' as it emerges to float above her tome's pages.
Flamel Parsons     'Mel's not having the best time. "Ow. Ow ow ow ow." He says, in that sort of surreal, positive-monotone way. "Ow." He manages to pick his earpiece out of his ears, squinting at it as it sparks and sputters, before he discards it and focuses on the rich culture and the bright colors and the celebration here! "Okay, so, if you guys got magical transmitters, now's the time! I'm swapping to psionic bandwidth, let me know if you want me to run brain-relay for you." As long as this thing isn't saturating too much of the local psionic bandwidth, Parsons can keep a sort of radio going... Even if it's unfortunately not likely to work with proper technological data transmission.

    "Blech, what an awful desert." He says, pulling his mask off and shaking it in front of him. The inside dumps some of that weird substance out, before he puts it away. "Huh. Useless!" He says, brightly. "Okay! Let's find that thing. I can't pinpoint a direction, so you handle that, I'll work on this end instead!" The others are dealing with things more directly and socially. Parsons, meanwhile, just sort of... Trances out, eyes going white. There's probably at least a few weak minds around here, so his astral presence pokes around for places of least resistance and tries to breach and examine things, scouting for any information on major events that happened precisely in tandem with the sudden rush of data. It's INCREDIBLY unethical, and if there's any local defensive mindsets against this sort of thing they'll springtrap him easily, but hopefully this can get him a chunk of data about the matter.

    If whatever's broadcasting was looking for a similarly incomprehensible response, this probably lights up sensors.
Crys Gattz Crys Gattz is looking very out of place, high tech clothing, the ears, the glowing choker she was wearing as he followd Dr. Jekyll and she seems to leep her cool a they move deeper into this strange desert. She seems to be in a good enough mood and air is clearliung up soon Crys is pulling off the scarf she had on for all the good it did which was nothing. She banishes it into her photon trap. she seems content to hang back and explore the villiage what little of it there is.

She tilts her head a bit though as she sees how many people are about for such a small place. She does seem to like the style of fahsion here though it's quite bright.

She however is also now staring to look for market stalls to see if she can find anything of interest while they look.
Orta     The first trader Victor can find is settled on a bench made of what at first appears to be birch wood, but then turns out to be the carefully polished and stained rib bone of some giant creature. The has rather significant quantities of food and drink laid out, mostly hanging from racks and kept in clay pots.

    Some of them are actually identifiable, such as smoked and dried fillets of what appear to be some form of cod. Others are complete nonsense, like clusters of berries that look like swollen brains. The drink he picks up is some incredibly bittersweet juice substance, yellow-green as modern candy. The trader looks up at Victor chugging at it with something like awe, and something else like total bafflement, tugging on the patterned collar of his vest, before scooping up the coins, biting on one, squinting at it against the sun, and then tossing it into a skin pouch of dozens of other mingled tokens of probable monetary value. It looks like there isn't a unified currency in circulation here.

    He watches the giant man wander away in silence, before favouring Staren's approach with a much warmer attitude, throwing his arms wide and exclaiming as if he'd just met a long-lost relative. He starts talking over him right away, gesticulating at Victor. For a few seconds, the always-reliable Multiverse's translation just . . . craps out. Staren is stuck listening to "Sona ec tredya kahts? Ec defencia? Deah tu insuretia. Loksenia laos?" for about five seconds, before the bizarre mishmash of Greek, Latin, Indonesian, Sino and English accentation cements itself in his brain.

    "So, bring any news? Or are you guards? Your friend is incredibly strange! Is he a mutant or something?" he then begins laughing, until he catches onto what Staren says, looks very confused, and then shakes his head. "Radios make the village god angry. The village god keeps the Empainia out, because they can't navigate the desert without their radios. If you have one, you should leave it with the gatesmen."

    All that talk of a god, and Mihk, sequestered from sight, finds nothing to do with any kind of magic, divine or otherwise. The area is mystically as dead as a doornail. Perhaps for that reason, Doctor Jekyll is free to cruise around town as much as he likes, having easy pick of weird animal stables, housing districts, an incredibly compact farm harvesting strange crops, and what appears to be a temple or the like, with people un uniform, white and blue robes setting out bundles of incense and face-like ornaments on its steps.
Orta     Chrys gets much the same weirdo treatment as Victor, though somewhat less so, as it's only her clothes, rather than her entire physiology. Some places sell crude to passable tools, others sell consumables, a few sell instruments, or baubles and superstitious talismans, a couple sell weapons, all of which are an eclectic mixture to say the least, from massive elephant rifles to hand built revolvers to almost military looking fare, and many more kludged together into hideous bastard guns from many different parts. Some shops, however, sell things that she just can't make heads or tails of, mostly in the form of odd little chips, globes, vials and what look like injectors of all things.

    Parsons is in luck. Near everyone here is in a state of unguarded festive celebration, and many appear almost pathologically relaxed, possibly from narcotic substances. A couple of quick dives, especially from trader caravans, glean that this village is called Hamuz, and is celebrating because of a 'guardian totem' they built their village around thirty years ago. Specifically, the newest high priest has had a vision, and finally determined the ritual to speak to the god that dwells inside of it, ensuring the village a hundred years of protection and prosperity.

    It is about at this time that someone actively approaches Victor, despite how badly he stands out, having to shoulder their way through the crowd. A girl probably half his height, wearing a very plain, brown, coarse cloak around herself, and a matching turban wrapped around her head, so that all that is really visible is half her face. Contrasting to the people here, she is pretty damn white, and her eyes are a perfectly neutral grey that doesn't show up in normal people. "Ecce! Pritus! Tu, loksenia! Dire dy sancitu! Faniba vertus! Festina!"

