Ruins of Khazan - Part 1: All Things Among Fallen Leaves

[Postmania]

After considering her analysis, Jane gave her report.

"My initial prerogative in this environment would be to scout forward, or to take to rooftops. But in such a shifting environment, my analysis concludes that I could easily find myself spatially displaced from the group if I chose this. The same caution applies to the group traversing rooftops, potentially in a moment that diverts attention from the building. As expected there is simply too much noise to chart a pattern of which buildings will appear next and where with my systems thus far. Perhaps only if I had a week or more."

Jane lowered her eyes from the rooftops with obvious reluctance.

"Perhaps it would be easier to capture the benefits of this chaos if I were alone. But that is not my current objective."

Jane made her way closer to the rear of the group again, continuing to sweep the environment. As the group continues deeper into the city, she make it a point to also scan the area behind them somewhat often, trusting the others to see threats more from the more obvious front facing direction.

[Siriel]

Ván is cautious, perhaps in a manner unbefitting one of such martial prowess but caution was rarely ill-advised in such strange a locale and circumstances. The instinct to check vantage points is understandable but she quickly realises that the city stretches endless around her with buildings of all sizes and descriptions blossoming out as soon as she turns her gaze to another part of the landscape. It is unsettling bordering on maddening.

How could one inspect a window for potential foes only to have it vanish and be replaced with dense stone the moment she looked away? Or worse, at one point she looked through a window in a doorway and saw an abandoned bakery. Trying the door, she walked in and arrived in a small inner-city apartment building of entirely different dimensions and contents.

The street, at least, remains somewhat consistent. Though her progress is slow, she realises that the way back to the gate is becoming increasingly obfuscated by the shifting and moving architecture.

Perhaps the trap is not of the making of those also seeking the prize that glitters atop the tree, perhaps it is the city itself?

The uncertainty leaves her more annoyed than unsettled. She knows well this kind of trickery; it was always the kind that refused to meet strength for strength or wisdom for wisdom, instead relying on confusion and little tricks to confuse and mystify, leaving its victim unable to strike back against the trap. At the same time however there is something reassuring about it. The fact that this kind of indirect method was used would also make it more difficult for anyone else to take advantage of it. It was the kind of region where one didn't have to worry about what they left behind, only what they encountered when moving forward. She could deal with that kind of thing.

The wise thing would probably have been to refuse the summon altogether, but she'd never been very wise in that way. She could feel the call and the pull, and that meant that she had to answer it. To do anything else would be to refuse her own self, and that was simply an unhealthy and maddening course of action. Taking a deep breath, she gave up on her additional measures of carefulness and started taking the most direct road she could find forward.

[Nik Hasta]

The uncertainty leaves her more annoyed than unsettled. She knows well this kind of trickery; it was always the kind that refused to meet strength for strength or wisdom for wisdom, instead relying on confusion and little tricks to confuse and mystify, leaving its victim unable to strike back against the trap. At the same time however there is something reassuring about it. The fact that this kind of indirect method was used would also make it more difficult for anyone else to take advantage of it. It was the kind of region where one didn't have to worry about what they left behind, only what they encountered when moving forward. She could deal with that kind of thing.

The wise thing would probably have been to refuse the summon altogether, but she'd never been very wise in that way. She could feel the call and the pull, and that meant that she had to answer it. To do anything else would be to refuse her own self, and that was simply an unhealthy and maddening course of action. Taking a deep breath, she gave up on her additional measures of carefulness and started taking the most direct road she could find forward.

Ván progresses down the street, feeling the city moving around in her blindspot. As she moves a bit deeper into the endless metropolis, the buildings begin to skew a little taller and that slightly oppressive feeling of being immersed in something so huge and complex begins to settle in.

She reaches a loose fork in the road. To her right she can hear shouting and the occasional explosion and gunfire. To her left, she hears a guttural growling and suddenly a cry of:

"Bad Dog!" Ella proclaimed, flinging the rock straight at the dog things head while adding a shrill "Run away!"

Aside from this two more obvious options, there is any number of side streets that seem quiet and deserted. The route to her right seems to be slightly more direct in terms of reaching the great tree but with such shifting architecture and myriad paths to choose from, it is hard to say how much that matters for her overall progress.

With events transpiring nearby, would she choose to engage or keep a low profile? Which way will she choose to go?

[Sharpandpointies]

Still standing with the group, Krys gives a slight nod to Nemo; of course it makes sense that an experienced manipulator of energies would have a more swift method of accumulating said energies within themselves. They wait in silence, surveying the every-changing city, as the Wanderer...does something. Nothing so dramatic as Jane's recovery of her own power - which the woman now attempts again, drawing a blink of surprise from Krys - but that's hardly unexpected. Krys' own methods of focus and replenishment of her body's intrinsic vibrations are all-but invisible, and even then, only to those with 'eyes that can see'.

Quotes from the literature of an earlier life, clinging to them like the rags of clothing.

Jane offers an assessment. Krys nods again. "Thanks, Jane. I'll defer to your expertise in the matter." Obviously the woman is more accustomed to these kinds of potentially dangerous situations than Krys, herself. "Glad to hear that your plans don't include going it alone." Their own, unfocused eyes narrow slightly, and they gaze about themselves less as a sightseer, more as an analyst. "The tree is the least obviously dangerous landmark, but also the furthest...and likely a gathering place for others. It might be our goal, here, but let's see if we can pick a path towards it that looks...LESS dangerous, right? Even in this changing city." 'Less' dangerous being, like All Things, very relative.

"How's the 'recovery', Nemo? Is it working for you, here?" There's some concern over that; Krys' own methods draw through simple, fundamental means that are common throughout most realities - energy flow and basic building blocks - but people with specific needs might find it more difficult in other realities. Hopefully that's not the case here, thanks to this being a nexus of some kind, but one never knows. Which reminds Krys...

