Scene #6302: Once More Unto the Wound

Owner	Pose
Priscilla	Entering the ruins of Njorun Station, ironically owing to its size, is less an venture into a megadungeon of unprecedented size, but a task and picking and choosing which of the literal billions of normal sized dungeons to start from. Even from as high as one can get in the air before they can no longer see the ground, the wreckage stretches from horizon to horizon, barely recognizable as a crater for how wide and deep the destruction goes, almost as if this forest of perpetually rotting wood, of glittering yet decaying wreckage, of still-burning fires and gushing vapours, had all grown like fungus from the massive gap in the mantle of the earth from which floes of fresh lava wind through it like glowing veins. Something of that size not only snaps when it hits the ground, but shatters into uncountable tiny pieces. When dealing with the indescribably overwrought central base of the former Union, designed for no other reason than the image of paranoid unassailability by the equally bloated Confederacy, trillions of miles of connecting passages are useless rubble, leaving mostly the larger and more fortified (or lucky) sections scattered over a continent's worth of space like marbles. Mapping it all out completely will take a lifetime even for the largest of initiatives, and the Concord's presence here is, while expert and methodical, a constant presence of relatively small scale, constantly rotating out staff and equipment in the way one rotates out emergency workers from heading into a nuclear plant to mitigate a meltdown in progress. A lot of what goes where can at least be plotted out from the well-known maps of former Njorun and scatter calculation, at least. Especially easing the scale of the undertaking is the fact that the insertion isn't looking for anything very specific; merely any terminals still connected to a functioning data core, to withdraw old records and operation reports. It's only a matter of asking ahead for the most intact chunk of architecture currently known, in the way that asteroids are currently known', that is confirmed to contain an Elite terminal. After that, the real irony is that many members of the Concord, most notably its commanding figure, still have Union access and credentials, so sudden was the superfaction's detonation under its own weight. Aerial insertion is the obvious choice. Teleportation tends to be somewhat unreliable around here (albeit nowhere near as bad as Njorun's sister disaster zone) and 'somewhat unreliable' can easily mean 'dropping into a pool of bubbling lava or a forest of ultrahard metamaterial wreckage broken all sharplike'. It's also easier to locate the exact city block-sized fragment (fairly small, comparatively) and descend to it, rather than the days it would take to navigate to on foot, even for the most avid speedster. In this case, it's even the right way up this time; everything tilts right only by a few degrees, so no wall walking or 45 degree ceiling climbing is necessary.
Priscilla	The chunk is a length of one of Njorun's smaller branches, that is to say about two aircraft carriers stacked upon one another in the guise of a tree branch, shorn straight down the side to show all of its interior layers like a cross section of a beehive. The middle ones are largely widened core transport lines, some being pedestrian boulevards full of unmanned kiosks, now-worthless maps, dead greenery, flickering holo-signage, and shops largely not worth looting, while others are high speed bullet train lines, or obvious conduits for teleportation nodes that exist neither here nor there. The chambers surrounding it are mostly lounges, meeting rooms, small indoor parks, storage, and then handfuls of rec businesses that can cater to Elites obviously not on standby so far into the tree tips; timewasters like arcades and semi-timewasters like gyms. In the lower portion, below central transport, there is a secondary vein of engineering sections, filled with inconsistently glowing power storage, mechanisms for the causeways above, more industrial inventory, and optical fibre cables (which, knowing the Union, are actually made of eighteen kinds of unicorn hair and nanomachines). On the upwardmost exposed surface, there's a narrow runway that cuts into the bark of the tree which leads to an elevator down to an exclusive, larger railway, likely for landing personal craft and then carrying them away to a proper hangar. It'd all be very straightforward were it not for the ambient nature of the place. Post-disaster wreckage is one thing; clambering through pitch black corridors, stepping on rusting tiles in echoing hallways, walking past dust-choked interiors viewed through fogged glass and listening to broken loops of sputtering intercom guidance has its own kind of unsafe atmosphere. Doing so while surrounded on all sides by walls of half-living tree flesh mottled together out of a million different species, regeneration itself, consuming itself, and sloughing off in rotten ooze that regenerates again over what it pours onto, like an infection of noxious sap and petrified wood, is quite another. A particularly virulent infestation of some kind of arboreal parasite appears to have taken over, stretching long, fleshy webs of some kind of fungal matter from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, like brushing through massive spiderwebs of dark and rubber sinew, starting in one room and ending up in the other. Nodes of luminescent spores and tumours grow at each end, sparking occasionally with multi-coloured electricity, giving the entire place an echoing, ominous hum, and providing at least some markers of progress when exploring the aftermath, reeking of death from every pore despite the complete lack of bodies in this ghost town.
Stella	Having no doubt arrived with someone else who actually knew where they were going and how to get there, Stella looked upon the seemingly infinite wreckage, having it impressed upon her what a vast world the Multiverse was, finally, a matter so easily observable when one can glance upon endless ruins and be told "that's not even a small fraction of the world, it's a footnote". Some things you can be told, and believe, but not understand until you see them yourself. Marching through the broken and rotting wood, illuminated by those weird tumors, Stella seems to be keeping her eyes closed, yet, she navigates through debris and obstacles without concern, walking with perfect knowledge of what's under her feet. That's because she's not looking with her eyes right now - she's looking with her being, communicating with the broken earth underfoot, taking in the entire area and trying not to be overwhelmed at the sheer quantity of information. "What are we searching for? I can attempt to locate it, if you can describe it, but it will work best if it is something metallic."
Katt	Katt has never been to Njorun in her life. Her world simply didn't show up until after it had already fell, and while she'd been told it was 'big', she was not prepared for the sheer scale of the big. In her defense, it's pretty hard to get across if you've never encountered anything even sort of approaching that size. "Who even NEEDS all this space?" Pause. "Or needed, I guess. Nobody's using it anymore. And phew, does it stink!" Katt is balancing carefully on clear spaces, as much as possible, to avoid stepping in the ooze and slime and general muck of rotting and regenerating plant matter. She hops easily from one to another; the problem is that sometimes there just simply isn't any kind of place for her to balance no matter how good her balance actually is. "I've never actually been to a place like this," Katt admits to Stella. "And I volunteered because of that, and because you might need security. So, uh, maybe someone else should tell you about that? I don't know about the grails and coins and things very much." She shifts her staff to one hand as she makes another hop, scrambling along the edge of the wall for about three steps before making another bit of clear ground.
