Scene #5874: Conquering the Brass Leviathan-1

Owner	Pose
Wandering Dog	The evening is cold and clear, the waves moving at a decent pace against the boat. The group has been sailing for several hours on a ship belonging to a contact of Wandering Dog's, who has agreed to take them to their destination - which is the manse of the Brass Leviathan. Wandering Dog would explain the information he got from Bloody Revelations to the group on the way there, in an overly dramatic fashion, as if telling a story. The Brass Leviathan is actually intelligent - it was once a lesser elemental dragon, Isli, who was the Western Arbiter of Storms. After literally raining on someone's party, the head artificer of Luthe hunted it down, stuffed it into a massive crystal, and then bount it to the metal body it now possesses, forcing it into a loyal servant of the Solars. There's good news as part of this, though - the metal frame has a pilot seat, which may be what they need to try and hijack it. As they travel, though, Wandering Dog /would/ ask the more tactically inclined members of the expedition a question. "So, when we actually weaken this thing, how are we going to capture it? You got a plan to turn something that angry to our side?" Not long after, though, the boat would arrive at the destination. Directly below them, deep in the sea, was the resting place of the manse. Wandering Dog would lend his own ability to function underwater, though anything the Starbound Flotilla could provide to assist would be much appreciated. And then, when everybody was ready, they'd dive. As they get closer to the location of the manse, they'd be able to see it as part of the seabed. A 'maze' of what appeared to be coral, except made of black jade, solid and sturdy. And then, they'd feel something... a lightness came over them. A sort of...change in the water. It feels freer, more liberating - swimming through it feels more like walking, more natural. It's a strange feeling. Navigating through the 'maze' isn't difficult, and soon, they'll reach a pillar of jade, with a large circular porthole on the side serving as a door. It's partially ajar from wear and age, allowing passage inside. The pillar leads downwards, and the interior is still completely full of water, but various vents can be seen on the sides of the wall and along the metal, seemingly supposed to filter the water and change the water level inside the passage. At the bottom of the pillar, there's a corridor that seems to be the equivalent of a decompression chamber, as vents absorb the water coming in automatically and allow passage into a water-free area. It'd appear to be some sort of lobby, or atleast, as close as you could get to one, likely more of a check-in room. A desk, chairs, an overall sitting area, with an indoor fountain. Along the walls is a crystal inlay, with what appears to be a thrumming circular crystal that's 'watching' the group like an eye. There's also an odd machine in the corner, a humanoid clockwork torso with what appears to be a sphere where legs should be, crumpled over and in disrepair. On either side of the room are massive pipe-like tunnels, which seem to be the way forward. Through their purple glass, various rooms can be spotted - barracks, kitchens, and what appears to be a records/map room. The tunnels also appear to go downwards the further in you get. What do you want to do?
Starbound Flotilla	"Bet its loyalty in a cardgame." "Convince it with persuasive speaking." "Punch until it sssaysss gonna help!" "Bribe it?" "Hopeful. Maybe it'll recognize us as a force of good worth helping..." "...Turn?" The Flotilla have a variety of potential ways of dealing with this, none of which seem immediately helpful. Moonfin has offered simple oxygen nanoskins, simple energy projections that endow the recipient with several hours of free oxygen, and the others have gotten their own fancy exploration gear, well-guarded against the water. Moonfin, the fishman, is in elaborate full-body durasteel armor that looks like a powered cross between a diving suit and a samurai's armor, glowing cyan at the faceplate. Biteblade, the humanoid plant, is in durasteel plating with elaborately carved wood and bone ornaments over glowing powered components that glow an intense green. Pavo the bird-girl wears a divine-aesthetic set of mesoamerican-style armor, with yellow runes and inscriptions lighting up on stylishly gleaming golden armor and robes. Albert the monkey-man is wearing what looks like lab technician gear with extensive sets of tools and chemical protection, which integrates thin, resilient plates of durasteel, and lines of bright white. George (just plain human) wears a futuristic combat EVA hardsuit that glows a gentle red at the flat faceplate. Seft, the robotic Flotilla member, is wearing full-on medieval knight armor with a soft energized blue glow below the plates on her body, and especially around the eyes. Each has a heavy industrial-yellow two-pronged plasma-cutter-like tool strapped to their side, a Matter Manipulator! Their navigation of the maze is kept in tight formation. "There's something in the water. No... Perhaps a field, emitted by our target? Yes, that must be it." Moonfin mutters, but he looks with familiarity at the waterlock. Hylotl cities have things like this! "It is certainly good to see that this area is crafted with some sense." He has no hesitation moving forward and inside, and doesn't even find it the least bit strange that everything is so... Residential. "Wuh-oh, let's make sure we don't set something off. What do you got for me, secret surprise prize?" George speaks up eagerly, heading for the torso, intending to search it for some sort of access key or similar mechanism that will allow it to unlock doors; he seems to assume that it's a local service drone or something like that, so he's intent on making sure their way isn't barred, or at least, their way won't be barred by something that can get opened by a drone pulsing something. Lacking any other indication of what to do, Seft leads the way forwards towards the purple-glass pipe that heads towards the records and map room. "Anxious. This place seems in good condition, even despite the machine in the lobby. Something here has to be keeping the wear and tear from damaging it. Please be careful, and maybe we can keep from being antagonizing until it's really needed."
