Scene #8002: White March: Breach

Owner	Pose
Captain Flint	PREVIOUSLY... <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "'Ogres.' How is?" <J-IC-Scene> Captain Flint says, "The first attack was made by a different clan I'm unfamiliar with. 'Wolf-With-Many-Mouths.' The Flames-that-Whisper clan were mistaken for the offending party, and ever since, things have escalated." <J-IC-Scene> Captain Flint says, "I believe Chains, Kukuru and Haseo have impressed the matron enough that she's willing to take us at face value." ... <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "'Battery.' What is it?" <J-IC-Scene> Kukuru says, "A battery is... Oh, the one here! Um. I think it's a place where they... Make some kind of important stuff? Useful stuff, probably." <J-IC-Scene> Captain Flint says, "It's both a fortress and a foundry." <J-IC-Scene> Captain Flint says, "Once, its forges produced a unique, highly prized kind of steel that drew interest the world over." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Steel-makers. Surviving? Knowing, lost?" <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Or does battery hold lost knowings?" <J-IC-Scene> Captain Flint says, "If the knowledge is out there, it's only in the dimmest recollection of a past life. A needle in a haystack, as the expression goes." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Old forges. Lost metal-knowings. I'm familiar." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "We'll see, inside."
Captain Flint	The town of Stalwart has another new development--a crier. Evidently the work of Captain Flint, a man with an impressive lung capacity stands in the center of the cool, newly evergreen town, elevated upon an unused crate sourced from the fishery. The portly, sandy-blonde man must have been locally sourced, as his Dyrwoodan accent (really, quite similar to American southern accents) is as plain as day. He warns, both of the dangers of the Wolf-With-Many Mouths clan, and how they might be spotted, while also reminding the townsfolk of all the good that's come from coexistence with the Flames-that-Whisper clan. The crier is particularly succesful, not only for the general boredom of the townspeople, but for the presence of pamphleteers distributing written supplements. The ogre which accompanied Flint into town has already left--and returned, with a gift. It's because of this gift that very few of the Walrus crew remain in Stalwart. While a skeleton crew maintains and protects the ship and mans two newly erected guard towers, the vast majority are in the cold, high in the wilderness of the White March. Anyone working with the captain is directed to take the north road out of town, then take the first left after the bend--and to bundle up. Mercifully, the weather today is just cold, as opposed to the blizzards that often blow through the areas surrounding Stalwart. This north into the March, the earth cedes little ground to trees, and what pockets of green do exist are clustered tightly together in fierce competition. Milestones worn down by the winds of time, speckled with caked-on snow, mark regular intervals along the way to the Battery.
Captain Flint	(OST: https://youtu.be/bTy90Ps8CII ) With the wind this quiet, the sounds of labor make it easy to guess where Flint and his men are. The Battery is a study in hard angles; a certain faded majesty persisting despite the dulled gold-leaf accents and snow-beaten stone. It towers above the milestones, above stony protrusions, even above the thick pockets of pines and firs--but its true immensity can't be appreciated until all of these obstructions are clear from one's vision. Built into the side of a mountain, or perhaps hewn from it, Durgan's Battery stands defiant against years of abuse from the mountain and the elements, and from would-be intruders. Teams of pirates fell trees, split logs and form them into scaffolding for their fellows. Atop the ramparts, other pirates break up accumulated rubble, lowering it with pulleys for yet others to grind into mortar. Strewn out across the courtyard are several tents, as well as a firepit to keep warm. Randall, the ship's cook, slowly turns a glazed pig over that pit, while casks of rum are on standby. Working in shifts, the crew are certainly making the fortress-forge cleaner, but the courtyard is also littered with failed attempts to enter. Battering rams, capped with iron from Stalwart's mines, lie split and splintered near a studded metal door not even scratched for the effort. Similar attempts have been made at entry points up above, with equal success. At one point, even tunneling beneath the fortress using the icy chasm beneath the bridge was attempted, though this appears to have caused a cave-in resulting in injury for a few pirates. While the ship's surgeon tends to the injured men in one of the tents, Flint and Silver peer intently at the main entrance--namely, at the relief plate which was bequeathed to the captain by Matron Beregan. Bearing an image of an anvil, the plate fits perfectly into a square recession set into the door, presses in with a satisfying click, but otherwise, does nothing. The wave-haired quartermaster can't help asking: "What are we missing?"
Hiromi	With the promise of old things and secrets and dangers, and the local wolf matters handled, Hiromi doesn't go off on her own, this time. She heads straight to the Battery, once she knows where it is, stopping only long enough to grab anyone else heading the same way without 'a means of transportation.' For her part, Hiromi's legs are strong enough to make overland travel as swift as it reasonably could be without teleportation, and for all her bulk, she has an uncanny knack for leaving the wilderness undisturbed. She drops down to two legs again once she arrives at the door, craning her neck to look up and down the weathered stone. She stalks about the area, first, sniffing for new smells and old air currents, marking anything she finds with the press of a claw, to come back and look into, later. Hiromi's next stop is to see Flint. "Tunneling. You've tried?" She'll need those pointed out, and maps come in handy, here. "Traps. You've found some? Heard, smelled? Even old stories." The door itself is a tempting target, unbudged by every attempt so far to open it, but that's exactly where she'd put down the most of her traps. Better to dig beneath and break the floor, and bypass all but mobile defenses. She's certainly done this before.