Septette Arcubielle	Miles above the target zone, Septette materializes and plummets headfirst towards the colossal branch. Those with particularly keen eyesight and a clear view of the sky might spot a tiny speck falling like a badminton birdie, the wildly-fluttering purple shawl around her shoulders serving as a plastic skirt. The mesospheric insertion is good for more than minimizing teleportation distortions: it gives her a rare moment or two to relax physically as well as mentally. Septette flexes her limbs, testing the motor response and sensory feedback as she subtly tweaks her trajectory on approach. "Clear below, eastern third of upper runway," she intones clearly over radio a dozen seconds before impact. She's got no idea if the rotted supermaterials of Njorun can bear her impact, and has little inclination to find out- rather than a hard landing, she 'skates' down the side of a vertical surface in a spray of sparks, leaps off it straight into the cargo-elevator shaft, and slides down that in similar fashion before finally landing at the bottom with a heavy crunch and slight flex of her knees. Mussed hair is preened back into place with a white-gloved hand; the much-abused shawl is primly straightened and de-wrinkled. Only then- talons still sizzling where they make contact with organic surfaces- does she make her way inside with the rest of the party.
Raziel	The group, pushing through the ruins of the old Union facility, Raziel was not here for the events that had transpired. Aware of them, but not here for them. Destabilization happened in the wake of the fall of the super factions, it gave rise to smaller, but arguably a more better life for the multiverse as a whole, but the mystery behind it all was still nothing he was in the know of, and honestly probably not concerned with. His allies asked for aid, and right now honor, and his own desires called him into action. 'The place was as shattered, but nowhere near as anchient as many of the places on Nozgoth, however what they lacked in age, they had in monolithic size. The place seemed to strech on forever underground. I had could barely understand the amount of resources needed to create such a vast structure...nor did I really care to. All in all, it seemed more of a waste, especially seeing the broken corpse of it now.' The eyes of the Wraith look over the room, noticing the strange spider webs and other strange flora. However, he focuses into the other realm, looking to see what spectres may yet haunt this large building, the death he could smell, but was it from decay, or from the fact that there were once living people, now dead, living here? "What is the goal here? I came here because duty demanded, but I am not well versed in the details of the actual goal."
Captain Flint	EARLIER Off the Coast of New Providence Island "I'm sorry--" John Silver incredulously begins. "Do you not remember what happened the /last/ time we were there?" Waves gently slap against the Walrus' hull, the ship creaking as it slowly bobs in the sea off the coast of New Providence Island. Across from the ship's quartermaster, seated at his writing desk within the captain's cabin, is Captain Flint. Flint's seafoam eyes slowly look up from the map he studies. A map of Njorun, put together from his memory of their last visit. "We'll be careful," Flint says. Silver knows this tone well enough to know that the captain won't be challenged. It might sound casual--but underneath that facade is an undercurrent which threatens to pull astray and drown any who don't swim with it. Silver scoffs, leaning upon his crutch, briefly looking away. He affixes Flint with another scrutinizing, incredulous glance. "Even if I thought this was a good idea, how in the fuck am I supposed to sell it to the men?" Flint's brow furrows. A subtle sign, but one which means he's beginning to lose his patience. His gaze returns to the map, in an effort to focus on planning. "Most of the ones who went with us that day are dead. Which means you'll only have to 'sell' it to a few. If they won't see reason, bring them to me." Flint takes a breath, then looks up at his quartermaster once more. "Were there any further concerns, or shall I do the rest of your job for you, as well?" NOW Njorun Ruins Flint's map is woefully inadequate, having accounted only for that miniscule section which he and his men had previously explored. This is apparent to him immediately upon arriving, as is the sheer impossibility of ever mapping the place in any meaningful way. He, Silver, and a small vanguard of ten hardened Walrus pirates elect for aerial insertion. With the Walrus being purely a seafaring vessel and the crew without any means of teleportation, they're relying upon Concord resources to see them to their destination. The transport drops them off within a few dozen feet--they end up rappelling the rest of the way down. One of the pirates has to hold Silver's crutch on the way down, swinging into one of those cut-up cross-sections and landing upon the rusted floor in near total darkness. Unlike Stella, Flint and his men don't have the luxury of seeing without their eyes. Joji, a stern, taciturn pirate with long black hair, holds a torch which lights the way for the others. "A terminal," replies Silver to Stella, Katt, and Raziel as he takes point with Flint. She'll likely be able to feel his crutch and the 18th century prosthetic leg of his, poking and scraping at the floor, respectively. "One an 'Elite' might've used."
Staren	Njorun. Staren hasn't seen it since that day. It all comes flooding back-- --It's still on fire? Huh. Only when he's up close, inside, does he see any signs of the curious effect he's mos interested in studying -- the tree is merging with everything. Fascinating! As they're cutting through some fungus, Staren wonders, "Wait, what kind of fungus IS this?" He warily cuts some to put in a sample container. After a second thought, he sets some nanomachines to constantly report on the container's condition in case it starts... turning into fungus or something. He picks his way through the wreckage -- suited up as always, he's protected from biohazards as can be -- although he's concerned it might start merging with his armor, around here. "You know, I don't think I've ever been here. I don't think most of us really got how BIG Njorun was... I mean, we saw it all the time, but we didn't see ALL of it... I never thought about, gosh, did people live their whole lives down here? We Elites would never know..." In response to the question about what they're looking for, he explains: "We think there might be an intact computer node here. We're after records -- my personal archive is pitifully small and incomplete, so I don't have the files we're looking for. Although, I, personally, am also interested in studying the phenomenon by which differing substances and objects merge in these ruins; I think it might tell us about the underlying physics of the Multiverse."
Priscilla	As indicated before, the First of the Concord is actually here. She had been for the previous dives in as well. Partly, it's just because these places are so critically important, and knowledge their contents are heavily locked down to the Concord. Partly, though she won't say so, it's because someone with Union authentification needs to be around in case the few others in the group are KIA. "In terms of who wouldst 'need' all of this; no one. Rampant ambition without purpose, paranoia without cause, and ego without justification, didst lead to this. The urge to be largely, mightier, superior, to an enemy which is only a threat due to thine size, and wishes the same for thee; a war of infinite, pointless escalation." she answers Katt at unusual length. "We requireth records. Specifically, of the vexingly common occurence of Grail Wars, throughout the former Union's latter history. Be grateful that such is hardly highly secretive information; Elites wouldst post after action reports of clashes relating to such all the time, or just as often, the circumstances which contrived to burden them with a Servant despite no desire to participate. Thou need find record-keeping devices that art both intact, and which art still powered by a source of energy still intact. Re-powering them shalt likely be of no use; I expecteth that once one hath failed here, it wouldst be subsumed in short order." It's easier said than done though. A great bulk of Njorun is made of plant matter instead of anything formed in the earth, placing limits on a sense for metals and minerals. There's plenty of those anyways, especially in the Union's infinite desire for even irrelevant lounges to be 'Confederacy-proof', but it does include stretches of organic matter that completely break the continuation of earth derivative materials, forcing a thorough search of each section. Even falling to pieces, it's tough stuff too. Septette crashes up to her shins in the sucking guts of the tree, and still doesn't come close to falling through it on impact. Taking the broken lift, smashing the panoramic glass in the lift pod itself and cutting through the doors, is genuinely easier, being a fancy-looking civilian transport gadget, rather than something simultaneously alive yet supposedly immune to arbitrarily contrived Multiversal giganukes.
