Welcome to the Apocalypse - Director's Cut IC

[Strider]

"No. I could likely deduce some things, but I am no expert on either, and in some fields, pure deduction does not result in success. But you omitted anything saying you could not pilot a helicopter. Can you? If you can, would it be possible to collaborate with with someone capable of sailing?" Ena turned, and marched carefully over to the entrance to the helm area, and called out once more to the occupants of the vessel. "DOES ANYONE HERE HAVE NAUTICAL EXPERIENCE? THIS VESSEL REQUIRES THAT."

[DragonRage]

"Perhaps," Amelie murmurs, "Safety is an illusion.  Heroes always die.  But the candle that burns the fastest, burns so bright.  Perhaps watching that candle will be the answer I seek."  Perhaps unsatisfied by the vague answer but still curious about the mana source she senses, Marisa heads deeper into the derelict.

 

Aquila, meanwhile, goes cruising for booze.  And he eventually finds some!  The water barrels are doubtlessly spoilt or empty by now.  The wine barrels are likely full of vinegar.  But maybe the whiskey is still good...?

 

As Leo completes his mana experiments, he has a sense of something watching him intently.  Then, the derelict's core briefly glows brighter as some system draws power, before the entire hull briefly turns the silver-grey of the reflection mana he just discovered.  The effect flicks on and off several times before fading, but the ship's hull stays shiny like a new mirror.  A distinct sense of smug, apprehensive satisfaction fills the air, like a toddler looking for their father's approval after learning a difficult word.  The hole in the hull seems to be healing slightly faster now.

 

"I dunno," Vitor admits to Lucine, "My psychometry doesn't work fast, and this thing's been laying here a long, long time."

 

Which is when Marisa walks in and falls silent in shock, having recognised the great artifact as a massive Powerstone, a Dominaran artifact used to power the creations of the infamous, genocidal anti-hero Urza Planeswalker in the distant past.

 

The souls inside the crystal freeze upon hearing Freya's voice, stunned that someone has actually heard them.  The screaming abruptly ceases, and there is a brief, swirling scuffle, before one of the spirits drives to the fore, the others falling back as best they can to give her room.  Moving to press her face against the side of the crystal, the spirit reveals the visage of a beautiful, ethereal woman in shades of yellow and gold.  "You hear our voices!  You must listen!  I am Solara, and I speak for all of us, the refugees of Serra's Realm.  I know not how long we have been trapped here, but long ago the Planeswalker Urza sealed our home inside this stone to fuel his Skyship Weatherlight.  The Realm of the Goddess was doomed no matter his actions, but he destroyed it without more than a token effort to evacuate.  Do not trust the Planeswalker Urza, should you meet.  And please, free us from our prison!"  The spirit falls silent for a moment, and then continues.  "...Should you be concerned for the ship's function, I assure you it does not depend on our presence in any way.  Please help us, spirit-walker!  We emplore you!"

Edited December 2, 2017 by DragonRage

[kj1225]

Aquila of course opens up the whiskey barrel and takes a sip to test it.

[Endlessblaze]

Leo seems interested by the ships reaction.

"DEFINITELY a consciousness of some sort here"

He pats the inside of the ship's hull as he looks it over for any other changes. NOW he was curious. Honestly feeling a little giddy. The materials and there mana types were VERY interesting, and had an array of possible applications. And the ship itself was quite the curiosity, And clearly had some sort of AI, or something like it. It was a great find. And once he purchased that seed from Marisa, there would be so many possible options. He wanted to see what he could do with these new mana types. The reflection mana obviously had worth in forcefields, but it could also work in protective enchantments. The seed might help him create golems and weapons that could be controlled by the will and thought of the user, and the wood....Implants? He didn't do much work with biological stuff, but he was sure it would be useful. Considering the ship was GROWING, he might be able to get a slow but steady supply of the materials. Which was perfect for making things dependent on the mana types.

Someone perceptive might note this giddiness, by the subtle change in the way he walked. Or by the sound of his voice when he spoke.
 

Edited December 2, 2017 by Endlessblaze

[StormLord]

Sha'Tith followed closely behind as most of the people in the first room moved deeper into the ship, they came upon a room with a massive crystal of some kind, he could feel the raw power emanating from it.

Once he finished giving the crystal a cursory glance Sha'Tith's attention turned to one of the Skyfallers who was here when he entered the room, the one the others called "Vitor".  He approached the Skyfaller and clearly addressed them.

