His interactions with the archives internal system was nostalgic in a lot of ways. It reminded him of the summer he’d spent working for volunteer hours with his high school's IT department, troubleshooting problems on food encrusted computers in search of possible solutions.
Only now instead of deferring to his superior for administrative access to the busted terminals, he was on his own in exploring the depths of the archives functions and which ones he personally had access to.
Not a lot of functions, as his needling revealed.
He requested the archive to go down a list of functions and was denied, the same Scribe text imposed on the rectangular query box. Specifying functions proved more fruitful, with access to the query box being a privilege that all outpost residents shared.
A jolt ran through his mind.
Aurelio scrambled back to the box and requested access to the oath of the scribes of the archives.
{Oath of the Scribes} Innovation required for access.
He clicked his tongue in disappointment. It was worth the shot in stealing access to the benefits of the ability without investing resources into it but the system was unwilling to bend on the matter.
Likely the case that the slate containing the oath was well hidden among the shelves or contained in the archives lower quarters, a region he was barred from entering because of his lacking Scribe status. And the innovation would give him access to these things once the system felt the “key” in his person.
Aurelio shook his head and doubled back to his investigatory efforts.
His setback was momentary because of the functions he did have access to. He discovered there were auditory and visual functions he could use within the archives. How the material would manifest, he was not certain.
The presence of these functions, however, meant he had access to a machine that could visually represent concepts he was unfamiliar with. It was a possible workaround for the language barrier the rest of the crew was dealing with, assuming that the system had any record of their language on file.
Messing with the query mechanism spat back error message after error message, his attempt to pull up an auditory or visual example of the previous scribes or information on the whereabouts of the previous denizens yielding back nothing useful. Either the system failed to understand his questions or it requested he find a scribe’s assistance to continue with the search.
Aurelio paused his question flinging and focused on the query, “Archives, please reveal the last known entry.”
The system did not reply with an error message or a patronizing request to search for a scribe. The stars on the panel shimmered with energy and a thin beam of light shot at a loose wisp in the alien structure hanging above the table.
The wisp grew in size and began drifting towards one of the shelves. Aurelio followed the little mote of light and found its direction was not to any slab on a shelf but to a dark corner of the room. He found a slab of obsidian wrapped in cloth, its size smaller and its shape circular instead of the rectangles he’d familiarized himself with.
Once he grabbed the slab, the wisp that led him to it dimmed in brightness and drifted back to the structure. He brought his spoils to the center of the room and attempted to activate it.
Seeing another smooth indentation on the stones surface, he sent his own ember to power the device and at once, a spectral projection formed. The image was of a woman in a worn blue jumpsuit standing in front of the archives table. The colors were shifted to have deeper blue tones on account of the ember source.
The woman was battle-hardened with half her face scarred from burns, the other half held in a fixed snarl.
“This’ll be my last entry in this godforsaken place,” her voice sounded like her throat had been shoved through a blender and the job wasn’t finished, “And good riddance to those ungrateful NPC’s.”
Aurelio’s heart sank, the acronym spat out in vitriol by the mysterious scribe feeling like sand in his mouth.
“I’ve suffered a fail state with these stupid motherfuckers. They went out there without me and took their suits with ‘em. Took the spares too, the vindictive cunts.” The woman spat out a thin red globule of fire onto the stone floor.
Aurelio turned towards the floor and noticed a faint scorch mark on the ground around where she’d hawked the loogie.
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“Dunno why they’d do that other than to spite me. And after all the work I did for ‘em.” Her laugh was short lived and filled with malice. “Thought they could handle things without my help after catching a couple of victories or maybe they couldn’t stand the thought of me being right all the fucking time,” she paused to glare directly at the screen, “It’s been a full week since they’d gone off on their hunt and they haven’t come back.”
The woman walked out of view before walking back with a crude representation of the game map that Aurelio was familiar with. Added onto the game map were two other sections on either side of the Mire with question marks and three massive question marks below everything.