Priscilla	Regardless, Stella's poking around quickly turns up that all of the really intact machinery is in the lowest quadrant of the branch. Despite hitting the ground first, the engineering sections for critical transport routes are the most robust. The central rail lines have their own workstations and corridor studs too, where someone can stand safely out of the way of transports (albeit just barely) and operate them manually. There's still power here and there too, which makes it odd that the lights aren't even turned on. The Walrus' crew's torches are the best source of it around, as the flickering signage is all magical or holographic in nature, casting no real colour. She and those men find several terminals in short order by searching, but they're of no use. One is split right in half, the other has lost power and started to melt and merge into the tree, its metal rotting, oozing sap, and sprouting gunmetal branch stubs. Yet another is spouting the jingle for the store closest to it rather than containing any information, and one more suddenly begins blasting a sea shanty at full volume with tinny, staticky quality the minute Silver walks within 30 feet of it. When Staren cuts at the fungal webs, it feels like sawing into rubber, and when he gets down to the core, he finds a honeycomb like bone marrow, which oozes something which smells unfortunately like blood due to the stench of copper and iron, and which sparks with bolts of electricity in all colours, no doubt something that would have electrocuted him without his sealed suit. Dropping the trimming into a hermetically sealed container, he can see it starting to regrow. The nanomachines tell him right away (or rather, tell him by their absence) that they lose the tiny amount of power contained within each one over time. Septette running into the same ones gathers much the same, save that to her, the sparks and thrumming power register as magic waveforms, or 'close enough' to ping. To top it off for weird sensory phenomena, Raziel can't sense a single dead thing in this whole disaster area, until navigating over a thickly reinforced plaza floor, surrounded on all sides by lifts that mysteriously don't go any lower. "Indeed, more than a world's worth of inhabitants were here at a permanent basis. Even they wouldst never see it all in their lifetimes." Priscilla replies to Staren, absently poking at a terminal that flashes several times before crumbling into dust. "Thou shouldst knoweth well why we seek these files in particular. Study as thou wilst, if thou thinketh it worthwhile."
Stella	"Machinery." Stella attempts to feel it out. She looks at Priscilla, as if she had failed. "There is too much for me to accurately pinpoint the specific machine you are looking for. However, I can direct us to the largest pocket of mangled metal I can sense, which I believe is one or more computers. The feeling is not dissimilar to the components that make up Staren's ship, if that is a correct frame of reference." Well, she's still not totally sure what 'a computer' is. She knows Staren's ship is made of them, because he told her so, and has been around just enough modernity to get a feel for 'complex things made of metal'. Actually, come to think of it... "It is not dissimilar to her, either." Stella indicates Septette. "However, I must warn that I cannot sense the whole way. There is too much plantmatter. I apologize." Stella does, to the best of her ability, try to indicate roughly where she can feel that pocket of machinery. It's something to go off of, but it won't light the way beyond that. How unfortunate that it seems to line up with Raziel's senses.
Raziel	"Below us..." he says, motioning towards the non working lifts, "I can not tell how many, but I can only assume alot of spirits there," Raziel says to the group, while falling into his own inner reflection. Others know where abouts they are to go, he is just willing to aid help along the way, and whatever his talents can offer in the means of assistance through the talking of ghosts which most others can not see. Of course, when things line up with Stella's senses, his eyes narrow just a bit. "Well, it seems you may have need of my special talents after all. I dare say I would prefer these people be reasonable, but something tells me this may not be as easily earned as one might hope." He comments. "An entire world, you say?"
Katt	Katt understands perhaps half of what Priscilla tells her, but she nods along with it like it totally makes sense to her. "Well, they certainly managed the 'bigger' part," she says, though from her tone it's hard to tell whether she's impressed or not by the scale. "All right, so we look for a terminal thing and use it. I know what those look like. I mean, I know what those look like when they're not in trees." Katt uses the butt end of her staff to prod at something that used to be a door, only shifting some of the plant matter slightly before she withdraws it. Gross, she thinks again, with a wrinkled nose. "Nothing to it but to get looking!" Katt picks her way forward again, advancing past Flint to the front of the party and scooting forward. She has no particular supernatural senses, but she has sharp eyes (and good ears, though she doesn't expect to hear a terminal). Her ears twitch anyway, though, as she stares into the darkness, bounding forward and then waiting for other people to catch up. She's also keeping an eye out for threats - honestly, she's doing that even more than looking for terminals, which she assumes other people know more about and can probably spot faster than she can. But monsters, or traps, or treacherous terrain - those she can locate.
Staren	A fungus with blood and bone? "Fascinating. ...hmm. They absorb power from anything they touch. I wonder just how strong this effect is? And how do they store the power?" "We're already learning. Is it only the tree that's merging, or are other things independantly merging too?" Staren stops to try and cut parts out of one of the terminals Stella finds -- the one that's started growing its own little branches! -- into another container. He sprays the outside of the containers with nanites too, in case one starts to get eaten through in his bag. Re: big bases for big base's sake. "The war was pointless. At least towards the end, we began to work together towards other goals." Re: The files, "I'm gonna grab as much as I can. I brought a bunch of empty hard drives in my bag." He comments, as he takes a picture of the dust and puts that in a container too.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette makes a handful of half-spirited attempts at summoning her drones- the translucent outlines of softball-sized hovering constructs appear near her outstretched hand, then fizzle away to nothing. Finally, she starts rummaging in her satchel for parts to assemble them from... only to be fortuitously distracted by Stella. "No proper computers in me unless I forgot to floss," she replies offhandedly, "but I get what you mean. Electronics; complex machinery." Her gaze lingers meaningfully on the peculiar young woman for a moment or two before she turns and walks to the center of the plaza, shaking one gloved hand out of her shawl and flexing her fingers. "If you and glowy-eyes over there-" Raziel, presumably- "are right, there's a simple way to get to where we need to be." Septette raises her arm above her head, and a terrible curved blade longer than her forearm itself somehow unfolds from the interstices of the limb. "Everybody hold onto something," she instructs as the tan ceramic blade begins to glow an incandescent reddish-white and her talons dig into the deck for purchase. Simultaneously, the ground around her glows a soft blue and frosts over: thermal shock can add a punch to ordinary concussion against rigid materials. Reinforced though it may be, surely the floor is less resilient than the goopy plantflesh around them. One moment the glowing blade's above her head, and the next instant it crashes down, slamming into the floor on its blunt convex edge with meteoric force seemingly without having crossed the intervening space!