Kukuru	As promised, Kukuru's done her part to make sure the ogre accompanying Flint and crew into town is given the best tour she can muster! It's not a particularly good tour since she barely knows anything about the area, but she does at least show him to the spots with the good snacks she picked up last time (and also buys about five more of each thing for later eating). Once that's all done, though, it's time to get to work! Visiting the Battery helps her get a better/any idea about what the place is about, and she even takes some time to cheer on the pirates working to get all that wood into place so more work can be done out here. Kukuru is once again bundled up in a heavy, poofy coat that all but hides her face, and she's modified her hat from last time to actually fit around her horns so it can still provide her with some warmth. Seeing those busted up battering rams and the conveniently-fitting plate, she tries to put her own problem solving skills to the test here. "Maybe we're missing... Um... An anvil?" She suggests, moving over to the plate and pointing at the image on it. "You know, to..." As she speaks and trails off soon afterwards, she smacks the plate with an open palm a few times, then gets an idea! Unlike Hiromi, she doesn't consider the possibility of traps in the slightest. Thus, Kukuru gets to work trying to just push it open really, really hard. If she can find somewhere to dig her fingers in, meanwhile, she'll even attempt to pull them open instead. She's made that mistake enough times at the supermarket to know better than to discount that possibility.
Priscilla	Well, it's Flint. Priscilla checks on him more than most. And she'd realized not that long ago that it'd been a couple of months since she can outside, so . . . "The more numerous occasions I hath to see thee work, Captain, the more I struggle to name thee and thy men as 'pirates'. Certainly the disciplines that number amongst thine own are too broadly spread by now? Simply look about at the industry displayed by these sailors. Thou shouldst perhaps consider a reacknowledgement as treasure hunters of some professional stripe. Or perhaps simply trouble seekers." Priscilla really wouldn't have even minded if it was blizzarding. The cold is her favourite, and the most it particularly begs from her is a change into familiar white and grey-silver furs, and then only out of nostalgic preference rather than any need to remain warm. She wantders through the construction to stare at the door, eyes falling on the splintered ram-beams. She knows the amount of force it'd take to break one down the middle is very much non-trivial, rather than getting caught up in it being 'mere iron'. Her fingers trace over the plate. "With what words was this gift given to thee? If it were so simple as a mechanism, men of industry wouldst settle for a lock and key wouldst they not?"
Captain Flint	Hiromi is known to Flint's crew, evidenced by the calls to make the captain aware. Her presence, and Kukuru's, are both heralded with a mixture of greetings and cheers--the crew is certainly wise enough to know that there are few people better suited to stubborn fortifications than these two. Priscilla's arrival, perhaps to her surprise given the fear they once held for her, is met with something more like respectful reverence. Much like their captain and quartermaster, the crew are dressed for the cold--and they still don't quite look used to it. "The word is an insult, bandied by those who paint the world full of shadows," admits the captain to Priscilla. "That we're monsters, only capable of destroying. Many pirates were once working people, and most only want the chance to ply their trades for fair compensation. Truthfully," he admits, watching the men work, "I don't know if they'd accept being called anything other than pirates, at this point. For those of us 'on the account,' it's almost like a badge of honor--a way of saying that we reject that painted world absolutely." Kukuru asks if they need an anvil. "It's not an unreasonable idea," Flint says to Kukuru, stroking his goatee. "The Pargrun dwarves--the group that once lived here, did venerate the act of creation." Striking the plate, as if it were an anvil, causes a reaction that catches both Flint's and Silver's attention--because, for lack of any better explanation, it catches the Battery's attention, too. There is a sound like the reverberation of a hammer against an anvil. The cold, the bustle of the working pirates, the sounds of axes and saws, even the distant cries of birds seem, for one moment, like pale, two-dimensional imitations of the real thing, fading into a dimly buzzing background. It passes after a moment of silence, and everything around the door returns to normal. "Beregan mentioned there was a password," John Silver answers Priscilla, leaning upon his crutch. "I have no idea what it'd be, but... you felt that tingling at the back of your neck, didn't you? Like it was waiting for something. The trick is finding out what the fuck it is, with everyone that used to live here dead for so long. People on this world often talk about past lives, but I don't know how we'd even look at something like that." Kukuru finds, using the grocery store test, that it is a 'push' door, and not a 'pull' door. With her strength, she could certainly brute force her way through. It would take quite an effort, given the apparent complexity and redundancy built into the door (it feels like there's a lot pushing back, when she tries), but it is possible. The key considerations are what damage might be done to the door, how easily it might be repaired, and, of course, what countermeasures might be invoked by such an entrance. Flint's hand rests gently upon her shoulder, as she tries. "If you mean to force the issue, allow us a moment to cover your entrance. Mr. Silver, if you'd please gather the vanguard..." If Kukuru wants to try brute-forcing it, she can--with cover from a fire team consisting of the captain, the quartermaster, Billy, and Joji. Otherwise, she's welcome to try and puzzle it out. Hiromi's questions are answered by Flint. "We've tried, yes." With one hand upon the wireframe guard of his saber, the captain gestures to the footbridge. "The ice is easy enough to get through, but the stone becomes far more resistant than it should be, the closer one tunnels to the Battery." His seafoam eyes drift over to Dr. Howell's tent, and he motions with a backwards nod of his head to the team of pirates currently hewing trees. "There's also the fact that the cave-in happened despite rather meticulous bracing. Billy supervised the effort himself, and I'm therefore loathe to believe it was a simple mistake or accident. If you intend to tunnel as well, do so with the utmost care and alertness."
