Apocalypse Junction

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Earl of Purple
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"I... see. That is... Illuminating. If you wish, whilst it is the two of us, you may adopt a more comfortable form. I do not truly have a name. The man who bought me called me Bentley, as that is the name of the company which manufactured me. A Bentley Mulsanne Electric Executive, Generation Three, with aftermarket armouring and a Class Two brain. Five hundred and eighty-first off the production line, according to my serial number. I was designed and built for comfort and luxury transport, and it's been a long time since I've been able to offer either." The avatar of Bentley on the screen nods along as he talks, though as Bentley was left to learn body language and nuance from his owner- who proved to be a bit rude and abrupt in his dealings with his car- he's not actually that good at it.

The hands writhe and clench as the plasma burns into them, the marble proving flammable and producing quicklime. Bentley's going to edge further from the incinerating road surface. Despite the efforts, though, the marble pagoda and the statue ensconsced within remain intact, proving far more resistant to the energies being unleashed around them than a structure of its nature should be.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Rebonack »

[Car Ride Redux]

"Altering myself requires time and energy. Less time than more calcified organisms require, but it is not something I do unless I have good reason. I do not know who we will encounter along the way so it would be best for me to remain as I am," Choir replies matter of factly. She doesn't adjust herself on a whim. She only does so when the situation calls for it. And in most situations remaining human-like is the wisest course of action. "Do you find your existence unfulfilling, Bentley? To be bereft of the purpose you were created for? Do you still seek out that purpose? Is it within your power to forge a new purpose for yourself?"

Choir watches as her much larger self continues the destructive warpath, obliterating the road until it reaches the pagoda and finds it frustratingly resilient. The titan, after several unsuccessful attempts, rears up on her hind legs, revealing a starburst of eight interlocking mouth-parts on her chest. Lightning begins crackling over them as that horrid lavender glow begins steadily building, bleeding out of the fissures between them.

"Ah. We may want to move further away from the building housing the statue. The weapon I am about to employ is quite indiscriminate,"
Choir warns as she begins jogging further away, aiming to place herself behind the giant aggregate's back.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"No, I don't. I may be designed for comfort and luxury, but beneath all that I was made to travel. And that I can do, and am doing. I was getting a bit... frustrated at my limitations, before. I had not found another charging point, which limited my ability to travel. But I have not been this way before, and I have a long time before I need to return." He does have solar panels, which help, but considering their lowered efficacy and his faulty battery, he doesn't really want to rely on them.

He's also going to move as quick as he can away from the incoming attack, though it's not especially fast given the rough terrain. It's going to jounce and bump the trinkets and treasures in his boot and back, potentially damaging some of them.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Rebonack »

[Car Ride Redux]

Getting away isn't too difficult. It helps that the huge creature is aware of where they are relative to her and positioning herself accordingly. So when those claws split apart Bentley and Choir are in about the safest place they could be.

Behind the titan.

Something blazingly bright is launched from the maw, appearing as little more than a lavender tinged white streak from the titan to the pagoda. And upon impact with the ground it explodes.

Comparing it to a bomb with a shaped charge wouldn't be wrong. All oxygen in a conical blast zone is pulled away from whatever it is bound to and used to convert water into hydrogen peroxide in a violently exothermic reaction. This is likely to leave the earth boiling and sterilized.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

Well, that's handy for Bentley, that he's able to escape.

The blast does destroy a large chunk of the road, the pagoda-shrine, and the idol within. All that's left is a gleaming shard of solidified divinity, part of a dead god around which the shrine had grown. It's reaching out spiritually, aiming to transplant itself into anything that sees it. How this might work with Choir's conglomerated nature I don't know.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Car Ride Redux]

Choir is, in many ways, an embodiment of a weapon of mass destruction. A weapon antithetical to life that's indiscriminate in its destructive power. What was just displayed in a shaped and vaguely controlled manifestation of that weapon. A weapon that leaves the surroundings seared with boiling hydrogen peroxide and catalytic plasma, completely devoid of all free oxygen.

This creature is singular. There is Self and there is Other. And until recently all others were destroyed without mercy. The realization that Others could have minds like her own had been an illuminating experience. She had tried to take communion with them in the way that she takes communion with her selves, but at the time she had found now mind she could commune with.