Captain Flint	The atmosphere is tense here, as Joji, at least, was among the original vanguard who came here with Flint and Silver. Thanks to certain dissenting elements within the crew, every member of those present has been informed, in detail, of the horrors which lurk in the darkness of fallen Njorun. Silver himself lost a leg to this place, and is the most unhappy about being here by far. With all that tension in the air, the sudden blaring of a sea shanty at full volume is not received well by the crew. Silver stumbles backwards, hitting the ground as his crutch clatters to the side. His flintlock, as well as Flint's pistol, and an array of anachronistic, stolen weapons, are leveled in the direction of the musical terminal with agitated readiness. A moment passes as the tune continues, its significance lost on every Walrus man present. Flint is the first to calm down, stowing his pistol and helping Silver up. With his crutch back in hand, the quartermaster approaches the blaring terminal. He isn't the least bit computer literate and has no idea what he's doing. As he blindly clicks on things and presses buttons, he hopes he can find some way to either shut the music down or get something useful out of it. "What are you doing?" asks Flint suspiciously. "I have no fucking idea," Silver responds honestly. That earns him a flat look from Flint--but the captain at least seems to believe him. "Joji," calls the captain. The long-haired pirate glances over. "Take four men, cover Mr. Silver. The rest of you, take a hatchet and come with me." He drops a dirty canvas bag upon the ground with a clank. Five Walrus men approach it, each one taking a heavy hatchet from within. While Silver blindly fumbles around on the terminal, Flint and the remaining five pirates approach Stella. "Lead the way to the rest of the machines," he asks of her. "My men and I will clear the tree, where needed." He, and the pirates with him, hold heavy hatchets intended for clearing thick foliage--each one looks like it'd need two hands to use.
Priscilla	Taking cuttings off a computer terminal, (how often does one get to say that?) Staren finds that they're less overtly problematic than the moderately disgusting fleshy web-matter everywhere. Despite its ostensible shape of something formed by tree decay, it's still hard metal and crystal, and takes some work to carve off. The circuits seem to be in one piece, but patterned like leaf veins instead of arranged in regular rows and angles. Most of the transistors are still charged, and also contain glucose(?). Silver poking and pushing at the terminal mostly just gets a deafening, shitty gift shop rendition of Drunken Whaler, overdone and cliche as it is. After smashing enough random buttons, the terminal abruptly shuts off, and from its card reading shot, discharges a splattered cough of what look like gold dubloons of all things, dropping a fistful of thick coins on the floor like a burst blister. The fact that it's one of the more comical reactions so far doesn't quite seem to make it less upsetting. Raziel's insistence on directly downwards does intersect the engineering spine Stella can follow with her metal senses down the center of the length of branch. Going at it already, it turns out to be a pretty involved process even for Septette. Stressing the laminate and metal with extreme cold and then slamming into it with white hot blades has the desire effect of splitting nasty cracks into it, but it still takes considerable hacking and sawing to get down to the bottom of them and slowly create an opening, having to refresh the cold several times to work the blade through line a can opener, removing a deep chunk of floor like a quarry boulder. There's still some left, given how thick it is, but stomping on it up and down is enough to cause it to cave in and fall through a space behind the deadstop of the rail track --barely wider than a crawlspace for getting from one side of the track to the other without crossing-- and straight into the lowest deck. It especially drops them into a section where the power still works, for a given definition. There is light, but largely only from the myriad glows of generators, fuel stacks, and power banks all stuffed into the reinforced gallery, independent and redundant like pretty much every section of Njorun is. Of course nothing so mundane as batteries was enough for the union; the blue pulse of knockoff Arc Reactors and Energon radiates from metal cases in the walls, yellow shines from Star Bits and Element 99, and the green of one of god knows how many spare Chaos Emeralds sits in a particular glass canister.
Priscilla	At least, they probably used to be those things. What's largely visible is colour-coded imitations either encased in, or composed of, some kind of gel splattered inside like melted wax, strings of warped fuel-stuff stuck to every corner of each container, suspending the main bulk in the middle of a nexus of fluid cables, like a cocoon, or perhaps some microscope close up of a viral organism. It's all wired together to lead into a room at the end of the gallery, massive pipes and centralized cables branching into the tree behind the metallic walls like they'd grown capillaries to feed into the wood. Defunct wires, fungal cords almost indistinguishable from them, and fine meshes of interwoven twigs, are easy enough for the crew to hack through, albeit it's a good idea to test which ones are still live before cutting into them with a metal hatchet head. Theoretically there's nothing stopping them from just walking to the end, except the steadily mounting feeling of exhaustion getting through. At first it's easy to dismiss as just the work of getting here, but it very, very quickly becomes obvious that it isn't normal. The further one goes along the passage, the more it seems to drain their energy too, siphoning from power suit capacitors, ghostly corpus, or even just their metabolism, making them part of the battery bank too. 'Not taking this route' isn't much of an option. Without all the planet matter in the way, Stella can easily tell that the big closed bulkhead at the end leads directly to a cluster of computer stuff big enough that it's probably the data core all the busted terminals actually connect to, and Raziel knows it's where someone has died, despite the claims that Njorun had teleported everyone out at the time of the fall; no doubt someone(s) who came before them with similar ideas. Katt doesn't hear much outside of the thrum and pulse and crackle of incompatible power supplies . . . yet instinctively, in the primal danger sense part of her brain, she knows there's something bad in there. It's the smell of an enemy.
Septette Arcubielle	After considerable carving and finagling, Septette finally breaks through the plaza floor and rides a loose piece to the level below. The oversized crescent blade improbably compacts back into her arm as soon as the task is done, and the limb is swiftly concealed under her shawl once again. The spatial efficiency is vaguely reminiscent of a humanoid swiss army knife. Her clawed right hand carves through the thick "undergrowth" as proficiently as any explorer's machete, sparing the pristine white glove on her left. The live wires don't particularly seem to bother her, but the energy-draining effect does catch her notice rather quickly: depletion of any kind is distinctly outside her normal experience. Septette pulls her shawl open to peer into her own skeletal ribcage and the red spherical 'heart' inside, laying her fingers upon it to feel its luminous pulse- quickened somewhat, to keep up with the added expenditure. "Pull out if you feel excessively faded," she says to no-one in particular while rummaging through her satchel once again. A few metal and ceramic parts swiftly fit together into a small hovering drone which lifts out of her hands, hovering up to the waxy amalgamated cocoon and shining a flickering purple light upon it. Are there any esoteric means to interact with the organic assemblage to produce a meaningful effect? It's a long shot, but it isn't as though she has much else to do save trudge towards the bulkhead with the rest of the group.