    His brain gets to fix this one too: "You! Wait! The stranger! Tell me, where is the holy idol? They need to know the truth! Hurry!" She reaches into her cloak and pulls out a hand-sized object, made out of perfectly fused pieces of white shell that look much too smooth and arbitrary in shape to have come out of a creature, to the point it looks like abstract art. "Something like this, but bigger! Have you seen it?"
Staren     Staren stares. The translation effect isn't working? The hell? It resolves itself before he can investigate, though. "We are..." Staren thinks about how to put it. "Scholars. From... /very/ far away. I am not sure what he is. What is an Empainia?" He gestures at the wares. "And what would you reccomend to drink?" He also pulls something that looks like a flipphone with crystals on it from his pocket and starts messaging the others.
Victor Xix      Victor is suddenly beset by a young woman. He stares down at her with those bizarre cat eyes. Those eyes slide down onto the object.

     He shakes his head.

     "No," Victor says, "I don't know what you're talking about. But if you wish to speak with the people, I will help you."

     Victor suddenly, more or less without warning, moves to hoist the girl onto his shoulders so that she can shout whatever she needs to shout to the crowd.

     "Do what you want," Victor says, "If you wish to move, I will move. I do not think anything here can stop me."

     It isn't said with any kind of ego or arrogance or self-importance - just the simple fact that, as far as he can tell, nobody else is...well...this *big*.
Henry Jekyll After wandering a bit and not finding too much that interests him, Jekyll heads back towards Victor, and thus he notices the strange lady that accosts the expeditions true winner. He hovers just behind her, controlling his breath and calling upon his talents to minimize the odds of this person yammering about holy idols and truths while he's doing his very best to get a detailed look at the object.

Without dematerializing, he's challenging himself, becoming invisible and immaterial would be cheating. Right as he gets into position, Victor picks up the lady and he sighs faintly. "I was trying to get a better look at that thing, Victor." He points out without rancor.
Victor Xix      Victor just sort of gestures up at her in response to Henry's response. "Now everyone has a good view of it," he says.
Crys Gattz Crys seems to be curious about the strange good heres, the drinks willbe picked up though she'll be paying in multiveral credits unless that causes and issue if so she'lljust walk away but she's also got an idea of the goods here are curious to her however. she doe look to pick pick up one of the pistols and will aim to buy it with one of the tickents for luck. She thought one was interesting and given her life? If there are any spirits or gods who want to help her. She'll damn well /take/ it at this point. She does have a very odd accent though so she may sound as strange to the merchant as they do do here. She'll make use of her credits to pay out so long as he takes them.

"So can I ask about the air out here? It was pretty bad closing in to the town here. Nothing I had worked to filter it a bit."
Mihk Lihzeh     Mihk remains in the shadows, or as best she can, keeping out of sight... but she's keenly aware of the other members of her 'party'. Victor's accostment by the strange girl gets particular attention. She closes her tome, cutting the Aether flow from the Compass as it comes up empty... no ambient Aether, only what she brought in with her inside her own body. This could become tense if she has to cast anything big.

    The Miqo'te's tail swishes but as the others move, she makes to keep pace, out of the main thoroughfare.
Flamel Parsons     Now what's happening? Oh, it looks like Victor's already solved a lot of the issue. Agent Parsons comes out of his weird astral trance, having gathered all the information he can, and leaving it on a passive telepathic broadcast to just his team. "Wow, you look in a hurry! 'They need to know the truth'? What's the truth they need to know? You said this was something about Hamuz's Guardian Totem?" Sounding like he knows what he's doing is always better than the alternative. And having someone who looks so much like a man-in-black interrogate someone when they talk about telling people the truths they need to know usually turns out very differently.

    "We're always very interested in necessary truths! What's going to happen if you don't hurry on this?" Such a friendly and curious guy, totally unlike his appearance. He even adjusts his sunglasses a little ominously as that friendly tone stays unbroken. "Does it have something to do with how it's broadcasting an invitation, instead of just protecting?"
Orta     The girl is pretty light, but to Victor, everyone is probably pretty light. She exclaims as he hoists her onto his shoulders, grabbing a fistful of his hair with one hand as the other dives into her cloak, quickly pressing the barrel of something against the back of his head. She pauses when he strikes up conversation with Jekyll instead, glancing between the two of them with exceptionally dark, wary eyes. She no longer shouts at either of them, suddenly taking on an intensely reserved and taciturn air. It's the kind of feeling a wild animal gives off when a rarely seen human proffers food; not the grass nibbling kind either.

    She clearly isn't a local kid. Furthermore, a cloak can't obscure someone's legs when riding shoulders, and the jet black and strikingly red-patterned clothing doesn't fit any of the caravans in colour or design. It's much too dark, complex and geometric. Whether her reservation is the language non-barrier, Victor's forthrightness in touching her, or Jekyll apparently having been lurking behind her the entire time, her reservations are quickly weighed and then shelved as Parsons approaches them and starts asking her everything up front.

    "They don't know what it is. I can't tell them. They won't believe anyone. It is holy to them. They've turned it on and I can hear it from far away. The creatures that live in the desert will come after it. It's recalling them. They'll be here at any moment and everyone will die! Please. You have to take me to it!"

    Chrys gets the same language trip as the others, which seems to be a recurring thing here, one-time for each person. One of the pistols she finds actually looks like a semi-automatic, despite all its components clearly being forced via hammer over a fire, like all the others. The seller demands a high price for it, claiming the 'fell off the back of a truck' method of procurement.

