Summary:
Of self, blessed-drone waiting with warms in newly-secure 10×20 comb, along with the headless metawomab, and Dr. Love, seated in a broken chair, a metamab who is missing an arm and whose legs are slightly mangled. The hall leads south to a larger crunch-munch comb; the path east is brighter, the other direction is Grue (grue). Oneself, believing that a distraction is always handy when engaging an enemy, arranges the metamab Dr. Love so the hair of the severot womab’s head is woven through and tied to his fingers, thus if hand rises, so too will the womab-head hanging from it. Warms glance at this arrangement and oneself has insight. Warms are wary of onerace and it is best to make distance and let mine actions prove onerace intentions true.
Oneself and warms are rested but tor lots of shills outside the wedge – pitter patter of warmals running and hissing and manyselves shill vibrations. The vibrations came up and back and seemed to end where the rumpled door was; banging ensues. A metamab? After a while, there is no more banging. No more tor emanating from the hall outside.
Warms decide to split up. They argue needlessly. The onerace understands resource utilization strategy like this; warms are strange and dangerous and they mostly do not. The dwar and mabden will remain while the rest of the warms leave to search with onerace. Warms little Gnue has yellow shard for mimicking wedges.
The door opens with a hiss, and oneself notices that the dark grue corridor now has a flickering light.
On off.
On off.
On off.
Like the hive, blessed queenbrood.
There are lots of crunchy things underneath (mushroom debris from last skirmish?) although a path down the center is swept clean. The damaged door has been repairot and bent back into shape. No other debris from the battle is left. Little Gnue tors the door across the hall. The warm reaches forth selfs yellow shard and it opens with a hiss. A crunch-munch hall? It would have served dozens. Furniture is displaced and overturned; Oneself sees many gnawed bleach-white mabden bones as well as nomab bones. Nummy warms, so good to eat, nom nom nom. North of the 30×50 comb is another gray wedge. Warms metamab which trills oneself “Slicer” sees a pressure plate which opens a view to the hallway oneself remembers from before. The cold one, a HissMar, another jammer like Oneself, thinks the bones were MiTar or Gif (weapon-wielding jammer HiPars). The wedge door opens into the corridor where the lava beast lays slain. Farther down the eastern corridor it is brighter — far, far away. Self is surprised to sense the warms Devok which appears to have recoverot and joins the onerace and the warms.
Warms head towards the light with self, and as selves cross the T-junction, one sees up North several brown wedge doors, also two more browns to the East. To the south is brown and yellow. At the end of the Eastern one, there is a large hallway. Onerace and warms proceed to the yellow wedge door (South). The corridor goes 30” and bends west. Self spies a blue door at the end (down another corridor). On a perception check, self and the cold one noticed a silvery box with a U shape handle in it. Intact. It was hard to perceive as it blends with the wall. The HissMar, self-titled Sarek, picks it up. Warms creep to the door. Warms little Gnue tors the door. Suddenly RoGnue shrieks crying out that something hath flitted into his laptor. Intrigued, oneself abrupts forward affixing the Gnue via tik-claw while extracting a 2” long meg. An Earwig; delicious, but also used to hold warms under harmon. Self wants to mog the warms and feeds the meg to the Gob instead. Self-titled Kreesy gets a rush of insights from all the hivemind. Praise the hive. The wall is coverot in megs, flattened against the door. Still sobbing the Gnue exclaims that there are many more. Kreesy evokes divine harmon and harvests the meg as they fall to the ground. Kreesy shoves them all into selfs wineskin and then places them in a metal box, a wise Gob indeed.
Self-titled JinZik swipes open the door to another 10×20’ comb; selves see another yellow shard within. There is a ceramic coffee can-sized cylinder smack dab in the middle of an otherwise empty, pristine clean. Jinzik tosses flour into the room. Immediately, the wall directly to the North detaches, separates into two pieces and envelops the Gnue with a snap! Jin is now embedded in the wall and oneself can tor the grinding of his bones. Self evokes poneclaw, prods the wall, with no effect, then knocks over the ceramic cylinder. Sarek goes in with trident flat to hold the wall open as if it were a trash compactor wall on a DrakStar; it has no real effect. The Devok attacks the barg; it is different from the wall but blended within it. A slapping sound is heard. Slicer tries to wedge its fingers behind the creature to pry it off the wall. It works. He can now see Jinzik. With its 2nd attack, Slicer attempts to tear barg open to free Jinzik. Self attacks with mine bluebar; the wall collapses, freeing JinZik. It is very thin now, stretching out. It is maybe 1,000 lbs. It appears groot. Warms attack, rendering many hits; cut it into pieces and cesate it. Kreesy calls upon the divine and glomes JinZik. The cylindrical ceramic thing has an ellipsis around it. It may be a way to unscrew it.