Stella	Being drained of energy is a... weird feeling. Exhaustion, in general, is. It's not alien to Stella exactly, but having it forced outside combat like this is unusual, and not something she'd dealt with before. At least they know their destination is relatively ahead. For what little it helps. A crystal blade forming in one of her hands is enough to help cut through as needed - and hopefully with proper guidance she doesn't end up shocking herself on a live 'wire'. None of the glowing power sources have meaning for her - she can't even really notice how special they are, except perhaps through her senses, picking up the distinct feel of gemstones of power or liquid metals unlike any she has seen before. It's too bad they don't have time to stop. Especially not in this hallway, which seems to be affecting them, somehow. "We must open that door," she finally says, directing eyes towards the closed bulkhead ahead. Likely entirely too thick to slash through, and she lacks heavy firepower. "I do not believe I can damage the alloy this place is made of, at least not on my own."
Raziel	Raziel drops in, aiding with cutting through the floor down with the Reaver blade itself. The tint of the blade red as it seems to eminate heat as they aid in trying to break their way forward. Leaping down, Raziel hits the ground, and comes to a springing step that might seem unnatural...and is quite unnatrual. His body, mostly bone and muscle, has hilarious fall animations. The blade shifts from red to greenish-white again, as it helps clear away clutter. His eyes taking note of where the ghostly figure would be, and with a breath would help cutting a way there again. 'Covered in strange plantlife that seemed to be thicker the farther we went down. However, light seemed to be visible here, though only slightly more helpful than above. Others mentioned things beyond my current understanding...and it all too reminded me how much more about the greater universe that I had to learn. This would be a good way to do so, I believed.' "I can try seeing if there is a mechanism on the other side?" he offers when the bulkead was in view, before stepping before the door...and releasing his physical body. Once in the spectre realm, he pushes through, forcing his way (if he could) through the bulkhead so he could remanifest himself on the other side. Should he do that, he looks for anything that would want to kill him, and a way to open the door...in that order.
Captain Flint	Not Silver, nor Joji, nor any of the pirates at the terminal really care for the rendition, or even understand what Silver is trying to do (least of all Silver himself). But at least, his button smashing causes it to shut off. /That/ sound is the universal language, and the four pirates Joji chose to cover Silver immediately make a move to grab the coins. One's hand is pinned beneath the metal sheet which serves as the 'foot' of Silver's prosthetic. The other three are stopped by Joji's sword, held forth in a threat of further action. "You don't know where they've been," Silver explains. He lets up with his prosthesis and kicks the coins under one of the other terminals. He's not taking any chances in this place, no matter how much it disappoints the men. He takes a look around, eyes scanning the area for anything which might be of further use. The sound of the floor collapsing is something he decides he should investigate. What he finds is Flint, and his men, sweating as if they'd all been in an incredibly taxing battle. Some rest upon the floor, some use their hatches as canes to lean upon. One of the men got a mild shock, but after that, the cutting was more careful, less frantic. Even so, they look exhausted. Flint himself is out of breath just as much as his men are, his hatchet fallen to the side, his chest heaving with exertion. "If there isn't," says Flint to Raziel, "Force is our only option." The captain begins snapping the metal heads off of the hatchets. His men, Silver included, watch with confusion. "Better we prepare for that now while we still can." Six wooden shafts are gathered up, and with a tearing sound, the straps of the canvas bag are torn off. Flint arranges them all into a thick bundle, then ties it tightly on two ends with lengths of torn strap. Tearing an uneven length of canvas free of the bag with a small knife, the captain then connects the two legnths of strap via the canvas, making a handle. "All of you, on your feet," he commands. "Get a hand on this," says the captain, lifting his makeshift battering ram. "And be ready to use it if Mr. Raziel finds no such mechanism. Or... if something finds him."
Staren	"Would it still /work/? I suppose if the concept of the computer's purpose shapes the tree-computer..." Septette moves like she's going to smash through the floor, and he gives her a skeptical look. This is /Njorun/. No way would that work? What happens is pretty much what he expected, although he's impressed all the same. And then they fall! Staren has wings to slow his, though, and he stares at the built-in power banks. "Wow, look at this! They built in redundant power generation /everywhere/, in case of... in case of... well, I'm not sure when you'd ever need THIS much. With the tree this damaged, it's not like we can really use the rail network... Wait a minute, what kind of power system IS this? The tree's taken it over too... Njorun, what /happened/, aren't you supposed to be dead?" Staren takes samples of the power network as they cut through them. Eventually, his AI warns him of unexpected power drain. Hopefully that nuclear backpack will be good for awhile all the same. "Guys..." Septette points out the drain. "It's happening to me too... Ugh, there's gotta be a better way than just walking in a direction until we hit something!" Staren stops, and looks around. "What's the matter?" He throws up his arms. "No more tape recordings to taunt me? What, you didn't see THIS coming?" If nothing happens, he drops his arms. "Well, it was worth a shot."