    It is not as ergonomically sophisticated and efficient as something one would find on present day Earth, and weighs as much as a brick, but looks extremely durable, fires very large ammunition, judging by its bolt, and could probably kill someone by bashing them over the head with it. She also gets a necklace of tiny wooden beads, supporting rounded, rectangular object that dangles from a metal ring. At first, it looks just like the object the strange girl had shown off, all organic white pieces jigsaw assembled together over flowing black seams, but on second look, it's merely a carved token meant to represent one. It's fairly affordable.
Orta     The merchant Staren deals with, meanwhile, seems to swallow the explanation readily. There probably isn't a great deal of long distance travel here. "You must be from the other side of the Continent! The Empainia own almost everything south of the mountains! After the Seventh Emperor died in the Great Fall, the old Empire dissolved. The Eight Emperor is his blood descendant, but from the Southern Islands, so they merged the two and called it a new empire. Not that I'm complaining! I'm not from around here either. It's very rare that a village has any protection that isn't Empainian or just working for coin! It isn't uncommon for villages on the frontier to be overrun by monsters, after all."

    His timing could not be more poetic. Subtly, over the sounds of cheering, tambourines, drunken sinking, hawking merchandise, toasting, bleating animals, crackling fires, and all the sounds of festivity, a sharp, scraping buzzing sound rises over the din. Soon, the air shivers with the sound not unlike millions of fat, black flies amplified through a massive speaker. Black shapes appear against the sun; an entire swarm of them, much like moths in shape, but as they rapidly approach, each one of them must be ten or twelve meters in size.

    They fly over the village like desert locusts, going much too fast for their size, immediately breaking the revelling into screams of terror, and then the cracking gunfire as guards along the wall and on rooftops scramble for their rifles and fire into the giant swarm. The creatures begin diving down, plucking people out of the streets with giant forelimbs. Others remain in the air, and begin strafing the rooftops with hideous, organic needles, fired like bullets, and loud enough to sound like return gunshots.

    The girl smacks Victor around the head repeatedly, trying to get him moving. "Now! Right now! Before worse catches up!"
Victor Xix      Victor's eyes slide upwards as the girl puts a gun to his head. There is a remarkable lack of fear from the giant, though he does make a motion as if he's in some measure of pain having his hair tugged on. He's already started walking as soon as the girl has given him directions, putting one huge, bare, clawed foot in front of the other and just sort of letting the crowd either part or not part depending on their wills. People who do not part will probably just get shoved aside by his sheer bulk. People who do part are ignored. People who don't part are also ignored.

     Then everything starts to go wrong as actual monsters emerge from the desert.

     Henry gives orders. The girl slaps the back of his head like he's a pack mule (which is probably more uncomfortable for her than it is for him - it's like slapping concrete, or steel, or some ridiculously hard material, more than slapping a person's flesh).

     "Very well," Victor replies, "Hold on to my hair and do not let go."

     Victor crouches down, like a springer. He listens to Henry's command, then says, loudly enough for the rest of the group to hear, "OK. I am going to take her where she wants to go. Then I will help you."

     Muscles forged long, long ago by mastercrafters long forgotten tense.

     As soon as he can tell the girl has a good grip, there is an explosion of sand where Victor once stood (though politely aimed away from Henry and Mel), and the massive supersoldier and his passenger are hurtling in the directions she gave like a missile.

     Surprisingly, for such a huge monster, Victor is remarkably nimble, too. His magnetic senses are on full tilt as he darts left, right, left, right, avoiding crowds and buildings and stalls as they shoot forward.

     She said 'now', so...he's making /now/ happen.
Henry Jekyll Before worse catches up is a fine motivator to hurry, but it'll all be pointless if the town dies before they get a chance to resolve the problem. Thus, Jekyll issues a pair of commands, waits long enough to ensure it's being heard, and then fishes out a bottle of some elixir, then downs it in one big gulp. Immediately, he falls to his knee as his body rearranges itself, his face twists and his muscles grow. He even gains a foot in height.

Fortunately his clothes grow with him. The man who rises draws the eye nearly as much as Jekyll dodged it, and with an amused smirk he jumps, straight for one of the flying creatures, big shovel-like hand reaching out for the bug's neck, trying to crush it between his fingers.
Mihk Lihzeh     Well, that's interesting... and then the entire world is panic, confusion and weaponized organic needles. Mihk throws back the hood of her cloak, stepping out into the street as the locals scatter and seek shelter. The Miqo'te stands defiant, even as chitinous spikes rain down around her, sinking into the ground, piercing building walls.. and some unfortunate people.

    She opens her tome, and begins casting again, a large Geometry appearing around her feet, expanding out to encompass the whole village... and then, a choking smog forms from within the Geometry, filling the area. Allies, and the civilians, are largely unaffected, the Miasma parting around them as if of its own accord. The monsters, would find themselves choking in a cloud of noxious gas, smoke and acid vapour... a truely horrific concoction.

    Mihk staggers as the Aether leaves her body, falling to one knee. "Must remain strong... the others need me on my feet, not passed out in the gutter." she says to herself, forcing her body to comply and stand back up, turning to assist the new girl with whatever it is she's trying to do.
Flamel Parsons     "Okay!" Orta has been honest and direct with Agent Parsons, and that's all he needs to start helping. "Can you hear it well enough to figure the direction it's coming from?" And then, here come the insects. He's sensitive enough to the local psychic space to feel things turn to panic. "Well, no need to convince them now." He says. "Mass social panic is a great tool for people in power to act on their agendas. How about /our/ agenda be running very fast and shutting off the totem?"