Captain Flint	She soon comes to find exactly what Flint was talking about, but, with her method being different than his, she comes to perceive the experience differently as well. It's no ordinary stone which surrounds the Battery. It looks and smells the same as any other stone in the region, but stone is not all that it is. Rather, there is an almost human stubbornness to it. Every inch that she claims is fought for, harder and harder the more ground she gains. Trapped, noxious subterranean gases mysteriously find their way to her, opened from veins not remotely touched by her claws. There's even an attempted cave-in that couldn't possibly have been her work--but her nose tells here there's no one else down here with her. In fact, the only human scent down here at all is that drifting from the neighboring collapsed tunnel, where Flint's men toiled and took injury for the effort. As she tunnels, the resistance is hardest at the floor of the fortress itself. Distant, distorted sounds of a battle fought long ago reach her--she knows them to be figments precisely because there is no scent of life beyond that unyielding stone. Breaking through, after much effort, involves avoiding traps that the maker or makers of this place, taken by some fit of paranoia, installed evidently for the specific purpose of killing would-be tunnelers. Spread out in staggered, uneven fashion, a set of three: a corrosive jet of acid, an electrified, razor-sharp net launcher, and a spike plate, all three in near perfect condition despite the clear smell of stagnant air. Assuming she can get past them, she'll find herself in a great, dimly lit and dust-covered hallway with a statue of some long-dead dwarf in the center, hewn from the very stone of the nearby mountain and polished to a soft gleam.
Hiromi	Hiromi's experienced something like this before, but that time, it was a local god fighting against her. Here, she expects, it's more the fortress itself that was arranged this way. Possessed, maybe. Between a defending spirit, and the spirit of a defender, there isn't much practical difference. But there are some things that just aren't effective against her, and that includes cave-ins and noxious, underground fumes. Even more so than the forests that should be most expected to be a wolf's home, this is her element. It's not just her strength that pushes her through, but her authority over all things of the (physical) underworld. Only stone possessing its own magic or spirit is enough to even resist her presence. It cannot, however, resist her strength, whether as stone or mud. Resistance hardens her determination, and all things crumble when pressed hard enough, as her claws do. Along the way, she pays careful attention to whether that resistance is still present when pieces of stone are torn away and thrown below her, where she commands the earth to swallow the remains, rather than take the tedium of carrying it out the way she came. She's been detected, she's certain. Her path was laid out without predictable meaning, but that's no guarantee of safety from prepared defenses, even if they're as immobile as stone tends to be. Complete layers of defenses in all directions would be one method of ensuring an attacker is halted. With the stone being worked to this extent, her senses can't penetrate it as easily as she would the depths below an untouched mountain. Inevitably, then, she's struck by a jet of acid at roughly human neck height (on her, ab-height), ducking back out, but not in time. It burns and melts, until her earth-covered hand brushes the excess away, and the thin layer remaining is consumed by rapidly regrowing flesh, until no blemish remains. She's better prepared for the electrified net, which strikes a wall of stone, resealing the trap the moment it's revealed. The spike plate catches her from a different direction than she'd been expecting, spearing through her calf. She shatters them at the base, pulls the spikes the rest of the way through, and walks it off. It's much better than she'd been expecting the dwarven preparations to manage with her. Enough so that she takes a moment by the statue, to let her leg heal and to challenge that defensive will to keep trying. "Come, spirits. Bones and ash. Resist me. Know me. I am Hiromi. Find contentment in defeat. Force me out, or know yourself helpless, then wail, beg, and submit." It's not the most peaceful way to put a haunted battlefield to rest. She tosses the broken spikes in the direction of the main door.