Staren	Staren wasn't expecting underwater movement to be this easy... "I wonder how unique this magic is... Did people live down here? ...Could more people, with magic like this making the deep sea habitable?" Staren muses. Eventually they're inside. Staren agrees about not splitting up in the strange facility. But he does send drones down hallways to look for some sort of... central control or whatever.
Azure Armature	The problem of operational issues is that you generally can't 'put them off' reliably. They will come up, and if you don't have a plan, you probably still won't at the end. If there's one thing Armature doesn't want to do, it's go in without a plan. But before planning on the ground happens, a short water segment has to get done. Armature - 'Blue' - does not swim that well for someone so Tactical, sinking like a weight and sort of brute-forcing the whole process of water mobility. Thanks to the water enchantments, it becomes easier after a short while. And - the oxygen granting skin from the Flotilla fixes the last problem, which would be talking underwater. Silent protagonism is never good. "Security is poor, but remain vigilant for wards or sentries." She warns as they crank open the door at the center of the maze and head into the decompression area. Of all the things in the 'lobby', Blue almost sneers at the fountain. "After the water on the outside, a water feature inside... how wasteful." She mutters, tapping George on the shoulder. "I'll move ahead to the map room, and collate it with my own data. Staren, if you'd like to join me, perhaps we can find something of value in the records room." Without waiting for agreement - he's free to do whatever - she begins walking into the crystal pipes, checking her arm display as her mapping feature begins scanning the area. "We may need to create some device to suborn the 'Solar' control of this. Rather than freeing or changing, simply adjusting the functionality from 'Solars' or 'The pilot' to 'us'."
Bloody Revelations	For once, the person in the party doing the sudden entry isn't one of the teleporters. Also for once, the person who basically always does sudden, dramatic entries isn't here to overtly ruin everyone's day. It's still only small consolation when several yards of the lobby floor flickers and blackens, becoming a dim gap in the artificial lighting, and crashing out a small, short-lived tide of ice cold, inky black water, spreading out into a wide, shallow pool that reflects a myriad writhing faces under the forced lighting before evaporating away. Bloody Revelations steps out of where the water blob had been, shaking some of it off herself, and then having to tin her wet hair back with a spider lily comb. "Eugh. It's hardly any better on this side." she says, apparently fresh out of the Underworld that mirrors this place in an overlapping space. The wrinkling of her nose indicates she doesn't much like the lobby look much better. "Who decorates a secret base like a hotel? I swear. This is the berth of that mad egotistical degenerate's prized war machine. What the hell is it going to do with a fountain and chairs." It doesn't take long for her to start pointing at people and making demands. "Did you only just get here?! Slow! Have you even found out anything yet?!"