"We're going to need some idea of what everyone can do," they quietly state. "Would be helpful to know, in a jam. Nemo can...jump? Far? Jane seems well-armed, with the capacity to use her weapons. I've...obviated some injuries on people. But that's all we really know about each other, so far, isn't it?" A smile twitches their mouth, there and gone. "Someone needs to go first, and I'm suggesting it." They consider. "On top of helping people with injuries and the effects of exterior forces, I guess I'm decent in a scrap. Arm's length only, though, and while I can be quick on my feet if need be, there's a limit to that. I have methods to withstand damage and such, but really..."

"This...is all that I am." They hold their hands out to both sides, the lopsided smile once again dancing on their lips for a heartbeat. "What you see is what you get."

Krys shifts their stacks to BRA, SPD, SKI, and PRE in order to maximize Notice (25), Insight (38), and Computation (30), to better try to find some insights into the city in terms of their current region. Possibility of 'All Things Are Finite When Viewed From The Outside, Even The Infinite' offering some insight of its own.

Krys will also follow along with the group as they move.

[Sharkerbob]

"How's the 'recovery', Nemo? Is it working for you, here?"

Nemo is lost in concentration, but Rae speaks for her. "I don't have the variety of Nemo's Magics, but going by our shared pool, she's recovering a little bit. I think it's costing her almost as much to make the effort to draw in the energies. We're getting more back then she's spending, but it's like a sip at a time. This... might take a while to get fully juiced back up this way. But we don't really have the resources or time for another method at the moment." She tipped herself on Nemo's head. "Thanks for asking, though!"

"We're going to need some idea of what everyone can do," they quietly state. "Would be helpful to know, in a jam. Nemo can...jump? Far? Jane seems well-armed, with the capacity to use her weapons. I've...obviated some injuries on people. But that's all we really know about each other, so far, isn't it?" A smile twitches their mouth, there and gone. "Someone needs to go first, and I'm suggesting it." They consider. "On top of helping people with injuries and the effects of exterior forces, I guess I'm decent in a scrap. Arm's length only, though, and while I can be quick on my feet if need be, there's a limit to that. I have methods to withstand damage and such, but really..."

"Well, I'm a natural String Mage, since I'm an Elsy," said Rae. "That means I can control strings with, like, mind-over-matter power. Can use it to grab stuff, hit stuff, trip stuff, tie up stuff, climb stuff, etc. Nemo's as good as me at it, and it's our strongest ability; we're kinda linked through it, and reinforce each other. Nemo, though, she's a whole swiss army knife of different Magics! Most of it's not really combat oriented, but she's got a few of those. Unfortunately, our crash course through reality seems to have drained her of a lot of stuff." She paused and shifted her hat a bit. "Uh... you'll have to ask her when she's ready. I can only really sense the String Power in her. Otherwise, yeah, she can leap pretty high or far. She's stronger than she looks, too, and knows how to kickbox. Not usually her opening move, but it's something. We, uh, don't have any other weapons on us but some extra string right now."

"This...is all that I am." They hold their hands out to both sides, the lopsided smile once again dancing on their lips for a heartbeat. "What you see is what you get."

"Looks good to me!" said Rae.

[Nik Hasta]

Her plan in place, Ella found a sufficiently good rock, moved as close as she could without the risk of being being seen...but with enough distance to make a break for the pillared ruins back down the path. Took careful aim....and then....

"Bad Dog!" Ella proclaimed, flinging the rock straight at the dog things head while adding a shrill "Run away!" in the direction of the robot.....as she had every intention to do herself the moment the dog turned her way.

The rock flies with an uncanny strength for one made of hard light and strikes the largest dog on the snout. The creature lets out a roar that threans to drown out Ella's warning to the other mechanical lifeform but, even as it turns toward her, Ella is already rushing away across the open courtyard putting as much distince between her and the burning maw of teeth as possible.

The mysterious robot reacts quicker than the dogs and twitches strangely. Around its feet, the spindly metal warps and shifts into a rounder shape, complex systems seeming to knit themselves out of solid metal, and a pair of small wings suddenly erupt from its upper arms. There is a violent bang of heat and light and a set of jet boots send the machine hurtling over the head of the dog that was menacing it moments ago. It swoops down and bears toward Ella.

Due to the speed of the jets, it catches up with her almost instantly but, as it goes to land, it stumbles and tumbles head over heels, spinning awkwardly and rolling until it collides with a pillar. For a split second it is silent before the jet boots and wings abruptly retract with a snapping hiss.

"Good afternoon/cycle/[TIME_OF_DAY]," the machine intones, while still lying with its head on the ground and its legs in the air, "Designation of contact: [HARD_LIGHT_CONSTRUCT] Therefore designated [MECH-ME-M-M-MECHANICAL_L-L-L-<srrkr>IFEFORM]. Do you require assistance?"

Despite understanding the words as they reach her, Ella is aware that this machine is speaking to her in some kind of extremely alien machine code and transmitting directly to her auditory systems rather than making conventional sounds. How she understands it must be some facet of the infinite city because she knows that decoding a sentence of this level of complex language would require several minutes of dedicated runtime for her under normal circumstances.

She hears the woofing howls of the dogs as they prepare to charge. She doesn't have much time to act.

GM Note to Ella: It is now your turn in the rotation, please report to the Combat Notation Thread for your next turn.

[Postmania]

"Capabilities?" Jane considers for a moment.

"Yes, a full assessment may be in order. As for me, a variety of ranged weaponry is available to me. I won't list all the technical specifications," Jane holds up a hand in a "stop" gesture, "but the important part is mainly that if I am able to acquire time to set up I can manage truly impressive shots at range. However, that level of stillness always requires a moment of pause which leaves me unable to snapfire as many shots down range."

Jane paused, buffering her next response.

"To clarify, ranged fire is indeed my default state. I was never provided options for close encounters, even though I have requested these resources at various points."

An unexpected wistful tone entered Jane's voice.