    The huge black shapes descend on the village and everyone goes into a panic. "You still hearing it well enough to pick a direction to run, miss?" He plants the fingertips of both hands on his head. "We need a way to shut it down, too. I'm going to try to get the new High Priest who started it up. Make him disappear and tell us what he knows." He skims his mind over the panicked area, trying to find... Information about the High Priest! Data about where he is, maybe even the man himself! The hope is to locate him, with the intention to track him down, breach his mind, and extract whatever source of information gave him the ritual needed to activate this totem! He's not much of a main-combatant compared to people like Jekyll's assigned combat team, so with a quick flash of bright red light, he condenses his psychic barrier on himself as an extra layer under Mihk Lihzek's generous help, and levitates up off his feet, up far enough that he can skim after Victor, trying and potentially failing to keep up. As the bugs approach, he even goes a bit translucent, psychically rubbing himself out of their perception as much as he can temporarily.

    He's going to do what he can to make sure the girl gets there, but more than that, he's going to focus on making sure she can do what needs doing. His eyes are out for that High Priest... Or that High Priest's corpse getting carried off by bugs, if he's terribly unlucky!
Crys Gattz Crys Gattz haggles a bit but does settle on the price. Even if she can't use it? The Leauge would likely love to have a sample of the local hardware. On the other hand a hand cannon like this? Could do some nasty things to the things crawling about on her home world so it's not too bad of a deal. She'll also take he necklace as well with a bit of a grin. She'll make payment and take her items just as she's called to help with a problem. She'll banish the items into her Photon trap, bow once to the merchan and then she's gone.

The bugs are comming nad Crys feels something down her spine it's a chill of revultion she does not like insects doubly so ones this big. She'll make for Jekyll summoning her own weapons a pair of mech guns, basically energy machine guns which she'll open up on the bigs as they are in the sky.

"Come on you think you got what it takes to bring me down? PROVE IT BUG FOR BRAINS!"

They need to buy time she can do that, and rather than let lose with fire? She's going to let loose with lighting even as she fires hoping to chain it between the various attacking bug monsters and hopefully take more out.
Staren     Staren sips his drink as the merchant explains. And then... his informant goes screaming in terror as GIANT BUGS attack the town. Staren holds the 'phone' to his ear, drawing his laser pistol and firing at a nearby bug, then turning to run off the way Victor went. He sticks the 'phone' to his face -- the screen half is transparent, actually, so it seems to work kind of like a scouter -- and holsters the laser pistol, his coat reforming as he pulls an assault rifle out of his bag as he looks for the others, sometimes stopping to fire a quick burst of nanotech-enhanced rounds at bugs grabbing people.

    At least Victor makes himself easier to follow... Staren keeps up, his shoes turning out to contain hoverjets that allow him to 'skate' around or make high leaps -- not to mention he can just summon his energy wings and fly. "So YOU know what the hell is going on?" he asks the girl, as he flies alongside Victor.
Orta     "I can turn it off." The girl says to Agent Parsons. "If you find the priest, have him tell you where he got his 'vision'. He should not have been able to activate the totem at all. It's important. Please." It doesn't take a lot of scanning to figure out where the priest almost definitely is: the temple building Henry had spotted earlier, which is a likely place for a 'holy' object. That means the Psychonaut will be following Victor after he insists she hold on.
    The girl holds to Victor's hair quite tightly. If smacking a skull like a slab of rolled steel bothered her, she doesn't show it. When he goes rocketing off, causing shrieking people to dive out of the way of his unstoppable, onward rush, she rocks backwards very slightly, and then instantly acclimates to it. For whatever reason, riding on his shoulders at that preposterous speed and gait doesn't ruffle her at all. She actually seems quite comfortable, and naturally adjusts her weight atop him to remain almost gyroscopically stable.

    Actually, he should notice pretty swiftly that he isn't /hearing/ the directions he's being given. He can imagine the girl's voice if he wants to, but ultimately, doing away with the illusion doesn't reduce the clarity or speed with which he is told where to go.

    Staren fires at one of the horrible bugs. Up close, the moth illusion starts to fall away, as they have limbs more like a deep sea crustacean or armoured wasp, and their heads are eyeless, armoured arrowheads. One of their wings is actually mounted like a tail fan, so they 'swim' through the air like fish. His laser pistol burns a hole through one of the creatures' heads, blowing out sticky, clear guts and causing it to shatter a makeshift stall where it lands.

    A second bears down on him, this one red in colouration as opposed to sandy brown, and this time the laser actually /bounces/ off of it. The light beam diffuses on its carapace, redirected harmlessly away, as if he'd shot a Glitterboy or something. This one gives chase as he flies after, spraying at him with a barrage of piercing spines that are most definitely loaded with paralysing toxins /and/ coated in armour-eating acid.

    As he joins up with Victor, Flamel, and the girl, as per Henry's orders, the red flier swoops in on Victor's back, only for his passenger to produce the weapon she had threatened him with from under her cloak. It's nothing like the guns Chrys had browsed, and much more like the trinket she had showed the greaver. Beautiful white, shell-like pieces of plating contour together in rounded corners and strange twists, fused over some black interior substance that pulses with faint circuit lines that glow from under its surface like veins.
Orta     The gun is way too big to be called a pistol, more like one-handing a collapsed. Regardless, she snap aims it at the diving bug, her arm perfectly steady despite her ride, and her pupils dilate strangely, before the gun lets off a burst of light that blows the critter to pieces with pinpoint accuracy. This is a considerable accomplishment, for a weapon with no sights, and no trigger.