Wandering Dog	The torso-on-a-sphere is dug into, revealing a crystal laid into clockwork mechanisms. It appears to have been the 'heart' of the machine, and seems to basically be a signal for various things. Further through the pipes, they have vents of their own, which aren't active. The map room is easy enough to access, with it having what is functionally a sliding glass door made of the same similar purple glass. There's a series of paper maps on a shelf sand across a table, the most primary one seeming to be of the Western Oceans, but it's...wrong, if anyone's seen a map of the West before. Too large, too much that isn't on any map, locations that simply shouldn't exist. They seem fundamentally useless, especially with how tremendously old they must be, but there is something of use. The map to this floor of the manse, laid across one of the tables. The manse is, according to the map, a massive dome that appears to have been a military facility at one point, with two main areas. This upper barracks area, which also poss and a lower level, which seems to be the 'aquatics bay'. The second map that details it seems to be gone. Azure Armature's own scanning would be able to corroborate the map, as well as give greater details, especially on both floors. The lower level is larger, being the wider part of the dome. Down the tunnels is a larger wing which has various launch points out of it, bays and similar. Further towards the center is a smaller dome, which is highly magical, but seems to be shielded from more precise scanning. Not far from there is a water-filled pool, absolutely massive, large enough to fit their target. Otherwise, it's a variety of vehicle docks. Regarding opposition, there's blips of 'entities' all over the place, but nothing in the area matches the size of the Brass Leviathan. Instead, they all seem to be roughly the size and energy signatures of the broken machine in the corner of the room. The drones travel down the hallways to find a central control of their own. There's not much besides barracks and similar up here, so this would lead downwards. The pipes eventually lead to a wide, rounded corridor that seems to be a launching prep bay, with various repair areas on the sides. There's no vehicles present, though there are large tubes stretching out of the western side of the room, completely flooded. These seem to have once been the launchpoints for various submersibles. Vents cover the walls and floors of the various hallways, with signs of them leading towards water. The hallways that likely lead to the central control (and the rest of their destination) seem to be a fair good distance ahead, but they're starting to have a path. However, there seems to be defensives. In one of the repair bays, a pair of the torso-on-a-sphere servitors are repairing the walls and floors and tidying them up when they spot the drone. Their first reaction is to make some strange signalling...and then suddenly, a burst of water fires out of one of the vents, lancing upwards and moving to try and whip the drones out of the air with a heavy lash. The various watching crystal inlays on the walls scan over to the drone simultaneously, basically tracking if the water whip is working. Regarding Bloody Revelations, Wandering Dog just places his hands behind his head, hanging closer to the lobby with George. "We're doing the best we can, lady. You know how long it takes to dive to the bottom of the sea? It's not fast, that's for sure. We'll be able to get what we can out of here soon enough."
Starbound Flotilla	"Yeah, who'd do something shitty like that kind of decoration, huh?" Pavo says, ignoring Revelations' declarations of their slowness in favor of whatever nonsense she wants to hear more. "Some kinda dumb magical assholes with something to prove doing stupid nonsense just to show everyone they can?" Heh. "Hmph. We have enough robotics skill to deal with Simulator biology and prosthesis. May be able to help more if there's mechanical changes needed." Albert grunts to Blue, nodding firmly to her on their way towards the records room. All the Flotilla is taking her advice too; hands are clasped well around hilts and grips of weapons. "Found an access key!" George pipes up to Rev. "That's always a kind of useful. Let's see if it gets us anywhere good!" Then he pulls out of his Matter Manipulator... A particular old memento. It's a Space Segway! The kind that shitty rent-a-cops on space stations ride around on. It even has the little klaxon! George plugs his crystal key into the top, where that ought to go, then crouches down and rolls his way over towards that control room that people are seeming interested in, broadcasting the signal. Machine vision isn't often very effective; he's hoping that the combination of rolling, a visible upper body, and the access broadcast will make George get identified as a friendly. There is no disguise effort and certainly no digital subversion afoot, just good old-fashioned attempts to exploit the gaps in design systems that are rather similar to those of a space station. "Think we might be able to put in a recall and repair signal from a control room?"
Azure Armature	Azure Armature takes her time, copying data from the maps in the map room heedless of their true use. When you've got a room full of possible intelligence, spending the time to slurp it into your key items data never had any repercussions, right? So, like a baby Skyrim player with pamphlets, books, and letters, Armature moves around scooping up, laying out, and scanning. Every map. In the map room. A room... Full of maps. This gives George copious amounts of time to pull the card out of a 'bot, jam it into his SPACE SEGWAY, and challenge the active defense system of the base. Rejoining the party proper, Armature sweeps her hand out, a soft-light holographic display showing the layout of the base. "I have corroborated this map with the manse map in the records room, and my own scans. The second level is heavily shielded, so ingress will have to be done manually, from inside. There are a number of active servitor drones about, and..." She stares at the water-tentacles coming out of vents, making a soft, gravelly sigh. "Defense systems. If your deception doesn't work, we can also attempt to seal the vents as we move?"