"I have wished for a sword such as that of the warrior we just encountered, Van, but the Facility stated in practical terms that it would likely result in decisions to close for a close encounter which ran contrary to my design specifications. For, although I am metal," Jane taps her chest plate, "my chassis is more designed to simply contain and hold the energies that power me. My capacity to withstand blows is relatively low. Still, something about a sword felt natural to me, for some reason."

Jane shrugs, her demeanor returning to baseline.

"So, I currently am not designed for any melee encounters. No kickboxing function is currently programmed in," she adds with a nod to Rae.

"Aside from this, I have been granted various experimental protocols to improve base function. I can increase the odds of shots on target via Hunter-Killer Mode, and even commune and absorb ambient spirits into my mainframe in order to grant myself additional processing power, as well as a separate enhancement to increase my targeting capacity to enhance the damage in my weapons fire."

A thought seems to occur to her and she adds, "In fact, the last two points could probably even be granted to others who are not myself."

She eyes the others, tilting her head in consideration.

"These enhancements were not designed for beings of flesh such as yourself, however, they shouldn't cause any actual harm to you. Although the lack of inborn filters to handle them may cause some minor distress. I've never had a reason to gift them to others before, so I have no experience with what may occur when they are used in this fashion. There is also..."

Jane pauses for a moment, her tone growing quieter, thoughtful.

"I had not thought about this particular function because I find it...unpleasant to experience even with built in filters. However," she looked over at Krys, "you did have an inquiry about information of our immediate surroundings. There is something I can do to act in an information gathering capacity in a way even without the active scouting role I would normally perform."

Jane looks around, scanning every direction for a moment, but this gaze seemed more distracted, or perhaps, looking to distract herself from what was next.

"And since we are, it seems, currently at a rest, likely in a location that will never be safer in this city, I may as well do it."

Two things then occur in quick succession. Jane carefully places her right hand in her left hand, clasping them together in front of her in an oddly human gesture. Immediately after this, her head slumps forward, dropping to her chest, as the energies within her noticeably dim. In this state, she does not respond to calls or stimuli, as she enacts her unspoken ability.

Note to GM:
spoilers:

Yep she is using her Sense Death ability here, seeing if there's anything she can pick up from her surroundings. I'm also assuming this is not related to her Trait that extends her range. And of course this turns off her Stack for the moment.

end of spoilers

[Siriel]

Ván progresses down the street, feeling the city moving around in her blindspot. As she moves a bit deeper into the endless metropolis, the buildings begin to skew a little taller and that slightly oppressive feeling of being immersed in something so huge and complex begins to settle in.

She reaches a loose fork in the road. To her right she can hear shouting and the occasional explosion and gunfire. To her left, she hears a guttural growling and suddenly a cry of:



Aside from this two more obvious options, there is any number of side streets that seem quiet and deserted. The route to her right seems to be slightly more direct in terms of reaching the great tree but with such shifting architecture and myriad paths to choose from, it is hard to say how much that matters for her overall progress.

With events transpiring nearby, would she choose to engage or keep a low profile? Which way will she choose to go?

There was a sudden cacophony of sound. As expected, she wasn't the only one walking through the streets even ignoring the three - no, four - that she'd already met earlier. In the multiple options presented to her, it was the sound of a growl that attracted her attention the most. It was something far more intimately familiar to her than scorching sounds of weaponry and the overly loud bangs that came with it, a kind of weapon that she'd never felt much of a taste for. What was the point of fighting, if she couldn't feel her own body's contribution to her opponent's defeat? None in her opinion.

Taking cover in the shadow of a building, she headed to the left to observe the situation. Just in time to hear the sound of mechanical blades and the loud howl of a pack, informing her that there was at least one more party in that battle than she'd been expecting. A complex situation? Or perhaps one that would become clear with her arrival.

[grampagen]

The group moves through the gate and mounts the wide stairs that lead to the viewing platform. As Ella and Van did before them, they see the great tree dominating the skyline, spreading endless leaves across the landscape and its trunk and roots displacing vast swathes of the city, lifting streets, blocks and even whole communities skyward.

To the left of the central tree, some distance away from the roots of it, is the slow-motion maelstrom of twisted space that seems to cover most of a district. Rubble, buildings and, if they focus closely, perhaps even people are being carried through an area where gravity seems to have become much more circular.

To the right of the tree, beyond boundless city, is a patch of bright red light and dark smoke that issues from the streets, in the distance they can make out of the odd winged figure or some kind of large bird creatures flapping around in the thick smog. The light seems somehow unsettling, it raises the hackles on the back of ones neck (if the viewer is the sort of creature that has body hair).

Those that feel the call of the city, find their gaze pulled to the top of the great tree. There is... something, far too high to make out from this distance and obscured through boughs of leaves, it nonetheless glints in the eye. As if a bright light were just peaking through. Through that hook in the soul, it endlessly tugs at those who have come seeking something.

GM Note to Jane: *snip*

Trevor is the first to speak.

"Never in all my... what on earth is this place? A place of magic surely but... it's so big. I can't see the other side," And he is correct, somehow, despite being enclosed in walls of presumably finite dimensions, the city stretches away into the distance until it becomes the horizon. And yet, the party can tell, through some intrinsic sense, that the great tree is in the middle of the metropolis.

This raises complicated and confusing questions about how they can possibly be at definitional edge of the city on one side and yet view the opposite side as infinitely far away while also being able to clearly see the middle which should be equidistant between the two points.

Ahead of the party is a large main highway, lined with abandoned buildings that shift and change as soon as they are unobserved and the ground has a few bodies dotted around. Nothing close to the ranks of the dead outside, but still a number have fallen here. Whether from their journey or something else isn't necessarily clear.

After passing through the Gate, at the first sight she encountered Kinu immediately narrowed her eyes, as if she could somehow blot away the shifting reality before them as easily as spots from her sight - to no avail.

Somethin' pulling at space...it ain't natural whatever it is.

The distortions between the buildings seemed to shift, somehow, from light to dark, solid to intangible, as if they were some strange mirage playing out through everything.