Priscilla	Operating off of an indefinitely self-sustaining magic core is generally to Septette's benefit, as the hazardous effect of the battery banks mostly result in lowering her output rather than leading to eventual serious danger. More than one drone at a time would probably be impossible though. As far as that one can tell, the infestations that penetrates through every deck actually originates from the various power cells sitting on standby. The 'fungal' parasite grows off their wiring and spreads around the area, growing through the walls and out the other side, Some of them actually deliver power to varying areas, charging portions of the tree itself and running its filaments into the janky and misbehaving electronics, while others suck power back in like a circulatory system, pumping it through the semi-living 'hearts' of former fuel sources. The actual type of power going through all of them doesn't seem to distinguish between what they originally were; it's all exactly the same, probably some kind of aggregate mishmash of 'energy' that has warped the original sources into the same bacteria-esque structure to process it. Raziel does exactly what any given Union officer would smugly meme about being impossible --how his powers of intangibility totally wouldn't help him break into anything because all of Njorun is totally intangibility-proof-- but either not every single part of Njorun station was ever overprotected to that extent, or whatever arbitrary wards were on it have since dried up (or been drained), because ghosting through the bulkhead actually just works. He ends up on the other side in a circular chamber about the size of a parking lot, jungles of cabling coming from a central pillar and spreading across the ceiling in all directions, and studded with terminals and monitor screens across every wall. It appears to be miraculously intact, with a huge cluster of what look to be hard drives and servers mounted along the upper half of the middle support, wired to the stacks and stacks of readouts and displays all around, some computer pedestals just randomly standing from the floor at unergonomic and poorly designed points in the room, rather than tucked into the walls. There appears to be little, if any, decay whatsoever, like this room had escaped the corruption all around it. The equipment all appears to be powered on as well. There's a console on the inside to open the bulkhead even; two of them actually. Obnoxiously, it requires two-key authentication to release the emergency override (what counts as an emergency if not the entire station falling over?) but as soon as Priscilla sees him successfully get through, she fades into the room as well, and times the disengage on the other console with him to get it open. The door opens about halfway before it grinds to an obnoxious, space station horror halt, causing all the lights to flicker as it tilts on its tracks and screeches to a stop. "What in the world art thou talking about?" Priscilla says through the gap while Staren has his episode. "Pray, force this a little wider, Lady Stella, Captain Flint." Ten men with a battering ram and a crystal golem are more than adequate to do so. It seems like a pretty easy run all said. Not much in the way of opposition, only a single, moderate inexplicable danger, and their objective is completely in one piece. Just look at all those computers! They're pristine! Not as much metal in the room as it first felt like though. Doesn't seem to be any corpses either, actually. All the screens are running video footage or something too, going through thousands of seemingly unrelated images, too quick to really pin down.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette slides into the room near the front of the party with an unusually hurried pace. Her expression is simultaneously flat and drawn; her eyes fixed ahead. Her irises repeatedly focus and refocus on something in the middle distance with a repetitive clicking sound. She stands perfectly still for a moment or two, and then takes another couple of steps forward wordlessly. Her drone falls out of the air with a clatter behind the party as she pulls power out of it and raises her gloved hand above her head. Coruscating magical energy gathers in her palm for a moment or two- and then she hurls a lightning-bolt-like blast directly into the central computer tower, carefully arcing around the pedestals without striking them. It's followed up a moment later with a wave of napalm-like arcane flames that paint a large swathe of the screens and terminals, sufficiently hot to burn sensitive electronics to a crisp. What the hell?
Raziel	Raziel, forms back into the room as Priscilla appears. Surprised, but not objecting...it is clear to him why she came second. He wouldn't have it any other way. Working with her the bulkhead opens, as he watches the thing open only halfway, being on the side of the bulkhead opening up. Raziel's eyes watching as people help push the door open, as the room itself is pristine and safe, the only threat that would come would be from behind the group. Until he notices Septette start approaching the door in a hury. That was odd, but the expression on her face causes the Ghost to squint. As the hand raises up, Raziel who decided to wait until the last moment throws himself in the way of her shot, the Reaver coming to life and switching to a more green tone to it. The blade swings, aiming to release a wave of wind to try and knock the mage down, so that they could be contained, though it may serve to disburse fire...while Raziel himself would get the blunt of the electricity seared through his body, and the fire the Reaver could not deal with, roast him. The Wraith, smashes against whatever service he is thrown from first, before collapsing to the ground in a howl of pain. Panting, he looks up, trying to collect enough fortitude to keep his material form going.
Captain Flint	The door halts, because of course it does. At least he was prepared for this alternative. Flint and nine other men line up near the edge of the door, seeking to create a fulcrum by attacking the part closest to the gap. Doing so also leaves room for Stella to work on the rest of the door through her own strength. "HEAVE!" The battering ram is pulled back by Flint and his men, slammed into the door. Numerous such cries are made by the captain, following a certain rhythm. Silver begins to tire, the longer he stands there--but how? Why? Then it hits him. Septette's comment about feeling drained. All of those glowing power sources, the rapidly increasing fatigue. He digs into his bag and tears open a stolen MRE, scarfing it down. "Eat your rations the /minute/ you're through," orders Silver of the men on the ram. "Even if you're not hungry." "We ain't been here but half an hour," coarsely protests the one pirate who isn't on the battering ram. "This place isn't just draining their energy," says Silver with a nod to Staren and Septette. "Ours, too." "Do as he says," orders Flint, once the door is down through his efforts and Stella's. There is a moment when the crew is silent, each man tearing into his rations with a hunger he didn't know he had. It will help stave off an end through being drained, but time is still an issue. Then Septette attempts to jeopardize their entire reason for being here. Flint's empty bag is dropped to the floor, his pistol aimed at her through the door. The weapons of his men soon follow. Eyes watching her like a caged animal, his lips curl into a snarl as Raziel attempts to intervene. "If you think our current state will keep you safe from reprisals, you've made a grave error. I would /strongly/ advise you offer up a prompt and /thorough/ explanation."
Staren	Failing to find any computer terminal intact, Staren briefly imagined Viridian Sunset taunting him about it, then realized that seemed like just the sort of thing that would happen, and there'd need to be some kind of intact device to do it. In retrospect, though, if it was going to happen, it would do so on its own -- pointing it out doesn't make it much more likely, although perhaps it gives more material for the Emperor to sass him for. No more taped messages is another benefit of the fall of Njorun, it seems. And hey, the party found a hidden door! He investigates eagerly, trying to slide under the door if needed. He barely has time to START marveling at the intact core before Septette starts attacking things. What the hell?! Also, Flint aims his pistol at her /head/ instead of her /core/. Rookie mistake, but he's not going to correct the man just yet. Staren turns to Septette, mouth hanging open as he tries to find words. Then he crosses his arms and frowns at her. "Explain." He's not going to just assume she's gone insane after last time. Maybe he really is missing something.
Stella	Raziel defeats the door, and Staren yells at the clouds. Stella seems confused, but doesn't have time to ask about it before they're being made to move into the next room where, hopefully, no awful draining effect is in play. She wasn't much help opening the door but she did help to the best of her ability. Things are then promptly awful. Like, super awful. Stella can't intervene for the first strike. Lightning is much quicker than she is. But she is a protector, and the moment between lightning and flames is all she needs to put herself between Septette and her target. The flames might be diffused, but Stella can create crystals as needed, and she's tough. Prismatic spikes rumble out of the ground to form a small wall to either sides of Stella, the crystals withstanding flames and even healing afterwards where the heat was too much to handle. Even Stella's body, used to block a part of the flames, starts regenerating at a rapid pace, scorched, half-molten crystal reshaping itself into place moments later. With Raziel having taken the lightning bolt, Stella's intervention should largely cover the flames, and even spare Raziel from the worst of the flames' wrath. But unlike him, the golem doesn't counterattack. Others have already demanded Septette to explain, so she doesn't speak, either.