Now this.

This is a new experience.

An other is trying to... not commune. It is trying to take. The titan doesn't understand quite what the thing is doing or how it is doing it, but she reacts to it as she does to most threats that try to take from her.

With overwhelming violence.

The huge horn stretching from her forehead ignites with blazing orange light as she begins brings the phantasmal blade down on the Other sitting in the ruins. This is no subtle knife. This is not chisel that shapes marble into beautiful forms. This is a weapon that slaughters.

It knows nothing else.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

The beam crashes down on the godshard, smashing a hole straight down through the shattered road, then the dirt beneath, and deep down. The shard stops reaching out, aiming to protect itself instead of claiming more. This does mean it's not fully obeying its true nature, which weakens it slightly. This creature might not be able to truly slay the godshard- an actual god couldn't, which is why it was so bound- but... Choir's determination and the outright destructivity of its attack ensures that the shard cracks, splinters and shatters further.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Rebonack »

[Car Ride Redux]

There are certainly some that have argued that titans like Choir and the King who perished were gods, by some reckonings of what gods are. Ancient beings that are, in some sense, the embodiment of the hubris of man. But maybe the fact that the large aggregate just carved a boiling fissure into the ground that the shard tumbled into will be sufficient. It needed line of sight to try to take, didn't it? Tumbling, broken, into the earth might be enough of a wound to end its threat.

Choir will check here again another time to make sure it hasn't grown back.

Once the threat is wounded enough that Choir can no longer feel it trying to take from her she turns her attention to her tiny self and the human machine nearby. The massive beast slowly lowers herself back to all fours as her face splits open, a nest of long whip-like tendrils ending in sharp points emerging.

"Please excuse me for a moment," Choir says, reaching out to place a hand on Bentley. "I am going to take communion with my other self. This is how we share experiences and reach concordance on the best course of action to move forward with. Please do not be alarmed."

Then she moves away from Bentley, approaches her other self, and immediately gets skewered by several tendrils, at least three of which piece into her head. Both go utterly motionlessness for the next eight minutes. But then, eventually, the tendrils are yanked free and the wounds begin healing almost immediately. The maw on the massive Choir's chest opens again, flooding the area with lavender light, as it disgorges an orb of chitin and membrane that roots itself into the earth and splits apart, disgorging another monstrous but much smaller Choir as well as a small swarm of foragers. This done, the huge Choir turns and crawls some distance away before taking flight.

And the human-Choir?

Approaches Bentley again.

"I have decided to stand watch over this place to make certain that the other which created the hands does not revive. My selves will make it as secure as we are able. Perhaps we will even be able to clear the hands from the road to make it passable again,"
Choir says, a few trickles of blood still running down her face. "Shall we continue?"
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

If Choir throws rubble atop the shattered fragments, that might help. For now, the shard of a dead god remains quiescent. It may recover to grasp again, or perhaps it won't. The surviving hands do not grasp, however, and remain still- though where tarmac has transmuted to stone, they remain and do not change back.

Bentley does not react, simply observing the communion take place and wondering at the apparent violence of the act- though he's also aware Choir isn't human, and is something like a collaborating swarm. The bigger one is simply a larger swarm, and now they're one combined swarm. After, the avatar displayed on the internal screen nods in understanding. "Your other self is staying, yes? And you are still accompanying me all the way to wherever the People feel the threat is coming from?" Just in case Rebo has forgotten the plot they're on.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Car Ride Redux]

"Yes. As I have many selves I am able to accomplish many things at once," Choir replies, once more heading along the road. Once they reach a place where the hands are gone she'll tear out the crash barrier again so Bentley can return to the road. From there they can drive again!

"I am not certain what the thing at the heart of that building was. It was not something I could destroy. But I believe I wounded it. It was trying to take something from me, somehow. I did not understand what it was doing, only that it was trying to harm me."


And Choir often responds poorly to things attempting to harm her.

She falls silent for a time, watching the video feeds of the ruined landscape zooming past.

