Metal Fish Out of Water [Closed]

  • Ava doesn't recoil in horror at the sight, mostly, she thinks, due to the fact she's never seen living versions of most of these creatures, so it's harder for her to empathize with their fate. "Alright, we're going to set up both Ponres and get to processing these dead organic creatures into food pills. Mari, I want you cutting them into small enough pieces to feed into the ponres without any difficulty, Freeman I want you making clear glass storage sceptically enough to hold-" She thinks for a moment, before turning to Burning Lion. "Query; In what manner, Interval and units, does your culture subdivide time?"


 
Burning Lion surveys the scene. It hurts to look at, over half the wealth of the village soon to be rotting. The only real activity in the scene is the grim-faced boys that are keeping watch over the carcases, keeping scavengers away while some of the village's women methodically try to cut out as much salvageable meat as possible. A few men are also digging holes a bit further away with simple copper shovels.


"Time? Well, until I gained these powers we mainly just spoke of night and day, with the time of the day determined by the position of the sun. Dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, dusk and then night again... but now... Its like, I can just look at the sun for a split second and well, I suddenly know exactly how many hours, minutes and seconds there are until sundown. Ruby Eyes, have you felt this too??


((...all exalted come with the instinctive understanding of time, right down to the minute - lunars also come with instinctive knowlegde of the lunar cycle... for 1 mote,


ofc for someone who's never even seen a clock to suddenly have a perfect internal one, that's freaky))


Freeman prints a sandstone disk and hold it out for Ava to read:

Code: 
Me and Mari will need proper lighting conditions to operate.
Also Mari should NOT cut anything. I should. If these 'cattle'
have bones they must be carved properly. PONRE devices
do NOT process inedible items, such as bones.
Bones are for glue.

Current conditions are not suitable.
Once conditions improve

Also, once we can see each other again we must have words on our communication situation.

I have been carefully considering strategies for that:
Please ask if this language these people speak is the only tongue spoken in this region,
or whether there are other tribal tongues we should be aware of. This is important.
 
Ava sighed. "I don't know if the lighting conditions could be changed... If you possessed the arc-protectors, how long would it take you to construct a non-magictech version of them for myself and Mari?"


She smiled at Burning Lion. "And how many hours in these days and nights, and do you have any larger time units?"
 
OOC: I am taking my (by now) usual status of "i got no clue whats going on so i'll just let the adults talk about this" pose...


IC:


"Hadn't noticed it... But now that you mention it... I have always been good at doing that sort of thing but not down to this much accuracy..."


"Okay this is going to get a little confusing, maybe, but the way it works is as such: We have second which is a small brief interval of time about as long as this" Ruby said snapping his fingers in a broadly one a second tempo "then 60 of those are called a minute, and there's 60 minutes in an hour." **I CANT FIND HOW MANY HOURS IN A DAY SO IF 24 ISNT CORRECT REPLACE WITH APPROPRIATE NUMBER" 24 of those "hours" make a day/night cycle. Then we reach the "days" mentioned earlier of which there are 7 in a "week", 4 weeks go in a month and theres 15 months in a year.


Now for the semi complicated bit, because a day can be both "the light part" of any given 24 hour period, or it can be the whole set of day and night, as in "i'll meet you there in 4 days" or "i'll see you at the end of the day" where the first uses it as a 24 hour slot, and the latter for "the light bit"


Man... Never thought someone with who has no clue what's going on would need to this much explaining...
 
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  • Creation has a 25 hour day actually.


    Aren't Freeman and Mari's eyes adjusting to the light?
 
((It'll take a few weeks worth of downtime to adjust to the light... don't worry, I have a plan for that - sort of))


Burning Lion shakes his head, speaking in an annoyed tone: "Haven't you heard what I've told you already? When the fair folk attacked we lost almost two thirds of men in the village... so not very many I guess"
 
Ava sighed. "I mean regularly, over this whole region... What precentage of people are awake and working in the day and in the night?"
 
  • Gleaming Marionette nodded in reply to the Moonsilver. As she slipped the ponre from her back, carefully resting it on the ground, she inquired, "Will you be inserting the organic material, or will you direct me to its location?"
 
Freeman prints out a new slate:

Code: 
Ava, tell Mari that we shall wait until the lights dim again before processing these cadavers
 
Ava nodded and was about to relay the message when a thought hit. "Freeman, could you recalibrate our eyes to be functional at these light levels?"
 
Freeman shakes his head

Code: 
Negative. I project that we will all need at least a 30 shifts worth of incremental exposure to this high-powered light source for proper acclimatization.

In Xexas we have extensive experience with luminocity-based over-exposure among dirigible crews and recon & retrieval teams - they train for roughly a week before being sent on missions

...and so the assembly and its gracious hosts return to the village and wait out the rest of the daylight inside Burning Lion's family hut. Too much light seeps through the straw bundles that make up the thin walls for the alchies to see properly, but its at least more comfortable than direct sunlight.


During this time Freeman unveils his immideate plans for the assembly's situation, with Burning Lion and Ruby Eyes chipping in with information.


Freeman's immideate issues relate to the assembly's ability to function properly.


