VoidTrecker Express Mods ([personal profile] voidtreckermods) wrote in [community profile] middleofsomewhere2021-01-11 05:58 am

Fierce New World- Mission Start!

"Good Morning passengers. Today is day six of the month of Jelly." The voice echoes through the train as passengers wake up in their beds. Not long afterwards their SCA’s glow with the colour of the void and a holographic image will appear.

Preparation and Arrival

They have a short time to prepare for their mission, enough time to read their briefs, make decisions, meet in their teams and gather anything they may need.

A few hours later there is another announcement. "Shortly arriving on System #2207385. All passengers get ready to disembark. Next stop world #2207385. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

The train judders as it leaves the void, the colours from the windows turn into the blackness of space but quickly white as the train descends into the entrance of the biosphere.

The doors of the train open and passengers can enter the large white-walled holding bay. Currently, they are the only vehicle inside. There are four large doors around the bay each labelled with where they lead. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The doors open easily, and their SCA’s show a basic route, though the non-linear nature of the sectors mean that obstacles will need to be navigated. While they are in a closed world, there is a day and night cycle: the panels far up above are designed to make it seem like there is a natural sky, brightening and dimming every ten hours.

Red/Summer

Empty Streets

Wide streets divide sealed-off factories and manufacturing pods that tower up towards the ‘sky’. It is hot here, though the fumes from the factories are vented out, leaving the air breathable if overly warm.

Sometimes the pods are not yet finished, empty shells that can be sheltered in. There are also stations for living, with plumbing and basic amenities scattered through the sector. Places to rest as they move towards the center and the Great-Summer that they seek.

Helpmates

Where factories are still being built they will find Helpmates, operating machinery or moving materials.

They will not pause in their tasks for long but are programmed to answer questions so can be drawn into a conversation. Or, if the Voidtreckers are unfortunate, they will find those that are malfunctioning turning on them as they approach.

They aren’t too difficult to fight, but can do some damage with the machinery if they manage to take a Voidtrecker by surprise. They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down outright.

Wild Weather

Though warm, the corridors remain a constant temperature that is not too unpleasant for people. For the most part. Unfortunately, due to the malfunctioning state of things routes may become impassable. Boiling air, freezing blasts, electricity crackling across a pathway.

Their SCA’s do a good job of warning them, allowing them to change direction or shelter in nearby buildings.

Purple/Autumn

Exploring

The Autumn sector is the least complete of the sectors, with shells of habitation pods and not much else. No one is expected to live here until nearing the end of construction, and so the pods are unfurnished, many missing doors, some missing internal walls.

Outside the streets are wide and clearly made to be pleasant to walk on; it is airy, bright and spacious, if a bit eerie due to the quiet.

There are panels on the walls, to call Helpmates to appear. Here they are primarily for helping citizens, giving directions and offering aid.

Malfunctions

Since there are more helpmates there is more risk of them malfunctioning. They attack with or without weapons, using any tools they can pick up to attack. They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down.

They won’t chase people into the houses, their privacy programming preventing them from doing so.

Turned Around

The roads seem simple, built in a grid pattern around the houses. However, whatever is going wrong here is affecting the very streets themselves. Sometimes there will be a wall where there wasn’t before or roads go in circles. Sometimes they find themselves at a dead end, trapped until structures shift again.

Their SCA’s do their best to keep up but it can take a while for them to reroute and by the time they do, that path might be blocked too!

Blue/Spring

Patchwork Forest

The Spring sector houses the hydroponics and pastoral sections. It alternates between grazing land and more heavily forested areas with rows of pine-like trees in a checkerboard pattern, with empty plots interspersed. Walkways divide each square, but all squares appear able to move about as required, as though on a conveyor system.

There are clear walkways to avoid stepping on any newly growing plants. In the grazing land live flocks of camelid creatures resembling alpacas with blueish wool, on average a metre and a half tall at the shoulders. Helpmates appear here as if on a timer to feed the animals and tend to plants.

Destruction


If the Helpmates here malfunction they attack anyone nearby, cause havoc to any farming equipment and frightening the animals.

They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down. The panels here are less obvious than they are in the more urban sectors, low to the ground, looking almost like energy panels. But once they know what to look for they will be able to use them to shut down the Helpmates.

Stampede

Frightened animals are likely to flee and unfortunately in this case it means rampaging across the grazing land to the newly growing trees.

They will need to be calmed, returned to their grazing lands and the plants restored. Or it might be that the Voidtreckers can stop the Helpmates before the creatures get too spooked.

Orange/Winter

Exploring

The Winter sector’s primary concern is life support. Huge banks of air scrubbers form artificial cliffs, while other sections are tanks filled with water in varying stages of processing or recycling.

The paths here are a lot narrower than they are in other areas, sometimes requiring moving between pipes or scrambling over layers of railing.

There doesn’t seem to be any easy or straightforward path through the sector, their SCA takes them on wild winding routes through the machinery.

