“Hoy come on...” Ailith rubbed her eyes tiredly, “do I have to pick at random?” She shook her head, “because we're certainly not going to split here...”

“Can you at least try to explain why you think your direction is the best one? Are you even trying to go to the same place?”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 808):

Hammer and Foot start to squonk quite a bit.  Then they stop, apparently realizing it isn't helping.

They seem to squonk at each other.  Then Foot emits a light that forms a picture.

A large metal looking desk of some kind.  There is something on it blinking.

Hammer then makes a picture too.  A large door with some kind of severe looking decoration on it.  Across it are some words too.  The only one you can read is DANGER

Coq can't read anything else either.

Llewellyn considers.  He points at Foot.  "Foot seems us to want to go to some kind of...uh...how do I explain this...control.  A place like the controls on my shud del where we can...uh...make something happen."

He shrugs, giving you an expression which must mean embarrassment over not being able to explain things better.

He then points at Hammer

"I think he wants us to go to...well.  That door.  I don't know what it is.  But it looks...serious.  Because it's thick, it probably is meant to contain something very dangerous.  Hammer may want us to deal with whatever it is.  But..."

He shakes his head.  "I'd have to see both of them to try to figure things out."

“Uh, alright.” Ailith said, obviously not too sure about anything. After some time, she asked the two drones. “Is what we need to deal with behind that door, Hammer?”

She turned to Foot then, “But first we should go to that, uh, 'control station', to, uh, maybe open the door or something?” In which case at least the order of operations seemed quite obvious. At least Ailith hoped so, because she didn't see a way to pick one over the other...

In reply to Ailith (msg # 810):

There's squonking.  And they both seem to nod, although Foot is a little more hesitant.

“Ha!” Ailith gladly exclaimed, “Great, then let's go to that control thing to, uh, well...do whatever you do in control rooms.”

“And then we'll go deal with whatever is behind that door that we're supposed to deal with.”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 812):

The hallway beyond Foot's door is long and skinny.  You have to walk down it single file.

Foot shines a light ahead to light up the darkness.  Hammer follows Coq, squonking to make the youngest apprentice hurry up.

"There should be power here.  Why aren't the lights coming on?" Llewelyn mutters.

There's a small stairwell leading up to a large open room.  Shelves with little dots of crystal line the walls.  There are a few chairs but...they look weird.  A little too low.  A little too wide.

You can see the winking light Foot showed you.  It's flashing a light bluish color.

Llewelyn walks over and studies it.  "They pow urt don but this..."  He shrugs.  "I can't tell what it is exactly. I can try to figure it out.  I'd have to take apart the...table...here.  Or we can just press it and see what happens.  Who knows? Might be fun."
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 04:00, Sat 17 Dec 2022.

Ailith looked around curiously, even going to sit in one of the chairs and testing it a few times. “Weird and not very good.” She judged with a sniff.

When Llewelyn spoke, she turned in his direction, glanced at the button... then pushed it. “Sure!” After all, if Llewelyn said they should do it, he who was often worried about lots of things, it had to be safe right?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:06, Sat 17 Dec 2022.

In reply to Ailith (msg # 814):

Llewelyn's face makes an expression you've never seen it make before.

As he starts to open his mouth, the room shakes.  Sort of like when Llewelyn's shud del is getting ready to go flying.  But this is on a much, much larger scale.

Llewelyn and Coq both fall over.  Hammer and Foot begin squonking like they have never squonked before.  You think you see Hammer slap Foot with one of it's sides, but you can't be sure as your chair seems to be spinning with you in it.

The room settles down.  And then the lights come on.

The tables and their crystal buttons light up in all sorts of colors.  You suddenly feel a breeze blowing across the top of your head.

And there's a voice.  It's low and kind of fuzzy sounding.  But you can hear it.  And...they seem to be saying stuff you kind of understand.

Please recall the iz'ik aiah in turning and unturning.  Zone blue is for all those with arms to wait for the avalanche.

Well.  At least you can understand most of the words it's saying.  Even if they don't make sense.

"Hey."  Coq has gotten to his knees.  He's hunched over Llewelyn, who's not getting up.  "I think the Interloper is broken."

I was so hoping you'd push the button

Well, of course she was going to push it if not told to not do it ^^

Ailith was very glad she had been sitting when she pushed the button, as it prevented her from falling over like Coq or Llewelyn. When things finally settled down and the whole room stopped spinning, she looked around for a second or two, mumbling, “_{Well, I don't know about fun, but it was exciting...}”

She paused for a second on all the lights, then with a frown looked up to see where the wind was coming from, but before she could spend too long thinking about it, first a voice spoke to say some weird stuff, but Coq announced that Llewelyn seemed broken.