Kukuru	"Pirates can be good, too. If it's a bad word to some people, then we'll just have to change their minds and make them understand that it's good." Kukuru suggests to Priscilla with a fair bit more force than she usually speaks with, sounding absolutely convinced that it's actually possible to do so. It certainly helps that the pirates had such a warm reception to their presence earlier. "There's probably other things that are supposed to be good that everyone hates, too, so we're just gonna do it the other way." The sound from striking the plate has Kukuru pausing to listen to the almost otherworldly sound, and she's tempted to hit the plate again after that otherworldly noise stops. The temptation fades, though, as she's back to considering ways to get that door open beyond just unga bungaing her way in. The urge to do so is quite strong, of course, since leveraging stupid amounts of brute force is one of three things she's particularly good at. Feeling that resistance behind the door means it's definitely possible, if not necessarily wise, and the costs of doing so in such a way are certainly enough to have her hesitating even with the aid of the crew watching her back. "Let's... Nah, let's leave that as a 'just in case' for now. We don't want to make things harder for the people living here than they already are." She answers, then considers Hiromi's tunneling idea with the new info provided. "If there's stuff keeping us out that way, too, then... There isn't anyone that would know about the password that died recently, is there?" Kukuru's not expecting an affirmative to that, but she somehow sounds like that would actually be relevant. "Maybe we could ask that way, but if not... Yeah, let's go with Hi-ro-mi. If anyone gets hurt, I can fix us up or get us out. And once we're in... Um. We're in! And we can work backwards to get the door open without breaking it." And so, she heads in after Hiromi, playing the part of the industrious and devoted healer. With Hiromi handling the traps so easily, she's mostly there for moral support and also making sure that there's an extra escape route available. That doesn't mean she won't wince and fret over reach trap going off, of course, but she knows Hiromi can handle the damage with her own regenerative abilities. If anyone else is coming that way as well, Kukuru will stick with them and keep their medical needs accounted for as necessary. Otherwise, she's going to be moving with Hiromi at the opposite side of the room, apparently having a similar plan to try and set off any traps intentionally to prevent more horrid injuries to their less supernaturally-healing companions here or down the line.
Priscilla	"A sense of ownership, is it?" Priscilla responds softly to Flint. "Ah. That pride is the antidote to shame's poison. Thou art perhaps well-reasoned in allowing them, Captain. The alternatives may indeed be lesser for their dignity." The ringing peal of the anvil plate sends her back into thoughtful silence. It's hard to tell Priscilla's silences apart in particular, but the way she stares unblinking at the plate brings to mind a cat sizing up a body of water and a bird on the other side. Priscilla produces a small, brightly glowing stone, casting something resembling intense firelight, and holds it between her fingers as one would a pencil flashlight, now stopping to intensely examine the relief, feeling it by touch with the other hand's fingertips. She combs over anvil, and then removes, checks, and replaces it, examining it for the tiniest detail. An inscription. A maker's mark. An internal mechanism. A spark of enchantment. She checks over the slot. She even borrows a torch and melts snow into the metal flats, seeing where the water pools and glistens. Provided she still finds nothing remotely useful, she bothers Flint again. "These art ancestral grounds, most certainly. If such an artifact were passed down for so long, and parted with for no coins, the knowledge wouldst most certainly be passed down with it. What soul liveth most closely? Whose blood shares history with those of the Battery? There art a hundred thousand, thousand phrases to attempt by trusting in blind luck. Surely thou hast heard of something." Provided that line of questioning is completely useless, Priscilla really only has one option: disrespecting dwarfkind and taking big risks on Hiromi's claims of spirit defenders by promptly ceasing to exist, and then just barely resuming existing, some ten feet on the other side of the door, then checking its backside. The Battery isn't really that useful if only a couple of Elites can get in and out.
Captain Flint	"Very good," says Flint to Kukuru. "As far as anyone having died recently... there aren't any reports of anyone surviving what happened here. But, it's been long enough since the fall that someone may have knowledge of a past life. On Eora, a soul may be human one life, and a dwarf the next. It'd be trivial to organize the townspeople by birth date, and filter out everyone born after the fall of the Battery. The difficult part would be bringing those memories to the forefront... but there is an inventor who might be able to help." "Galvino, was it?" asks John Silver, earning a nod in response from the captain. "He's..." Silver wrinkles his nose. "...not very popular with Stalwart, but if someone could help us go digging around in past lives, it'd be him." Inspecting the relief plate with scholarly attention to detail, Priscilla discovers a few things. First, being from the world that she is, there is something very familiar about the construction of this place. It is enchanted--rather, an inordinate amount of mortal souls have been bound to the place. They protect it, strengthen its walls and very likely assist in the non-mechanical aspects of the door; namely, listening for the correct 'password.' Opening it, her torch reveals, is a matter of not only speaking the password and striking the anvil, but in setting alight a small concentration of gas within a stone dragon's head. Striking the anvils and firing the forge, as it were. The nature of the password can be gleaned from the impressions left upon the spirits, over the years. A canticle of three verses, each one separated by the strike of the anvil, then punctuated by the firing of the dragon's mouth. "He doesn't live far from here," says Silver. "Maybe twenty minutes up the road--I understand he's not at all the type to work for free, and I'm told he's disliked for good reason, so keep that in mind."
