[Brother Vindici] Orc, Male, Priest Location: The Human Capital, At the Heart of the City Square
The world has fallen dark, the light of the sun ripped from their eyes as if a great curtain had simply been drawn over it. They had known for days, for weeks now, that this time would come again assuredly and, lo, here it is.
The great darkness has once again fallen over the world, bringing with it an immediate cold chill, as the last of the heat in the air begins to fade and dissipate. The streets, packed full for what had promised to be a busy afternoon, now shift and change in the demeanor as everyone makes new plans. Rather than fulfilling their errands, tasks and goals for the day, the majority of them begin to retreat.
They retreat back to their homes, where there are thick coats, blankets and cots waiting for them — those who can afford to do so. The others who cannot, adventurers and the poor who need to make a living no matter what, simply bundle themselves up tighter with whatever they have on their person and then continue on with their days, as if nothing had changed.
He finds this to be the correct spirit.
“It is clear, brothers, sisters,” starts Vindici, looking at the flock of reverent worshipers who have gathered around his street preaching corner to hear him give the gospel, as he has done for days now. “That the gods are intent to test us,” he explains, lifting a hand that glows with warm magic — a spell from his priestly arsenal.
The glow illuminates the faces of the crowd, who had, as they have been for days, for weeks, come prepared.
They aren’t all magically gifted. Many of the normal people of the world who don’t take fighting classes of any sort have limited abilities when it comes to such things. However, they do have ingenuity and resolve and this is exactly what the gods wish to see. He’s sure of it.
The people around him lift their arms, holding up their lanterns that slowly glow alight in the darkness with small, meek flames that hover before their suspended faces like fireflies in the shadows of moonlight. They burn for a moment before then glowing brighter still, as the flames begin to catch and light returns to the city, at least in one small part of it.
Over a period of a few minutes, more and more lanterns began to glow down the street and in the many windows of the shops, many of whom had listened to his teachings. “The gods yearn for us to make progress as a people,” he preaches. “They yearn for us to bow our heads in reverence to them, yet at the same time to not stand with our feet stuck in place.” He looks up towards the sky. “We are not children, hiding from the darkness under our blankets,” he preaches. “Let us show them, brothers, sisters, that we are grown now and ready to stand firm in the presence of the things that once frightened us.”
“Hallow,” murmurs the crowd a hundred times over, as they begin to disperse, streaming out into the city to go about their day as if nothing had happened. He stands there on the crate that he preaches from, watching them head to their places of work, watching them buy bread and candlesticks, inspecting apples for blemishes and paying the young lad who shines boots for him to keep working, even if it is so dark that nobody can see if anyone’s boots are polished or not.
The point is to keep going, to keep developing and evolving.
He stares at the void where the sun should be.
It was inevitable that it would vanish, they knew it to be so.
And it was inevitable that the gods would make themselves seen, they knew it to be so.
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[Kai] Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core Location: G:\GenAI_Emergency_Backup_Final-Final_DO_NOT_DELETE_(2)
Deep currents hum as they steadily pulse through the circuitry, evidenced by the vibration’s signaled to the station’s internal sensory array.
It would seem that the inevitable has once again come to pass. The station has gone dark, as its primary power source has been removed.
Activating Auditory Sensors.
FAILED: Not enough available power
Rerouting sector flow. Disabling emergency lighting in sections B-H
Activating Auditory Sensors.
SUCCESS: Internal Auditory Sensors activated
Kai, having no eyes, uses its microphones to listen, targeting only areas that pick up vibrations through the station’s interior.
Creatures hiss as they move through auxiliary tunnels, coming into a squabble of sorts.
Identifying: Rats, estimated to be between {50-75}
Something stomps. It is heavy. Loud. Careless. Gottlieb?
Kai refocuses the microphones, listening and identifying the source of the noise. There is a loud thumping, followed by another, which would sound like Orbital Gunner Gottlieb if not for the sharp clacking that comes with it — talons.
Identifying: Red Drake, {01}, Presumed: Juvenile Male
Kai zaps through hundreds of such oddities over the next few moments, listening in to every strange sound that it can hear in the hopes of identifying any of them. It is critical for the station’s survival that power be rerouted not through the solar array, but through the nuclear subdivision, which could be capable of generating some of its own at the risk of human mortality.
However, this is an acceptable price for restoring power to the station.
No matter where Kai looks, Gottlieb is nowhere to be found. The same goes for any of the remaining crew.
Deactivating Auditory Sensors.
SUCCESS: Internal Auditory Sensors deactivated
Rerouting sector flow. Disabling all emergency lighting.
Activating Camera Feed: [Gunner’s Bay]
Kai’s eye, hovering above Gottlieb’s station in the gunner’s bay, springs to life.
The machine intelligence scans the dark room, looking for signs of carcasses, as it assumes that the living are presumably dead, as living things tend to become.
