• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Day in the Life: Aos Si Ruins on Jing

Gwaed had paused for a fraction of a second as thoughts invaded his mind, images and feelings and... history coursed through him. Was this the gift of the machine? A side effect of whatever fell will kept it moving? Something inside him reacting to it's touch? On instinct, reflex, he kicked forwards, pushing himself back with the aid of the lack of atmosphere, letting the machine fall to it's end. He pulled his blade out, reminding himself to sharpen it when he had a chance. He turned proudly to Ami with a smile. "And you worried. While you were busy being fast, I was busy being helpful," he teased, but his smile revealed how much he wanted to say at the moment, about what he'd seen. The incessant beeping stalled him however.

"I have a few minutes before I'll need to hold my breath, so I will be returning to the ship." He placed his blade on his back again, and kicked off, hurrying slowly to not appear panicked. He wasn't panicked, quite the contrary, but fighting and ancient robot and then dying of loss of power seemed an ill way to end a tale.
 
Fia made an estimate.

Her two fleeing, corporate countrymen were underground somewhere between the pyramid complex and the outer ring, so she couldn't just cut through the ground to get to them. Action vids not withstanding, physics didn't work like that. Instead, she followed one of the corridors along back the way they had come and decided to take out a part of the wall and superstructure adjacent to it.

She found a larger room that didn't seem as well supported on the scan, big enough she might take out a couple floors of old Aos'si fairy-tale castle if she broke it near the curve where the floor met the wall. It wasn't an explored room so she didn't have a single idea what was inside, but if she collapsed something back the way they came originally, there would be a chance of cutting off their escape instead of helping it.

"This is going to jolt," she said over her shoulder, to the human. "Hold on."

She skimmed the touchpad with her fingers, finding the ship stabilizer vents and activating them as a counterweight. The ship began to drift sideways, towards the structure - enough to offset the 40mm kickback.

"Hey runners," she said over the comm at the ground crew, "I'm going to shoot you a hole off the passage, about two hundred fifty meters ahead and to your left, about a minute if you book it, but it's going to sound bad, you'll probably have to climb some rubble. It will be the passage with the dust blowing out of it. You ready?"

She had the thing centered. The slow sidelong drift of the ship lined the crosshairs up for her. Slowly, they drifted.

Fia waited for confirmation.
 
It was like spice in the wind.

Amisra's hasty retreat came to a stop, not because Gwaedcryf insisted on doing what he did best, but because it tingled, like a tingling scent in her chest. War worn eyes traced their moves yet ignored their motion, peering, looking, seeing something different altogether. But just as quickly as it all happened, it was over, and the redheaded Aos'Si wordlessly marched on back to the swordmaster, her lips still as she helped to push aside the ruined carcass of a relic off of him. Grasping Gwaed by the shoulders, she looked at him from head to toe even as he spoke with pride. But there was a look in her eye that he hadn't seen. Not in a long, long time.

"What did it do?" she half whispered to him and him alone. Just as quickly though, her pointed ears twitched at other events in motion. "What is your plan Fioda?" she questioned, voice clipped.
 
Gwaed's smile at Amisra faded, partly out of a sobering realization that she knew he'd seen something, and partly out of worry that she might have seen something too. The glint in her eyes, it was something intangible, and yet understandable. He spoke softly back to her. "I'll tell all on the ship. I have approximately 5ish minutes before I need to test my lung capacity." He gave her helmet's cheek a pat as he started moving, before he hopped on comms and changed his demeanor entirely. "Fia, if you blow a hole in this millennia old artifact ridden outpost with a library potentially containing knowledge from our people's past, the next team will find a suspiciously recent looking Aos Si skeleton," he growled.

Admittedly, he only needed to say no, but the concept of this place being pummeled from orbit made his stomach churn. So much lore, so much to read and understand, he could spend the next couple human lifetimes looking at them all. And he fully intended to. He was rushing to get back to the shuttle via the way they came, or he would have to die. And truly, he'd rather die and soil this sacred place. Maybe that was a little dramatic. He'd apologize later.
 
Fia rolled her eyes.

It was just stuff. Was she really going to have to explain how important it was that Amisra get out of this alive?

She almost thought not, but changed her mind. She disengaged the stabilizing thrusters, allowing them to auto-correct the drift. Then she keyed the mic and leaned forward in her chair, folding her arms and crossing her ankles, one over the other, against the railing beneath.

"Look. See the pretty chief-executive tail end you're chasing? She has to survive this. No Amisra, and we don't even get a shot at our own history, broken or not, the human corps waiting in the wings give you a nice monument and take it."