Septette Arcubielle	It's the same everywhere. The Deep Ones, the VRMMO, and now the Njorun ruins. Unlikely the squishies can be persuaded. They have to be saved from themselves, forcibly. As always. Septette doesn't stop her motion to explain- she's a ceaseless flowing current of steel, dancing around the predicted threat vectors from the assembled Elites and edging closer to the computer cluster. Instead of kicking Raziel when he's down, she steps around him (just out of reach of his one-handed blade, she calculates). Her eyes flick over Flint's pistol and up to his face, then over to Staren: "You know what I'm for. This isn't what it looks like." Stella's crystals come up from the floor to block her approach- Septette takes one millisecond glance at their regeneration, decides against trying to break through, and instead leaps clean over them and onto the ceiling before dashing towards the core once again. "Which is more likely-" Walls of fire erupt from the ground between Septette and the party, making pursuit on foot perilous. Her talons rip into the cables attached to the ceiling as she closes the distance to the server cluster, and that horrid crescent blade unfolds from her forearm again as she draws it back for a mighty strike against the central tower. "-That I'm compromised, or that you are?"
Priscilla	Scarfing down MREs does certainly help, albeit not instantaneously. Energy is energy is energy. Even sucking it out of the human body, it's not something so mysterious. Food has calories in it, and calories are energy. It'll keep them going for another half hour. Everyone is focused on Septette otherwise. Despite drawing weapons on her, this could amount to a good thing. The video footage scrolling over every console, cycling through hundreds and hundreds of disconnected images, skips slightly as every one of them suddenly registers the lightning and fire attacks simultaneously, playing them out across every monitor at the same time; instead of each going through something completely different, they repeat the sequence like a hall of mirrors, with the most stand-out detail being that it appears to have been captured from the angle of each terminal. They each transition to a prompt, urging the user to hit the confirmation button to begin emergency download of files. Except also the cables Septette rips as collateral on her charge towards the center of the room splay blood and what looks like cerebral fluid all over the floor.
Staren	Or that you are? Staren strokes the chin of his helmet and considers this for a moment. "Fine. You'd better be vindicated, Septette." He waves in a vague downward motion at Flint, Stella, and Raziel. "Stand down. Finding another computer core won't be impossible, even Septette can't take them all down. If she IS comprimised, better to learn now than later." Are the cables /bleeding/? "How soon can you start giving us an explanation?" Just in case, he does attempt to start sending the video record of this mission back to his ship. If Septette HAS lost it and somehow kills him, better that everyone's warned.
Stella	Stella would have continued protecting the computer, had Staren not given an order. Orders are absolute, and so the golem stands doesn't pursue Septette through her flames, instead electing to watch what happens. "This is sudden and confusing," she notes to Staren.
Captain Flint	Septette's argument is not as convincing as she'd like it to be. Neither, for that matter, is Staren's attempt to calm him down. What ultimately does convince Flint that she isn't betraying them is the result of the killbot's actions. Namely, the fluid that starts bleeding from the cables. That fluid doesn't look mechanical. Silver was saying this place was draining their energy. And now, all of the terminals are begging someone to start an emergency download. Flint barges past his men, offering an explanation as he briskly strides into the room. "The wires bleed, the room drains us of our energy, the terminals tempt us with file transfers." Should any of Septette's fire stand in his way, he attempts to circumnavigate it unless patently impossible. He isn't, however, attempting to pursue--only to enter the room. "The machine now lives, and means to kill us for its own sustenance." He turns and points at the ceiling. Not at Septette, but at the server cluster she attacks with her crescent blade. "Firing positions. Anyone without a musket, take aim and assist her. Those with, open fire on the terminals."
Raziel	Raziel slowly, peeling himself from the ground does not quite understand what is going on. Surely the room being sealed would explain the... Except that it wasn't? Fortinately for himself, his body was still undead, and maintaining it was a combination of will and physical matter. Infact, experimentally, he draws the soul reaver, attempting to draw life into himself...avoiding his allies in this effect, but from the supposed 'thing' that this room was, instead of what it was presenting itself to be. "Does not a warning suffice? Or a word whatso ever?"
Priscilla	Staren may regret that. Septette leaps to the ceiling and plunges her arm blade into the server cluster with a resounding loud squelch. Blood and spinal fluid pours from the banks of flickering LEDs and sparking hard drives, quickly pooling on the floor of the chamber. The terminals begin sputtering and flickering, turning into kaleidoscopic patterns of nauseating colours and headache-inducing static, immediately becoming intensely painful to look at, like stabbing paralytic bolts into the back of the brain that clench every muscle at once, as if grabbing hold of a low voltage electrified fence. Cables begin unplugging from monitors all over the wall and moving like hunting snakes, waving their converter ends around as if tasting the air, slithering towards Raziel, Staren, Priscilla, Stella, and Flint and his men. Considering he'd ordered many of them to look up at the servers rather than at the monitors, a good number of the crew aren't affected by the hazardous displays unless they disobey orders and lower their weapons to take a peek, and so a round of muskets going off into the central mass causes the cables to spasm and writhe, discharging bolts of hazardous iridescent lightning all around them. A corner of the room fills with the ethereal, humming chime of Moonlight as Priscilla draws the fluidly glowing sword, clutching it in a white-knuckled grip as if it were a vital handhold, already casting soft, cyan embers off its blade. A few moments of sustained contact with the sword of guidance, and she looks up at what Septette is seeing, suddenly taking on a visibly disgusted expression. She swings the sword at one of the randomly scattered, poorly arranged computer pedestals near her, and its upper half falls to the ground with a wet, bloody thump, its display fizzling out and revealing what looks like a petrified human neck and head, its brain exposed through its skin and skull, all of which has been turned to wood, and connected by organic, fungal wire to the server bank. Raziel attempting to draw life force into the Soul Reaver finds that it comes from every one of the haphazardly placed floor terminals as well, though not from the wall monitors. It doesn't belong to them though, but rather is part of the web that spreads from the core cluster. This is indeed a room in which many people have died.
Septette Arcubielle	Flint's men should be able to find their way around the walls of flame with only modest difficulty: rather than presenting a contiguous impassable barrier, they're shaped to funnel movement into specific chokepoints with esoteric mathematical relationships to various vantage points Septette might have diverted to. Seems she was planning ahead for a messier outcome. Without the specter of internecine quarrels, Septette's task becomes substantially easier. The iridescent electricity seems to pose a minor inconvenience to her even where it strikes her directly, and the psychoactive screens don't even muster that. Absent a pressing need to defend herself, she simply hammers the central structure again and again, claws and talons and integral blades carving into the pseudo-vegetable flesh in search of anything that seems vital. She is drawing, perhaps, a bit too much cathartic satisfaction from the one-sided violence. Maybe it's the resemblance to her ancestral foes?
