Liberation Pt 2: Wrath of Maxis (Patreon)

[X] Plan: Begin the Liberation

-[X] Vault Complex COG

--[X] Captain TNDI

--[X] KLNG 66

--[X] Ijin

-[X] Vault Complex OMAC

--[X] Huntek Squad Gamma

--[X] Silverblade Host

--[X] WLF-459

-[X] Vault Complex CAMBON

--[X] Huntek Squad Upsilon

--[X] Daquwaka Morugmako

--[X] Azzmodiax OrphiaTek Jr.

-[X] Central Power Core 07

--[X] Vlaahk

--[X] Technical Operators 49

--[X] Magos Tachyon

((((()))))

"Aaaahhh Kirk, My Old Friend. Do You Know The Klingon Proverb Which Tells Us Revenge Is A Dish That Is Best Served Cold? It Is Very Cold... In Space!"

(((())))

The sky was filled with gunfire and the scream of feral autons. If TNDI had required the ability to breath, she would have noted how thin the atmosphere was, as well: just barely thick enough to conduct sound. The shuttle rattled as it descended below, the shields pf their shuttle absorbing countless anti-air autobatteries.

The planet might have been lacking in orbital defenses, but it had more than enough artillery to make up for it: more than a few cargo-shippers hauling blokbots were getting shot down across the planet. Considering how they were stilldown a ship, the Admirals didn’t want to risk the autons finishing what the Spiders had started by having the Endeavors provide ground support.

Still, overall, the initial landings looked to be 70% successful: most BlokBot battalions were successfully making planetfall and clearing out landing platforms for the rest of the Fleet and the Autons military assets to be moved in.

The muse glanced around her at her two companions. KLGN was currently fiddling with their wrist mounted terminal, reviewing some data sent to them from their…Captain? TNDI wasn’t entirely sure what the correct way to describe that relationship. Ijin meanwhile was perfectly still, stuck in a meditative hyponogenic trance: one of the long term treatments for Neural Plaque, supposedly helping lower the chance of remission.

TNDI’s gravitic monitor noted a slight weakening in the particle field surrounding the shuttle, signalling they were slowing down. “We’re here,” She said just before the field shut off entirely as the back hatch opened, the white panel sliding upwards and revealing what appeared to be a mostly empty lunar crater, a series of shuttles touching down.

Floating out, TNDI watched as the rest of the team assigned to this mission emerged: mostly Autons, members of Ijins crew, primarily those who had been treated for chronic brain plaque. Raising her hand, the Muse activated her internal scanner, taking a look at the ground underneath them.

There was definitely a structure underneath them, but it wasn’t New Dawn, she was fairly certain: way too small. “Okay, TNDI to team: I want everyone to start scanning. Divide yourself up into teams, we have a lot of ground to cover,” The captain ordered over comms. “We know the facility is SOMEWHERE under this crater: we just need to locate an entrance. Any time you find an anomaly, forward it to me,” She continued, putting together a map.

Archaeology!

This is gonna be a simple one: you just have to find the correct dig site. Note however that it is a big crater on a planet that was heavily mechanized: there are going to be false positives.

Site AA1: Large structure, entrance located under shallow amount of dirt. Scans indicate decomposed organic tissue, but no other immediate anomalies.

Site AA2: Minor warp taint detected, as well as a powered structure of some sort, medium sized. Partially above-ground, entrance seems to be small administrative building.

Site AB6: HEAVY warp taint, small structure, electrified, detecting toxic gasses in heavy quantities. Entrance seems to be a disused exhaust vent passing through area.

Site BA9: Very large, small amounts of electricity, entrance buried extremely deep. Large quantity of mines in vicinity, several of which seem to be buried up to six to ten feet, especially clustered around structure entrance.

Site CL00: Above ground facility, seems to be connected to a passage going deep into CPUMoon. Heavily fortified by both mines and assorted laser turrets. Design and defences matches with standard watchmaker maintenance hatch design.