Captain Flint	Entering in through the tunnel is easy enough once it's done, but 'haunted' is definitely the right word to use. If she'd rather not deal with stodgy inventors, Priscilla can certainly circumvent the door, though she can tell by the overabundance of spiritual infusion that this would almost certainly exacerbate any perceptions of the Concord being invaders. The resistance Hiromi encounters, even upon breaking through, is ever present. Even commanding the earth to swallow the stones up as she throws them down the chasm is done with more effort than normal. The statue that she chooses to rest near, which is immediately visible to anyone entering in through the tunnel she made, bears a dust-covered inscription. Beneath the inscription, there's a glyph of an anvil exactly like the one on the plate. It's dimly lit, inside, enough so that the taciturn pirate Joji takes it upon himself to light a torch. There are pockets of light down the hall from this great, circular entrance, and every now and then, a draft carries warmth your way. You can dimly make out the shape of a similar statue, at the end of a long hallway opposite this one. Indistinct whispers play at the edges of your hearing, shadows seem to move at the periphery of the dancing torchlight. Evidently, the Battery took her challenge to heart--the moment it's made, the whispers burst into the chaotic din of a siege. Orders shouted over the screams of wounded and the clangor of clashing steel paint a picture. Taken with the odd skeletal remains, they paint a far more disorderly picture than Flint's dry historical account. Some of the remains found around this great chamber do suggest fighting between the dwarves--but one of the words heard in the spectral din is certainly 'invaders.' There's the sense that this hall was meant to be the first line of defense, should the front door ever fall. The traps, laid out in an irritatingly staggered fashion (to make one think that each successive one is 'the last'), span a diverse range of activation methods and delivery methods, from tripwires to pressure plates, from more standard mechanical traps to gouts of freezing cold and even, somehow, stored mind-affecting spells to daze or trick the mind into believing an injury has occurred. Most of them, at least on this floor, were set off long ago. But Hiromi did make a challenge. It is answered, at the most inconvenient possible time, by a squad of animated skeletons and spectral dwarven defenders. They rush down the hall, coming from the chamber with the vaguely defined other statue, bringing to bear weapons that have stood the test of time frightineningly well, if the clash of Flint's sword with dwarven steel is any indication.
Priscilla	"His popularity with the townsfolk little concerns me." says Priscilla to Silver. "The fact that his name found thy tongue first is well enough. I need him not sway the commonfolk with his presence. Only do as I ask him." She looks back to the Battery, where Hiromi and Kukuru are now inside. "This place is no mere edifice of idle and paranoid artifice. The long-ago souls within art soaked into its very stones. They art essential to its very functioning. It is more than likely that such ghosts of past watch the doors, arm the traps, and churn the earth below. There is no use in a forge and fortress that aims to betray thee at every step, yes? Even shouldst we pierce its heart this very night, little shall be achieved." She pauses just before leaving, to point to the dragon's head. "Order the men to go nowhere near this, if thou wouldst." Then she sets off in search of this Galvino guy.
Kukuru	"Past lives sounds... That sounds pretty nice to know about. What you might've been like before, how you could do things differently. Maybe even... Continuing some work you never got to finish?" Kukuru ponders aloud as she considers Flint's info about how this world's dead function. It might not help her right away, but it does give her a (very) slightly better idea of how this group might be able to obtain the information they seek later. It just doesn't quite help while they're exploring the area behind those mysterious doors. There's more immediate threats to worry about, although Kukuru does show some caution and stays far away from that first statue for the time being. When she sees that second statue in the distance, however, she draws attention towards it by pointing at it and calling it out. "Thing! Maybe that'll show us... Something." Before she can check it out, though, there's skeletons and dwarven ghosts to contend with. "Stay close, everyone. You'll be fine even if you die a little, so don't be afraid!" She reassures despite using distinctly unreassuring words before advancing on those defenders coming towards everyone. Kukuru's big dumb claws come out of her pockets, and she starts swinging them in wide, sweeping arcs to catch as many of their assailants at once. Rather than just trying to smash or launch them out of the way, however, her movements are actually slower than normal. She doesn't want to break those statues or other clues, after all. Instead, Kukuru moves as though she's trying to literally catch them in her claws, keeping them together long enough that she can clap them together to crush them together like some sort of sapient iron maiden.
Hiromi	Hiromi's challenge is returned, and though the traps can only find her should she move, she'll have to if she's to seek the leaders. It's obvious and natural that defeating a group of soldiers won't make an army surrender. The main risk, in this case, is of there not being any leaders left, or else, if none are recognized. Then there's no way to transfer that authority to someone else. Not unless the puzzle Priscilla's working can be solved. But then, maybe it won't be quite that difficult, and she'll find what she seeks before she's sunk her claws into every stone. With Kukuru here to help, there's even less need for hesitation. It's unclear how much of Hiromi's regeneration is conscious, but it's definitely something she can switch off, conserving her immediate energy for other effects, and that's what she does, leaving the wounds to her ally to heal. In place of that, she parries physical strikes with stone-hard fists, kicks off to fly across the room, swings her leg through her opponents, and sends defenders flying in equal measure. She can keep knocking them down, as long as they keep getting up, assuming they don't resist hard enough to break. Bending is the best way to survive her advance. 'Up' or 'down.' She'd come up through the floor, and so, she looks for some way 'up,' in the direction of the fortress's heart.