She glanced over to Shun, the resident human, and asked, "How many of your kids do you have left? Still have a visual on that thing?"
 
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Gwaed came to a realization, sighing as he understood. Surely the ship above had the ability to show her the feeds, unless compartmentalization was so important. With a sigh he responded, "No, the danger is passed. Amisra was never in direct danger, for I fended it off with the help of our Drone Pilot. The construct is no longer operational. I will not let this 'old history' be forgotten again." Still ticked off, and still floating quickly to get back to the ground shuttle, he grunted to himself, "'Old history that everyone forgot.' Not on purpose."
 
Shen's expression tightened a bit as she listened to the Aos Si argue, mostly because she was trying to focus. She really couldn't afford to give a shit about their drama. Her eyes scanned the status of the drones, one hand over her mouth in thought. "Thirteen. Five damaged." Shen muttered. She was keeping an eye on the body with the last drones following Gwaed and Amisra out. It seemed "dead", but she didn't want to take any chances -- that thing was apparently full of surprises.
 
Amisra sighed.

"Very well," she replied to Gwaed. "Though I feel a certain sense of disappointment," the Aos'Si executive began heading back. "I would have hoped that you would be more careful as to not harm our inheritance Fioda," she remarked, slightly less than pleased at the turn of events. "As for you," her emerald eyes shifted to Gwaed, time ticking away for the man as she spoke, comms open and voice deadpan. "I am disappointed you did not threaten to hilt your sword in her instead."

Given the situation, this was likely the best she could do to diffuse the building tension.
 
Gwaed was somewhat disappointed in himself that he knew exactly what the proper response to that jab would be, yet there was a measure of pride in how brazen he knew he'd have to be to say it. To use a human adage, fuck it. Without even missing a beat, not needing to look back at her as he sped forward, he responded in an equally deadpan voice he couldn't help but tinge with a smile: "Unnecessary, that's what I have you for."
 
Fia rubbed at the bridge of her nose, staving off a headache.

Did this matter? No. Crisis averted.

It irritated her that both lovebirds would die for a building, but since that didn't seem necessary anymore, the point was moot. She'd get Amisra back for the sword comment later. Or, more likely, she would bury it with all the other iniquities wearing a customer-service smile and wait for a moment where doing something would hurt. It's how she'd lived up till now. Why change?

"Want us to swing around for you now?"
 
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Fifteen minutes later

The Aurora class landed some distance away from the Aos Si structure, keeping it out of the dust and expended fuel cloud, while the rover and its storage train drove up to it. The main personnel airlock was several stories above ground, but a hatch was nestled between the nozzles on the underside of the main hull, allowing equipment and people to be transported in and out of the corvette via a short elevator. The rover had the equipment to repair Gwaed's electronics and battery, while extra small arms coming out of the corvette. It wasn't much, just basic weapons for defending a vessel: short assault rifles, a few machine pistols, some hand thrown explosives of various types, and a couple of utility shotguns that accepted specialized ammunition.
 
"You well know how that has turned out in the past," the redheaded woman replied. However, with time, her jovial attitude faded.

It was a strange time in history, where elves walked amongst human beings. If they were real, what else was too? It was a difficult question, with potentially strange answers. But the one answer that Amisra settled on for the time being was measured as 12 gauges and six shells in the tube. It was a strange sight, seeing an Aos'Si feeding rounds into such a thing and grabbing a bandolier of munitions, but she had her reasons. Shotguns may have been archaic, but the Ranger chose this knowing it wasn't just a weapon. It was a tool. Armor piercing slugs, hardened buckshot, plastic explosive rounds, EMP emitters, white phosphorus and even little drones were the gadgets she chose.

"A classic sweep and clear seems to be in order," Amisra remarked. She was adamant that their inheritance would not be denied.
 
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Gwaed was in the same room, gazing upon the choices available to them. More ammunition for his gun, another gun to add to it's number, and his sword receiving a good sharpening. Alas, not from Amisra. "I concur," he responded to the redheaded elf, placing similar tools on his person. "I do wonder whether conventional EMPs will have the intended effect, but we should try anyway. And on our way back, we should ensure the machine is deactivated and then grab it as well." He began working on his suit, making sure it was as repaired as he could make it, and of course recharging it from it's tribute to the ancient system.
 
"That might be worth a try. If they're draining it, they probably run off it too."