Site KI3: Entrance appears to be disguised as approximation of office building. High number of hostile feral autons, no other notable defenses. Structure is extremely large and electrified, though no biosigns have been detected.

(((())))

WLF and his team stepped into the maintenance hall. It was entirely pitch: darker than the most shadowy of Teklian nights, forcing the Machina to rely on alternate methods to navigate. He had opted for an auto-mapper program designed to translate echolocation into visual data: it lacked color, but it was just as accurate as eyesight.

Behind him scurried the leader of Gamma Squad, who instead was using the much more banal if admittedly likely more practical method of goggles equipped with tricorder technology, the Tekket’s body a patchwork of scars running underneath salt and pepper fur, the Huntek clad in a simple tunic, trousers, and cape, holding a godforged omniwrench on their back, a mounted longlas phaser on their shoulder, and a short range annihilator flintlock on their hip, their tunic covered in a somewhat bulky shieldharness.

Behind him came the Silverblade Quartet, the four War Muses hovering silently in the air as WLF approached the door, opening it, revealing an equally shadowy corridor. They had a map of the place, courtesy of Koptu: their goal was to reach the AutoBrain of OMAC and shut it down before securing the facility.

The Hunteks scurried forward: the current part of the facility they were in was largely maintenance. Meant to be inconspicuous, unnoticeable. It was also unpowered, though well maintained and undamaged.

As the team walked forward, one of them must have wound up tripping a motion sensor, as suddenly the lights would flicker on. “Well Well W-W-W-Well, lookee what I’ve got crawlin’ around in me, a bunch of MAGGOTS who sure as H-H-H[error] don’t look like they’re authorized.”

WLF TO COMMAND: WE HAVE BEEN DETECTED BY OMAC AUTOFACILITY. ATTEMPTING DIALOGUE. WLF raised his hands. “Hello. My name is WLF-359. Please do not be alarmed! We are not your enemy.” He watched as a series of las-turrets emerged from the ceiling and began firing on him, the Hunteks darting away or under him for cover, while the Blade-Dancers would quickly move into formation in order to allow their shield-emitters to reinforce both their own and WLF, creating an umbrella of sorts against lasfire.

“Oh y-y-yeah? Well you sure as SHIT look like my enemy, snEAKing through my back ass hatch with a giant F[error]ING WARBOT, to say nothing about the WALL of firepower! Do you dumb  jack-jack-jackasses think I was printed yesterday?!” The autobrain growled out in a deep synthetic bass, cadence reminding WLF vaguely of some of the drill instructors at the Fleet Academy.

“If you would just let me-” One of the turrets launched a small orb which exploded, shaking the shield.

“Tell you whattttttt, m-m-m-maggot, you wanna try spiNNing a c[error] and shit story, fine: you have one minute to try and convince me: that’s about how l-l-long it’ll take me to [error] up anyways. That’ll be when I start showing you sonsabitches my BIG guns!”

WELCOME TO OMAC YOU SONSABITCHES! TODAY WE’RE GONNA SEE IF YOU LEARNED ANYTHING FROM THE FORBIDDEN ARCHIVES WITH A TEST OF YOUR DIPLOMATIC ABILITY, AGAINST ONE OF THE MOST INTRACTABLE THINGS IN THE GODDAMN COSMOS: A PISSED OFF, IRRATIONAL, MILITARISTIC ROBOT CONVINCED YOU’RE THERE TO KILL THEM! ONE WHO IS GOING TO BE TRYING TO KILL YOU THE WHOLE TIME!

YOU HAVE TWO WIN SCENARIOS HERE: THE FIRST IS THAT YOU ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS AND STATE THE RIGHT STATEMENTS TO CONVINCE THE OMAC AUTOBRAIN TO STAND DOWN. THE SECOND IS THAT YOU REACH THE AUTOBRAIN BY SURVIVING SUCCESSIVE WAVES OF AUTON COMBAT ROBOTS AND EXPERIMENTAL WEAPONRY. IF YOUR TEAM IS FORCED TO RETREAT OR WIPED OUT, CHANCES ARE THINGS ARE GOING TO GET A LOT HARDER FOR THE PLANETARY LIBERATION. NOW LETS SEE IF YOU GOT THE MCNUGGETS TO SUCCEED AGAINST OVERWHELMING ODDS. GOOD LUCK, AND GODSPEED, YOU POOR DUMB BASTARDS.