"You are from this world, do you have any idea what any of this is? or what we're suppose to do next?"

The Lizard wasn't particularly rude, and though he wasn't exactly polite he hadn't been exactly polite to anyone thus far.

[Chevaleresse]

"So that's a Powerstone. Huh." Her words, while sounding rather nonplussed, are rather at odds with the wondering expression on her face. "Wait a second. . . Powerstone, derelicted vessel of some kind, a hull that grows back. . . This is the Weatherlight, isn't it? Now that, that is something that's actually amazing, and I've seen a lot of stuff that people called amazing." Her happy expression faded as she peered at the thing. "But if this is actually the Weatherlight, and what I've heard about Urza is true. . ." Her face turned a shade or three lighter than normal. "So this is where the rest of Serra's Realm went, too." She declined to comment further, countenance grim.

[Hal Henderics]

Blue wanders around the endless plains of the first couple of rooms, taking in the impossible expanse, the works that must have went into producing this ship, it's simply too much for him to even conceive of.  A billion yellow wire warriors could work for a million years and achieve maybe a third of what he's seen thus far.

 

Each Rivet in these strange tiny rooms shines with otherworldly power, each bolt seemingly made from whole stock, instead of merely found in various states of disrepair.

 

He comes across a sliver of crystal, lying on the ground in one of these rooms, glowing brightly.

 

"How odd."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Freya floated even closer to the gem now, listening to Solara, her own anger starting to rise. Urza… That was the asshole’s name that did this. But, as Solara pleaded with her to help, Freya began to realize the problem. Millions of souls were in there… It would take a long time to free them without breaking the gem, maybe even years. It would be simple to just break the gem and free them, but what if they needed it’s power for something?

 

... Well, she had to try anyway.

 

“I’ll do what I can, I can assure you of that” Freya said after a slight hesitation, before reaching out to touch the gem, aiming to figure out a way to use her own magic to pull one of the many souls free of the core.

[Hal Henderics]

Blue promptly pops out of a maintenance hatch, toodling over to where Marisa and Lucine are both staring at the core.

 

The glittering shard in his hand glows, and also glitters.

 

"There seem to be various loose things scattered about this place.  It really is a marvel, isn't it."

[DragonRage]

"Hey, I'm working on it," Vitor tells Sha'Tith, "Haven't you people been listening?  This thing takes time, especially for something as old as this!"

 

Aquila tries the whiskey.  (Constitution check 17 v 14 success!).  It tastes absolutely foul.  It's clearly been sitting long enough to start dissolving the insides of the barrels and tastes strongly of wood and dust.

 

It takes her a few minutes of theorycrafting and concentration, but eventually, Freya feels confident enough to reach an ethereal hand into the powerstone, grab something, and yank hard.  There is a brief feeling of resistance, and then a spirit pops cleanly out of its imprisonment.  Freed and standing tall, Solara is revealed as a towering, statuesque angel clad in flowing, pale robes over shining mail armor.  Whatever her coloration was in life, it is subsumed by the ghostly, pale, yellow light that suffuses her spirit.  The ghost goes to one knee at Freya's feet, tears leaking from her eyes.  "After all these years, Serra has answered our prayers.  With a necromancer, no less.  Truly the goddess has a sense of humor.  Thank you, Lady Necromancer, thank you."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Eventually, Freya finally figured out what she had to do. Which was rather simple, figure out the best place to reach in without so many hands reaching out for her, and yank Solara out... And sure enough, when Freya's spectral hand reached into the crystal, the crsytal itself rippling on a spiritual level as she did so, and pulled hard when she grabbed something, it worked, as a soul was pulled out of the crystal with a little pop, the suddenness of the force causing Freya soul to fly back a little bit. Then, as Solara got used to being free, Freya realized that she had spent way too long outside her body, and quickly turned to go back into it.

 

For everyone else, Freya suddenly moved again, letting out a long sigh of relief before bending down to pick up her staff. By the time she straightened and looked at Solara, the angel was already kneeling in front of her, giving Freya her thanks. Needless to say, this actually surprised Freya, but she was quick to reply... Which, specifically, was he crouching in front of Solara herself, leaning he staff on herself, "I don't really need any praise, honest. I just... Well, Urza deserves to die for what he did. Hopefully he already did, and he's paying for his mistake " Freya stated, her tone noticbly a bit angrier when she said Urza. However, when she spoke again, she seemed to have discarded that anger, as it went right back to cheerfulness,  "But, I'm just doing my best to fix it. I guess your goddess does have a sense of humor, for both of us to meet like this. My name's Freya though... Not really used to the entire 'lady' thing" Freya replied, before standing up, taking a step back from Solara, thinking to herself on how she was going to get the rest of the souls trapped in the gem out. After all, she needed to use her soul to get them, and judging by the fact that she was visibly whiter than normal, anymore soul adventures for a while might start to actually kill her. Well, she could probably do her work without going into the spiritual realm... But there was the problem of there being MILLIONS of souls trapped in there.