Everything, that is, except that damned tree. Bathed in the red behind it, whatever it was made of was pulling who knows what toward it through the smog.

The Warrior of the Wasteland moved some distance ahead, half-crouched as she prowled over the surface of the roots that broke through the nearby road, then reached upwards to snatch a handful of the leaves as they fell.

It stirred some nostalgic part within her, the spirit of the hunt, perhaps, as she challenged the Ruin that had befallen the wilderness so long ago. Perhaps there was something in the substance of the tree that could be useful?

(OOC: Notice and Insight Check; Kinu studies the roots, the street they grow out from, and the fallen leaves of the trees.)

After considering her analysis, Jane gave her report.

"My initial prerogative in this environment would be to scout forward, or to take to rooftops. But in such a shifting environment, my analysis concludes that I could easily find myself spatially displaced from the group if I chose this. The same caution applies to the group traversing rooftops, potentially in a moment that diverts attention from the building. As expected there is simply too much noise to chart a pattern of which buildings will appear next and where with my systems thus far. Perhaps only if I had a week or more."

Jane lowered her eyes from the rooftops with obvious reluctance.

"Perhaps it would be easier to capture the benefits of this chaos if I were alone. But that is not my current objective."

Jane made her way closer to the rear of the group again, continuing to sweep the environment. As the group continues deeper into the city, she make it a point to also scan the area behind them somewhat often, trusting the others to see threats more
from the more obvious front facing direction.

Better yet, it seemed that while she was staring at the ground, Jane had been scanning the environment.

"Hmm. That easy to get lost, huh," she grunted, "So we find the one, sure thing to use as a landmark."

The sight of the bird creatures, the sound of flapping wings only made her surer that the Tree was the place to go; but how many others had that idea?

The strange, faint light fell from its boughs and outlined shapes of dead bodies on the roads. How many other before them?

"We're going to need some idea of what everyone can do," they quietly state. "Would be helpful to know, in a jam. Nemo can...jump? Far? Jane seems well-armed, with the capacity to use her weapons. I've...obviated some injuries on people. But that's all we really know about each other, so far, isn't it?" A smile twitches their mouth, there and gone. "Someone needs to go first, and I'm suggesting it." They consider. "On top of helping people with injuries and the effects of exterior forces, I guess I'm decent in a scrap. Arm's length only, though, and while I can be quick on my feet if need be, there's a limit to that. I have methods to withstand damage and such, but really..."

"This...is all that I am." They hold their hands out to both sides, the lopsided smile once again dancing on their lips for a heartbeat. "What you see is what you get."[/COLOR]

"Well, I'm a natural String Mage, since I'm an Elsy," said Rae. "That means I can control strings with, like, mind-over-matter power. Can use it to grab stuff, hit stuff, trip stuff, tie up stuff, climb stuff, etc. Nemo's as good as me at it, and it's our strongest ability; we're kinda linked through it, and reinforce each other. Nemo, though, she's a whole swiss army knife of different Magics! Most of it's not really combat oriented, but she's got a few of those. Unfortunately, our crash course through reality seems to have drained her of a lot of stuff." She paused and shifted her hat a bit. "Uh... you'll have to ask her when she's ready. I can only really sense the String Power in her. Otherwise, yeah, she can leap pretty high or far. She's stronger than she looks, too, and knows how to kickbox. Not usually her opening move, but it's something. We, uh, don't have any other weapons on us but some extra string right now."

"If we find someone that says they got a mind for bad intentions, I'll talk 'em down. But if I find something that looks at me the same way, I'll use my hands."

[Nik Hasta]

"This...is all that I am." They hold their hands out to both sides, the lopsided smile once again dancing on their lips for a heartbeat. "What you see is what you get."

Krys shifts their stacks to BRA, SPD, SKI, and PRE in order to maximize Notice (25), Insight (38), and Computation (30), to better try to find some insights into the city in terms of their current region. Possibility of 'All Things Are Finite When Viewed From The Outside, Even The Infinite' offering some insight of its own.

Krys will also follow along with the group as they move.

Despite their use of the aphorism, Krys has a fair amount going on that is quite unseen in terms of their ability to perceive. Their time in the Time Outside of Time has left them with an eye for detail that far exceeds that of a conventional human.

However, from their vantage point on the viewing platform and even as the group began to trickle forward led by Kinu; they don't notice anything specific that wasn't immediately obvious. The streets are quiet barring the rustling of the leaves and the very faint and distant sounds of ruckus and combat. The shifting buildings are unsettling but seemingly random in their changes or, as Jane had noted, were part of a pattern too large to compute at a glance.

What they do feel is that their initial scepticism about the scale of the city, suggesting illusion or a trick of perception, is quite wrong. As they step on to the streets and leave the comparative spatial normality of the walls, they can feel the overwhelming scale of the city around them. They are walking into a true infinite construction, both bounded and unbounded in its dimensions. Krys is highly aware of perceptions of infinity and what that imaginable scale can entail, while the street and the buildings ahead look normal, they are struck with the feeling that they are walking on a tiny bridge that stretches over a canyon of unimaginable depth.

With this perspective informing their steps, they continue deeper into the infinite.

Two things then occur in quick succession. Jane carefully places her right hand in her left hand, clasping them together in front of her in an oddly human gesture. Immediately after this, her head slumps forward, dropping to her chest, as the energies within her noticeably dim. In this state, she does not respond to calls or stimuli, as she enacts her unspoken ability.

Note to GM:
spoilers:

Yep she is using her Sense Death ability here, seeing if there's anything she can pick up from her surroundings. I'm also assuming this is not related to her Trait that extends her range. And of course this turns off her Stack for the moment.

end of spoilers

GM Note to Jane: Jane now cannot use Stack and has taken -10 to her BRA stat while her Death Sense is online.

To onlookers, Jane is slumped in a manner akin to prayer for a short while, it seems almost peaceful. Internally, she is flooded with data as her ability to sense death and interrogate the circumstances of the recently deceased goes into overdrive. While her range of sense only covers a little over 100 metres, she detects some of the strange quantum functions of the buildings that are causing her to experience a lot more than she would otherwise.