Captain Flint	Galvino's house isn't far away. At first glance, it looks humble. It is also, like the Battery, highly booby-trapped. Unlike the Battery, which could arguably be excused for its defenses owing to its ancestral upkeep and the fact that it's a fortress, the inventor's house seems almost spiteful in its defenses. The upside is that one man working on his own simply doesn't have the resources to fortify as heavily as an entire culture over generations, and she can avoid the worst of it. Crossing down the nearest stairwell into an elaborate laboratory, the First begins to see (if the traps weren't enough) why this man isn't liked. The smell is a mixture of burnt skin, dried blood, chemical preservatives, and ozone. Half-finished automatons with distressed, clearly human-sounding voices hurl stream of consciousness word salad, either at Priscilla, assuming she doesn't conceal her presence, or, disturbingly, into empty air. Concealing herself from them is the wise choice, as any who happen to see her charge forwards, begging for help before overheating and exploding into molten fragments of copper, iron, and some kind of green crystal. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who thought to come visit him. Here and there, slain by traps or wayward automatons (?), lie fresh, robed, hooded corpses, with daggers and other weapons not far from their bodies. The man himself is home, but locked inside some manner of panic room. It is specially warded against immaterial intrusion, by inlaid arrangements of copper and that strange green crystal. Two voices come from within the room--his, and that of an automaton evidently much more stable than those that roam the halls of his underground laboratory. As long as she can prove, to his satisfaction, that she's not with the masked assassins who tried to kill him, Galvino opens the door for the First. He's an older man, with umber brown skin and coarse white hair--though most of it has fled his head, and remains in its greatest concentration as a scholarly, pointed goatee. With him is a woman seemingly made of bronze and iron riveted plates, who observes the First with the same passive disdain she levels at her inventor. "What do you want?" he asks rather bluntly, adjusting his spectacles and flipping an arrangement of heavy switches which evidently serve to deactivate the remaining defenses. "I'm a busy man."
Captain Flint	Kukuru's claws can handle the reanimated defenders--though their armor is much stronger than it looks, enough so to make 'skeletons' an actually credible threat, with how well it blunts and distributes impacts. Unusually, they're fighting her as if they're still alive, and in the ghostly din, both she and Hiromi can hear a name repeated: 'Marunn.' She's evidently both the commander of the forces standing against 'the invaders,' and some kind of force of personality within the Battery. Flint had mentioned some sort of civil war--it's possible she spearheaded one of the factions. Being caught and crushed is an unconventional means of attack that the undead soldiers and spectres don't easily respond to. The nearest way 'up' is a spiral staircase that, judging by the draft which blows from above, leads not to the heart, but the battlements. The 'heart' of this place, however, is easy for her to find. Some dim, faint echo of a long-sleeping power yet gently thrums through this place. The source of that power isn't up, but down--closer to the beating heart of this world. She, Kukuru, and the contingent from the Walrus can fight their way down the hall. There, the group is barred by another door. Unlike the first, which must be spoken to, this door speaks directly to you. "Intruders," calls a stern, feminine voice from the impassive visage of the door. "I don't know if Zoltun lured you here with promises of coin, or if you thought to breach these halls for some other reason--but it doesn't matter." There's a sense, as is often the case with ghosts, that Marunn isn't so much talking to you as she is talking to what memory she thinks she sees. "On the souls of my ancestors, you won't pass this door."
Hiromi	Hiromi turns back again when it's clear that the stairs up are to another, outer lay of defenses, turning to find the way down. She passes through defenders in the manner of one for whom the density of their armor is less important than its weight, and no weight is enough to prevent her from tossing the skeleton somewhere far away, and none too gently. What wounds the weapons give her along the way are ignored almost entirely, as if she barely needed her own body to remain whole to use it. There is, subtly, a little of her regeneration still active at all times, just to keep muscles and joints connected where they should be, at the moments she needs them. Arriving at the door, she says, "Zoltun. Who is?" Followed shortly by, "I hear your oath. Will you honor it? When I pass this door, know defeat. Surrender." She says to Flint, "Tell her, why you wish, for this place," but it's an aside, without waiting for a response. This time, she's going straight to the door to open it, ready to set herself into the stone, to gouge it with her feet as she wrenches with her arms, revealing (and flexing) that pure physicality that moves mountains. A direct contest is the surest way to fail against her, when she's been convinced it's worth taking up. If she were in a hurry, she'd take a running leap at it. But she'd rather give people a few moments to think.