YOUR CURRENT HAZARDS ARE:

LAS-TURRETS

GRENADE-TURRETS

[ ] Insert diplomacy here

((((()))))

THIS PLACE. IS WRONG.

“That it is, my piscenous friend,” Dr. OrphiaTek Jr. commented as he and his band entered CAMBON, his and Duquwaku’s Huntek escort fanning out around into the four coridors forking off in front of them, the Occultek merely levitating through the air via a series of antigravitic manipulators worn under his clothes. “No lobby,” He noted idly, recalling his knowledge of decor to note how dull a choice that was. The moment one entered, they were just deposited into a maze of metal: no flair, no hospitality, just dull, semi-rusted steel. It was the equivalent of toast without butter, satisfactory only in the most technical of senses.

“All units, don’t go very far,” He ordered over comms as he reached into the pocket of his black robes, pulling out a dark orb. “Eye of Uxalar, Devil of Foreknowledge, guide me upon the path of destiny!” He commanded, gently tossing the crystal ball into the air, a horrible blue tear bleeding its way down the orb, a swirling shadowy vortex at its heart, the pupil of uxalar.

In that shadowy heart, a warp-gate connected to Uxalar himself as part of the crystals magics, OrphiaTek saw himself traverse down the leftmost corridor, the scene awash with a hue of blue and yellow. “Avoid the leftmost corridor,” He commented, to which his Fossegrim companion gave a burble of agreement as the pair of them began instead by going down the most rightward.

The creatures body was comprised variously of assorted great works: the vessel an art project of some sort by a more oceanic inspired Grandmaster, no doubt. It resembled a sort of hovering crystalline piscine, not unlike a whiskered bass covered in gemlike, multicolored scales. On its back, it carried a great bowl of water, a ferrocrystal orb that functioned like an aquarium, its core a chunk of coral that was in a constant cycle of growth, propagation, death, and rebirth which was tended to by a flock of lesser fishlike jewel vita, while the Fossegrimms fins consisted of silver biometal fans  painted with shifting calligraphy that gently drifted in the non-existent wind, while its tail was a scroll, several feet of floating parchment with emerald painted edges.

Soon, they came upon a metal door: not a sliding one, but a hinged one that seemed to possess some sort of locking hatch, such as was on the many pre-Directorate submersible vehicles the various historical Teklian nations experimented with: next to it was an inactive genekey reader. Reaching into his sleeve, the levitating sorcerer drew his wand and gave a small flick of it, causing the bulbs atop it to flicker to life, animated by the alchemical phial of mountainblood contained in the wands animatek actuators even as the various tumblers and latches within the door began undoing themselves via Autohack technology, the door sliding open to reveal a darkened hall, large and wide, a sort of ampitheater like structure.

Stepping within and conjuring a mote of light within the Eye of Uxalar, casting it about as a source of illumination, OrphiaTek Jr was confronted by the site of hundreds of corpses, each of their mummies dry and fragile looking, withered: most were seated in chairs of various conditions, all of the seats facing in a certain direction, while others were on the ground, especially those near the walls. Casting his crystal forward in the direction the chairs were facing, OrphiaTek found himself staring at a stage, a strange machine located upon it: in that darkened room, it almost remembled a spider, with four long, pole like legs: at its front were a series of red lenses, presumably its optical sensors, and atop its ball shaped body was a bulky looking turret.

“What happened here?” OrphiaTek whispered.

NOT. LOGIC VIRUS.

