[IC Thread] Act 1, Scene 2 : Toy Soldiers [BioHazard]

The soldiers moved from almost clockwork precision. Charm enhanced training enabling them to move almost as one, and while it wasn't as smooth as a dragonblooded brotherhood would, it was still impressive.


Their movement almost as one, it was easy to not quite catch on what the soldiers were doing. Namely, setting up a defensive perimeter of haze-shields barricades that could be activated swiftly along side tripods that mounted brass and steel tubes that were familiar to everyone.


A defensive wall that protected the grounded Manta skyships and providing a safe path to and from the mansion...
 
'Ok people lets move out." Aine shoulders his spear and medi-backback, before moving up slowly to the mansion
 
Arama, mentally marking and identifying the various pieces of equipment being set up, sent a silent command to the artifact lens covering her eye to delve its vision into the essence spectrum. Now able to see the flow and pulse of energy emanating from both those Terrestrials not actually heading into the mansion, and the artifacts being she scanned the clearing with more focus. With the amount of troops and crates being moved around out here, it was unlikely that the Haze Shields and Essence cannons were the only things to be put into position here. She wanted to make sure that she knew what was going to be here.


After all, should things come to worse and they had to retreat back this way, it would be prudent to know what you would be running toward.
 
Lee follows Arama, keeping his fang about 25 steps behind Arama's in case something nasty happened. "Stick with me, boys" He quietly orders his group, "And we'll all get out of here alive."


Maybe they would. He certainly hoped so.
 
"Gentlmen, ladies, this way," taizei Cid waved at the dragonblooded commanders who had emerged from the Nu Wa's cargohold.


Escorted by the older dragonblooded, the journey into the mansion was swift and done in silence.


Walking in the mansion, gave the impression of a summerhouse kept by a rich gente. A deliberately cultivated image, to be sure. From the scattered portraits here and there, to the traces of where care-takers worked to maintain the building to the luxurious standards expected by the gentes.


Eventually, they reached their destination; a rather unremarkable octogonal wine cellar, with racks of bottles of wine on every other wall. While the lighting in the room was faint and guttering, the fact that they were essence fuelled lights was a hint that the room wasn't quite what it perported to be.


Still, the only other oddity in the entire room beside the lightning was that the tiles were an immaculate white with tiny circular holes between the tiles.


With but one entrance with stairs leading down into the room, the taizei's next statement didn't quite make sense. At least on the surface. "Gentlemen, here we are. The entrance."
 
Aine slowly follows taizei Cid, motinoing for his squad to follow him but to keep an eye out. As he enters the mansion he continues to look around seemingly a little peeved by the luxury that surrounds him as he moves through the rooms and down into the cellar.


"Ok....." Aine shrugs.
 
Tranquil Meadow leads his men (and women) down; well-trained all, they automatically took up the best position to pass through the mansion's chambers without getting in the way of the other troops.


Once down in the cellar, the Exalt looked around at the dimly lit chamber; nodding in response to the taizei's words and assuming there would be an explanation shortly, he paused to draw a bottle from its rack and inspect the label.
 
Rinji noted both the circular holes, and the wines, keeping an eye out for any particularly fine years. At the same time, he looked through his lens, using the Essence Sight to observe the odd little holes. At the same time, he toyed around with his data crystal, trying to see if he could pinpoint their exact position, or, if this room was left out of the information.
 
The bottle of wine that Tranquil Meadows examined wasn't that exceptional a bottle, if one were to judge by the label. A red wine from a local winery, almost cheap when one considered it.


Still, the tiny layer of dust coating it along with the date that it was bottled indicated it had just been sitting in there for several decades now.


The cool temperature of the room enough to keep the wine drinkable.


***


OOC, I'll wait for further posts from GaelicNinja and Gulup before continuing on.
 
Lee stays quiet... he'd been expecting something of the sort for a while. With his troops surrounding him, he eyes the stairwell down. Eying the holes askance, he remains quiet and outwardly at ease.
 