Help or Hindrance

The fluctuating temperatures here are causing problems with many of the pipes, several sections are flooded, others are in danger of being so.

There are patch kits in easily opened panels, designed to be used by the helpmates and indeed there are many helpmates out.

But some are less helpful, those that are malfunctioning are more likely to cause more damage than they are there to fix. They will attack any one who tries to interfere with them. They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down.

Patch Job

Once the malfunctioning Helpmates are dealt with the pipes still need to be fixed. The patch kits do not have any instructions but are simple enough that anyone with a basic knowledge of how to fix things should be able to figure them out- though the more knowledge and expertise they have the better the fix!

For those that don’t, many of the jobs will need more than one person and so for those that don’t mind taking instructions they will find an extra pair of hands is always welcome.

[personal profile] unfavorableinstigation 2021-01-15 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"Networked AI, even; I can't imagine the Great-Seasons-"

Did they even have a collective name, or just Overseers?

"-were meant to act in isolation from each other."

The shield, once no longer needed, dissolves with but a thought from Nita; she lets the energy-payment drain from her with a practiced flourish.

"That's no problem either. Though I'm not a mechanic!" she quips, poking a little fun at herself.
sciencegirl: (03)

[personal profile] sciencegirl 2021-01-16 03:20 am (UTC)(link)
"Well, I mean the term 'run' loosely. I mean more like an operating system. The Overseers could be the operating system but usually a task this large would have to be arranged by a massive mind, and the Overseers might have just been the people that started it and lost control of it."

Something is messing with these poor little things, though, and speculating when she can't actually test or investigate is getting her nowhere. So still without doing any decent job of introducing herself, she starts cleaning up the mess the insane Helpmate was making.

Take care of this first, then go grab a working Helpmate.

"I guess someone will find them. Getting life-support going is the most important task."
unfavorableinstigation: Nita looking right, holding a book. (I'm In The Book)

Want to request an NPC for the fixing-things part, or fade out before we get that far?

[personal profile] unfavorableinstigation 2021-01-16 03:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Nita nods, expression softening, and she makes her way over to help with clean-up as well.

"Yeah. Without it, can't have much of a biosphere project to speak of..."

Though, she can't help but wonder why all the sections are having problems. Why not just critically damage life support, and watch the rest fail?
Edited 2021-01-16 15:59 (UTC)
sciencegirl: (050)

We can fade or throw in a distraction

[personal profile] sciencegirl 2021-01-17 03:19 am (UTC)(link)
"Honestly I hadn't thought it was on purpose. I thought it was through a spreading system error. Which... right, bigger than we can fix. I think all we could do is leave a message for anyone that came behind us to fix."

Overseers or not, this seems to be made for more people to eventually show up to and inhabit. Not just a few people. Leaving some notes about what was substantially broken and places to monitor could be really important.
unfavorableinstigation: Nita looking right, holding a book. (I'm In The Book)

Fading in a round or two sounds good to me.

[personal profile] unfavorableinstigation 2021-01-17 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Nita nods.

"Preferably on something longer-lasting than pen and paper. Or the Helpmates themselves could help, though we might want to hold off on that until we know things are stable for them here."

Lest the Helpmates glitch into forgetting what the notes are!
sciencegirl: (092)

[personal profile] sciencegirl 2021-01-18 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"Maybe! I wonder if they follow orders. I've not really stopped to check. Come on! Let's go find that not-crazy one!"

She almost grabs for Nita with her hair 'cause she's used to occasionally hauling people around, but then remembers, right. Magic stairs! So she just spider climbs up over the edge.

"Hey, when this is all over, can you tell me how you did the invisible stairs stuff?"
unfavorableinstigation: Nita Callahan kneeling in the woods, drawing a glowing blue diagram on the ground while reading from a book. (Drawing a Spell Diagram)

[personal profile] unfavorableinstigation 2021-01-19 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
"What, the wizardry?"

Nita lets Entrapta head down first, so she can dismiss each stair after both girls climb it.

"Yeah, I can show you the air-compress work. It's - half-persuasion, half-math? Like most wizardries."

It's a non-chalant explanation, she knows - but then, with hair like that, perhaps taking things in stride was the way to go here.
sciencegirl: (080)

[personal profile] sciencegirl 2021-01-19 08:32 am (UTC)(link)
"Math! Okay, that I can understand." She sounds delighted to hear about how math is involved in this. Enough that she clasps her real hands in front of her and baby-claps with her... hair? Well the motion is there but the sound is just a soft happy rustle.

"It sounds like it'd be so useful! At least interesting to observe. I'm in."
unfavorableinstigation: Nita working with a Kernel (Wizardry Is Kid Stuff)

[personal profile] unfavorableinstigation 2021-01-19 01:53 pm (UTC)(link)
... Huh. Apparently Nita's guess was right.

"It really is. Come on, let me clear the rest of these steps."

After that there'll be (most likely) more walking, more wizardry, and more Helpmates.

Hopefully not nearly as ill-mannered Helpmates.