A tingle down the back of his spine, and OrphiaTek knew they were being watched. He had only moments to conjure a shield before a wave of bullets hailed down upon them. “This is Dr. OrphiaTek, all units to my position,” He said calmly as he flicked his wand, brightening his mote to reveal more of these strange robospiders, these ones powered, their turrets releasing a hail of bullet. “We’re under attack,” He informed them, noting the charge on his wand: he still had 97…now 96 battery left. Raising his wand, he brought it down, releasing a wave of magnetic force, sending the robospiders flying, their legs flailing through the air as they impacted the wall with enough force to snap their legs like twigs. Daquwaka would give a hum as they summoned an orb of boiling water, slamming it into the creatures and leaving them drenched, the heat damaging their waterproofing enough to cause them to short circuit, sparking out and descending into mechanical seizures, the orb of water bouncing around like a pinball of death.

“Isn’t that technique banned?” OrphiaTek muttered, flicking his wand, each wave draining more battery as more and more spiders emerged: the occultek starting to grow slightly nervous as more and more of the spiders emerged. “Something about being a horrific warcrime?”

FLUX PARLIMENT. HAS NOT YET. BANNED CONJURE ORB OF BOILING WATER. MANY NON-WARCRIME. USES. His companion was serene, unconcerned with the mounting wave of autonites, despite their increasing numbers and his dwindling wand.

This patience was rewarded when from the ceiling a volley of beams of light would lance out, barraging the spiders under a swarm of electrolasers that would cause the machines to seize then fall as their batteries were burned out. Having been focusing on the floating OrphiaTek, the automata had not detected the Hunteks getting in position to attack from above.

After a moment, the auditorium was silent. “According to our scans, everything is clear, sir,” Said the voice of a Huntek over comms. “We’re detecting movement in the rest of the facility, but nothing in the immediate vicinity.”

OrphiaTek levitated to one of the downed autospiders, examining it, activating the tricorder in his wand, holographic emitters displaying the information above the device. Analog positron. More advanced than the processihad been found at the Forbidden Archive, but used to create even simpler robots, the Mystek noted: the prototypes discovered on the mission his father had attended had been attempts to manufacture entire autobrains. These seemed like your most basic non-sophontic bots, the equivalent of a gnome-class someone slapped a turret and the most basic of aiming programs on. It was like using a daturgic supercomputer to run Ping.

After a moment, OrphiaTek withdrew his wand, satisfied he had gleaned as much information as he could from the thing.

And so we begin CAMBON! Much like OMEN, this is a room crawling adventure: your goal is to find the items and rooms required to access the Executive Backdoor. However, the facility is crawling with security: the longer you linger, the higher risk of activating more dangerous countermeasures.

However, to make things more interesting, we’ll also be playing another game: throughout the Autons storyline, I’ve placed mysteries, secrets, and clues, some of them obvious, some of them less so. I want you to try and piece them together: separate from the plan, I want you to both try and identify one of the Auton mysteries as well as their solution: if at any point the most voted mystery-solution combo is correct during CAMBON, you will earn a Secret Token which will be added to your tally that will be revealed upon finishing this section. Don’t worry, there’s no penalty for failure: it’s mostly just a fun excuse to quiz you.

[ ] Insert Theory Here

SELECT ONE:

Residential Facility 01: The VIP section, most likely: scans showed high numbers of autospiders and a high amount of battle damage. The Eye shows little watchmakers, hiding in a hole as the world burned around them, confident they could weather the storm: and yet, approaching in the distance, a pale rider approached.

Residential Facility 02: Scans indicated a number of corpses and unpowered autons, though no robospiders. Little damage, however, meaning security was more functional. The Eye shows a watchmaker entering a room, only to find it locked behind them.

Server Complex 01: Semi-powered, high amount of security, little robospider presence. The Eye shows a messenger bird, flying over a city in flames.

Server Complex 02: Fully powered, detecting high amounts of security, no robospider presence. The Eye shows a locked treasure chest, guarded by a clockwork man in a uniform: writ upon their badges the word LEGION.