 

... This task may take a long while...

 

Spoiler

NEW TRICK!

Spirit Release (level 1, trick):  This action can free souls from bindings, imprisonment, and other conditions imposed by others.  Current maximum speed:  1 soul per round.  The soul prison or targeted soul must be touched, and only one target can be touched per round.  An object imprisoning multiple souls counts as a single target.

 

Edited December 3, 2017 by GodofGamingRWBY

[Chevaleresse]

Marisa's face flattened a bit when the appearance of the ghostly angel finally caused it to click. "Right. Serra's Realm. Angels and paladins and heroes, oh my! I just. can't wait. for the lectures to start." She shook her head, realizing that she'd been asked something. "Oh, that piece of crystal. Give me one moment. . ." She bent down to pick up the sliver of material carefully, assuming Blue didn't resist.

 

Marisa attempts to identify the object Blue found.

 

"I need to talk to you guys as a group, so I can peddle my crap at you and tell you some stuff that's probably going to be useful going forward, by the way."

[kj1225]

In the hall outside the booze room, one can hear the smashing of barrels with liquid in them. After a few moments of silence, a calm looking Aquila walks out wiping his flail head off on a piece of cloth. He eventually heads to power core room by luck. After looking around, he decides to address the thing most pertinent to himself. Pointing at Marisa he speaks.

"You're new, are you with the other group?"

[Hal Henderics]

"I am certainly ready to be peddled at."  Blue says with no shortage of humor and interest.

[Chevaleresse]

Marisa hands the piece back to Blue. "It's another powerstone. A little surprised they'd need more than this one, considering it's an entire plane's worth of mana, but I guess redundancy doesn't hurt. Hold onto that, it's valuable." She then turned to Aquila and nearly jumped out of her skin, very clearly flinching away from the man. She muttered something that sounded like it was black speech, profanity, or some combination thereof under her breath - it was quite unsettling to hear, really - before replying. "Uh, no, I'm not with any group in particular, nor am I a good target for being crusaded upon, purged, 'enlightened,' or any other such thing."

[kj1225]

Aquila chuckles as he removes the helmet and holds it under his armpit. His face is, in the immortal words of Van Gogh, "proper fucked up". Not enough to be extremely horrible, but still enough that it looks kind of bad which is kind of helped by the smile on his face.

"Currently I'm more fond of ravaging... But I'm only in the business of doing that to people that ask for it."

He winks before setting down the helmet and leaning on the wall. He points a thumb to himself as he speaks.

"I'm Aquila. Back where I'm from they called me a conqueror. Or Prisoner 24601 but I killed the last guy to do that."

[Chevaleresse]

"Oh, ravaging huh?" She briefly considered one of her signature suggestive eyebrow waggles, but she didn't need anything in particular from the man at the moment.  "Good. Well, I don't support raiding and such outside of a time of war but I'm not really up for an ethical debate at the moment. I'm sure she'll have something to say, though," she said with a jerk of her head at Solara. "I'm Marisa. A traveling mage, I'm here to sell your group some random shit I found while I was exploring the planes. Though I gotta say, I wasn't expecting part of Urza's Legacy to be here and apparently in your hands."

[kj1225]

Aquila shrugs. He kind of was trying not to stare at the apparent angel that was highlighting him choosing wrong in terms of religion. Of course that meant he was staring at Marisa a bit more than necessary. He coughs to himself to gather his thoughts again.

"Yeah, guess we got lucky since the previous "owners" happened to try killing us..."

[DragonRage]

"Ugh.  Santa Maria, I need a break from that," Vitor mutters, taking his hand off the hull, "This thing's history is going to take forever to-  Wait, ma'am, did you say you know what this ship is?  And that you have magical artifacts for sale?  I do believe I'm interested in a look at both.  As far as payments go, I don't have a lot of money, but I do have a rather unique service I could provide:  psychometry.  I can divine the history of any item by touching it.  How to use it, who's used it in the past, what it does, and what it's done.  Surely a connoisseur of mystic codes such as yourself could find worthwhile uses for my talents?"
______________________________________________________

"Have I wronged you, Lady Planeswalker?" Solara asks Marisa uncertainly, "I do not believe we have met in the past, and if we had a mere Archangel would certainly not have been enough to inconvenience you.  Please don't stick me back in there."