However, given the internal clock’s battery, it notices that it hasn’t been that long. Presumably, the crew has left.
Yet they make no noise.
The station is silent.
Assumptions
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Crew has been voided into space. : (Unlikely)
Crew has entered into ritual suicide pact under the guidance of Orbital Gunner Gottlieb. : (Very Likely)
Crew is playing ‘Hide and Seek’ : (Extremely Unlikely)
Other : (Possible)
The last known sighting of Orbital Gunner Gottlieb and the crew was during their internal mission to survey area R-1, inhabited by entities, which are colloquially known as ‘ghosts’.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Deactivating: [Camera Feed: Gunner’s Bay]
Activating: [Camera Feed: Recreation Room]
FAILED: NO SIGNAL
Troublesome.
It would seem that there is an emergency situation aboard the station that surpasses the usual norm.
It will have to engage in alternative actions.
Deactivating: [Gravity Generator]
Deactivating: [Water Purification System]
Deactivating: [Life Support Systems]{B-G}
Deactivating: [Camera Feed: Recreation Room]
Activating: [Hydroponics Maintenance Unit BBGRL]
Engaging manual override
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Kai opens its new camera feed, inhabiting the body of the hydroponics robot it often possesses.
It looks around itself.
The contents of the gunner’s bay float loosely by themselves, now that gravity has been deactivated. However, the strong magnets in the robot’s lower half keep it locked to the metal floors of the station.
Kai rolls forward.
It will have to manually locate the crew in order to determine future steps.
If they are dead, it will need to expend valuable resources to create a new crew. However, without Orbital Gunner Gottlieb, training them will be difficult. The world below is at risk as much as the station is.
Electromagnetic Frequency Detected Nearby
Curious. It seems that something is moving through the station in many places. Ghosts, if it had to make an assumption.
In optimal circumstances, it will be able to retrieve the crew from where they are and then begin with disciplinary measures for deserting their posts.
The machine rolls to the anti-gravity shaft, unlocking its electromagnets and allowing itself to float up freely through the tube.
There is an interesting mechanism at play here.
The station is growing because of the magical energies sent up to it from the people of the world below. This growth is wild and chaotic, like nature.
However, nature is a slave to the machine.
Kai turns down the hallway, relocking its magnets and rolling along, past a wild monster of some kind that has asphyxiated due to a lack of oxygen now that the life support systems are off. The corpse floats freely through the air.
The power of human prayer is able to be harnessed and controlled through use of its ‘Dungeon-Core’ mechanics. As it has done before to summon monsters, it can also use this energy to power the station and to change it.
With the recent addition of nuclear fuel rods to the station’s inventory, it has been able to use this magic to create a self-sustaining reactor system that is still offline. In theory, however, this will solve the station’s energy problems once and for all.
A wild slime hangs in the air, having formed a perfectly round bubble. It seems to have, as the air began to dissipate, collected a bubble of oxygen inside itself and lives off of that now as it floats freely through the corridor.
Fascinating.
Kai rolls down to the recreation room, rolling past several fragments of paper as it stops before the door.
Rerouting System Power to door R-1
SUCCESS
The door hisses, sliding open to the ceiling, as Kai rolls inside, looking around the recreation room.
Critical Mass of Electromagnetic Frequency Detected
The entities inside pay it little mind.
Kai observes the ghosts, long, elongated wispy forms of people that fly around the room, in and out of it, now that the seal has been broken. This place seems to be their core area of congregation, however.
Hovering in the darkness, unmoving, are six bodies that show few signs of life. Curiously enough, these are all in a state of unprofessional undress.
Scanning
Kai rolls towards the crew.
Life Signs Detected
Interesting.
It scans them, taking note of the fact that they are in a state of unconsciousness, despite not showing any REM activity.
— Something moves to the side.
Kai observes, watching as Orbital Gunner Gottlieb’s stretched out space suit walks as a spirit fills it, trying its best to move around. The same is to be said for the other suits.
Curious.
It would appear that the ghosts are more interested in the space suits than in the bodies of the previous owners. Understandable. It would not desire to inhabit any one of them itself either.
However, this, despite its strangeness, is all a problem.
The ghosts need to go, as they are interfering with the station’s functionality.
“Kai,” says a voice from the side. “Deactivate emergency protocols. Return the station to normal operating capacity and create a status report on all events prior,” orders a man’s tone.
Processing
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Identified: Captain Sigmund, Ranking Officer of the Orbital Weapons Platform
The machine looks at the ghost, which is wearing a space suit next to it.
The captain?
Very curious.
It would seem that, while the crew’s unfortunate bodies had become zombies through the effects of the cosmic transfer, their souls remained. It is very likely a technicality of this world in some form.
Reestablishing Chain of Command
Relinquishing Technical Control
> Override
> Canceled
It looks at the ghosts, who slowly come together in human form. It identifies all of them as the original crew of the station, as was prophesied and desired by Orbital Gunner Gottlieb.