    They are waylaid no further, as Chrys, Jekyll and Mihk hold the swarm behind them. Henry, or rather, Hyde, catches his ride head on, finding purchase behind its facial 'mask' and snapping the chitinous joiner to its thorax with a hideous noise. It somehow maintains level flight for a few moments, giving him an opportunity to jump to another one. Chrys fires her Zonde into the veritable fleet of bugs, and the electricity leaps between a dozen of them, frying them like the archetypical bug zapper and sending them crashing to the ground, save for another red variant, that shrugs it off.

    It perishes like all the others, however, when Mihk lets loose the Miasma. Aetheric poison is something no desert creature in a magic-null world will have adapted to, and in short order, she has gassed half the town, littering it with giant bug corpses that unavoidable generate a fair amount of collateral and deafening screeching as they kick, writhe and fall, in exchange for the high kill count.

    Swiftly enough, the away group arrives at the temple steps, relatively unchallenged, where men and women in white and blue robes are fleeing the scene, rather than clustered inside. At the rear of the main hall, underneath the illumination of a giant window that looks like stained glass, but upon inspection, is actually a section of the colourful wing of an unfathomably huge insect, stands what is unmistakably the 'totem'. The size of a small car, it bears the same flawless, white and black, modern abstract art aesthetic as the girl's gun, and seems almost fused into the floor, like it had grown there. It thrums with activity, causing the air closely around it to visibly vibrate and pulse like a drum. Tiny dots of light run along the black seams in its contoured plates, indicating activity.
Staren     They have laser reflective armor?! "Fuck!" Staren curses. He was already planning to switch weapons, but still...

    When one bug in particular starts chasing him and throwing nasty-looking acid-coated spines (they hit his forcefield, thank goodness, but the forcefield is showing cracks pretty quickly) Staren just focuses on running/flying as fast as he can, zipping past Victor with a shout of "SHOOT THE THING BEHIND ME!" He lands behind some cover and catches his breath... when no bug comes, he peers around the corner and sees it's been blasted to pieces. "Thanks!" he smiles to the pair, giving the girl holding the giant gun a curious look.

    Once they're inside, he asks her, "Alright, how do we shut it down?"
Victor Xix      This whole thing is fine for Victor. He even seems like he likes being given direct orders; rather than buckling or bristling at the weird method of information, he simply acclimates, adapting and accepting.

     This gives Orta direct access to his thoughts and his senses.

     Victor moves over towards the strange thing. In the process, he rips a hunk of stone out of the ground. It will act as a weapon should he need to kill something - a weapon as efficient as any sword or gun in the hands of the Warmaster.
Mihk Lihzeh     Mihk doesn't have much in the way of Aether, but a few Magic Potions help aleviate the stress on her body from casting such a large Miasma Field without ambient Aether to draw from. Never-the-less, she is making herself as much of a nuisance as she possibly can, hurling bolts of Ruinous Light at flying and ground-based monsters as possible. She isn't trying to limit collateral damage, that's not the job she's been given, she's only trying to stem the tide of creatures so the others can do their job.
Crys Gattz The monsters are newish to her she doesn't fight bugs like this very often but well she's gioing to do her best to deal with these thing and her main focus of buying people time which is what she can do. With lighting, and mech gun she works fairly well. She's normnally be more up to let the Foies lose but burning down the down isnt' a good idea. Zounde into the fleet of bugs? It does seem to do a good job og being one heck of a bug zapper but there may be more.

then the bugs get the second comming of the Orikin Man as Mihk just shows she has nop love for the bugs she lowers her mech guns and swaps out to a Ruby Bullet. Not as fast firing but it can do some serious damae which she puts it to work abut there still seems to one other thing to dela with, one other little thing to deal with.

"Oh great this is way too much like home."

Seriously the only way it could be more like home is if a dragon dropped in on them. She will contiune to buy time though as needed.

"Go I'll keep dealing with them!"
Flamel Parsons     Alright! Mel focuses on tearing ass to that temple, in that case. "Ooooh! Sources of visions! Definitely! Heading for them!" His levitation blasts him forward with a sudden boost of speed as they make their way into the temple, bright white light shining around him when he makes the hard boost inside. "Handle the Totem, Miss! We're here to do anything else you need done!"

    And he is! His own part of "anything else" here is to track down that damn VIP. "HIGH PRIEST." He calls out, with a sudden, aggressive telepathic broadcast, easy for anyone to receive. "The powers that be need to discuss your vision! Come out, explain where you learned what you did, and we promise there won't be any undue harm!" But he doubts they'll be quite that easy. Jamming a finger on his temple and directing his clairvoyance ability to the Guardian Totem should give him some sort of bearing on its most recently psychically significant event, and psychic traces of what happened in it, and who was involved; he's hoping it'll track the High Priest and give some clues about where they are right now. But, hopefully, the High Priest can come out and explain it.
Orta     The girl riding Victor's back reacts visibly once he gives over a portion of his senses. Her eyes rapidly contract and dilate for a few seconds, like a camera refocusing on a fast moving object, and all the muscles in her hand holding to him go perfectly rigid, before she puts the gun away, and flatly states "You're a weapon too, from the Ancient Age." Having never met someone from the Multiverse before, she is correct only out of pure, ironic coincidence.

    Getting into the temple, she quickly dismounts, landing with a flutter of the raggedy cape thrown over her. She shakes her head towards Staren, briskly striding over to the thrumming monolith. "I can't explain it. I will know how once I make contact."

    She does exactly that right away, reaching out and laying both hands on the bone white exterior, and staring directly into it, as if there were something written on its surface. She remains like that for several seconds, feeling the totem's vibrations and watching its coursing lights, before suddenly, laying one hand on one of the many near-identical plates, and depressing it into the bulk of the idol, twisting it with a grinding click.