Fishing his security pass out of a pouch, the taizei paused and looked carefully at the dragonblooded surrounding him before speaking up. "Now, what I'm about to tell is considered a minor secret in regards to the lower city and various little sealed areas."


"Located here and there are secret projects and storage vaults located within the lower city. And if the project heads are in hidding, it is quite possible that they would ," Cid coughed into a hand before continuing. "In certain rooms like this, you need to locate the exact center, like here."


Dangling the crystal tube on its chain, Cid knelt down and slid the pass into the holes at the five corners of the center tile. "When doing this, you need to make sure that you start with the hole closest to the elemental pole of Earth and work clock-wise."


Standing back once more, the dragonblooded nodded as a low rumble filled the room before the center six tiles rose from the floor, revealing a a crystal orb set upon a glimming pillar of blue jade steel.


The hollow with in the allowed an armoured hand to reach in to grab hold of the handle set there.


A crystal bell chimed within the room as the dragonblooded reached in and turned the handle and the orb it was inset vertical.


"And now... down there, you're on your own."


The elder dragonblooded nodded as the wall on the other side of the wine cellar rumbled as it lifted itself up, revealing further rectangular holes set in a granite frame rose up. Each 'frame', a yard wide, provided a set of steps down into the darkness beyond.


A darkness that drank up the light from the wine cellar, and the glowing glyphs carved into the surface of the stone frames and filled with orichalcum and jade.


***


If you wanna work out what those glyths say, you'll need a Int + lore roll (first age and or wards are applicable as specialties) as well as having Old Realm as a known language. Difficulty of the roll is 4.
 
Seeing as this was an important mechanical and security feature that they would have to be aware of, Amara paid full attention to what Cid was telling them. In addition to his instructions, she also paid attention to the construction and (with the aid of her Dragonfly's Ranging Eye) the general essence pattern of the locking artifice. It would help cut down on search time to find these particular sections by checking now when they had relatively more time, and considerably less potential distractions than on-the-fly once they were down in the lower city.


The glyphs were of interest as well, as her status as a sorceress let her know that their purpose and strength could mean various things. Whether to keep things out... or in. How long ago they had been made or last maintained (though the amounts of Anathema metal present in their designs did lend a hint as to their age). In a situation such as they were heading into, any information could become vital when least expected.
 
Aine watches with interest as Cid demonstrates the opening process of these such rooms. When he finishes Aine turns to his squad


"Ok people, I think thats our cue to move out." Aine shoulders his backpack and steady's his lance before following his squad down the opened 'frames'.
 
Entering the tunnel, Aine and his men were treated to a gentle cool breeze that blew cool and dry out of the tunnel.


The light from the glyphs were enough to guide the dragonblooded and his men, but just enough for such.
 
"Keep 'em peeled people." Aine instructs. "We have no margin for feck ups. In out, thats what we want. Stop at the first junction we guard and wait for the others."
 
The ex-Immaculate watches the procedure as demonstrated with care, glancing aside only for a moment to see if his troops are doing the same. As the entrance opens he pauses, closing his eyes to take a long, slow breath; the air that flows from the opened tunnel must be fresh enough for his purposes, as he smiles, unlimbers his bow with a flourish, and gestures for his men to follow as he follows Aine's group into the passage.


As he goes, he keeps an eye out for any signs of previous travelers along this route.
 
Cold and crisp much like that of a breeze found at the top of mountains or in the distant north, the air is clean.


The essence sight provided by various artifacts such as the dragon armours, at a reasonable cost of motes per minute, or a dragonfly's ranging eye, show a tunnel not concealed by darkness that ate at the glow from the glyphs on the surfaces of the tunnel.


The glyphs were but the source of a warm grid of mist that lay outside human sight, and which twisted and squirmed much like tendrils of creatures found deep beneath the sea upon plains of almost absolute darkness.