 

[Chevaleresse]

"Well, the previous owners probably didn't get it by asking politely. Or maybe they did. Urza was a dick, as I've heard one person put it." She turned to Vitor. "Yes. It's a vessel known as the Skyship Weatherlight, created by one of the more powerful and influential Planeswalkers to live and one of the few things that can carry someone who isn't a Planeswalker from one plane to another. At least, I think. I've never seen it in person before now." She glanced around at it, still not quite believing where she was. "Needless to say it's a pretty big deal. As for what I've got for sale, it's mostly magical this time, but I honestly just collect curiosities, mystic and otherwise."

 

The angel's response was confusing to her, something that defused a bit of the hostility toward the entity. "Er, no. Not yet, anyway. I'm probably going to regret asking this instead of keeping you thinking I'm some sort of divinity, but what do you mean by 'a mere Archangel?' Pretty sure you're higher on the metaphorical totem pole than me, though I would rather not test that in the middle of the Weatherlight. Or at all."

[Projeck]

Contagion's eyes widen, not that it would be seen anyways, at the sight of the apparent angel. Well, that sure was interesting... he shook his head, getting focused once again. He starts looking around, trying to find out what is wrong with the ship.

[Endlessblaze]

Leo takes note of the angel. At least the others were saying she was an angel. A projection? ghost? 

He felt like he had missed something important.

"Ok now what? Why is there an angel here, and what did I miss while I was running test?" 

"You need to start paying more attention to your surroundings."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Hearing Leo's question, Freya snapped out of her thoughts, turning towards him, "I pulled her out of that gem... The one blasting with magic" Freya stated, pointing at the core once again. By the tone of her voice, it was apparent that she still didn't really like it. After a bit more thought, Freya began to walk towards it again, reaching out a hand to try and pull out another soul if she can, using her new trick.

 

Spoiler

Spirit Release (level 1, trick):  This action can free souls from bindings, imprisonment, and other conditions imposed by others.  Current maximum speed:  1 soul per round.  The soul prison or targeted soul must be touched, and only one target can be touched per round.  An object imprisoning multiple souls counts as a single target.

 

[Chevaleresse]

Lucine, for her part, had grown distracted by trying to comprehend the workings of the massive artifact they found themselves in, wandering away from the group as she examined it. Trying being the operative term; this was something far, far above anything she could understand. She felt a bit like a kindergartner who had just learned to read being shown algebra for the first time. She did, however, find something that seemed to respond to her presence; a depression in the floor - deck? It was supposedly a ship - sized for someone rather larger than her. It didn't take particularly long for curiosity to overwhelm caution; Lucine stepped into it after only a moment of hesitation, mostly just to see what would happen.

[Sutoratosu]

Stellio walked the halls of the ruined vessel alone, as most of the others seemed to have scattered deeper. This wasn't.... quite like anything he'd seen, back on the isles- fishing and overseas trade were both booming factors to Valeria's economy, before the civil war. But this thing seemed like it was made to tread waters of a...different sort than he was used to. Something felt... off about it however. He had been present to disasters before, seen the aftermath of towns razed, cities raped and burned, and their inhabitants slaughtered wholesale and in some cases raised yet again as thralls.... and this sensation was the very same as when he'd walked through the ruins, every time, listening as the souls of the damned cried out- creating a cacophonous noise which culminated into one thing, and one thing only...

 

The sound of silence.

 

Silence... yes, that was it. Pure and utter. Silence so grand, he could hear the cries of those he had slain even now, with every step forward he took. Bits and fragments of shattered memories and broken dreams- the residual energies of too many men and women to count, as they writhed in the agony of death. Energies which stuck to a Terror Knight like flies to honey.

 

"How many might cry out here, if one were to listen?" The knight pondered to himself "How is it that so much death is tied to this place, this derelict? An instrument of war, in it's day and age? Or perhaps something yet more sinister..."

 

He kept walking, hoping to find the answer to his own question. If this truly had been a warship, it would have an armory at the very least, and barracks to house the crew and any troops it transported...

 

Stellio attempts to find the Ship's Armory/Barracks (Or whats left of them)