    Why the villagers worship it becomes apparent, as the machine then speaks in a cool, feminine, technical voice, using some variant of the local language that even the translation effect doesn't help, so dead and forgotten as it is. The girl doesn't give any voice commands back, remaining standing perfectly still, until the machine shuts off seemingly of its own accord.

    Finally, the girl turns away, letting loose the breath she had been holding. "It's a beacon, to communicate. All the others like it are gone, or moved somewhere else. It attracted the desert creatures with its regrouping call, because they are descended from the ones that used to be controlled through it. The Empire's ships don't go near it because it attacks their communications." She states all of it as if it were fact, instead of her opinion, though she has just described, in clumsy detail, an drone control network node with an ECM suite.

    Sadly, the high priest has already fled the area, as did everyone else. Weirdly enough, the monochrome idol responds partially to Flamel's psychic powers, receiving him with a strangely formatted thoughtform, as if alive. Its last psychically significant event is actually an extended 'conversation' with the girl over a very short period of time. Before that, a day ago, someone else had touched it, but not made that kind of contact, instead activating a manual override by using words from the same, dead language. It immediately makes him think of an old man reciting words from a 'holy book', of some misunderstood origin. He gets a good idea of what the man's psychic imprint feels like; enough to pick him out from a crowd.
Orta     Outside, the swarm breaks into a holding pattern, reverting from their coordinated behaviour to some kind of natural instinct. They break apart into distinct entities, that each surround a single red unit like a queen. This does not at all stop them from attacking humans. Even without the beacon, they lunge on whatever they see, trying to carry off people to eat later (or mid-air, as some especially horrific sounds from up above suggest).

    Chrys and Mihk have their hands full, even only dealing with one cluster at a time, but without the totem to draw them, taking out the red units, either by casts of Ruin or by lucky or well aimed shots with the ten star handgun, causes the entire cluster to flee, and makes holding the village much more plausible than relying on its overwhelmed, local defenders. Scores of corpses litter the ground, both monster and human, and somehow, the latter are more violently mangled than the former. The actions of the League are what have made the ratio 5:1, instead of 1:30.

    At last, reinforcements come to relieve them, as they start to run low on Aether and TP. Bounding down the temple steps, the girl who has all the answers waves emphatically to the air, and a second later, a swift, winged shadow speeds over the village. In its wake, one of the swarms erupts into a perfect sphere of roiling, burning plasma, like the rapid sparking, expansion, and collapse of a house-sized sun. The targeted cluster is reduced to ash in an instant, and when the shadow circles back around for another pass, the rest break and flee, as if in fear of some natural predator, without the safety in numbers they had before the League butchered them.

    The girl continues waving, actually. Not like signalling an aircraft, but like trying to get a friend's attention in a crowd. The shadow instead circles towards her, and out of the air, another creature settles to earth. Only about a head shorter than Victor, it strongly resembles a bipedal dragon in its body structure, with its draconic wingspan, tail, and body structure. The more classical traits of the mythological beast are absent, however, replaced with the influences of a primeval predator from the abyssal sea, in the form of its scaleless skin, interlocking plates of armour, its gleaming eyes, blunt and heavily fanged jaws, and its strange posture, as it stands on alien hoof-like feet.

    The girl jogs towards the bizarre beast, which receives her with a sound not unlike a crooning eagle distorted through several layers of faulty electronics. The way she cuddles up to its head, helmeted in the same material the idol was made of, indicates the relationship pretty well. It looks to the others straight away, lashing its tail and growling like a running subwoofer, but swiftly stops as she holds its neck.

    "I am sorry, for putting you through that. I owe you a lot for your help." she finally mumbles out loud, busy petting the dragon-thing instead of making polite eye contact. "Could you please tell me where you are from? I've never met anyone like you." Only then, does she stop to look around at the carnage. "We should go somewhere else. I can't stay long here anyways."
Staren     Staren's ears twitch. Victor's a weapon too. That tells him something... so he doesn't find it odd when the girl says she'll 'just know', and simply nods as she walks ahead. He runs outside to help shoot down bugs, until the shadow flies over. He watches it warily... Just because it attacked the bugs, doesn't mean it's a friend.

    But the way the girl is waving to it, and that it lands right in front of her, puts him at ease. He doesn't aim the rifle at it, at least.

    Since he's already wearing his scanner, he /does/ check its heat signature and search it for magic and the like, including an ultrasound pulse to get information on its structure. And Orta's too, for that matter. Maybe they're both robots, who knows? Although, she mentioned the bugs being 'descendants', but then, someone could have physically implemented an evolutionary optimization algorithm, couldn't they?

    He at last slings the rifle over his shoulder and approaches her. "I'm Staren of the Free City of Lazlo. I'm a researcher for the... League of Progress, now. We are from other worlds."
Flamel Parsons     "...Huh." Flamel looks impressed at the way Orta's expertly handled it. "How /did/ you know how to do that, Miss? That was a living-- Oh, right, bugs." The agent says, cocking his head towards the exit. He floats out as well, intent on helping. One hand goes to his temple, pressing against it with a pair of fingers. The right hand, though, points dramatically out, like a finger gun, and fires blasts of brilliant orange light, floating and drifting around above the ground like a surfer as he does.

    Soon, everything's calmed. Except for the dragon.

    He puts fingers up to where his earpiece normally is. All that's there now, though, is a softly glowing purple light. "Situation contained. Bugs exterminated. I suspect ancient precursor aliens." It's not aliens, 'Mel.

