Scene #7950: Hovercraft Hangout

Owner	Pose
Starbound Flotilla	The Flotilla have offered to help Staren out with her little problem. This zone's of strategic importance, but it's just... awful! Though George thinks it's great. The Captains are excellent settlers, though, and that means they have a big fancy hovercraft design suited perfectly for all this. Albert helms it, while Seft and Biteblade configure and deploy a variety of navigation and sensor buoys for automated transit construction. Moonfin's a begrudging navigator, and Pavo's captaining. Albert, of course, remains on the main gun just in case, "relaxing" as much as a man like him can. "It's the martial settling." He eventually mutters to Staren, not too hard to hear over the softly whooshy hover-engine. "Nostalgic because we're fighting for a handhold in a frontier. Everyone has to operate unconventionally. Even the Concord." His turret rotates slowly, sweeping over the horrible banks nearby and blasting a hostile slime that moves too quickly towards them.
Staren	Staren's modified a hovercar with a double-barreled railgun turret and deployable wide-footed landing legs for exploring the swamp. There are some one-shot rocket launchers in the back seat. Knight and Syril are riding in the car, equipped as they were for the Autocthonian first contact with smart environment suits, breastplates, their personal melee weapons and Staren's high-tech guns. "Yeah." It's Syril who speaks up this time. "'Unconventionally.' Rosie told us about the wars they had before we were born, but... All I knew was me and the others from the village fighting /him/ and his machines. ...Kinda weird to be working with someone who uses robots for a good cause." Knight is less nostalgic. "This place is terrible. Didn't you say one of the other zones was flying sky islands? Why aren't we exploring flying sky islands?" he whines. "Because they aren't of strategic importance yet." Staren replies. She's got her laser sniper rifle just in case, but she can control the turret and fly at the same time just fine, and ventilates the occasional aggressive swamp creature.
Starbound Flotilla	"Unconventional for the lack of development." Moonfin says, between map-reading sessions. "In Sector Zero, the density of development and warpgate connection is such that almost no areas become strategically important to development innately, for logistical reasons -- except, perhaps, The Line. Not that I believe this is much of an improvement." He sneers at the thick, muddy water. "But for Mr. Petrov, my ally here, it is reminiscient of productive campaigns against the MiniKnog." "Curious. You've had trouble with invading machines? Poor thing..." Seft looks concerned and pained. "Sheepish. Even though I had nothing to do with it, let me know if I can do anything to help make you comfortable." She finishes up configuration on another buoy, and digs another out of a crate and glances to Staren instead. "Cheerful. Though, you know, it's pretty interesting to see you engaging with a tactical challenge this way, Staren! I don't think I'd ever seen you try to manage a frontline, like this. The effort and focus you're putting into it is wonderful!"
Staren	Seft and Biteblade are aided in their efforts by robots and golems bringing in supplies of salvaged materials through the gate. Some of the big heavy golems can pound pylons into the gloop so platforms can be built on top, but it is in general difficult for most of Staren's constructs, at least the heavy construction kind, to work in this environment. On the bright side, Wonder's dream-dungeons have provided material of all kinds and useful tools from all kinds of worlds, bits of dreamstuff that resist the swamp's corrosion or have unusual physics behavior that can be abused for power generation or construction. Actually, the recent contact with Ravnica is probably quite helpful here -- the new Izzet invention of plants and vines that can be used for power transmission will fit in here better than the usual mechanical solution! Moonfin waxes on Sector Zero's lack of areas of 'strategic importance'. "We used to have them... 'Target Zones', we nicknamed them, because they had high concentrations of some unusual resource -- like a divination pool, or high-density power sources, or easy-to-tame-and-train dragons. They disappeared in the Great Cosmic Cucumber Vomiting, though." Beat. "Maybe they're here in Secundus somewhere." Syril is engaged by Seft, though like any teenage boy called a 'poor thing', he briefly looks away in annoyance. "/Robotnik/." The name is spat, clearly a hated enemy of nigh-mythological significance. "We were just toddlers when he took over everything and turned everyone into robots. A few adults took as many of us as they could into the forest, but... most people... Gnh. And yet some of us were even helping him, despite everything..." He looks out the window. "Everything's gone now, though." Staren smiles, spirits lifted at the compliment. "I'm trying! I..." She rubs her arm, "I guess I'm not as natural a fighter as I thought." She glances back at Knight, who is looking out a window and then flinches as a slime-bird splats against it. Staren looks back to Seft. "I need to learn how to do this without... without some quest to become more powerful dominating my life." She grins, "Also, seeing a whole new Multiverse, even a small piece of it, is just fascinating!"
Starbound Flotilla	"Might be! If something got smited topside, maybe it fell down here? But I get the feeling that this is like that now. At least once the damn thing opens right. Wonder if anything around here can help with divination..." Pavo rambles between coordinations. She's keeping the whole crew sort of collaborating, and is even pretty good at directing the robots and golems! Seft leans over the edge of her hovercraft, looking to Syril, then to Albert. "Sympathetic. It sounds like the MiniKnog that my friend Albert opposes. There sure seem to be a lot of parallels, aren't there? I suppose the more different things are, the more similar. Robotnik and the MiniKnog, the Target Zones and Secundus..." She scratches her head, laughing a short series of beeps. She's focused on Staren again. "Amused. Well no wonder you spend so long trying to find out the rules that decide those consistencies, right?"
Staren	"That's a thought..." Staren responds to Pavo. "For all we know, there could be some future-seeing hermit or ancient mystic vision-granting grove hidden away in this very zone. Or maybe one of Wonder's dream-fragments, but I'm not sure that something out of someone's dream would see true future... especially in Secundus, where once-fated futures don't happen." "The MiniKnog?" Syril asks; once given a brief explanation, he ughs. "Sounds like they found a way to turn people into robots while pretending not to. At least Robotnik's honest about making everyone his mechanical slaves." Staren looks back at him sadly and thoughtfully, then ahead, replying to Seft, "I can't help it. Trying to make sense of things... It's how I survived, or tried to. People don't make sense. I had to make sense of them. My knack for solving well-defined problems with pieces that operate on well-defined rules... I just wanted to be useful to people. It's the obvious way to be useful, right? I'm not sure..." She sighs. "What else do I even have to offer?" A small flock of aerial predators swoop down on the vehicles -- while shooting them down, some stray shots hit one of a group of slow-moving, elephantine creatures in the distance, wading through the swamp on stilt legs. It explodes! "What the hell?!" After her shout of surprise, though, she brings the car a bit closer to one of the slowly-scattering herd members. "I'm reading fuel fumes in the air. George, do you smell gas? Could these things be... concentrating high-energy chemicals from the swamp?"
Starbound Flotilla	"What, like methane gasbag kinda stuff? Shit. Seft, gimmie one'a those." George snatches one of the buoys and points its end at the herd. "Damn, we could get a lot out of that. Wonder what they concentrate all that combustible stuff for... I mean, no way they're not concentrating it. Something had to cook off. Bet'cha Pavo could cook up an engine to burn those guys if we can pull the fuel safely." "Isss... spicy forbidden balloon..." Biteblade whispers. "Floran can try to capture! Robot friend can hold down buoysss, Floran can gather!!" She's practically already falling over the edge with eagerness, and Seft barely gets through the first motions of a nod before she's out chasing the things. Undoubtedly there'll be a useful new source of local power here by the end of the day.