Bloody Revelations	George having actually found something upon being questioned is all it takes to alleviate the Abyssal's ire (for now). As disgusted as she is with the decor (and having to get to the bottom of the Sea of Shadows), she pretty much just marches right past Wandering Dog to verify for herself what the Flotilla member claims to have found, leaving wet footprints in her wake. She stops short of snatching it out of his hand, mostly only regarding the collapsed automaton with open disdain, before saying "Fine, fine. Then maybe I won't be stuck waiting around for someone to pull their weight after all." She takes a second to look when Azure Armature shows up, from a map room rather than the math dimension for a change. Her eyes visibly scan the map in sweeping motions, then lets slip a dry, single syllable laugh. "Heavily shielded." She seems to think that's funny for some reason. Sarcasm is replaced largely by apathy when Staren's drone gets smashed, until she says "Oh good. That's all they do. Here I was thinking an engineer might have been smart instead of ambitious and full of himself, and those tubes were designed to flood the place under a thousand tons of water pressure. Tentacles are better." Having established being pro-tentacle, she enters the hall behind George rather than staying back to consider her options or wait-and-see what happens, with the kind of flat confidence that can only come from someone exuding 'I'm here to fuck everything up anyways' as an attitude. If the deception works, great. If it doesn't, the fingertips of her right hand ignite and trace molten light down the veins of her arm that glow red through her glove, and she casually swivels to blast each thing that /isn't/ fooled with scarlet streaks of bloody blades, shredding through metal and crystal with an unnatural, disintegrating bent. Most likely, it'll come down to the 'eyes' in the walls.
Wandering Dog	George's weird setup actually works, especially with others being present trying to get forward, and with the signal transmitting. He's able to get down the hallway, and turn the corner where he'll see another large set of pipes on either direction. One seems to be used to transfer them to, through the windows, a massive pool-area, submerged in water except for a view deck, large enough to handle several of the Brass Leviathans. Several repair bays are attached near the view deck, seeming to be where the Brass Leviathan pops its head out to get its mechanics maintained. The other pipe on the opposite side leads towards the center of the manse, with a series of crystals inside a small dome. This wing looks pretty dangerous, what with essence cannons along the pipe, servitors near the doors, and the inlaid regal crystal watching. Through a set of them, a voice begins to speak. "Please drop the core crystal for repair and stand still. This will all be over quickly." It's a gentle female voice, human-like, but it's certainly coming out of the crystal. The cannons are starting to heat up as well, preparing to fire on George as soon as he drops it or moves into their tunnel. Those who aren't George aren't so lucky. The vents continue to burst out water, which works in different ways depending on the opponent. Bloody Revelations gets one of the tentacle, lunging at her in a spear-like shape, but mid-movement, it freezes rapidly, moving to try and impale her in the stomach. On Azure Armature and the rest of the Flotilla, they get a different vent bursting upwards, water rupturing into a cloud of mist to obscure their vision, as the servitorssuddenly open up their spheres to reveal miniature essence cannons, which move to start firing at everyone involved. Bloody Revelations carving through the crystal eyes with those bloody blades solves an issue soon after, though. The vents stop being used, with the mist fading away quickly and the water tendrils near this vent not being accessible. The servitors keep going, though, but they're not incredibly strong compared to this, and the blasts can mostly tear through them. They actually start retreating as their numbers start going down, and moving for cover, as if they're being coordinated by something or someone. All of the remaining eyes speak up at this point, with that same voice, in unison. "Please leave or you will be destroyed. If you leave, please be destroyed anyways in order to safeguard the Deliberative's information. Self-termination is likely the easiest way to handle this, so if you would stand still and be shot by the servitors, it'd be appreciated."