    "As for you, Miss." He says, turning to her and settling down on his feet, doing his best to look nonthreatening in front of the dragon. "What you owe us is your name. Also, potentially a ride out of here. I tried walking here. It was awful. But, if you have some form of... Affinity for these machines, for this technology, you may be particularly of interest to the League of Progress. If you wish to leave immediately, that is certainly quite fine. I'll return later." In a black windowless van. With masked thugs and a prepared interrogation room. Wait, no.

    He flashes a badge to her, matching the introductions of the others with his own. "Agent Parsons, Psychonauts Multiversal Operations Bureau."
Victor Xix      "Yes," Victor confirms, "But not of *your* Ancients."

     Victor watches the whole display with that same detached dispassion he gives most things, though he does seem visibly displeased when the girl dismounts - though why is anybody's guess.

     "I am Victor," he says flatly, "It is my name, my title, and my occupation."

     He does not elaborate on his world, nor anything else. He just makes a motion with his massive, meaty claw, indicating again that he is not *from* here. He turns his eyes off into the distance, looking over the village.

     "No," he agrees, "You probably cannot stay here. You are probably at fault."

     "I know of a church where you would be welcome."

     Victor hesitates.

     "No. What I mean to say is this. They would not dare to refuse my request to give you shelter until you find somewhere to go."
Orta     Magic reads zero. Heat signature at first indicates the thing is stone cold, but betrays some subtle details that the dragon is running /extremely/ hot, but efficiently retaining all of its heat. The ultrasound doesn't penetrate very deep, as it seems the draconic creature is some kind of quasi-invertebrate, almost more shell than spine even under its seemingly unarmoured portions of skin. Staren can identify a few clearly biological organs, but not make heads or tails of what they are. Pointedly, the dragon looks directly at him the instant he scans it, and his software crackles slightly as he gets a pulse back, counter-scanning him with a similar frequency what the idol had used.

    The girl, by contrast, is pretty much human. A casual observation would say entirely human, but there are subtle cues. The lack of certain, minor bits of interior human anatomy, differences in body temperature, highly exaggerated brain activity in specific regions. She doesn't notice him being an invasive jerk, until after the dragon does, at which point she gives him a misgiving look. Oddly, his scan picks up that her /gun/ is alive as well, in a more floral way.

    "Orta." she finally responds to Parsons. "My name is Orta." She doesn't seem to get the clever wordplay from Victor's name, merely watching him with a note of curiosity and bizarre, distant fondness; much different from the villagers peering out of cover or trying to retrieve the bodies of their family members, who watch him with trepidation.

    Orta turns the bit about other worlds over in her head, getting a grip on the concept before saying anything excessively primitive. "I've never been past the sea or the sky. How would I go to another world?" is her first question, though she clearly has her misgivings about the idea. Only after Victor has wandered beyond his considerable earshot, does she murmur: "I can take care of myself. I don't need a house. I don't need a religion." Her pride seems a little wounded at the suggestion of being taken in. The dragon hisses like microphone static.

    Orta still seems lost on explaining things to Parsons though, even defensive. "I hold them and I feel how they work. I feel how they think, or how the people who made them think, and that tells what they are for. I don't read books, it's just obvious to me. Is that what your League wants? I can't teach you how to make them."

    At the mention of a ride out though, Orta sheds her cloak, trading the out-of-culture subdued browns for out-of-culture colours and markings. Underneath, her actual head cloth is the same, striking black and white as her clothing, and patterned like the circuits on her weapon, which she unwinds in a single pull, and ties around her throat and shoulders as a scarf, exposing her snow white hair as she deftly hops onto the dragon's shoulders (probably so it won't blow off in flight).

    "We can carry one more person, but there isn't room for more. I have a camp five hundred leens from here, but no food or water to spare. Take any you can find."
Staren     Staren gives a 'huh' when the dragon notices his scanning and scans him back. Well, no harm there, they're just looking.

    He answers Orta's question directly -- it's not like people of this world won't find out soon enough: "There's a hole in space that connects to... ah, the multiverse is cris-crossed by a network of warpgates, with a sort of tunnels between them which can take you from one world to another in a short walk, instead of flying a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, you get the idea, long way, although that's an option too sometimes if you have a way to go fast enough."

    He nods as she explains her intuitive approach to technology. "The League... wants knowledge. It's members all have their own reasons for participating, but as a group it exists... to find better ways to do things, and to make enough money doing so that it can sustain its own existance. Finding new technology to study is part of that -- one world may have discovered a way to do things that never occured to people from another world."

    He scratches his head. "We don't need food or water... Um... Look, now we've told you what the league wants, but what do /you/ want?"
Crys Gattz Crys Gattz isn't evne sure what to do with these things but she'll keep fighting and trust in others to deal with what ever is attracting them. She lower he weapons as the things star to flee however? She changes her mind and tries to gun down a few more. She muses this is a lifeform that should be exteirmated when all things are done. Biomonsters never sit well then again she'll need to know more informtion to figure out just what's going on here. Finally the waves calm down and back up comes. Then the thing start to leave? Crys muses she should come back to seriously put a dent in these things population.

For now she goes to catch up with eveyrone else shaking her head.

"Woah... what's that?"

Oh hell it's a dragon but it's not causing problem so there will be no fight over.

"Good idea and I think I can think of a few places to go."
Victor Xix      Victor seems perfectly content to follow along on foot, and does not have much in the way of dialogue. He is not much of a talker. He isn't really much of an *anything* except an alien killing machine, though his weird flatness softens a bit whenever he is in any kind of actual proximity to Orta, like he actually has some form of affectionate or protective instinct being jarred to life by the weird contact they had earlier.