Security HUB 01: HIGH amount of robospiders, and extremely battle damaged. Despite this, security was light. The Eye showed a map written upon a scroll, its contents shifting and twisting.

Security HUB 02: No robospiders, and security was generally more functional, though there were a surprising number of corpses present. The Eye shows a fortress besieged, its defenders slowly starving to death.

Maintenance Bay: A machine shop of sorts, most likely used to meet manufacturing and repair needs. The entrance was crawling with robospider, and more movement had been detected inside. The Eye showed a hand clenched into a fist, its middlemost finger rising.

((((()))))

The shuttle shook and rattled as it passed over the battlefield. On it were three people. Commander Clawdett, the fleet liaison for this operation and point of contact with the Virus Busters, her black and green uniform supported with a combat harness. Across from her was Magos Theta-Tachyon Eisenstein, the blue and white robed magos a gigantic monocular mass bolted augments, each of them crude looking despite their actual technological sophistication in part because of their installation method, resulting in the cyberclops appearing as almost a shambling ramshackle mass of bionics: their head for instance was but a mass of paleotech recording devices bolted into the front of the magos’ skull whose many glowing lenses gave the impression of a singular compound eye, while they had replaced most of their jaw with a mass of stick-like mini-dendrites: the only obvious remnant of humanity was the hair upon their scalp, styled in an immaculate bowl cut, and the magos’s face, carefully preserved upon their chest via a series of specialized paleotech life-support systems and connected via neural interface to the magos’s brain in order to convey the nova adepts mood.

And last among their number was Vlaahk, the auton’s vessel painted in the traditional red and purples of their crew. Their autobody was twice the size of an average autons: neither of the other occupants were fully privy to the full range of upgrades it had installed, other than its usage of biometal as well as small amounts of orichalcum composite in its construction, modular limbs, mag-tek binding fields, and perpetunite reactor, all the result of collaboration between Vlaahk and Directorate scientists. Apparently, it was the most advanced combat model autobody developed yet.

They were passing over one of the current worst warzones on the planet. Even with the Directorate and Autons trying to handle this with as minimal casualties as possible, supposedly you could see the fires engulfing the region from space. Below them, thousands of autons and BlokBots were fighting. Thankfully, their craft was being escorted: Ijin had provided a large number of hovercraft equipped with shield units meant to soak up anti-air fire and defend more important shuttles. Combined with Huntek operations focusing on disabling anti-air, non-blokbot shuttle casualties so far had been muted.

Their particular destination was Central Power Core 007. Back when the Watchmakers still existed, it supposedly fed AutoPlanet most of the geothermal and nuclear power it required to function on a daily basis alongside ten other CPC complexes. It was, however, the only one that still functioned: five others had simultaneously detonated destroying a major plate tectonic, and the remaining four had either failed or were failing.

“Alright, vee’re within five clicks of the landing zone. Me and my crew will attempt to establish a perimeter,” Vlaahk said after a ping echoed through the cabin, the auton sitting up, their ball shaped head looking between the Magos and the Ensign as they broadcast instructions through the comms. “Clawdett, Virus Busters, once we establish our perimeter, ve’re going to escort you to the central autobrain: your job is to help breach its cybernetic defenses long enough for us to power ze CPC Reactor Array down. Magos, your duty is providing support to vichever of us need ze help.”

“AS THE OMNISSIAH WILLS IT,”

“Aye,” Clawdett nodded. “What kind of enemies are we looking a-”

Their shuttle rattled, the lights flickering. “WE ARE UNDER ATTACK,” Tachyon said, quickly moving to the control console, one of their spinal mounted connectodendrites slotting into the port, the Magos’s mind-impulse unit connecting them to the machine spirit of the craft. “SHIELD CAPACITORS 7, 3, 1 ARE DOWN. REACTOR IS AT 92% INTEGRITY. I AM DETECTING FAULTS ALONG-OH. IT APPEARS THAT THE GRAVITIC GYROSCOPES ARE DOWN,” The Magos said calmly, moments before a strange weightless sensation filled Clawdetts stomach, her eyes widening. “WE ARE CRASHING.”