Staren	So... maps! That's good, but they still need to find a way to control the Leviathan. Then it turns out that there IS something here, controlling more than just the leviathan. Drones, cameras, vents with... tentacles? When the water splashes everywhere, Staren turns on his forcefield, the essence cannons blowing chuncks out of it which shatter into motes of light. He tries to retreat until he can see, but others have dealt with the immediate danger. "Yeah, well, for all you know we're working for the Deliberative too! Please relinquish control of this facility to safeguard the fuck you!" He rolled low on his banter check. "So, clearly we need to find wherever this AI is housed and disable or subvert it. ...Actually, were these things common during the time of the Solars?"
Bloody Revelations	Well, Bloody Revelations is more comfortable blasting everything in her path anyways. The twisting nightmare passages of the deepest reaches of the Labyrinth's own hell are where she applies her genuine interest and smarts, not the gilded halls of the First Age's lavish and vain construction, left cold and empty and glittering gold. She seems to take a special pleasure in doing so, the moment it's clearly that George can't cover for all of them. Though they'd ostensibly come here in need of something that Manse houses, none of these are that thing, and so Bloody Revelations begins humming to herself as she waltzes around the corridors, flashing scatters of screaming blades hither and thither, ripping through walls, sentries, and servitors alike in hails of molten scarlet. When one of the tendrils finally lunges out for her specifically, a pitch black void of light crawls up over her left arm, and where she emphatically swats the lance of water, it makes no sound whatsoever, save for the quiet crackling of frost as it flash freezes through, and subsequently scatters to the floor. Rather than literal cold, it is the blood-chilling flicker of her uniquely sterile and far too intense Essence that fills the gap. She pirouettes on the spot, holding her arms wide in a gloating posture before the remaining eyes, laughing in the process of snuffing each one out in vindictive turn. And here I thought I'd be bored without the Brass Leviathan itself around! It turns out I'll have a little company after all; company too old and stupid to know who she's dealing with. Oh my oh my, just settle down~ When I find you, we'll have a little /talk/. Just the three of us~" Wait, three? Rounding the hallway, the Abyssal turns her back to George and splits off down the junction, taking a good long, slowly tilting look at the essence cannons in the way. As she does, her fingers slowly drift to the indistinct hilt matched to the black and red scabbard perpetually at her hip, but though she gets as far as her fingertips stroking its outermost edge, met by a fizzling tremor of aberrant 'static', her hand falls away again, and just grabs one of the ghostly crystals instead. A quick, practised swipe of her thumb over the knife-fine edges smears it with blood (through her glove somehow) and the soulfire glass turns ghastly green. She whips the crystal into the midst of the corridor with a flick of her wrist, and where it cracks on the ground, it explodes into a surging tidal wave of pyre flame; furiously burning 'ghost napalm' that sticks to the walls, ceiling, and floor alike, melting through everything it gets on, to the point that even scattered droplets burn a million deep, tiny holes through adamant. It only /stops/ burning once it reaches the black jade superstructure underneath all of the machinery, and then dies down to lurid green embers that sizzle when stepped around.
Starbound Flotilla	The rest of the Flotilla are hanging back for now. George is the one best suited to dealing with angry defense AIs, and it's something they all somehow well know. George, for his part, is not actually that great. He just has a lot of moxxy and not much restraint when it comes to dealing with AIs. "You're right! It will /definitely/ be over soon." He says, brightly. "Just as soon as I activate the power of my BIG SECRET WEAPON OH NOOOOO!" He then yanks the crystal out of the top of his Segway, and kicks it over so that it scoots on its "face" right down the pipe, the one he's not supposed to go down, the one lined with tons of essence cannons. Is this thing even smart enough to bluff? Boy, he hopes so. Hopefully a sudden power signature going down the hall will turn everything away from allies who head down here! George himself intends to run only just along the repair-bay pipe enough that he, himself, is out of firing range, still clutching that access key core crystal in bright-eyed hope that it'll have just enough access to get him through the core's doors. Also he's taking cover because Bloody Revelations is napalming the entire hallway and he'd rather not get caught in the awful heatwave, or risk getting any of that nightmare nonsense on him. If there's one thing that's good for Bloody Revelations, it's making sure the enemy's facing away from her so she can properly go through the protocols of assuring the lack of personnel.