     He also isn't looking around much, though, as Orta's already discovered, that's *not* an impediment to Victor learning things about his environment.
Orta     Orta doesn't so much as blink at 'hole in space'. Explaining it that way actually seems to help. The term is not technical, and for some reason, she definitely grasps the underlying principle of what it means. "I've never heard of it, but then the Continent is very big and few people travel far, especially not by ground. I want to see it. It could be important." She pats the dragon on the neck gently. "He is still very young, so he can only fly so far. I don't know when he'll be as fast as his <<predecessor>>, but we can still travel." The word fumbles somewhat in translation.

    Staren asks her a very pertinent question. "I want to change this." she answers almost immediately, looking to the scores of corpses. "Someone before me did something to free humans, but they couldn't do it all on their own. They broke the hold of the Ancients, but now humans are held captive by the earth and the monsters instead. Humans depend on Ancient <<technology>> to survive, and they misunderstand it and misuse it. They fight over it, and people die, and won't think of living without it. That's not what she would have wanted."

    The dragon shuffles its wings impatiently, craning its neck around as Orta settles into the dip in its spine. "Where? She asks Crys. "I have no reason to stay here. Empainian ships will come here, if they hear about me."
Staren     "It's quite possible said hole only appeared recently." Staren elaborates.

    He listens to her wish, rubbing his chin, and then paces back and forth in front of her. "Hoo boy. That's a big project. I'm not sure what even you /want/, exactly... Do you want humanity to be more educated, understanding its technology and able to make the weapons needed to fight off monsters like those bugs? You say 'held captive by the earth', do you want people to go to space? In any case, it's clear you want some sort of broad, society-wide advancement. That sort of thing is beyond me, although maybe there are some subtasks I can help with. It's probably not a project the League will undertake, either, at least not as a whole -- some sort of agreement where they get to study the ancient technology and in return we make everything we learn available to your people, perhaps, but not the rest."

    He stops pacing and turns to her again. "But the Multiverse is a big place, with lots of people. You'll find lots of folks out there willing to help out, in many different ways." He reaches into his coat pocket, and then stops. "Do you have any sort of radio? If not, I can give you one with which you can reach the Multiverse at large."
Orta     Orta looks to Staren like a confused cat, put off by his sudden pacing and lengthy introspection, pulled out on the spot.

    "Weapons, ships, shelters, tools, everything. The environment is harsh wherever you go. It freezes you or burns you or poisons you. Any place where things grow, there are creatures that kill humans. The sea is impassible. Even underground is dangerous for humans, who might wake up the Pureblooded. There are so few places to live. Depending on the Ancients is the only way to survive. They find relics like these and live hoping they'll protect them, but they don't know what they are, and they only get them by opening the ground or disturbing the Ruins."

    "There has to be another way. I want to know what it is. Would you help me find it?" Despite the positive tone of the question, Orta's voice does not sound hopeful. Just the look in her eyes says that she expects nobody will understand. Regardless, she shakes her head softly at the latter question. "No. They aren't useful out here. You don't carry things that aren't useful. All the other radios to talk to are in the Empire, and I can't go there."
Crys Gattz Crys Gattz says "Staren slow down old man, lets worry about the noew then the larger bit. Yes you should be able to find refuge for the night on the colony ship I'm from. I have ehough pull with the hunters guild there to get you a place to stay for the night. Or at the very least I can think of a few other place we could go for the night. We should get to the gate regarless of where we go, right? Let's get on our way before this Empire drops in." Why is it always the EMPIRE?! Why not the Republic, the League, the Confederation or something else?! Always the Empire seems to be as common as humans or Palmans.
Staren     Staren nods. "I'll lend my expertise when it's applicable. Creating better societies is a problem that's long interested me, but one I fear I lack the skillset to engineer... Um... I suppose, in general, the ways to do it usually involve finding a better patron than ancient technology that you only hope does what you think it does, being surrounded by monsters that can be slain even with the most simple and primitive of technology, or having some sort of magic available that allows people to acquire a level of personal or group power that allows them to /fight/ monsters like that. If your world has none of those conditions, you're going to need outside help. A new patron to fight monsters and provide protection, be it a god or singularly powerful entity from outside or a polity with military might to spare. Technology and education, both in how to use it and in scientific principles your people haven't had the opportunity to study while beset on all sides by death. Or perhaps if we could understand more about these 'ancients', we could learn how they were able to develop in a way your society can't... and, hopefully, how to avoid whatever eventually ended them." He scratches his head. "Thinking about it, it's probably that the 'monsters' are creations from their time that have made it hard for modern people to advance, isn't it? If so, ancient technology may be your only key if you want to remain independant from outside..."

    "But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here... Do you have a sense of how to use this? If not, it can teach you how to use it; merely tell it what you want to do, or ask it what you want to know." He holds out a tablet -- a mass-produced design from a 22nd-century high science world with a focus in computers and AI, capable of stretching into a wider form or bending into a bracelet for easy storage.
Orta     Orta blanks out almost completely as Staren goes on. She seems unreasonably smart for a desert nomad. She is not a sociology student. It takes her a couple of seconds to actually answer from all of that, apparently taking it as a tentative yes. She shuffles up on the obliging dragon's neck, and takes hold of the tablet, turning it over in her hands as she stares at it uncomprehendingly.

    In two seconds, she's switched it on and started flipping through the options. She frowns faintly as none of the text makes any sense to her, but apparently has no trouble navigating the interface without voice requests. "It has no character. So many tools, all pushed into the same place by so many people, as if they're all taken for granted. It's a servant, isn't? But it just listens and acts. It doesn't know anything its makers didn't. How lonely." She figures out the bracelet form quite quickly too, likely for similar practicality of not falling from the back of a flying mount. "I need to go. Show me the way to the other worlds."