Kukuru	There's a name being said. It doesn't mean anything to Kukuru at first, but she does eventually piece a few things together with what Flint's mentioned. "Are they... Protecting someone?" She asks aloud to her companions from the Concord and the Walrus alike, slowing down considerably to get some of that healing power distributed so nobody's stuck with lingering wounds for long. Hiromi certainly gets a good chunk of it so she can fight at her best, and the Walrus' crew gets plenty to make sure they don't even up dead themselves. Kukuru might very well be the one in the worst shape by the time they actually get upstairs. She doesn't have to think too much about which way to go, at least, with Hiromi leading the way. "If that's what's happening, though... Hmm. Maybe they're not mindless, either. Maybe we can convince them to help us~" She suggests, perking up already with an eager smile that only grows wider when she hears a voice coming from the door that stands before them. "He-llo there! I don't know who that is." She replies plainly, then cants her head slightly as the voice continues. Kukuru doesn't answer right away, instead looking over the door to see if there's any viewing ports or eyes on it. "Are you okay? Do you need any food or water or anything? I've got snacks from town and some stuff from home." She offers, then steps to the other side of the door when Hiromi works on getting it open. She doesn't move to try opening it right away, instead giving Flint and company as well as Marunn time to speak before aiding Hiromi with that. "We just wanna get the front door opened properly. The people living here... Oh! I guess they're your new neighbors now, huh? They want to protect their home, but they gotta get in here to do that. Do you wanna come meet them?"
Captain Flint	"Zoltun," the spirit spits in disgust, and the crumpled forms of skeletal dwarves threaten to reassemble. "Is the worst excuse for a komandant these halls have ever known. At least Exandru is principled. If Zoltun had his way, he'd sell every last Pargrunen secret and tradition, no matter how small or sacred, only to line his own coffers." So that would be, at least in part, what happened here--some kind of conflict between three 'komandants' that boiled over, if the talk of 'invaders' is any indication, at the worst possible time. "Fighting any would-be intruder to the death is the only way to honor that oath," rings Marunn's voice dangerously. "Surrender isn't an option." It's then that Flint, prodded by Hiromi, elects to speak up. "I feel the same way," he says. This, Marunn didn't expect--there is a sudden silence from the disembodied spirit. "Violence is the only recourse against those who would commodify everything that you are--for when you deny them, it is inevitably what they will bring to bear against you. We have no intention of perverting the Battery, or the White Forge within, for something so banal as commerce." "We represent a Concord, formed that the strong and the exceptional may rightly steer the world away from the rule of men like Zoltun. Short-sighted, unprincipled men." Billy, Joji and Silver keep hands near their weapons, but they know Flint well enough by now to know when he's on a roll. "Money is a reality we must confront; but it need not be a lasting reality. If you believe that the sweat of one's brow and the strength of one's arms should hold more weight than the vampiric accumulation of coin, then I urge you to reconsider the lens through which you view my comrades, and to allow us passage into your Battery, for we believe the very same." Surrender would be a great dishonor to someone like Marunn, and as Hiromi attempts to wrench the door open, she is harassed by the still very much intact weapons of slain soldiers, animated by ghostly hands. The door, imbued with Marunn's soul, can resist her, though as with any other stone it is bound to bend to her will even despite resistance. Flint, however, manages to convince the komandant to see your presence as something other than an invasion, and for a fleeting moment, it seems as if you're truly speaking to her, not trying to reach someone through a cloud of memories. Kukuru's kindness, in that moment, moves her. "...if only Exandru were here to see your kindness. I wonder if care and generosity like that, even in the face of hostility... if it would change his opinion of outsiders," she muses. There is a pause, then. "This... you..." A palpable confusion knots and whorls through the cold chamber. "Am I... dead? No, I... I am. I'm sorry, but even if I wanted to abandon my post here, I couldn't. I can't quite remember why we did it. Gods, I... can't even remember the whole cantec anymore." The door does slide open. "I can at least open the way for you. My soldiers won't bother you, but I can't speak for Exandru's or Zoltun's." Distaste bubbles up through the air at the mention of Zoltun. "Assuming any of his actually stuck around." Now that it isn't a matter of potentially dishonoring her vows, but a matter of helping kindred spirits, Marunn is more cooperative and alert, even if her memory has suffered in the decades since the fall of the Battery. "They'll be deeper in. I think... I think most of mine made their last stand here in the Great Hall."
Hiromi	Hiromi laughs, even while the defenders stab her. Her body is deceptively hard, and even an enthusiastic thrust is more liable to glance off than find blood, but enough do to keep Kukuru busy, to her own, selfless detriment. The Archwolf laughs, "'Coin!'" The joke is all in the single word, the thing for which she has never had any use, in contrast to 'secrets,' 'traditions,' 'principles,' and 'strength.' There's another thing to amuse her, which is, "Your oath, 'to the death,' already fulfilled." The door opens, and she rolls her shoulders, breathing in at the same moment as her wounds close. "'Exandru,' 'Zoltun.' We'll see. You," she says, turning just her head toward Kukuru, "will see 'Exandru,' maybe." If another of the dead chooses not to challenge her, that's fine, too.