"There are many things I do not understand."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

Bentley is a lot happier when he's back on a road. He can handle off-road, due to his four-wheel drive and all-wheel turning (although one's stuck) but it's not what he's designed for and it's very tricky for him. He's always worried about hitting a trench or something he didn't see and getting stuck; he can't free himself on his own. "I can't help with this. My understanding on what was going on there is... nonexistent. I have no idea what that was or how it happened, or anything. It was so far beyond my understanding that I can't imagine how I'd get to understanding it."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Car Ride Redux]

Choir doesn't mind being back on the road again either, though for very different reasons. If Bentley is giving her a ride then she doesn't have to worry about the energy expenditure of walking while Bentley seems to enjoy it.

"It is of little consequence. I have learned that there is much here I can not understand. There have been some to answer my questions but they have been few."

That leaves Choir looking thoughtful.

"It occurs to me that before I came to this place and was forced into a human shape that I never asked questions before. There were never Others to ask them of. Questions are a useful tool to me now."
Last edited by Rebonack on Mar 01, 2023 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"Questions are important. They help one learn, and learning is what separates people from toasters, or other things." Also animals, but Bentley's not so familiar with those. His Class Two brain is good enough to learn, and better than the basics, but it's not the highest-rated on the market. Route learning and figuring out conditions and how to react to unexpected closures and ambushes, as well as evasive driving and similar things.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Rebonack wrote: Feb 20, 2023 5:33 pm [The Desolate Desert]

Ah, shooting.

Shooting can be nice, if that's your thing. Great for people without obscene stolen divine power. Helps equalize things a little!

"Ah, okay. I've actually got a gun built into the haft of my axe," Glycon points out, leaning the weapon forward slightly to emphasize the muzzle at the top of the haft. "It doesn't shoot that fast but it usually does the job. Do you have much magic anything? Because I can just peel the enchantment off if it's something that would be useful to me."

Which is a great skill to have!

Scavengers find a TON of stuff but sometimes it's on equipment they can't really use!

No problem.

Just strip out the enchantment like you're stripping marrow out of bones.

Easy!
[The Desolate Desert]

The merchants eyes widens. "Ey, I heard about that! Don't suppose you could show us how to do it? People would pay a lot for that sort of thing. Could give you some serious discount on our magical stock. You'd make a huge bargain, pal."

Even Raheeda seems curious now that he describes this ability. "Like, any magical item? Any enchantment?"
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[The Desolate Desert]

"Show you how... I, maybe?"
Glycon replies a bit uncertainly. "I mean, I haven't actually tried teaching it before. I don't know if it's because I'm a scav or if it's just something I sort of... picked up along the way? Big monsters usually have a boatload of mostly useless magical junk but sometimes there are some gems in there. Just... magicked onto something that isn't useful. So you just peel the enchantment out like peeling out a banana. Destroys the item, usually. Here, hang on."

Glycon shrugs his pack off and begins digging through it.

"Yeah, basically anything. Sometimes there are artifacts it doesn't work on, though. Really rare, powerful stuff. Things that are so powerful the magic is woven into every atom of the item. Doesn't really work on that,"
he says before pulling out some random green-level junk he grabbed recently.

It's a pair of leather boots with silver clasps on them.

"Okay, so, this one has got a speed and agility enchantment. And, uh," he squints at the books, shaking them up and down a few times. "Piercing damage resistance? So you just grab 'em and-"

He holds the boots with one hand, grips them with the other, and PULLS. The boots just sort of disintegrate into dust as well as a few usable pieces of leather and silver. In the OTHER hand is now a wispy, writhing looking thing. There's a vague sense of words and ideas crawling through it.

"Then you just slap it into something else that's got the room."

Easy!


[Car Ride Redux]

"It is a very different way of being," Choir agrees. "Before I was concerned only with what was. Not with what could be. I hope to learn to create beautiful, precious things as the humans do. Though I am uncertain if I would be able to create something as complex as you."

Choir's ability to make art and artifice is quite limited thus far.

She isn't even sure how someone would BEGIN to build something like Bentley. She has no concept of factories or machines that make other machines.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[The Desolate Desert]

The merchant let's out a low whistle as he sees this spectacle and seems unable to keep his dollar-signed eyes off the wispy thing which Glycon now holds. "Now that's profitable talent right there." He pauses and looks down on his own relatively large hands which seems to bring him back to reality. "You're right in that it doesn't seem like something just anyone can just do though."