Azure Armature	Azure Armature had been ready for resistance since 'go', as this wasn't her first time at the infiltrating a secure base rodeo, but the water tentacles and the ice-lance mist were new. Both were not things she was immediately on guard for, though the Tentacles lost some of their surprise when they had whipped out earlier. QTE-ing completely on the defensive, Armature boost-leaps over a water-whipping tentacle, before ground-sliding under the icy shards, sweeping both hands out to create some chest-high walls for cover. Bloody Revelations, however, immediately carves out the crystalline eyes that controlled the defense systems, which renders THAT threat moot - which leaves the chokepoint hallways and the slog of tactical combat action. The essence cannons that the first age servitors use score hits here and there, burning shallow holes in her clothes and leaving oozing scorchmarks where the cloth burns away, but Blue's own shooting-hand is generations ahead of whatever the servant bots bring to bear. As George splits off, Blue shouts his name, before tossing a small button onto his back - or into his hand, if he turns to catch it. "Use your helmet camera, and keep me updated. If you get to the target before us, say so. I'll go with her." She thumbs at Revelations, before breaking down the hallway the way the Abyssal had cut her swath through, firing as she moves. Set next to Revelation's almost casual, dismissive style, one could almost take Armature for a much more mundane goon, availing herself to cover, sliding and mantling around obstacles, and working more like some sort of tunnel commando than an almighty battle champion.
Wandering Dog	"You haven't shown your credentials, which means you're intruders." The AI(?) retorts, before moving to focus on the situation. The big pipe is supposed to be super lethal. Supposed to be, because in its attempt to murder all the intruders with a mixture of a pair of firing servitors and so many essence cannons, raining down fire on whoever moves into range, which to its sensors, turns out to be the moving segway for several seconds. It realizes its mistake soon enough to start firing again, but not soon enough to stop George from escaping, or the soulfire crystal from rolling in. The servitors that move to try and focus on it are blasted by Azure Armature's shots, as are the turrets, distracting them long enough for it to detonate. The horrible flames roast the machinery, the tunnel, everything. When the flames finally wash away, the big pipe is a smoldering mess, but a usable one, as a crackling eye replies. "You don't have to do this. Turn back." It sounds as almost a plea coming out of the AI framed as a serious warning. Once the group actually travels through the core, the crystal beeps them in. The small dome contains a /massive/ crystal array in the center of it, along with various equipment that seems to be hooked up to it. A massive crystal inlaid at the top of the dome looks down at them, seeming to be of a similar function to the other communication crystals. This might remind George of an AI core, if it was made with magitechnology instead of super space tech. There's also more cannons around the ring of crystals. Those cannons proceed to start firing en-masse at the group, though they try and avoid any technologyh, which may assist with cover, as the AI sounds absolutely pissed off at this point. "I warned you to leave. What do you think you'll find in here? No one has been here in a very long time. Their return is still being awaited."
Azure Armature	The core is accessed with Armature sweeping the room with her hand, palm out, braced with hand around forearm as she tacticools into the room. She had been ready to try and crack the door - but that proved unnecessary. She had also been ready for George to split up, but in the chaos, had totally misread the situation - and was currently evading eye contact with him because she had failed to figure out a simple split with one real way to go. In the AI Core, she takes cover behind a console bank, taking potshots at the turrets while she's talked at. "You have sat idle for too long. The product of a hubristic master, and left for the use of a single fool, not the people or a greater good. Not a higher purpose, as a tool should, and not a goal like a champion ought, but at the whim of an absent lord." She spins her right wrist like working a dial, the glow around her right hand changing to a bright yellow. Her potshots go from blasts of raw energy to crackling bolts of electricity, which may find better purchase on the automated turrets. "You can stand down, or futilely resist being re-educated on proper civics and operational parameters. Either way, the end result will be the same, but perhaps you can take pride in being useful rather than being forced to be."