Having disengaged her visual processors, Jane is not aware of the position of the buildings around her beyond her memory. However, some of the corpses and signatures of the dead that her system attempts to parse and analyse keep flickering in and out of existence as, presumably, the corpse itself is inside a building whose existence or position is uncertain.

Attempting to simplify this onslaught of data, Jane processes the information prioritising the most recent death on the basis that this would suggest the most recent activity in their immediate environs. She detects the position of the most recently killed entity in her range, it is a little way up the road, bearing left from their position.

GM Note to Jane:
spoilers:

If you want to interrogate the circumstances of this recent death, please let me know.

end of spoilers

She also notes that the times of some of the older deaths not fixed. The arcane systems that read the signature of the Death Energy and translate it into a timestamp are confused, as with her own chronometer tracking her countdown until she is consumed by Nekro. They flit between within the last few weeks, to years ago, centuries ago and then having not even happened.

The paradox of reading a death that is both in the past but also yet to happen fills Jane with a sense of robotic nausea as a largely logical machine encountered something obviously impossible.

The Warrior of the Wasteland moved some distance ahead, half-crouched as she prowled over the surface of the roots that broke through the nearby road, then reached upwards to snatch a handful of the leaves as they fell.

It stirred some nostalgic part within her, the spirit of the hunt, perhaps, as she challenged the Ruin that had befallen the wilderness so long ago. Perhaps there was something in the substance of the tree that could be useful?

(OOC: Notice and Insight Check; Kinu studies the roots, the street they grow out from, and the fallen leaves of the trees.)

GM Note to Kinu: The roots, being absolutely enormous, are much further away than Kinu could reasonably just rush to. I'll give you some information on the tree but Kinu isn't the most observant so it will be a little limited.

The root systems that have upturned entire streets are off in the distance, far enough into the infinite metropolis that they had not broken the surface of the road or disturbed the structure of the buildings immediately around the party. Kinu touches the leaves, dry and coarse in her hand, and even as they break under her touch she becomes aware that the great tree is intensely magical. Even a tiny part of it like a single leaf has a small spark of magical energy to it.

The leaves are removed from the main body of the tree itself and she is too far from the roots itself to learn anything more about its immediate structure and function but even a dead leaf possessing so much of a spark speaks volumes about the sheer power of the gigantic plant that dominates the landscape.

[Sharpandpointies]

"Sounds handy," Krys responds to Rae. "Lots of different abilities is going to prove pretty useful here, I imagine. More than me, anyway. And I'm pretty glad she can fight - that both of you can fight, together. I'll be you've worked out a lot over the years. Although..." They glance first to Jane, then to the Great Kinu, walking ahead. "I suppose we're pretty covered on that front." And with Kinu's words, it becomes apparent the woman truly is a leader, her first choice seeming to be words rather than violence. Good to know. I've always been more partial to talking over fighting, myself.

Jane follows with a detailed run-down on her own capabilities, little of which comes as a surprise. She contains a large number of weapons - that part is a surprise, Krys has only seen the long-gun and the pistols - and she is what some people refer to as a sniper. Fair enough. And, interestingly, she has always wanted a sword. Wanted it very badly, from the change in her tone, normally flat and factual. Well, if we see one - hopefully not on Ván's corpse - we can give it to her. "We'll try to avoid pushing you into fights, Jane. The lack of armor and close combat subroutines does sound like a problem." Krys is very serious; there's no irony at all in their tone. "We want to stay alive, not 'win'," they mutter, lips tight.

Raising their voice slightly, Krys calls ahead to Kinu. "I hope you're not adverse to retreating if things look bad; I'm not an advocate of fighting to the death myself, unless there's no other way out."

But Jane continues regarding enhancements to herself - and to others? - involving 'absorbing ambient spirits'. Something linked with her power source, no doubt; Nekro, the death-god of her reality. "Ashen death," Krys whispers, considering the possibilities. Absorbing spirits? The remains and experiences of others whose physical bodies have ceased to be functional? It sounds... They shake their head, unsure if they would wish for Jane to allow them access to such a necromantic skill. The assassin herself doesn't appear to enjoy the experience, either. Another reason to have a 'chat' with her creators. But then Jane falls into what appears to be a trance, or perhaps a sleep-mode. Krys immediately moves in front of her, scanning the area for threats. "Not something you're going to be using in a fight, I guess," they murmur.

What a curious group in which they have found themselves. And that's coming from someone whose last set of friends was a bunch of bickering, reincarnated god-beings.

A small moue of considering twists their lips as they sweep the city with their gaze; on the hunt for danger, Krys nonetheless takes note of certain impressions. Some are gathered by their senses, clear and obvious. Others...are still gathered by their senses, but in a fashion they cannot describe, unconscious and dependent on perceptions that only remain in fragments. It seems that of the two choices they postulated earlier, it is the second that is correct. "It is truly endless." One corner of their mouth quirks. "The City, I mean." Another of their short shrugs follows. "Having a center in infinity seems impossible, but there are definitely ways. For starters, there's always a perceptual middle." The grin widens slightly. "Wherever you're standing, that's the center of infinity. So maybe the tree is the perceptive center of this city, overshadowing all other perceptions within it by dint of its own nature. Our own perceptions of the infinite city are affected by the tree, and we view it as the center rather than ourselves."

Still watching, still guarding Jane, Krys raises both hands. "Then there's the reality. Step outside of the infinite and it's pretty easy to see that there's a center. One might need to have the proper perceptions and be looking from the proper 'perspective', but yes...there's a center. It's always changing, depending on where you're 'standing', so to speak..." Their voice trails off for a moment. And there you are. "Just like this city," Krys murmurs, nodding. "And us within it."