“Things are different here. Just enough to blindside ya when you least expect it. The Bed of Giants. The Coral Grove. They weren’t in the base game,” She slammed the map onto the table, “And that’s my ticket out of this fucking mess. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t important. It has to lead to something. I want no part in whatever cosmic bullshit the Monolith’s roped me into.”
Aurelio digested the revelations he received slowly.
He wasn’t the first one that the Monolith had chosen. What was the criteria to be considered a candidate? Were the people pulled to act as the Monolith’s avatar from around Aurelio’s time or were they being pulled from across time within the margins of the game's release?
His train of thought was cut short as the woman ended her message.
“This’ll be the last trace of me in this place. Don’t know if it’ll get wiped for the next sorry schmuck that gets pulled into the nightmare. If you’re one of those schmucks, do whatever you can to keep the lemmings alive. The rock’s honest but it does not give a single shit about you or your well being. Find your way out of this mess as soon as you can and skip out on all this. Mona, out.”
The spectral projection flickered with the image of the angry Mona before sputtering back into the stone.
Before Aurelio could unravel the threads that Mona left behind, his attention was taken away by a flickering of the crystalline sconces and a whisper nudging him to exit the archives.
He obliged the strange sensation and walked towards the center of the outpost. An imposing bone-hewn specter stood at the outposts square, their body bobbing above the earth.
This was the third scripted event of the tabletop game. The third of four that were tied to the TEAM mechanic, and one that could leave him with a nasty flaw if he messed up his approach.
Aurelio took one step forward and the specter's eyes flared to life. Violet embers where its eyes would be, flames leaving the pale sockets charred with their presence.
“I sense a champion.” It wheezed. The specter raised its decrepit finger and pointed it at him.
Aurelio took a deep breath and willed himself forward. There was no point in whining over what the system was like before. The sooner he attended to the specter's will, the sooner he could return to his thoughts on Mona and what it meant for his chances to return home.
“I am your champion, specter. Witness me.” Aurelio bellowed.
|?Let Fate Decide?|
The system prompt manifested in front of Aurelio. He blinked at the die suspended in the air and pondered what guiding the specter towards a beneficial conclusion would be like.
The creature was described as having an “inscrutable purpose” by the game, an apparition of the past looking to a brave scavenger to act as a spectral steward.
With the timer ticking down, Aurelio crossed his fingers and grabbed the die, manifesting a cerulean cube in his hand. He flung it to the ground and rolled a six.
|Reap What You Have Sown|
The specter dashed towards Aurelio and grabbed his arms tight. Its fingers felt like icicles, a violent hiss coming off of his skin as the specter held tight.
“You. You wish to learn. I will teach you and take what I must for this offering.” Its voice gained strength with every syllable, the warmth in Aurelio’s body waning with every second.
The creature pulled away once Aurelio was drained. He didn’t need to check his sheet to know what happened to him. He lost an experience point and was back down to zero.
But that setback came with a worthwhile reward.
“Lead. Or be led to the slaughter.” The specter advised Aurelio before fading out into a puff of smoke.
In its place was a revolving violet card.
“The Apparition takes hold of the Scavenger. Warmth is sucked out of their body and in its place,” Aurelio recited the events description with an uncanny accuracy, “the Apparition leaves behind an echo of a past settlement.”
The boon for dealing with the event, aside from gaining a point in Academics, could either be the Spectral Steward ability or the gift he’d earned.
A random Innovation.
“Give me something good…” Aurelio muttered under his breath. He grabbed the rotating card and drew.
{CONNECTION} {Piety Innovation Type} - Learn my name. Command my wisdom. | CHOSEN gains the COMMUNE action. | SUBJECTS negate one Event Damage on their expeditions. | (1 Innovation Point) Devote Will / Seek Protection.
Aurelio dropped to the floor, his mind wracked with an overloading pain. The weight of the world was upon his shoulders as he felt a familiar presence tower over him.
He blacked out as the Monolith spoke its first words to him.
“FINALLY.”