Striding into the tunnel, the dragonblooded and their men disrupted the grid which flowed around them and back into their original form, doing no harm to the soldiers of the shogunate, nor to the essence flows of the wards.


Marching downwards, the essence sight revealed that at the bottom of the tunnel, there lay a corridor that widened, but stayed straight and true in a perfect straight line from the stairs down.


"At the bottom, the light nearest by the stairs is where you'll find the counterpart to the opening mechanism up here." The taizei's comments echoed down the tunnel.
 
Aine moves down to the bottom of the stairs, he motions to his squad to form up in front of him and he waits by the light nearest to the bottom of the stairs.
 
The corridor that lay at the bottom of the stairs didn't have any lights. At least til Aine and his men stepped into it.


At which point...


One by one, beams of light shone upwards from the ground from the other end of the corridor.


Seperate enough that there was shadows in the passage, but wide enough and diffuse enough that the beams of light weren't blinding.


Looking down at 'first' light in the corridor revealed a single tile surrounded by five holes, just large for a security pass.


***


OOC - Each stairs' frame is 10 yards tall by 10 yards wide and 1 yard across. The stairs tunnel is 150 yards in length and descends 30 yards downwards.


The corridor at the end of the stairs is 25 yards wide and tall, and 200 yards long. At the end of which is perhaps a chamber covered in darkness.
 
Aine and his ashigaru was soon joined by Taizei Wu Zhi Jun and his men. The fire aspect was keeping quiet as he took up position amongst his men, as they directed their weapons at the wall of darkness at the end of the corridor they were in.


***


OOC - puppeteering fhgwdads05's PC til he returns. -_-
 
Lee follows, after signalling one of his men to take point for his squad, and dropping into the third position, the rest of his squad moving in a loose single-file.


He looks around actively, ensuring that the details of this tunnel are in his memory.


***


OOC - posting on behalf of GaelicNinja who is having some difficulties with his computer and getting into the PbP forum.
 
Being that she is hardly the primary combat portion of this expedition, Arama and her squad head down near the end of the procession. She does pay attention to their surroundings, and the various wards and mechanisms around them.
 
"Good luck and good hunting," was the last words of taizei Cid that echoed down the stairs before they started to descend silently and smoothly.


With a solid wall of stone behind them, there was no place for the S.T.A.R.S. commanders and their men and women to go, but forward into the yawning maw of darkness.


Essence sight granted from artifacts revealed the room's shape and contents even before the dragonblooded stepped into it, triggering the flood of blinding lights from the ceiling.


Blinking away the spots of whiteness from their eyes, the dragonblooded were in a quiet hall, with benches against a wall, and regular rows of stone pillars connecting floor and ceiling.


At the end of the hall, stood an indentation of the tunnel that connected to the Undercity.


Within said tunnel and hollow rested a metal beast, a monstrosity of jade and cold dark steel burnished. Long and wide, the machine resembled a rhino or perhaps ox of steel if such animals were the size of a pair of yeddim.


Which was a surprise, given that according to the briefing, such a vehicle wasn't suppose to be here and had to be called up using the control system against one of the walls.


***


An Iron Ox carriage, without any additional carriages.


Perception + awareness rolls would be a good thing now, as would investigtion roll.
 
"Oh?" Meadow mused aloud. "That's odd..."


Raising a hand to shade his eyes from the glare while they adjusted, the Wood Aspect peered around for any clue as to the reason for this incongruity. Looking for things in man-made locales was not one of his particular skills, but perhaps he could spot something.


***


Perception + Awareness result: 8 7 6 2 (2 successes).


Percption + Investigation result: 1 10 7 (3 successes).
 
Nothing visible to his eyes, at least. Tranquil Meadow sighed. And as he drew breath to do so, he caught a scent. The ex-monk froze.


Slowly, he lowered his hand back down to the string of his bow.


"Blood... and charred flesh," he announced. "And something I don't recognise."
 
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