Oneself searches the wall where the barg hid and finds a BLUE SHARD. Self attaches shard to ones roarclaw. We proceed to the next yellow shard. Jinzik swipes. The door goes back. A single metal table lies within; 20×10; a mabden skeleton wearing an ornate uniform is within; the comb has a deep blue green glow; the glow is tide pod blue but also slightly brighter. Self shoves Dr. Love in, it falls to the ground and glows blue. Warms leave and go to the blue door. Within are many tables, boxes on the tables as well as an orange metaknight. Segmented tentacles are everywhere. There are 4 other orange metaknights working on something. Two additional doors are visible now: a blue wedge to S and a blue to the East. The orange metaknight approaches us and begins squawking in words we cannot fathom. K’lar holds up the blue shard. Its glowing rill change from orange to grue, and it backs away. The door in the east opens; one goes through and warms see an open space, sparks, sounds, creatures. VERY clean. Oneself have no boggle what metas are doing. Ones are completely baffled. We go the East door. Cylindrical bodies lie atop tables; a hulking spider-like metabarrel is working on them; 11 metaknights in various states of completion are there. We see a small box floating 1 foot off the ground, filled with circular discs and power modules. Jinzik evokes poneclaw to snag two. A grue metaknight emerges from the rot wedge and approaches us. Oneself flashes mine blue shard; the metaknight moves aside and exits. JinZik stealthily steals two more. Warms and self leave and re-enter the main room. Sarek realizes that the tables and boxes have hose-like attachments; they are all severot. The cold one is able to lift one; the colorot strings within are severot. Sarek rips it away from the table. The one metaknight is picking up broken bits as we go to the Southern door and swiping it open to find that it is a storeroom with two shelves, small boxes. Long metallic discs, globes, etc. Storage. Slicer has a vague idea of what these all are. Jinzik finds a box of power discs; Keesy grabs it. 12 are inside. The hive now have 16 total. Kreesy takes a wrist cuff with a rot ruby on it; it is right sized for a mabden. The Gob tosses it to JinZik
The grue metaknight heads to the rot wedge, Selves follow him, jumping through before it closes. Tosc makes it; Sarek makes it; Slicer makes it; Oneself makes it. The door begins to close and Slicer attempts to hold it open. There are many boxes and 2 grue metaknights; both angrily confront ones Devok, self-titled Tosc, and the meta pushes the demonspawn backwards. Self has inspire and together with the cold one, Sarek, pretend to fall appearing shorn by the pushing, recalling THIS: https://images.app.goo.gl/Fy89wkQfv6EZEbjYA .
An alarm sounds and all work stops. Jinzik and Kreesy are now in the room as well. An arsenal is within and it appears warms are in a room within a room. The wedge closes. There are boxes everywhere, filled with oval globes, power batteries, etc. It is clear now that the grue metaknights realize that warms aren’t responding with violence after they pushed selves and meta appear to be boggled. To enhance metas understanding and communicative abilities metaknights kore power to their hivehelms. Self evokes hivemind that one is shorn, really hamming it up. Jinzik brilliantly evokes hivemind that warms shards shine rot. One of the grue metaknights suddenly reaches out and grabs Kreesy by the claw and hauls the massive ForBog forward. ForBog remains calm and does not respond immediately. The grue metaknight activates the box that Kreesy picked up from the previous room. Selves are startled to suddenly learn that Kreesy’s new toy translates! It turns out the metaknights are saying “IDENTIFY” to Kreesy, who evokes gimley to present a rot shard. The grue metaknight says, “explain fomorian”(Kreesy), who is clearly a gob. Sarek hisses “He issst mine sssubject for experimentation”. Ones are informed this is arsenal 2-9-C-11. Meta indicate oneselves are not authorized arsenal access. Jinzik asks, “would you be willing to bring said arsenal to security personnel?” They reply by calling a supervisor: “Requesting Golf Echo Romeo Golf Summit” drones a meta, calling a higher authority, who is now in transit. Oneself posits that the grue metaknights are clearly FUBArot and are acting beyond the scope of meta assigned duties, attempts to invoke the meta-torn one (thou shalt not harm mabden) by saying, “Security enforcers; you have harmed self — a drone of shard blue. Meta must DEACTIVATE.” And amazingly, they do. Both metamab settle inert resting on the floor.
Ones posit quickly: 1) grab boom glar, 2) push the grue metaknights and hope that their proximity to the door will open it.
Selves act: Kreesy blurs himself into a likeness of Slicer to conceal his gob heritage. One clacks 2 of each color (4 colors); Tosc clacks 1 grue and 4 rot. JinZik loots; clacks 1 rot. Slicer pushes one of the grueknights to the door, as does Sarek. The door opens. Sarek wedges the meta in the door. Hivemind-style ones and warms all push through.
An orange metaknight confronts warms, saying selves should meet the Preceptor in holding area 2 Charlie. Oneself says:
“we have permission from GERGS”, and waves it off with a blue shard.
Manyselves exit the room and run back to ones compatriots.
Blessings for the Onerace – Drone K’Lr H’Arcnss for HARP 2021