“Broken?” She looked at the Interloper with concern. “Uh oh...” After a brief hesitation, she stood then approached to see if she could do something.

In reply to Ailith (msg # 816):

The breeze seems to be coming from a small opening overhead.  Several of them.  Air is blowing out of them.  It doesn't smell quite right.  A littel stale almost.  But you do notice it's easier to breathe.

Llewelyn is making small groaning sounds.  His bird is making squawking noises. But that's nothing new.

The voice changes.  All u'sulu'e.  Please taste the heat inside the hulsh m'sawlo

The voice sounds a bit stern.

Hammer is suddenly nudging you from behind, seeming to be pushing you towards the door you came in.

A bit overwhelmed, Ailith looked at Llewelyn, Hammer, Coq, then back again. “Alright, alright, I’m coming!” She said to the drone, letting him push her while she looked back at Coq, “Try to wake Llewelyn up, and tell him I went to, uh 'taste the heat'?”

For some reason, she had no idea what that meant. Who needed to 'taste the heat'? What did that even mean?

She supposed she was going to have her answer soon enough but that was still super weird and she’d have liked to have Llewelyn and Coq with her for this. Though on second thought…maybe it was best to let Llewelyn wake up without being around…

“Alright, lead the way Hammer.”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 818):

Hammer and Foot wing their way back towards the door Hammer wanted you to take originally.

It's now better lit.  Small strips of white light shine within the walls and floor, illuminating the hallway in a weird and frankly eerie kind of way.  The two droids seem immune to such concern.  They head down the left hand side of the juncture, still squonking at each other furiously.

You can't hear the voice right now.  If it weren't for the sqonking, things would be quiet.  Disturbingly quiet and eerily lit.  What a wonderful combination in decor.

The left hand hall ends in an open archway.  Beyond it is a room that may be as large as your village's market square.  There are kinds of doors and large metal columns lining the walls.  In the center of the room is a long table with those winking buttons and odd displays that have become such a constant in your life these days.

Hammer floats towards the table and beams something at it.  Lights flicker on it.  One of the doors suddenly starts to glow red.  You recognize it as the door Hammer showed you before.

Foot floats up to you, sqonks, and then turns to the door.  He floats back to it and squonks some more.  He stops and hovers over one section of it.  A pictogram is painted on it.

It's the image for fire.  It seems...redder...than the rest of the door.

Sorry, I didn't really sleep last week for some reason, I didn't want to subject you to the nonsensical posts that would have resulted from that :o

“It's soooo big!” Exclaimed Ailith as she looked around the huge room. “Why would they need something that large?” She asked then, rather pointlessly since there was no one to answer her questions, and that didn't prevent her from following Foot and Hammer to the table.

“Fire!?” She yelled, obviously distressed, “Did I make something burn again!? _{Llewelyn is going to kill me...}” Looking at Foot, she asked “How can I stop it? Do I need to stop it?”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 820):

You're worried about making nonsensical posts in one of my games?

Are you new here?

Don't worry about it.  I figure it might be the holidays.  Hope you got some sleep.

Hammer and Foot begin to squonk like they have never squonked before.

Really.  It's a cacophony of squonks.

Hammer seems to be trying to direct you to the table.  Foot seems to want you to come to the door with the Fire symbol on it.

“That's not helping!” Obviously frustrated, she added, “Couldn't you be like Llewelyn's bird and talk!?”

Shaking her head, she went to the table in a hurry, simply because it was closer. “Coming Foot.” The young apprentice looked at Hammer, “What should I push!?”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 822):

There are two symbols that look promising.  In that they are both the most brightly lit.

One that could be the symbol for door

And next to it is the symbol for heat.  And it's flashing.

Ailith growled. “It would seriously help me if you indicated to me what I'm supposed to be doing you know!”

But, since no such help was coming, Ailith decided to first touch the flashing symbol. “And make that one stop please? I <i>know/i> there's a fire, it's not helping!”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 824):

You touch the heat symbol.

You foolish, foolish Aitzal you.

The moment you press the symbol it seems to sink into the panel it's sitting on.  Suddenly the lights in the room start flickering.  There's a lot of sound too.  A braying kind of buzzing sound  that is very, very LOUD!.  It doesn't stop either.  It just kind of dances on your eardrums.  One of those dances that involves a lot of hopping.

The room starts to shake.  Not much.  Not so you're thrown off your feet.  But probably enough to really unnerve you.  Or maybe not.