They jerk a thumb over their shoulder without looking. "We're already running into paradoxes that can't be explained in three-dimensional, entropic reality anyway. Like the gate. And our proximity to it. We just came through it, we're still 'close' to it, so...we're standing at an 'entrance' to infinity, and could just walk out. That's an impossibility once you're within the infinite...not without moving through a dimension that isn't bound to the infinite, in any case." Which explains - one explanation - why Krys cannot simply return to outside of All Things, in Time out of Time, to where they belong; having entered the infinite they can no longer exit it, not without the state of rule-breaking, ultimate freedom, Svātantrya.

...Ashen Death, but this sucks.

OOC - Krys moves to 'cover' Jane, should anything chose this point to attack.

[Postmania]

GM Note to Jane: Jane now cannot use Stack and has taken -10 to her BRA stat while her Death Sense is online.

To onlookers, Jane is slumped in a manner akin to prayer for a short while, it seems almost peaceful. Internally, she is flooded with data as her ability to sense death and interrogate the circumstances of the recently deceased goes into overdrive. While her range of sense only covers a little over 100 metres, she detects some of the strange quantum functions of the buildings that are causing her to experience a lot more than she would otherwise.

Having disengaged her visual processors, Jane is not aware of the position of the buildings around her beyond her memory. However, some of the corpses and signatures of the dead that her system attempts to parse and analyse keep flickering in and out of existence as, presumably, the corpse itself is inside a building whose existence or position is uncertain.

Attempting to simplify this onslaught of data, Jane processes the information prioritising the most recent death on the basis that this would suggest the most recent activity in their immediate environs. She detects the position of the most recently killed entity in her range, it is a little way up the road, bearing left from their position.

GM Note to Jane:
spoilers:

If you want to interrogate the circumstances of this recent death, please let me know.

end of spoilers

She also notes that the times of some of the older deaths not fixed. The arcane systems that read the signature of the Death Energy and translate it into a timestamp are confused, as with her own chronometer tracking her countdown until she is consumed by Nekro. They flit between within the last few weeks, to years ago, centuries ago and then having not even happened.

The paradox of reading a death that is both in the past but also yet to happen fills Jane with a sense of robotic nausea as a largely logical machine encountered something obviously impossible.

Jane's systems in processing this new information began forming tentative new rules of existence, switching between theories as they attempted to make sense of how death that could be and could not be could be explained by some form of system of physics. The effect was dizzying, and after a while Jane conceded the point that this was unlikely to be solved by her current understanding of physics (although one of the subroutines which suggested there be some sort of faster than light distortion seemed like it was on the right track) and that the effect of constantly switching between models was too disorienting to maintain in any regards.

She did wonder why only some of these times were not fixed. This and the effect on her estimate for Nekro's full culmination left her pondering the possibilities of floating points in time and space, undestined deaths that could change and be altered...and this more than anything started to really crash her subsystems and she quickly moved on from there.

She instead focuses on the most recent death, which seemed to not be flickering and existed in some form of more fixed reality, to her relief. Perhaps this could give her some more information.

OOC: Jane is indeed trying to determine whatever information she can regarding this particular death.

[Sharkerbob]

They jerk a thumb over their shoulder without looking. "We're already running into paradoxes that can't be explained in three-dimensional, entropic reality anyway. Like the gate. And our proximity to it. We just came through it, we're still 'close' to it, so...we're standing at an 'entrance' to infinity, and could just walk out. That's an impossibility once you're within the infinite...not without moving through a dimension that isn't bound to the infinite, in any case." Which explains - one explanation - why Krys cannot simply return to outside of All Things, in Time out of Time, to where they belong; having entered the infinite they can no longer exit it, not without the state of rule-breaking, ultimate freedom, Svātantrya.

...Ashen Death, but this sucks.

OOC - Krys moves to 'cover' Jane, should anything chose this point to attack.

"And I thought the Scribed Lands were convoluted!" quipped Rae.

Beneath the hat, Nemo took a centering breath, and her eyes blinked open. "Best I'll manage without laying us up for a short while, and I don't feel too comfortable just making us all stand here in the relative open for the next hour."

"How we lookin'?" said Rae. "We're swapping notes on what we can do. I'll fill you in on what we already discussed, but I'd like to know where we're at. I told them about our String Magic already." Rae quickly lists out what the others told them, heroically managing to not obfuscate the facts with witty commentary.

"It would seem everyone is capable in their own way," said Nemo. "

OOC: Nemo attempts a few purely cosmetic and ineffectual displays of her gifts, just to see if she can actually trigger them, but nothing more effortful than, say, picking up a book. Hopefully this is okay for flavor without sacrificing more ENR. If not, then ignore the following and I'll just say she "senses" the energy within her.

Nemo nodded, and extended a hand, palm upwards. A flicker of flame, like a candle-light, danced along her fingertips for a couple seconds, before snuffing out. She turned her hand palm down, and a handful of snowflakes fell downwards. She closed her eyes and for the briefest moment, felt the slight shifting of air around long, invisible hairs. Finally, she "listened" for a presence within herself, and felt the grumble of a feral beast, waiting for it's time to spring free. "Fire Magic. Snow Magic. Jaguar Totem. String Magic. Flesh Magic. Rat Magic. Sky Magic." She opened her eyes again, frowning deeply. "I'm sorry to say, my range of gifts has been reduced drastically.

"String and Fire seem strongest. As Rae probably mentioned, String enables tactile telekinesis extended through string material, specifically. It's weaker, but I think my general range is still there. Fire Magic lets me produce and project flames. That seems the next strongest I have. Snow Magic, I can produce bursts of Snow; I'll have to see if I can still shape it like I used to, but my reserves are so low, I don't want to drain them just practicing. Flesh Magic lets me manipulate flesh up to a point; all I can manage right now is to heal a person from minor physical injuries; that, too, has been reduced, and unfortunately I had not yet learned the techniques to harden cells against pathogens. Sky Magic, all I have is a jump assist right now. Rat Magic, I can sense things immediately around me somewhat like a rat's whiskers, but I don't have any of the other associated powers. And the Jaguar Totem lets me transform into a jaguar."