Fia descended into the small makeshift armory with the other two, a bullpup rifle slung over her chest and her helmet sealing her otherwise airtight suit. Neither the appearance nor capabilities were different from the suits the other two wore; the only stand-out came in the form of a quartet of unadorned, business-looking daggers in the small of her back, in what seemed to be a specialized drop-sheath.

When her boots touched solid ground, and Fia got a good look at the other two arming themselves, she nodded to them.

"I only saw part of the drone feed, but I just finished quickly reviewing the rest of it. Based on how the drones did - and you - " she said, with a small chin-up acknowledgment to Gwaen, "we're only going to have a problem if we're outnumbered."
 
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Gwaed gave a nod in turn to the fellow warrior, smiling as he felt pride swell in his chest. He clamped it down, it would be unbecoming to be too prideful, but the compliment did resonate with him. "Between Humanity's machines and our ability, I think we'll be fine regardless." Remembering something, and humanity's tendency to value machine life as though they could feel. "Shen, the sacrifice of your machines will not be in vain. They have died for a good cause. Besides... they are machines and can be fixed. So it's not an issue anyway. We will get those back to you, since currently they are soiling my archeological site." He clicked the comms off, his piece said.
 
Shen soon emerged from the elevator, lifting her eyes from her datapad to acknowledge the group with a nod. She would stay behind in the corvette, of course, but she needed to stretch her legs before returning to "desk work," as she liked to call it.

She brusquely put a hand to the back of her neck in an attempt to hide her embarrassment at how serious Gwaed treated the matter of the drones. Sure, Shen got admittedly too attached to the machines she operated as her fellow soldiers would often tease, but that didn't mean she wanted everyone to notice, dammit! Especially these Aos Si who thought humans were already weird enough.

"Uh, yeah. It's whatever. And yeah, make sure you all get whatever that hostile was back here so we can examine it closer. I'm interested to see how that thing works -- er, worked."
 
"Very good," Amisra began, her voice focused on the task at hand. "Shen will stay behind in the corvette alone while the rest of us proceed." For a moment, the Ranger opened her mouth to speak but paused. The times had changed, Changed to the point that she was far more valuable than a humble woodswoman or custodian of a library. "Fia, after you," she replied, resisting the urge to clench her teeth at the thought of not doing so herself.
 
Shen's small army of drones formed a semi-circle around the team of Aos Si as they ventured back into the ruins, now more armed, their electronics repaired. The structure was just as they left it an hour ago: silent, pristine, dead. Through the opening in the donut they entered, then through the connecting pylons into the central triangular structure, then down flights of stairs into the underground rooms. The corpse of the construct still laid there, along with bits and pieces of mechanical tissue welded into the walls and scattered across the floor, from both the construct and Shen's drones.

It was all quiet otherwise, save for the sound of footsteps that travelled through the floor to the Aos Si's feet, then through their bodies. They followed the map inscribed on the walls upstairs, finding more art melded into the walls haphazardly. There were a few rooms before the supposed destination: ancient, personal rooms with shriveled and dried up wooden furniture, dead flora that decorated the walls, books that weren't nearly as well preserved as those in the central structure, their pages welded together, the ink stolen away by the vacuum over hundreds if not thousands of years. Each of them also had smooth tablets either on the desks on mounted on the walls, perfectly placed and undisturbed, along with what seemed to be light bulb analogs that hung dormant on the edges, where the walls met the ceilings.

Then there was a second construct that stood solemnly at the end of the hall at a T-junction, lifeless and unmoving. It didn't respond to any signals from the probes while the formed a wall between it and the Aos Si team as they investigated the rooms. It was somewhat different than the previous construct, but taller, thinner, with different facial features, as if they were two different people. Still, the construct still had the same metallic plating covering mechanical fibers, its eyes still dark and soulless.
 
Fia kept her rifle trained on the construct, but didn't fire immediately. She did a brief flashlight scan around the visible area near it - up, down, both sides - then just kept her rifle's light trained on it, one more beam next to the half dozen or so drone cameras.

Partly it was curiosity; partly, Fia had begun to form the impression that these things were broken somehow. Time, she supposed. Did they activate based on proximity, or what?

"Got another one," she said back to the other two. "It's not moving yet but it's blocking the way forward."
 
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"Yes, but its form is also different than the previous one we encountered," Amisra observed, eyeing the visuals. Slender and tall, its features spoke little to her as to what it could do. "It appears that these are not standardized, or perhaps have a typology, with different variants potentially having different capabilities," she noted. Mulling over their options, the emerald eyed woman pondered aloud, "Is it even possible to capture one with our equipment? Or should I just put a snap-shot in the neck?"
 
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