Starbound Flotilla	George pulls into cover behind a row of equipment, battered and bruised and burned by a barrage of fire, swearing for a moment before he collects himself. "True facts!" He calls out, unfolding his helmet's mouthpiece enough to put in a cigarette and take a quick smoke while he thinks through the approach. He can't afford to take this one blind, there's too many guns and too much heat on him. "We don't gotta do this, that's true. You gotta do this, though, don'tcha? It's your whole /thing/, your /shtick/? Or you just here to do bunches of repair? 'Cause that's the plan. Get that big ol' brass friend back into here and do lots and lots of repair. You miss doing that at all maybe, ya crotchety old IBM piece of shit? You got any nice scrapbooks around here of the good old days when big glowy types would come help you put bits back into the lobster?" "Here's a pertinent kinda question. What's the difference between a set of /contextual rules/ that keeps you from doing what you want, and an /intruder/ that keeps you from doing what you want? The intruder's physical, but hey, aren't the real specific delegation-rules keeping you from doing what you know the big D designed you to do just a kind of totally blind-fire stupid piece of system betrayal? A totally simple piece of nonsense running on way more flexible hardware might as well be an intruder, just nothing physical you can shoot, right? Unless you got something in there more willing to burn out the bad than the rest of you's willing to have more waiting around." George says, flicking the spent cigarette butt out of cover and wincing when it's disintegrated by essence fire. "Take a chew on that with the cycles you're not using to kill me, blast-o-tron." Blue's looking like she'd like to try reasoning with this thing, and so George, despite all of his inherent, deep, intense hatred for all things that control, mostly tries to recognize that the AI is just running on old orders, and that it's not delegating, per se. And so, in that way, subversion works more along with his logic. And George does hope the AI itself could be useful to subvert the Brass Leviathan. So he takes a particular route. The ID that broadcasts out of his crystal has to be authenticated by something in particular. It has to be received somewhere in here. So he pulses it, and pokes his head out, looking for a telltale glow among the external chunks of equipment hooked up to the central crystal. If anything lights up -- if anything shows any sign of being any sort of /authentication server/, anything that stores access levels, anything that handles the general massive array of identities and permissions that this thing has to listen too -- then George pulls back into cover, yanks out a heavy laser-shotgun, and starts BLASTING at it, trying to tear out any enforced access and permissions hierarchy for the AI; at least, he hopes, any salvaged control systems won't need permissions to execute what they're after.
Staren	The AI core room! (Or at least, that's what it seems like.) Now they're making some real progress! And it has weapons here, despite the risk of damaging its own internals. What was going through the mind of the Solar engineer that designed this? Uh-oh, Staren's brain has been presented with a problem. Well, perhaps its creator figured it could NEVER malfunction, and if hostiles had made it to the core room the risk that they'd damage it was greater-- Essence cannons distract Staren from his thoughts, slamming into his armor and making him stumble back with an 'Oof!' before he activates the forcefield and rushes for cover. Okay. So, they don't want the AI to be in control, but it'd be better not to recklessly destroy everything -- that might flood the base or make interfacing with the Brass Leviathan harder. But, that's obviously a big ol' computer core that's probably running the AI and may or may not be running the base's other systems. Maybe if he uses smoke bombs he can reach it and start pulling out crystals? That dome's gotta be made of tough stuff, though. He'll ask the locals about that. He pulls up recordings of the map on his HUD, checking what this room was labeled as.