Rae's tilted a bit on her head, while her shawl flapped in some approximation of a shrug. "Jeez, that's really it? What about all the other elements? Or turning invisible? Or the songs? Or your blades?"

Nemo shook her head with a sigh and a shrug. "Trying to hide my capabilities at this juncture would not seem to behoove us any. At any rate, without the Spirit Blades, it'll come down to strings, fire, and fists for combat. I have some kickboxing training, but I was hardly my master's best student. Would you be able to help me there?"

Rae assessed herself, rippling her threads over Nemo's body, tightening the normally-loose sleeve around her partner's arms for a moment, before letting herself relax and hang naturally. "Oof. Sorry, hun. Still hard to move that much. Don't think I'm going to be able to hold form long enough to armor you like usual. I can probably still give you a quick boost in the moment, though."

Nemo pursed her lips. Most of her Magics weren't directly useful for combat anyway, except by clever tactical implementation. Still, to be stripped down this much, even some of her passively useful boosts were gone. She wouldn't give herself too good of odds against a trained gunman, or one of those superhumanly skilled swordsman from back home. She was really going to have to be on her toes, for both herself and her partner, at least until Rae was able to recover enough. All the more reason to stick with a group, assuming they were as sincere as they seemed to be.

"Stay on me at all times," Nemo said to Rae.

"Yes, mother," muttered Rae. "Don't think I'd be able to get far right now anyway." She paused. "Man, do you not even have that power?"

Nemo's pursed lips took on a hint of prim sardonicism. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, and if I did, I most certainly don't have it."

"Damn. What a rip!"

[grampagen]

GM Note to Kinu: The roots, being absolutely enormous, are much further away than Kinu could reasonably just rush to. I'll give you some information on the tree but Kinu isn't the most observant so it will be a little limited.

The root systems that have upturned entire streets are off in the distance, far enough into the infinite metropolis that they had not broken the surface of the road or disturbed the structure of the buildings immediately around the party. Kinu touches the leaves, dry and coarse in her hand, and even as they break under her touch she becomes aware that the great tree is intensely magical. Even a tiny part of it like a single leaf has a small spark of magical energy to it.

The leaves are removed from the main body of the tree itself and she is too far from the roots itself to learn anything more about its immediate structure and function but even a dead leaf possessing so much of a spark speaks volumes about the sheer power of the gigantic plant that dominates the landscape.

The enormity of the boughs of in the distance were of a magnitude like none she had ever seen before. Yet the sheer scale of the sight was something she had to experience for herself. Even as Kinu stalked foward upon the broken roads...she hadn't reached them yet where they ripped through the old stone, laden with corpses.

Kinu found that this eerie strangeness brought her to silence, and a quiet embarrassment like a kid swatting the air as if that would somehow dust the snow off of a distant hill.

But the crumbling leaves in her hand carried something familiar in it. Whatever fed the roots of this tree, it was certainly different from the craft she'd known, the casters she'd fought against. The natural shape, it was less structured than the runic incantations of the Walled City, but if there was a language behind it, regardless she wouldn't know it. Yet the sheer substance within them, it carried an unmistakable scent, a form to her reckoning she found uncannily pure.

"Magic. Hmm..."

Kinu let a few crumble in her grip, staring at it in silence for a moment.

"Of course it would be..."

"Sounds handy," Krys responds to Rae. "Lots of different abilities is going to prove pretty useful here, I imagine. More than me, anyway. And I'm pretty glad she can fight - that both of you can fight, together. I'll be you've worked out a lot over the years. Although..." They glance first to Jane, then to the Great Kinu, walking ahead. "I suppose we're pretty covered on that front." And with Kinu's words, it becomes apparent the woman truly is a leader, her first choice seeming to be words rather than violence. Good to know. I've always been more partial to talking over fighting, myself.

Jane follows with a detailed run-down on her own capabilities, little of which comes as a surprise. She contains a large number of weapons - that part is a surprise, Krys has only seen the long-gun and the pistols - and she is what some people refer to as a sniper. Fair enough. And, interestingly, she has always wanted a sword. Wanted it very badly, from the change in her tone, normally flat and factual. Well, if we see one - hopefully not on Ván's corpse - we can give it to her. "We'll try to avoid pushing you into fights, Jane. The lack of armor and close combat subroutines does sound like a problem." Krys is very serious; there's no irony at all in their tone. "We want to stay alive, not 'win'," they mutter, lips tight.

Raising their voice slightly, Krys calls ahead to Kinu. "I hope you're not adverse to retreating if things look bad; I'm not an advocate of fighting to the death myself, unless there's no other way out."

Palming one last scattered leaf, Kinu nonchalantly presented it to the others with a dumbfounded shrug. Not much of a finding. At Krys's call, Kinu responded.

"Can't think of a way this'd get much worse than being cast off like this," she grunted, "but the only way out might be to go through. In scraps like that, you don't get to make much of a choice."

But Jane continues regarding enhancements to herself - and to others? - involving 'absorbing ambient spirits'. Something linked with her power source, no doubt; Nekro, the death-god of her reality. "Ashen death," Krys whispers, considering the possibilities. Absorbing spirits? The remains and experiences of others whose physical bodies have ceased to be functional? It sounds... They shake their head, unsure if they would wish for Jane to allow them access to such a necromantic skill. The assassin herself doesn't appear to enjoy the experience, either. Another reason to have a 'chat' with her creators. But then Jane falls into what appears to be a trance, or perhaps a sleep-mode. Krys immediately moves in front of her, scanning the area for threats. "Not something you're going to be using in a fight, I guess," they murmur.

What a curious group in which they have found themselves. And that's coming from someone whose last set of friends was a bunch of bickering, reincarnated god-beings.