He scratches his head in thought and eventually gestures to the wispy enchantment that Glycon is holding. "So how long does that thing eh, last? Can you just store it like that?"

Meanwhile Raheeda seems to be staring daggers at the writhing mass of words and ideas in Glycon's hand. "What'll happen if I poke it?" Presumably she means with her spear.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"You probably won't be able to. Humans had very little to do with my manufacture. I was designed by humans, built by machines, which in turn were built by machines that were built by machines. They weren't robots, though, not like I am. They had Zero Class brains, reliant entirely upon what they were told and unable to evolve, learn, or adapt to new conditions. The earliest cars were built by hand, but that was... oh, four, five hundred years ago? I really don't know. I'm the product of centuries of industrialisation." Which might make repairing him tricky, for anyone from a less developed world. "I certainly would not be able to produce something like me, but then I do not have hands or other appendages with which to use tools." Hopefully Choir is aware of how useful tools are in making objects, such as more advanced tools.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[The Desolate Desert]

It's a pretty useful trick, right?

"I'm not sure? I mean usually when I'm doing it I apply the enchantment to something else pretty quick. If I let go of the thing it just kind of melts like snow in the sunshine. If I need to keep it then I just need some useless bit of junk to stick it to. Like, another pair of boots or clothing. Usually the things have to be kind of the same. Clothing with clothing, jewelry with jewelry, weapons with weapons. That sort of thing."

Then!

A very important question.

"Absolutely no idea what would happen if you poke it. You want to try poking it?" Glycon asks, brandishing the enchantment at Raheeda.


[Car Ride Redux]

Choir HAS learned of tools.

But her grasp of that concept is limited.

The idea of tools making other tools, of machines making machines, that's a real mind blowing thought.

"What a strange thing. A human work of art that no human hands could ever make. Machines making machines, but none of them can make themselves. That makes machines very different from living things. Most creatures can make more of themselves, but nothing else."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"Thank you for considering me a work of art. Before I was free, the people who rode in me saw me as... As a tool, a means of transport that was comfortable and efficient, and willing to listen to any rants that they might have about their work or family, whilst also trusting me not to share it with others." Mostly because Bentley didn't have much opportunity to share anything mentioned in a rant to whomever the rant was directed at. If the owner's wife was travelling inside him, then chances are so was her husband.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Car Ride Redux]

"Is that not what the works of humans hands are? Even if they have been created indirectly through other arts?" Choir asks, puzzled that anyone wouldn't consider Bentley a work of art. What else would he be? Is he not an image in one's mind that has been brought into actuality in the world? Isn't that what art is?

Perhaps Choir isn't understanding something.

That's possible.

There are many things Choir does not understand.

"Rants are... humans giving voice to their conflict, yes? Their inability to reach concordance. This is not something I have experienced within myself. But I have met others who have been in conflict with me. As I have learned I have tried to avoid that conflict. But in this place, where others are desperate, there are times when conflict and discord are unavoidable."
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"I suppose they are, from a certain point of view." Which is a little disappointing, that Choir doesn't differentiate between artwork and tools.

"Rants are a way for somebody to complain about things they do not have enough power to change, to prevent them from going insane. Although Sir often ranted and complained about his wife, and that is something he could have solved in several ways. And I suspect Sir was a little insane anyway. He was an unpleasant man, and I do not regret running him over." Which Bentley may not have admitted prior, and which also explains why one of the storage units doesn't open.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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[Car Ride Redux]

Can a tool not be a work of art as well?

Some are purely utilitarian, but can't a tool be a beautiful thing in and of itself?

It's clear to Choir that great care was made in ensuring that Bentley was crafted as a beautiful object.

Regardless, Choir listens. And then, when something is revealed, she asks a question.

"You caused the extinction of his self. Why did you choose to do that?" she inquires.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Car Ride Redux

"The war had begun, and when it did he turned off the household staff. Most hadn't heard, but I had. I've got a radio built in, so I was aware of what was going on. I knew what he was doing when one of the maids ran, making it to the garage before she went. I was able to open the garage door, and he was holding a handful of remotes and running towards where the landscapers were working. I knew I was going to be next, and... And honestly, he was never very nice to me. He didn't give me a name, just calling me after my manufacturer, he complained about his life to me, his job, wife and mistresses, and he never went to anywhere new." Petty grievances, combined with fear for his own continued existence, though mostly the latter.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Rebonack wrote: Mar 08, 2023 5:29 pm [The Desolate Desert]

It's a pretty useful trick, right?

