CASE STRIDENT - PART TWO SUPPLEMENTAL
Choral partition: secured, sleeveshelled
Remember name: Volter Piil
Strident base, investigatory, cogitocode: //venting halos, red rubric, her falldown light//
[EScapture mastermark: Volter's mind partitions slideway into the peel tower's ground level. It's dark: re-lens to heatsign. Heavy with serpents: ripple field. Floor secured, sleeveshells give praise and split personas and set tether.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
Sleeveshell: Bossy (p: shadow)
Partition tether-type: Ghost Choir (3)
Echo_none_
Tap the mark and check in... now.
Sleeveshell: (p: shadow) |
Sleeveshell: (p: tower) |
Sleeveshell: (p: steed) |
Bossy-- mark. Drift -41.9 |
Smartso-- mark. Drift -t 51.9 |
Antsy-- mark. D-drift -t 51.9 |
Goddammit, I'm off |
Synch incomplete |
S-s-synch incomplete |
I know |
Boss, Antsy and I are on the mark, you're drifting behind by 10 |
Just r-reading Smartso on the m-mark |
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We're drift -t d-dot fif-fifty |
Hold on. Okay |
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|
Synch complete |
Synch complete |
Synch c-complete |
Sleeveshell: Bossy (p: shadow)
Partition tether-type: Ghost Choir (3)
Echo_synched_
What happened? Smartso?
Sleeveshell: Smartso (p: tower)
Partition tether-type: Ghost Choir (3)
Echo_synched_
It's just been awhile. Hello, people.
Sleeveshell: Bossy (p: shadow)
Partition tether-type: Ghost Choir (3)
Echo_synched_
Set your capture echo-slates and move out. Watch your corners.
Moving |
M-moving |
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture: Bossy finds a junction stairwell and re-lenses to mist frames. B: Five floors including this one. Looks like the upper floor is also empty. Smartso quickflashes. S: No outward non-ghost sentience. Antsy re-lenses to coldsight: We're a-alone in h-here except for the fucking p-p-poltergeists. S: And their activity seems relegated to the three floors below. That's where the people are/were. Heavy serpent influence: ripple field. B: Ambient snakes are super fucking ambient. Antsy, stay here and cover the juncture. Smartso and I will check the lower floors. Bossy and Smartso slideway directly down. A: Sure. Keep sh-sharp down there.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture: Bossy and Smartso find the lower level to be supernaturally dark. They re-lens to mist frames. Their vision is still gauzed over with a thin utter-black. B: What's going on here? S: Someone bit the light. Snake of some kind. B: What, like the darkness is bleeding? S: That's one way to not look at it. Let me try something. Smartso sends out a pulse of psycholuminescence to jog the choir's host memory. V: What do you think you're doing? S: Sorry, prime, permission to deep access our time at Mssr. Hezelg's discourse on immaterial harmonics. We were asleep so I'd need all of us plus. V: Plus what? A: He m-means the ultra us. The one that's h-here when we're n-n-not listening. V: (sighs) Sure, do it.]
SOURCELIGHT
Choral re-partition: secured, sleeveshelled
Remember name: Volter PiilStrident base, investigatory, cogitocode: //venting halos, red rubric, the falldown light//
[EScapture: S: All done, thank you. Smartso quickflashes. S: Boom. The darkness normalizes. A: T-tickles. I c-can feel that all the way up h-here. Smartso laughs. He and Bossy re-lens to heatsign. V: Good job. S: I had a hunch that Mssr. Hezelg's aberresonance solutions could apply to phlogistric snakebites. B: Hey. Nerd. Would you shut the fuck up and remember what we're doing here? Bossy and Smartso split up and start searching the room. A pair of poltergeists throw chairs and tables at each other as they do. Maps, snapsacks, planning boards and useless calendars scatter across the floor. B: Some days, I swear.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture distorted: Ground level. Antsy re-lenses to mist frames, looking through the floor of the upper level above him. A: Hmm. I th-think Smartso's trick c-collapsed the extra dark upstairs, as well. Heavy with serpents: ripple field. Antsy quickflashes. A: There's a m-mental curtain up there. It m-m-might have been r-reading empty b-because it was just opaque. B: Stand by.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture: Smartso finds a large crystal lathe array untouched by the chaos. S: Bingo. Found tons of one-sided correspondence here. B: They couldn't get anything in or out of here? Lucky us. Smartso slideways into the lathe array. S: Let me read through what I can. V: Hypnosummarize all of it and I'll review the contents later. Heavy with serpents: ripple field. B: Floor's secure, I'll keep going.]
[EScapture distorted: B: Antsy, you're clear to go check upstairs. Antsy re-lenses to coldsight and moves to the stairwell. A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII. Heavy with serpents: ripple field failure. V: Don't move, Antsy, the field will tear. Wait for consciousness hardening. A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture: Bossy lowers into the floor below, most of it taken up by a makeshift refitting and repair station. B: Found some bodies. Bossy quickflashes. Heavy with serpents: ripple field. B: Two real, one fake. In the center of the room, fungal accretion grown up from the floor has turned the corpses of Strident operators into gruesome, too-elongated stalagmites. B: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII.]
[EScapture distorted: Bossy quickflashes. B: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII. V: Don't stare directly at those bodies. Gloss your lenses to impressions only, I'll narrow the images later in a ritualized setting. Bossy re-lenses to dreaming-atmosphocal. Three synodite armorsuits. Separate work benches. Two shredded. Third colonized by mimicules. Bloated to appear alive. Slim manual next to it. Bossy quickflashes. Heavy with serpents: ripple field. B: Serpents have just completely fucked everything in here. I'll grab a hypnosummary of that manual and withdraw. V: Copy that. Check on Antsy, he's holding a ripple field together and needs more mind.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture: Smartso hovers out from the lathe array, quickflashing. S: There's a small compartment inside this thing. Physical messages, too pressed together to read unconventionally. There's also a latch that needs lifting. Requesting skelepresence. Heavy with serpents: ripple field. V: Be gentle. Smartso's ectosphere pulses. V: Patience. Like you said, it's been awhile. The ectosphere extends a pair of semisolid tendrils. V: There. Smartso/Volter flip open the latch on the compartment and grab hypnosummaries of the missives inside. Skelepresence ends.]
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture distorted: Ground level. Bossy looks at a smudge in reality where Antsy used to be.]
Choral partition hardening: secured, sleeveshelled
Sleeveshell: (p: shadow) |
Sleeveshell: (p: steed) |
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Antsy, it's me |
IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII |
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I can only see your outline, buddy. A psychic sketch |
IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII |
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Come here. I got you |
IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII |
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Key this thought: her falldown light |
her f-falldown light |
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Good, I see you. I got you |
||
Mark |
Mark |
|
Hardening complete |
Sleeveshell: Bossy (p: shadow)
Partition tether-type: Ghost Choir (3)
Echo_synched_
Field's holding. You okay?
Sleeveshell: Ansty (p: steed)
Partition tether-type: Ghost Choir (3)
Echo_synched_
S-something upstairs has really p-pissed me off.
[Name remembered: Volter Piil]
[EScapture distorted: Antsy slideways up into a ramshackle room the Strident team converted into a crew's quarters. B: Wait. Bunks. More snapsacks. Clothing chests. A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII Corpses. A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII. Ash-Priest. A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII. Hunched over the fungus mounds of the Strident corpses B: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII its proboscis inserted A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII B: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII slurping out their liquified S: Cut the tethers it knows remains V: Cut the tethers it knows and their meanings and A: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII their B: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII beginnings S: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII and V: IIIIIIIII dist IIIIIIIII
ends]