Staren	Staren shuts his eyes as soon as he feels the pain. "Don't look at the screens! Basilisk hack!" He warns. His AI censors them on the view from his suit cameras, including what's being broadcast out. He may need to censor the rest of the record later. "It may be trying to download itself into us." Priscilla calls attention to the strange pillars by slicing into one. "Did it GROW this? An imitation computer room?" There are... stone heads inside? "Maybe a more literal basilisk than most..." He was hesitating at first for fear that something very specific needed to be destroyed, but it's pretty clear now that the whole ROOM is bad. He starts firing at the monitors. The cables are zapping wildly! Lightning's not really dodgeable though, forcing him to turtle inside his forcefield as he tries to think og a countermeasure. "Should we maybe just plant explosives and leave the room? We can come back after they go off and clean up!"
Stella	Intense pain caused by visual contact. After the first painful, confusing shock to her 'skull', it doesn't take Stella long to close her eyes and stop relying on them. Lucky her that this room is full of metal, even though it's also evidently full of life. 'Life.' Whatever you want to call THIS. "I do not understand what is happening. Someone will need to explain," Stella vocalizes, because yeah, none of this makes sense to her. What she does understand is how to kill things, though. At least that part's easy. But without her eyes to see, she'll have to rely on her own powers for a change. No reflecting things. How troublesome. The best she can do for now is hurl crystal blades towards the slithering cables, trying to pierce them and pin them, quite literally, to the walls and ceilings, rather than having them be a threat to people's attempts to resolve this.
Captain Flint	When the gunfire begins, those Walrus crewmen who Flint ordered to attack the terminals, rather than the servers, can be heard screaming over the crack of more modern firearms. The captain acted too soon, it would seem. Silver, who prefers the familiarity of a flintlock pistol, is among them, his knuckles white as he grips the support of his crutch. Flint, having heard Staren's warning a moment too late, screws his eyes shut, one arm raised to cover his face, the other held out to reach Silver. He repeats the scientist's warning to his men, shouting to be heard over the din of combat. "Don't look at the screens!" His hand makes contact with Silver's roughspun cotton shirt. Flint takes hold of him, throwing him towards the door. That's the only one of his crew he's able to help without opening his eyes again--and Silver knows this. Septette's walls of fire would make blind searching nearly suicidal. While the rest of the crew begins to reload their weapons, Silver calls out directions for Flint, helping him get the rest of the men affected to safety by safely navigating the flaming choke points. When a lurking cable threatens the captain, Silver blasts it with a shot from his pistol, calling out a warning to Flint. "Stay back! Cable!" He begins reloading, and doesn't continue instructing until the thing is felled. If Priscilla sees this, she might note it to be the first display of genuine teamwork between the two, to this point. They actually work pretty well as a team--though neither is sure that simply moving the affected men will help them in the long run. "Is that the last?" calls Flint. "Yes!" The captain reloads, turns his attention to the ceiling, and continues firing.
Priscilla	Stella finds that cutting into the cables further clashes with the illusion, as they spark and ooze all too much like the webs Staren had been taking samples of on the floors above. Her crystal blades slice through them with ease while they're stuck in paroxysms of seizure twitching, trading blasts of electricity for her effort, but no doubt able to simply power through them with her regeneration. She can outright see them unplugging from the 'terminals' scattered across the floor space, replacing the ones slashed to pieces, seeking new repositories of information to jam themselves into and download, only to be blasted back by Silver and Flint's work. "No, this was indeed the correct place." Priscilla insists to Staren, slashing through her own row of cables. When one begins to unplug from a terminal pedestal next to her, she grips it with her tail and rips it out of the ground, its monitors sputtering out like the first, and causing a second, petrified corpse to crumple to the floor, the cable now struggling to pull out of its exposed brain. "I hath likewise no doubt that this is some perverse interpretation of a directive to preserveth the data's integrity by whatever means necessary." Once the members of the Walrus are clear, they slowly regain their ability to move, albeit slowly and twitchily, as if their muscles had indeed been paralyzed by electrical current not moments before. It's after a protracted period of stabbing and slashing and carving into the central computing cluster, spilling cerebrospinal fluid over the ground in great, malodorous splashes, that Septette finally deals enough damage to the core's nervous system to shut it down, causing all of the remaining wires to fall limp and lifeless to the floor, and the psychohazardous terminals to shut down completely. Seeing it for what it is, an enormous amalgamation of congealed grey matter has grown in the central pillar like the fibrous knots found in wood from the fungal infections that live inside of them, wrinkled like multiple brains growing out of one another, from which the strings of rubbery, organic power conduits extrude. The randomly placed terminals are indeed the remains of a number of previous explorers with the same idea of recovering Union data, who were paralyzed and consumed as soon as they started, leeched for extra power and their own brains used as data storage to offload information from the slowly rotting core banks. The monitors on the walls are just monitors though; unfortunately shooting them up has only damaged some of the remaining equipment, though the wiring to those is actually data cabling, so the signals sent through it were indeed digital. Following those leads to having to carve away big, gorey chunks of the parasitic mass in the center, until one can uncover and extricate the equipment buried in the middle.
Septette Arcubielle	A few moments after the techno-organic monster falls limp, Septette pulls her arms out of its guts and takes a few steps back. She holds her arms out in front of her, swiftly heating them to a dull red glow and boiling off the disgusting pink-and-clear fluids that drip from her claws. Her shawl is ruined, too- but that'll be considerably more trouble to fix. That resolved, the little construct excuses herself and largely fades into the background: evidently she considers her duty to the party discharged, leaving the grunt work of digging the actual server out to others who are less concerned with fastidiousness. One small cutting from a woody-fungal brain does find its way into a small flask in her satchel, however: evidently she doesn't share Staren's assessment of the growth's uselessness.
Stella	Electricity does do a pretty good number on Stella, especially blind as she is and without the ability to anticipate it. She's not fast enough to dodge lightning to begin with, so chunks of her can be scorched or, in the worst of cases, blasted off outright by lightning. Lucky her that she can piece herself together, all things considered. Once it's safe to open her eyes again, she looks about - a more normal person would probably feel intense disgust at all the gluids and brainmatter. She just has no idea what's going on, still, beyond that the 'computer' did 'something' and was trying to eat them or something. This was weird. She doesn't deem any of this safe enough to shove into crystals, not unless explicitely told to anyway. She'll be content enough just watching the smarter people dig the server out of the brains, and verify whether or not they got what they came for.
Raziel	The soul reaver continues to drain the life and souls of those left behind...before there is a strange flashing of light from it, and Raziel with a force of effort, more than he would like to admit, pushes the thing back as a strang energy on his arm. Though there is that familar fading in and out, much like when he took the strike for what he thought was the computer. There is a bit of a stagger to his walk for a moment, as he strains to maintain the focus and energy on his physcal form, giving others the chance to make up for the precieved slack on his end. "Not what I expected tonight, that's for sure." he says, in a slightly sarcastic, but amniable way. If he took exception to getting nearly pounded flat like that, he does not show it.