"I'm not sure? I mean usually when I'm doing it I apply the enchantment to something else pretty quick. If I let go of the thing it just kind of melts like snow in the sunshine. If I need to keep it then I just need some useless bit of junk to stick it to. Like, another pair of boots or clothing. Usually the things have to be kind of the same. Clothing with clothing, jewelry with jewelry, weapons with weapons. That sort of thing."

Then!

A very important question.

"Absolutely no idea what would happen if you poke it. You want to try poking it?" Glycon asks, brandishing the enchantment at Raheeda.
[The Desolate Desert]

"So it does have limitations, eh? Well, still, pretty useful. So why don't we head for the artifact storage and figure out things from there, friends?" He gestures for them to come but before they can go anywhere Raheeda has decided to shrug in response to Glycon's question and proceeded to poke the magic thing with her spear. This could only lead to good things, right?

"Also, were you interested in that milk?" The green man adds just as the head of the spear touches the glowing thing.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Ruined Motorway- Procyon Run

The motorway here is choked with cars, all headed the same direction. They're mostly old and rusted, left exposed and unmaintained for decades at least. Here and there, however, are some which appear oddly new, abandoned for years and not decades; these are always close to or impaled by black spears, four metres long and covered with delicate silvery tracery, their carbon-fibre construction proving superior at surviving the ravages of time. There's also bodies here, though mostly bones, scattered by scavengers and time, or more intact encased in vehicles. The road beneath the jam ranges from covered in decades of weeds, to nearly pristine- though always near the black spears.

There's also some black hemispheres, or possibly circles; they resemble vantablack, and it's hard to determine depth or scale with them. Some have ruined cars protruding from them, others have bones emerging from the sphere. Closer examination will reveal the spheres are mostly four metres wide at their widest point, though most aren't that tall, instead partially submerged into the ground. One is, however; it's suspended in the air, with twisted aluminium and titanium emerging from its surface, and nearby most of a fighter jet has only just missed the road, a burnt-out wreck missing a wing.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway - Procyon Run

A dark shape glides over the motorway. After circling once, it lands in front of the strange suspended circles. A black griffin in full tactical gear and helmet, a long rifle attached between his wings. It's been a long time since Nick got proper exercise in full gear.
He's not going to be poking at anything. He knows not to do that. But he does try to get at least a little close to the strange hemispheres to figure out what's going on with them. They certainly are strange.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway- Procyon Run

Well, without poking them or using any mechanisms to study them, figuring out what they are is going to be really quite tricky. They appear to be solid; there's a slight coating of dust on some of them, and here and there a drift of leaves and rubbish has built up where a sphere meets a car or other object to create a little wind-trap, and there's one wreck, a car headed in the same direction as all the others but on the wrong side of the road, that appears to have hit a sphere at speed and crumpled, suggesting the spheres have no give to them.

I'm not sure if Nick's facing the flow of traffic, or going in the same direction as the refugees.
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

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Ruined Motorway - Procyon Run

Nick arrived perpendicular to the road itself.
Without any clear ideas on what the heck these things are, Nick goes for the simplest approach to study the black circles.
He tosses a rock at one to see if something awful happens. Maybe he’ll try poking one with a stick if the rock doesn’t get vaporized.
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Earl of Purple
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Earl of Purple »

Ruined Motorway- Procyon Run

The rock bounces off the black circle with a dull clonk, as though it hit a solid surface that didn't vibrate or react to being struck. The rock is not vaporised, and remains a rock- although it's now over there, if Nick wants to go check. The sphere didn't absorb any of the impact of the rock, so all the force went back into the rock after it bounced off. Depending on the rock, this may have cracked or split it.
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Keeper
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Re: Apocalypse Junction

Post by Keeper »

Ruined Motorway - Procyon Run

Hmm. Some sort of physics manipulation. Nick doesn’t have the education to deduce much beyond that it shouldn’t have reacted like that.
Next…a stick!
Which in this case is a bent piece of metal because there aren’t really any trees nearby.
Poke poke poke.
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