Priscilla	Priscilla is . . . Uh . . . Very used to traps. Yeah. She navigates the garbage inventor man's humble abode of killer bullshit mainly by keeping a very careful eye out, assuming every single blind corner is some stupid ambush, refusing to trust stares, just phasing through doors rather than open them, and sticking right up against the walls at all times, assuming pressure plates and wires are generally a given. Maintaining invisibility is as much a matter of habit and preference as it is tactical, given how little it costs her. All the beter for the cabin having ambient mobs. The panic room is the first time she's come across the storied 'anti-teleportation ward' in a while, but she doesn't strictly need to invade it. Being chalelnged to prove she isn't with a bunch of assassins she knows nothing whatsoever about, Priscilla recalls distant arguments between Seifer and Majima about business card holders, sighs, rifles around to try and find where she even put hers from back then, and slides it under the door. "Durgan's Battery." Priscilla replies, promptly, softly, and no-nonsense, the second Galvino asks. She glances back to the corpses littering the floor, and absentmindedly causes the accumulated mist-like ghostly soulstuff residual to their freshly slain state to rise up out of them and coalesce in her hand. XP is XP. "Thou art one spoken of in high esteem by those very few who deem thy relation with the commonfolk irrelevant, Sir Galvino. If any of what I hath heard of thee is true, then thou shalt provideth me a means by which to read the history of those townspeople who may claimeth old descent, to learn the passphrase we shalt require to put its wrathful spirits to rest. The reward will be as thou nameth it. Am I made clear?"
Kukuru	While the defenders are still attacking, Kukuru divides her attention between door-duty and fending them off. Even though she knows Hiromi can handle it easily, she still doesn't like seeing it happening, and she takes care of it with the power of crushing and healing in equal amounts. While that's going on, she also learns a few new things about the (possibly former) players in all this: 1. Zoltun sucks. 2. Exandru's probably okay. 3. Marunn seems principled enough to work with. That's more than enough to convince her that trying to beat up the door or whoever's behind it isn't necessary, and her optimism bears fruit when Flint's able to convince her to see reason, and especially so at Marunn's hypothetical. "It's not too late to change his mind, is it? I mean, you're here, so maybe he's...?" Kukuru suggests with an affirming nod to Hiromi, not quite connecting a few other dots until later. "... Oh! Are you dead? You don't have to apologize for that. Was it recent?" She sounds like that might actually be relevant to something, but she doesn't elaborate on how. Instead, she starts putting together a few more things, eventually snapping her fingers once she comes to a realization while shuffling over towards the opening of the door. "Oh! There were a bunch of them saying 'Marunn' before. Is that your name? I like it~" And then it's time for introductions. "I'm Kukuru." A beat, and then the usual followup. "Ku-ku-ru. That's Hiromi, and that's Flint, and that's Joji, and that's John..."
Captain Flint	"Ah, yes," says Galvino. His accent, in stark contrast to most of the ones around Stalwart (and his robotic... co-habitant), is closer to an Italian accent. Flattery will get one everywhere with him, it seems, though his 'friend' rolls her filigreed eyes at the way he puffs up. "I assure you, you've heard correctly. Observe," he says, gesturing with a hand to the robot. "A mortal soul, transferred to an artificial body with no memory loss or aberrant behaviors. I introduce you to the Devil of Caroc." "Yessir," says the robot sarcastically. "I'm just the belle of the ball around these parts." Galvino shoots her a dirty look, but isn't otherwise about to let pass an opportunity to speak to someone that has something resembling kind words to offer. "She has a funny way of expressing gratitude for being saved from the gallows, doesn't she?" No wonder he's not well liked. "No matter," he says with a wave of his hand. "I have precisely what you need--" He notes the gathering of mist not with revulsion or surprise, but detached, scholarly respect--even slipping on a specialized set of goggles to observe some nonphysical phenomena as it passes. "...right... over... here. Ah, belfetto! Here we are." A very precisely carved pewter disc is held in both hands. Copper wire is wound tightly around three points, holding a pointed green crystal. "I invented it to detect souls that lived a previous life in the Battery, but, of course, it requires close proximity to the subject to work..." And Stalwart would apparently run him out of town if he even got close. "Simply hold it and point the smaller end towards one of those moronic villagers--if their soul has memories of the Battery, the disc will vibrate. In return... I ask an exchange," he says, his eyes alight with ambition. "I will offer my assistance in your business with the Battery as a researcher." "The townies'll love that," says his companion. "What they don't know needn't concern them," says the old man. "In return, you give me permission to return home and publish my findings, once your business there is concluded." So, he's that sort--not so much conerned with money as prestige. Assuming Priscilla finds the offer agreeable, he's more than happy to offer both the device, and his discreet assistance.