A small moue of considering twists their lips as they sweep the city with their gaze; on the hunt for danger, Krys nonetheless takes note of certain impressions. Some are gathered by their senses, clear and obvious. Others...are still gathered by their senses, but in a fashion they cannot describe, unconscious and dependent on perceptions that only remain in fragments. It seems that of the two choices they postulated earlier, it is the second that is correct. "It is truly endless." One corner of their mouth quirks. "The City, I mean." Another of their short shrugs follows. "Having a center in infinity seems impossible, but there are definitely ways. For starters, there's always a perceptual middle." The grin widens slightly. "Wherever you're standing, that's the center of infinity. So maybe the tree is the perceptive center of this city, overshadowing all other perceptions within it by dint of its own nature. Our own perceptions of the infinite city are affected by the tree, and we view it as the center rather than ourselves."

Still watching, still guarding Jane, Krys raises both hands. "Then there's the reality. Step outside of the infinite and it's pretty easy to see that there's a center. One might need to have the proper perceptions and be looking from the proper 'perspective', but yes...there's a center. It's always changing, depending on where you're 'standing', so to speak..." Their voice trails off for a moment. And there you are. "Just like this city," Krys murmurs, nodding. "And us within it."

"...how do you figure-" Kinu started...

They jerk a thumb over their shoulder without looking. "We're already running into paradoxes that can't be explained in three-dimensional, entropic reality anyway. Like the gate. And our proximity to it. We just came through it, we're still 'close' to it, so...we're standing at an 'entrance' to infinity, and could just walk out. That's an impossibility once you're within the infinite...not without moving through a dimension that isn't bound to the infinite, in any case." Which explains - one explanation - why Krys cannot simply return to outside of All Things, in Time out of Time, to where they belong; having entered the infinite they can no longer exit it, not without the state of rule-breaking, ultimate freedom, Svātantrya.

...Ashen Death, but this sucks.

...then her amber eyes seemed cross and glaze over for a moment, taken to a complete silence at this analysis.

"...uh huh...clearly I'm missing something here...er, or there's an issue of, uh, perspective."

Kinu cleared her throat,

"Only thing I know about magic is it doesn't come for free. Whatever this tree's feedin' on is part of some cycle. But that's all I can get with a look."

[Nik Hasta]

She instead focuses on the most recent death, which seemed to not be flickering and existed in some form of more fixed reality, to her relief. Perhaps this could give her some more information.

OOC: Jane is indeed trying to determine whatever information she can regarding this particular death.

spoilers:

Jane is suddenly no longer in her body. In a manner not dissimilar to her transit through various realities on her way to this place, she is suddenly organic and running. She has enough time feel a curious revulsion at the level of sensation that organic life has to contend with in any given moment; heartbeat thumping, cold sweat pouring down her back, muscles screaming in agony as she is running for all she is worth. There is series of rumbling growls and barks not far behind her as she skids to a halt beside a courtyard and breaks right to try and lose whatever is chasing her. Jane is not predisposed toward fear, as a manufactured entity who was implanted with basic concepts and ideas rather than grown, she has always had a calm mind and steady surety of purpose. She is shocked at how panicked she is feeling by this. Or is this the memories and feelings of the person who died melding with her own? It is hard to tell where her observation ends and her experience begins. Suddenly, as she summons on last reserves and pounds across the courtyard, she is struck in the right shoulder and sent spinning to the floor. Her thoughts become scattered as the wind is knocked out of her. She smells burning. Something had. Something - a fireball, is she on fire. She's on fire. Fire. FIRE! In a panic, she rolls and slaps at where her clothes have been lit aflame by something. Her shoulder is strangely cold and numb, her body shutting down sensory information once it realises that the pain would be too much. She screams and flails on the dusty floor. You have to get up. You have to run. They are coming and they'll kill you. They'll. Kill. You. Get up. Stop crying and get up. Get up, get up getupgetupgetupget- ... A horrifying crunch. She is screaming, a different kind of scream than the one that issued from her when she was burning, this one not of just pain but also of the animal reaction to violation of being bitten. A large demonic dog, with raw exposed muscle and four burning sets of eyes, has bitten into her leg. She claws at the ground in a futile attempt to drag herself away but is shaken like a toy and slammed against the wall of the courtyard. Her vision is cloudy. She is going to die. There's so much blood. They're so big and she is so small. Why did she come here? Why? This isn't fair. She is letting out a low constant moan, her throat raw from exhaustion and screaming. Two smaller demonic hounds approach her, long serpent-like tongues licking their jagged and mismatched teeth. To her left, she just about makes out a silvery figure, walking jerkily toward her. As the two other dogs pounce and tear into her midsection, blood erupting from her mouth, she hears a question. "[ORGANIC_LIFEFORM-FEMALE] do you require assistance?" And there is just a brief snatch of the sounds of cracking bones, blinding pain and the horrific sound of her internal organs being ripped out and chewed up into a mush in the jaws of the two smaller dogs. And she is gone.

end of spoilers

This is perhaps one of the most visceral experience Jane has had in her short life, her CPU is audibly whining from the level of data processing it is putting in to regulate her programming.

OOC: Nemo attempts a few purely cosmetic and ineffectual displays of her gifts, just to see if she can actually trigger them, but nothing more effortful than, say, picking up a book. Hopefully this is okay for flavor without sacrificing more ENR. If not, then ignore the following and I'll just say she "senses" the energy within her.

Nemo nodded, and extended a hand, palm upwards. A flicker of flame, like a candle-light, danced along her fingertips for a couple seconds, before snuffing out. She turned her hand palm down, and a handful of snowflakes fell downwards. She closed her eyes and for the briefest moment, felt the slight shifting of air around long, invisible hairs. Finally, she "listened" for a presence within herself, and felt the grumble of a feral beast, waiting for it's time to spring free. "Fire Magic. Snow Magic. Jaguar Totem. String Magic. Flesh Magic. Rat Magic. Sky Magic." She opened her eyes again, frowning deeply. "I'm sorry to say, my range of gifts has been reduced drastically.

GM Note to Nemo: Yes this is fine, no ENR use incurred.