Non-Peace Weekend - Investigation

[mockmods]

[Two weeks have passed since your arrival. The Researcher has delivered a pair of motives, promising to reward some or punish others if rule 7 is not enacted by the end of the week.]

[Today is Friday, the deadline for your incentives. There is no morning announcement today.]

[Maybe It's nothing, but you might notice a faint, odd metallic scent in the air as you exit your bedrooms this morning.]

[Proceed with caution, Participants.]

Comments

[windowsexplorer]

[A safe assumption! And a terrible smell.]

Be careful. It smells like something caught on fire in here.

[And she goes on and steps inside. What ridiculousness do we have in here?]

[mockmods]

[Looks like it was a pretty nice office and workshop, once! Which has since been burned to shit in more than a few places.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Yikes.

Well, we might as well get searching. Let's check out the office-y areas first. We got anything like, say, a document that still has legible bits?]

[mockmods]

[There look to be quite a few file folders scattered around, in various states of burned, actually! But what's probably more pressing is yet another body lying on the floor.]

[windowsexplorer]

[OH GOD DAMMIT.

Anyone she recognizes, perchance?]

[mockmods]

[Hard to say, given that the upper body is burned as all get out like large chunks of the office. The body from the abdomen down is pretty untouched, which would make for some pretty gruesomely biological sights and scents, were it not for the fact that said upper body has been reduced to a charred and melted metal endoskeleton, destroyed circuitry and wiring fused into the frame that supported it.]

[Sorry Meredith, you've found one thoroughly decommissioned android.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Congratulations, you've given this evidence to one of the few people in the game for whom it being a robot might actually make it worse and who also doesn't have nearly enough distressed-looking icons.

Speaking of things that make Meredith need distressed-looking icons, about how big is this ex-robot? Penny-sized, bigger, smaller?]

[mockmods]

[Maybe a little hard to tell, depending, but it looks to be about half a foot taller than Penny-sized. It's also built in the general shape of an adult man in a simple black suit rather than a teenaged girl.]

[windowsexplorer]

[Oh thank god no cute robot girls have been harmed in the making of this investigation.

Anything in robodude's pockets?]

[mockmods]

[There actually is something! Looks sort of like the electronic IDs you've all been given, but with a snazzy silver case instead of black.]

[aragona]

[Sonia follows Merideth into the new place that is actually interesting. Burnt stuff sounds not cool for the vampire, so she's going to inspect one of the less-burnt areas of the room.]

[mockmods]

[There's a work desk of some kind that's mostly unburned!]

[Which is good, because the unburned half has a big stack of books in varying sizes.]

[aragona]

[Nice. Sonia picks one of the smaller ones. It might be a notebook with top secret log entries.]

[mockmods]

[This one's a thin, staplebound pamphlet that looks like it could've been made at any Kinkos or Repro Depot. The title is printed on the cardstock cover in simple Times New Roman.]

Technomagical Fusion: Development of the Spirit Core Battery
L. Miller

[aragona]

["Spirit Core" sounds like an occult topic. That's something...Sonia is not an expert on but maybe she'll recognize a thing or two!

She checks out the first few pages before skimming through.]

[mockmods]

[It's pretty dryly written. But if Sonia takes some time to even skim a little- sure does look like some kind of necromancy. Specifically, pulling spirits from the afterlife and preserving them in some kind of crystalline matrix?]

[aragona]

[EW. This sounds like vampire magic and it's gross. Are we talking hundreds of souls or just a few in this matrix?]

[mockmods]

[If you're reading closely? Just one soul per matrix. Though if you're reading VERY closely, there are some really vague references to an incident involving dozens or even hundreds of spirits forcibly entering one matrix together.]

[Sounds like it didn't go well.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Well, what's here to look at that Meredith and Sonia don't already have? Assuming nobody's going to ask the literal demon's opinion on the afterlife stuff happening over there.





honestly he probably wouldn't be that helpful anyway]

[mockmods]

[Well, remember that page of notes you found the other day, with the sketch of the cute toy robot?]

[There's something very similar looking sitting on the charred half of the desk Sonia's inspecting. At least as much as you can tell under all the carbon.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Ehhhhh. You work in Hell, you get used to the char.

Michael idly scrapes a little off what ought to be the robot's head with his thumbnail. Does it look totally unworkable, or did we just lose some outer layers here? He thinks robots might be a little more capable of losing those and still working than humans are.]

[mockmods]

[Looks pretty intact, overall? Why a toy robot was built to withstand fireball temperatures is a bit of a mystery, but this one's held up better than the computer it's plugged into.]

[If he's inspecting it closely, there do seem to be a few areas of detail hidden under the grunge.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Well heck, let's get some more of this grunge off then!]

[mockmods]

[Well, there's one kind of big area on the front, in a recessed panel. A subtle etching that reads "YOUR LEARNING PAL" in large, friendly letters.]

[eudaimonikos]

You are probably so annoying when you're on...

[Okay, let's check out this computer. Is there much to be done with it, or is it too burnt?]