Foot nudges you towards the desk Hammer is hovering over.  They both seem to want to push you towards another array of symbols.  Hurray.  More symbols they seem to want you to figure out.

Fortunately, out of all the symbols, only a few are flashing.  Unluckily there are three of them.

One seems to be the symbol for Danger

There's one for Winter

And the last one Run Off.  Like snow melting and running off the mountain.

Ailith growled, both annoyed and…well…concerned might be a nice way to put it. “Foot, Hammer, SHOW me the symbol I must touch! Light one of them up, I know you can do that!”

“I don’t understand any of these!” The apprentice despaired a bit. And was particularly irritated by the danger symbol. “I know there’s danger! Should I push winter?” It couldn’t make a fire worse, could it?

On the other hand, she was two for two at the moment, so… Well, there was a reason she was pleading for the two drones - as Llewelyn called them - to help her make sense of it all…

In reply to Ailith (msg # 826):

I was wondering when you were gonna get this level of pissed.

Wouldn't it be terrible of me if they both highlighted two different buttons?

Hmmm?  Wouldn't it?

They both light up the same button.  Run Off

When you press it, you hear an odd sound behind the door.  A sort of whoooshing sound.  It's almost pleasant.

Soon that loud, braying sound stops.  The symbols stop flashing.

Except for the one marked door.

That one stays lit.  But doesn't flash.

Grumble, grumble.

Ailith visibly tensed as everything was going on, only relaxing - barely - when everything had been calm for a good minute. And as she did, her eyes drifted towards the Winter button, wondering what it would have done.

On second thought... Considering that it had been the one she had been intending to touch, maybe it was for the best that she didn't know.

“Alright...” She glanced at the two drones, “Thanks. So... This one,” she pointed at the button marked door, “Then we go see what's behind that door Foot wanted opened?”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 828):

There's a pause.  Then lots of clunking noises.  Like heavy metalic things are being dragged across something metalic.

Then there's a room rattling THUNK.

And that door slightly swings open.  Slightly.  It's heavy as all get out.  So it takes you a moment to push it open wide enough to peer through.

There's a large chamber beyond.  It's almost all white.  And it's kind of steamy.  Like someone was boiling a lot of water in here a moment ago.  Though you don't see any pans or fires or anything.

The only feature of the room is a pedestal.  On top of it is a crystal about the size of your fist.  And the crystal glows.  Very shiny.  Enticingly so.

Uh, mumbled Ailith. She may have had her head tucked in her neck as she did too, but obviously it couldn't be because she was worried something was going to fall on her head, or worse.

And she absolutely did not jump with that loud noise, not at all…

But, once reasonably sure that everything that wanted to move had finished doing so, she finally looked around, then focused on the door. “Well… I guess that's it?”

Once she finally managed to move the door completely out of the way, Ailith took in the steamy atmosphere of the room. Which… well, it sort of made sense if there had just been a fire…even though she couldn't see many - or any, really - traces of it.

Soon enough of course, she focused on the crystal. And she looked at it suuuuuuper suspiciously. “So,” she glanced at Foot and Hammer, “Am I supposed to be touching this, and will anything else go up in flames if I do?”

In reply to Ailith (msg # 830):

Hammer squonks at you.  Foot does too.

They are nothing but helpful, aren't they?

The crystal seems to beckon you closer.

There are sigils cut on to the post it's resting on.  You can discern some of them.

Walk

Run

Fall Over

That odd feeling you get when you've eaten bad ro'zuk zuk eggs

And a fourth symbol which looks like...well.  Hammer and Foot.

I guess the drone one is the fifth one, not the fourth?

Ailith growled once more, though this time she was slightly less annoyed than previously. Probably because there wasn't the same urgency as previously and she felt she at least had some time to make her decision.

“Alright,” she muttered, “I don't want to fall over, obviously.” on the other hand, something she Would have guessed to stop the fire would have done… Well, something else entirely.

“And I for sure don't want to get like that.” she said, pointing at the last option. “There's no way this can be anything good.” Which left two options.

“So…” she glanced at the two drones once more. “If I push that one,” she pointed at the one with the drones, “Are you going to be replaced by drones who can talk to me and actually help?” Which… well, Ailith lifted a hand and grimaced, “Sorry, that was uncalled for.” Even though…

On the other hand, it might give her another drone, who was likely going to argue with the first two instead of actually help. “Anyway, I guess that only leaves those two.” At that point, Ailith didn't hesitate for long. “Walk before you run, I guess.”

At that, she pressed the walk button.