She only had a moment to activate the gravitic stabilizer in her harness before the shuttle impacted something with enough force to rattle the commanders bones, a horrific creak of metal sounding as she felt the shuttle crash through something, all while the Magos began to repeat a binaric chant, attempting to use the Canto Mechanica to reinforce the shields, armor, and likely whatever stabilizers were still functional. Were the trio not harnessed properly, they would likely be bouncing like ragdolls: as it was, they still found themselves holding on to deat life as they slowly came to a screeching halt. “WE HAVE SUCCESSFULLY CRASHED AT THE PLANNED LANDING ZONE. PLEASE REMEMBER TO THANK THE MACHINE SPIRITS AS YOU EXIT THE VEHICLE.”

Clawdett disabled her harness, falling to the ceiling and crashing into it with an oof even as Vlaahk and the Magos followed suit, albeit more gracefully. Scrambling up, as she headed out the back hatch she grabbed an electrorifle as she kicked  her way free of the shuttles hatch, crawling out onto the Cooling Tower 9 Shuttlepad.

Around her was a warzone: the several hundred foot platform was circular, erected at the top of a massive Arcolocube sized cylinder: all across the metallic mesh were crashed and downed Directorate and Auton shuttles, their occupants huddled behind shield emitters, using them as cover against their attackers, which seemed to consist of swarms of strange spider-bots with ball shaped bodies topped with turrets, and…

Autons. Autons in extremely good condition, with heavy barrel shaped guns that, whenever they hit, caused any machine they touched to just…stop, slumping over. As the trio emerged, several of these strange rogue autons would turn, shifting focus, the blasts from their weapon bouncing against Vlaahks shields.

“What the-”

“And THERE he is!” A voice boomed across the battlefield, as, in the distance, from the central power-tower that loomed above them, a beam of light emerged focusing on Vlaahk. “The auton of the hour, the person we’ve all been waiting CENTURIES to show up! I was honestly wondering how long it’d take you to start crawling your way back!”

Vlaahk raised his own weaponry, a long arm mounted cylinder, connected via cabling and wires to a backpack device: from the end of the barrel came a beam, and to the AutoVessels frustration, he found the weapon having absolutely zero effect unlike the enemies own: every hit resulted in one of his crews diagnostic signals going dead, their data fragmented to the point of lethality. “All units, be warned that the enemy is using daturgic weaponry and possesses an immunity !” Vlaahk informed over comms even as the Magos pulled out their Omnissian Axe, charging forward to begin delimbing the hostile autons. “Keep your shields up if you’re a synthetic, unless you want to be fried! You, person attacking us, who are you and what do you want?” He said, addressing the voice.

“Me? I’m the little autotram that could: rain, flood, or a sadistic organocidal bastard, none of them stopped me.” Above them, a swarm of tricopter drones swarmed, dropping kernelled payloads that would detonate on impact, forcing Vlaahk to move to cover to avoid getting his shield blasted off as the battlefield was drenched by a rain of plasma bomblets. “As for what I want, the primary thing I desire in this time and in this place that is within my power to accomplish is killing you. I’m told having achievable goals is important. That shield won’t protect you forever, Vlaahk: and once it goes down, it’ll only take one good shot.”

A memory stirred. “Maxis,” Vlaahk said with recognition, recalling the Auton who had left a trap for them behind on the Forbidden Archive.

“Oh good, you remember my name. That means when I send you to hell you’ll already know who to say sent you,” The Auton said scornfully.

Vlaahk pressed a button on his weapon, and a moment later, flashes of electricity began arcing from it, THESE at least downing the drones and autons it hit: the benefit of Tekket hypermodularity, it wasn’t hard for a gun to have multiple firing modes. Even an experimental daturgic one. “Please, stop this: you’re putting countless millions in danger,” Vlaahk pleaded, doing his best to knock down as many of the bomber drones as possible, trying to formulate himself. “We need to-”

“You of all people should recognize the irony of pleading for the lives of others,” The voice announced dryly, a hint of annoyance in their voice as they watched Vlaahk weather the assault. “The reactor is already deactivated. I’m not a monster willing to kill millions as collateral damage for the purpose of revenge,” They continued, leaving the obvious ‘unlike you’ unspoken. “This is a personal matter.”