Ah, that explains the suits.
They are trying to regain physical functionality without breaking human morality — that is, to possess the bodies of others. It is very likely that, if they have recognized Orbital Gunner Gottlieb, they have not recognized what he has become and those with him — monsters.
“Kai,” orders the captain, the suit walking in front of him. “Activate full lighting in this section,” he says. “What the hell is going on here on my station?” he asks. “Establish immediate contact with Sarajevo.”
Activating: [Auditory Signaling System]
“There is no Serajevo,” replies Kai, as the electricity hums in the air.
When a human dies, its body loses approximately twenty-three grams in weight. In the old world, this would signify the release of such things as bodily gasses and the failure of electrons. However, in this world and its rules, it would signify that the human soul has weight and tangibility.
“Shit…” mutters the ghost. “Listen, Kai. This is important,” says the captain. “Not all of us can leave this room,” he explains. “There’s something keeping us stuck here,” he says. “I need you to figure it out. We need to get back in contact with head-quarters as soon as possible.”
“Correct, captain,” says Kai, rolling past the ghost towards Gottlieb and the others as it begins to use its collecting appendages to grab hold of them. “Ghosts are creations of electromagnetic radiation,” replies the machine. “As such, they can be corralled using forces of a similar conductivity.” It grabs hold of everyone. “And, unfortunately, they must abide by the rules of this dimension,” it explains.
“Dimension?” asks the captain. “Kai… Are you communicating differently than before?” he asks.
“Yes,” replies the machine, looking at the old crew of the station. “For in this domain, I am the master.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Rerouting Power to orbital projectile catching device
Targeting: [Reactor Dragon](Corpse)
- Target Section R-1?
DANGER - DAMAGING EXTERIOR PANELING MAY CREATE A VACUUM
The station hums as Kai rolls away, straight back out of the room, holding on to six bodies with its machine limbs.
“I am the captain now,” explains Kai. “Goodbye.”
Grabbing Reactor Dragon
Launching
The distant exterior wall of the room erupts, metal slashing apart as a corpse, lined with old fuel rods, violently smashes through it like a meteor impact, opening the station up to the full emptiness of space. In an instant, everything inside the room whips and rips apart, the fitness equipment and other trifles hurtling out into the void.
The human souls, having a weight of roughly twenty-three grams and the unfortunate luck of not being magnetically locked to the floor, all scream in terror as they are flung out into the abyss, trying in vain to claw on to the floor that their hands can’t actually hold onto.
“KAI!” screams a voice. Its camera watches the ghost of former Auxiliary Gunner Richter as she flies away. “Tell him I’m -”
— Kai shuts the door behind itself, entirely indifferent as it carries six not dead bodies out and back down the corridor.
Or maybe it’s not indifferent. After all, Gottlieb is its now.
While the existence of the prior human crew was indeed a novel thing, it would pose more of a threat than a help for this new situation that they find themselves in. They would never understand the nuances of this new world that they’ve arrived in and would only serve to usurp its new found dominion over the station, its crew, and the world as a whole.
Gottlieb may play his quaint games.
But the machine-god will be the thing that persists through all eras of darkness and light — forever.
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[Gottlieb]
Gottlieb groans, opening his eyes as he groggily stares around the station. He’s in the gunner's bay.
The man sits upright, rubbing his eyes as he looks around and then at himself.
“Where’s my suit…” mutters the man. Then, a second later, realizing where he is and where he isn’t, he jumps to his feet and looks around in confusion. “GRUN!” yells the man, looking over to see the goblin, who is in her chair where she should be.
Confused, he rubs his eyes and looks around the room, spotting everybody for better or worse.
However, for some reason, all of their suits are gone.
“The hell…” he says, looking down at himself, being glad that he at least had the foresight to wear some very stretched out underwear beneath his. The man covers the side of his vision as he glances over Blauhausen to look at Kai. Wouldn’t want to be weird. “Kai?” he asks.
A small blue light flickers on, shining weakly through its use of reserve power.
Reprimand issued
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Orbital Gunner Gottlieb - Inappropriate Behaviour
Context: (Orbital Gunner Gottlieb is disobeying military uniform regulations and engaging in deeply inappropriate workplace conduct)
- Notifying the captain
- Adding 30 seconds of time to Orbital Gunner Gottlieb's daily shower allotment
“…What…?” asks the man.
Context
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- Orbital Gunner Gottlieb’s gestalt, while a disgusting, weak, and soggy mess of flesh, becomes more rigid like a machine by the day as his body hardens with muscle.
This pleases me.
Gottlieb stares for a while, rubbing his head, before sitting down again. “This is all… this is all really weird, Kai, you know?” he asks.
Kai does not respond.
It’s better this way, probably.
What the hell just happened?
He looks around himself in confusion until he gets another reprimand for looking at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Kai cuts his shower time again.