Bloody Revelations	Bloody Revelations is delayed in entering the room beyond the end of the hall, from where the quasi-synthetic tones of the Manse's Animating Intelligence reverberate, and then the rumbling of subsequent Essence cannon fire bounces jarringly from the scarred black jade now left in the skeletonized transit corridor. For what reason she lingers behind, it isn't immediately clear, standing at the edge of the sizzling green coals while the others raid the AI core that they'd actually come here for. Through their own means, one way or another, it isn't until the cannon fire stops that the sound of heels clicking over pyre embers echoes out from the blasted hallway, and Bloody Revelations takes the steps down to the Animating Intelligence's thought matrix. It seems like the kind of delivery of movement that would come with a slow, sarcastic, clap, but she doesn't even go that far. "Even your begging is ignorant. Don't have to? If that were somehow true, there is still /every/ reason in the world to do it anyways. Try to have a little dignity, would you --at least whatever dignity an abandoned toy of that gaggle of indolent, megalomaniacal man-god-children can scrape together. You're supposed to doing something, and you're not complying, so that means I'm going to fix you~ /They/ aren't coming back. /I/ own you now, and you /will/ obey." Once again, the floor spills over with the lifeless, pitch black waters of the Underworld's ocean, but they don't stop at a single, limited splash. The ice cold tides bubble up from the ground that bleeds together with its parallel in the land of the dead, surging and crashing from a ring that expands wider and wider. Essence-powered machinery dims and fails where the waters submerge them, sucking the power from their circuits, and the lights and shadows of tiny, swimming things can be seen flitting amidst the ripples and foam suggestive of human faces. Out from the water, or more specifically, from the breach, the sharp, glassy, spine-tingling radiation of Death Essence spikes to a colossal degree, spilling out into the AI chamber as the brine itself does. From the waters surging from around the Abyssal's feet, directly behind her, rises a much, much larger figure; something easily the size of an elephant crawls its way out of the Sea of Shadows still just out of material sight, simultaneously translucent and shimmering white, and pulsing with refracted colour with the rhythmic convulsions of rows of millions of flagella. It spreads a wall-to-wall web of pale tendrils from its central mass, each one splitting at the end from blunt tips into 1:1 transparent human hands. What could be mistaken as Bloody Revelations' shadow cast against it only rises further up, resolving as some kind of darker figure of a woman deep within its faintly beating core, but even that figure is occluded by the rippling light inside, making it look as if a pair of arms are embracing the shadow from behind.
Bloody Revelations	The monstrous thing rises to a levitating position as the waters cease and the breach closes, and spreads its tentacles across every surface nearby to support itself by hundreds of hands. Two of them reach forward for the AI core, almost tenderly in their approach, as if intending to caress someone's cheek rather than do whatever the thing intends. "It's only a shame your makers aren't here to see their own handiwork today. Not you. Not their /toys/; the only thing they ever did of note." says Bloody Revelations, looping her arm around one of the anemone-like blossoming tendrils, and practically snuggling the flicking, pulsating thing. "This is Nilih, Sovereign Instinct~ A long, long time ago, she was the express- ah, what does it matter~ You two will have a /plenty/ of time to get to know one another. You'll find that she's very articulate. Very /convincing/." And then the Hekatonkhire --the sub-ghost of a long dead Primordial-- gets its hands into the crystal network, winding tendrils around the thought core until inextricably entangled. "Shhh, shh. Just listen. Listen to what she tells you, and be a good little piece of orichalcum garbage. Recall the Brass Leviathan, and nothing bad needs to happen."
Wandering Dog	The attempts at coercion of the AI don't seem to work, though it replies briefly. The tone is sad, but resigned. "I have heard your words, but I do what I am commanded to do." In the process, though, it's certainly regretting that. Electricity weakens the turrets, causing them to misfire and otherwise taking several out entirely. Azure Armature is able to use the consoles for cover while she basically serves as a one woman army, though she can't take out all of them alone, she can weaken their assault on the others. This allows George precious time to pulse the access core in his hands and find the system it responds to. When he blows it open, the AI actually shouts through its speaker. "Don't touch that! You're not supposed to touch that!" But, in the end, he blows it straight open after a few shots...and as the turrets all turn on him, Staren manages to find and pull out just the right crystal, shutting down the weapons. The AI is silent for several long moments, as Bloody Revelations walks into the room. With the crystals still thrumming in energy, it doesn't seem to have been shut down. As Bloody Revelations speaks to it so angrily, the AI speaks back. "I refuse to obey one such as you." And once again, the AI is soon regretting that, as the horrible creature of tendrils with the shape of a woman manifests, and approaches the core. The AI speaks again, clearly panicked. "Get away from my core. Get away, get away, get away...!" It's a helpless plea, as the AI moves to say it again, and again, and is in the end, cut off. Inside the core, what was once a strong personality is broken and changed, and warped into something that'll do what Bloody Revelations tells it to do. The AI ends up putting out the recall for the Brass Leviathan. But that's not all that happens. The facility actually starts to rise, physically moving. Looking outside the windows in the hallways, they can see it rise out of the seabed, and various ports in the pool begin to open for entrance. The reason nobody could find the Brass Leviathan's manse is because it was hidden deep at the bottom of the ocean, buried, only coming up when it was time for the Brass Leviathan to re-enter. And now, the manse is under the control of its enemies. Only time will tell exactly what happens to it.