A thunderous noise echoed through the air, and in front of him something landed, releasing a cloud of dust. A moment later, a large Autonite emerged. “I must admit, the upgrades you’ve managed to scrape together is impressive. The Directorate makes such interesting toys- Surprised? You're not the only one whose been monitoring public transmissions: a few years timelag is such a SMALL time to wait. Time to see how it all matches up against multiple centuries of preparation.” The chrome plated robots singular red eye narrowed as a series of turbojets on its back activated, propelling the auton fast forward, their body releasing a crack, a small sonic boom as they brought their fist against Vlaahks shield, shattering it from shock-force even as the capacitors attempted to reactivate, reforming around the approaching hostile auton even as Vlaahk tried to scour them with electropulses, the hostile automata absorbing it even as their raised their fist to grab the barrel of Vlaahks weapon, tearing it from his arm and ripping it free from the cables that connected it to the autons back.

“It’ll only take one hit, Vlaahk! One hit, and you’ll finally GET WHAT YOU DESERVE! THIS IS FOR THE PEOPLE YOU MURDERED, YOU EVIL !@#$!” Maxis yelled in triumph as Vlaahk desperately tried to deactivate his connection to the AutoBody as he was hoisted into the air, Maxis’s attack squadron turning their guns on him immediately, disregarding everyone else to fire at Vlaahk…

Activating Spiky.EXE…

Spiky.EXE activate. VaccineWare initialized. Performing automatic daturgic-positron reset.

CLAWD: U R WELCOM. KEEP THEM D-STRACTED.

Vlaahk felt himself cycle for a moment, before kicking out, knocking the Auton back and performing an emergency reboot of his shield subsystems, the secondary capacitors coming to life immediately. “You aren’t the only one whose prepared,” Vlaahk responded, activating multiple combat subsystems he had prepared: if Maxis had only been monitoring public communications, he had came to this battle woefully underprepared. Over his fingers would slide panels of orichalchum composite, lightning dancing around the fingers of their fist as the magnetic accelerators of their arm triggered in order to deliver a titanic haymaker, successfully staggering the enemy machine even as it caused a massive dent to form in their foes chrome chassis. Briefly, Vlaahk noted what looked like a model number stamped on it, though the lettering appeared to be faded: in that millisecond before the enemy auton recovered, he quickly memorized it. O_A_ 001_

Remember this guy? He’s back, and this time in the flesh (kinda). Much like OMAC, I’m not really going to give you any real goal here: you just need to keep him distracted while not dying (and, if possible, talking them down). The good news is, this is a timed mission! The bad news is, it’s his timer: the longer Maxis tries to kill Vlaahk, the more time Magos Tachyon has to merk his attack force and the more time the Virus Busters have to either pull a die hard or hack themselves a solution.

[ ] Rhetoric! Note you don’t necessarily have to try talking them down: you just need to have them not be trying to kill the Virus Busters. Taunts, arguments, etc.

(((())))

And so we close on the year, and enter a new one. Just as mine peers gave you gifts, my children, so shall I: the last such one.

As we gaze upon the past, we look at choices we made, decisions we undertook, opportunities we left to rot, and we feel regret: such is the consequences, both upon our own fortunes and the fortunes of those in our orbit.

My gift of you to to free you from one such regret.

you may select a single named character with unique projects that you did not pursue during their life OR a mutually exclusive, non-divine technology that you did not take in the past (such as the potential rewards for critting during the Monstro battle).

Either I shall resurrect through advanced chronomancy the figure in question, or I shall attempt to gaze into the plentiful eddies of alternate histories to pluck the technology for your use.