- once the sun sets he plans to make a dwelling for the assembly that'll stay dark enough for proper assembly function during the day


- secondly, for outside operations he'll prioritize making two Arc Protectors, but that will require a suitable source of synth leather, black crystal and metal


- once that's done the issue of language must be addressed: Freeman wants to remove Ava's Interpolative Syntax Emulator to study and replicate it... since Mari probably wants one, and Freeman has a plan to allow him to communicate just as easily... although that requires that the local have a written language.


He's going to make himself a Radiant Iconography Array and display text around himself - this had been his original plan back in Xexas as well

Code: 
Feedback requested on my plan

Otherwise the outside light levels are sufficiently low that we can carry out the cadaver conversion operation
 
Ava smirked. "I've already implemented the download memory buffer function of my Interpolative Syntax Emulator so if need be I could teach the two of you this language is a reasonable amount of time. Besides that, I'm wondering if the Radiant Iconography Array might not be a mis-allocation of precious resources at this time, as the silica tablet communication set up still functions."
 
Code: 
Access to terrain suitable for inscriptions might not always be available.

Inscriptions may be difficult to make under certain conditions

An RIA would free up my limbs and crafting charms for more important work - plus the device can be used for general signaling
 
"I'm not saying it wouldn't be useful. What I am saying is that we have a very small quantity of suitable materials for such work, so we must always strive for the most effect usage of that material."
 
Code: 
I never indicated that it would be quick to go through my list
This is also why I've prioritized getting you and Mari a set of Arc Protectors first
and Mari an Interpolative Syntax Emulator - I'll make do until then

Ask Mari if this is ok - and if she's ready to head out for the recycling operation
 
Ava relays Freeman's previous observations to Mari. "All I'm saying is that unless you have an unused slot in your set up, a submodule such as Architectural Army of One would have less of a opertunity cost then a new charm."
 
Freeman frowns, then prints

Code: 
Three facts:
1) Xexas, as a lone patropolis, does not have any man or god-machine protocols in its sacred datastores. Reasons classified. This fact is also classified.
2) protocols are not stored and shared via the noetic charm network
3) because of the above I was privy to Xexas' contigency for field-expedient charm swapping - in liu of lack of the vat-surrogate weaving technique

It is possible to manually remove and implant charms, if done by competent magitechnicians.

I am equipped and outfitted to do so. Storage of non-implanted charms is easy, but might pose a security risk.

And until a site and materials for a vat complex can be found, then upgrading my crafting charms would be a waste of resources.
 
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"You forget, we are gaining resource through barter here... in a place where there is no line of defense, and they live in domiciles made of brown spars. The amount of man-shifts of labor you can deliver is a resource stream for this assembly."
 
Code: 
Yes and no
From what we've been told so far there doesn't seem to be ANY useful natural resources
in the area worth gaining, beyond basic intel on where we are and how to survive in this place.

Once finished here we should seek more advanced settlements, or look further
afield for useful materials to build a base of operations with
 
She sighed. "That might be true, but we've seen only a very small sliver of what they have here... I think if we leave them ingratiated to use, having a place we'd be welcomed near that egress site will be useful. I don't think we'll be leaving here before a month (700 shifts) has passed. If we were to leave this tribe much better off after that, their gratitude should be a worthwhile resource to have amassed during that time. If that costs us your man-shifts constructing them a defensive barrier, so be it."
 
Code: 
I can build whatever is needed - but if these villagers are being raided by
the kind of native spirits we encountered earlier they'd be better off being
relocated to a proper defensive position... and arguably also a location
with a more stable food source
 
"We're not in the God-Body... for all we know, the raising of edible organic life as they do is the most stable food source available here."
 



  • The assembly, Lion and Ruby has already talked about the village and how it works while waiting for the sun to set


    Assume you know by now that farming in the south is... not easy, especially since Ozmai is some distance from what very few rivers that flow this deep into the south. The few oasis there are feed villages like Lion's, but its simply not possible to irrigate with their limited water supplies. Only the yearly spring rains bring water to the region.


    Equally we'll assume that the assembly has at least tried to explain their origin and nature to Ruby and Lion. Ruby has no dots in occult, and Lion has one...


    So they have understood nothing beyond "These three are also exalted... somehow... but not human, which doesn't make sense - but up until recently the only kind of exalted we knew were dragonblooded, so hey?"


    And indeed, Burning Lion has confirmed that the only iron and copper mines in the area are under the control of a local ruler, one "Silver Coyote" - Coyote apparently being the name of a type of regional scavenger animal. The best description they could give of such a beast, at least of what the assembly could understand given that rats are the only other living breathing things in Autochtonia... is that of a big rat at around 30 pounds in average weight, with a much larger maw, which hunts in packs and has a very good sense of smell and hearing.


    ...and Burning Lion has noted that Silver Coyote really isn't that different from a filthy rat in his opinion, decrying him as a tyrannical ruler who's enforcers do little but harass those who live under his rule and take food and resources from them, leaving everyone to half-starve most of the time while his Gundai warriors and personal harem is always kept well-fed.


    Beyond that, then understanding that the assembly needs metals, 'black crystals' and other rare materials, Burning Lion suggests during these talks that he and the assembly journey to the capital of Ozmai - which is the name of these lands. Silver Coyote probably won't give up the things the circle needs freely, but if the assembly would aid Burning Lion in topling this tyrant... then they could have all the resources they needed - for rumor has it that Silver Coyote's harem is always adorned with jewelry made of precious gems, crystals and magical materials.


 
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