Tik-Tok (Session Golf) Vicros Bihar 24/05/2022
May 25, 2022 0:07:42 GMT
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Marto Copperkettle and Lucky like this
Post by DANLOWS on May 25, 2022 0:07:42 GMT
*Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock*
My life can be summed up in those words. Ever since my parents died, off who knows where, my life has been segmented down to the second. Little slices of time, tick-tocking away. I thought only I could hear it. Then I met Derek, and I know SO much more.
I’ve been in the Dawnlands for a few months now, having taken a few jobs here and there, getting some lessons from Pipper (a fantastic teacher, I would recommend speaking to her if you need something made.), assisting others as often as I can. But always, in the back of my mind, I know that time is ticking away. For what, is unclear, but whatever it is, time is slowly running out. Something is wrong. With the world? It’s hard to find the words that encompass this feeling, this CERTAINTY that something is broken in the world. I thought I would find answers when I came to the Dawnlands about the fate of my parents, but all I have had are more questions, distractions. I guess my time for that ran out.
*Flashback*
My family have always had a fascination, and some might even go so far as to call it an obsession, with mechanical workings. As a child, in half remembered lessons in family history, there was a half remembered story about my great great grandfather (Mordex Bihar II), who apparently took part in some great mechanical march that only happens every century or longer, and as a reward for taking part, received a pendant made of a gear cog ⚙️ from the great machine he marched to. This has been passed down the family, father to son, since.
My parents had left on an exploration of a newly discovered portal to somewhere called the Dawnlands, while I was away at school. They had only been away for a few weeks, when this pendant was sent to me. I do not know who sent it or when it arrived, but one day it was there, lying by my bed. Of course I picked it up to see, and as soon as I did: *TICK. TOCK.* The ticking of some vast machine could be heard. Of course, I didn’t understand, but something felt different, changed, altered from before. Where before I was waiting expectantly for my parents to contact me and tell me how things were in Kantas, now it was as if I knew I’d never hear from them again. It was maddening! I didn’t know how I knew, but I KNEW they had died. I KNEW this pendant was important and part of the answer to the noise I kept hearing. I took to wearing it around my neck as a talisman, more than a family relic. I’d noticed that sometimes when I was wearing it, I could reach for an object and suddenly it flew accross the last few inches to me, and I began experimenting with other effect. It took me 6 months after I left school at 18 to save enough gold to arm myself and book passage across the seas to Kantas.
*End Flashback*
I received a very unusual message the other week, one from a person named Derek. Normally, just getting a message wouldn’t be unusual, however part of the message stood out to me. A string of 1’s and 0’s were staring at me, and something about the way they were arranged was familiar to me. There was a repeating gap between the characters, precisely at intervals of 8. “Some kind of cipher”, I thought. After a few days of working at it, I cracked it! A cipher based on a two state only with the positioning of each digit having significance!
Contained within was mostly coordinates, and something I didn’t understand about tendrils? Branches? Roots? Tentacles? I’m not sure if I missed a few numbers with that part. Surely it can’t be that important?
I met my friends, Boosya and Lucky in the Three Headed Dragon, and we were shortly joined by Damien (the tallest man I’ve ever seen) and Captain Alistair Smyte, another large man, who I’d not met before.
I showed the others the letter and explained that I’d been requested to go to the Clockwork Keep northeast of the Daring Heights walls. And invited them along to see what aid was requested that we could render.
As we reached the forest on the route to the Keep, we became aware of something following us. A strange mechanical construction with 4 sides, wings, and four legs.
A combination of my half remembered family knowledge and a sense of a vast intelligence jolted me. This was a Modron! Or more accurately a Quadrone! I thought they existed far into another plane of reality, but here was one in Kantas!
It didn’t seem hostile to us at all. And so we decided to follow it to where it was leading us.
It led us to a clearing containing a larger Modron, this one a tridrone, that looked like it had seen better days.
Derek informed me that he had created all the Modrons around the clearing, and not only thst, but some mechanical monstrosity he called a Kraken!
He seemed reluctant to mention any of the heirarchy of his Modrons, Due to the “Mad Jack(s)” hexadrone incident a while ago. He also showed me his devotion to Primus, God of Machines, and I responded by showing him my pendant. He told me that Primus had spoken to him offering to give me answers if I helped Derek with a run amok mechanical menace of his own devising.
I needed no persuasion, unlike some of my companions, who haggled so effectively they managed to get Derek to raise his initial offer by 25 gold pieces each. I think Derek was confused by that outcome too. Derek gave Lucky a large clockwork key and told us that there was a fail safe built in to this Kraken that would shut it down if we reached it with this key.
We made our way towards the keep, and as it came into view, I immediately saw there was a big problem. The Kraken has wound its tentacles into, through and around most of the working in this keep, including the clockwork from which it derives its name! The machine was stuck! This needed to be fixed immediately, was the feeling I got when seeing it.
We rushed into the keep, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a metal tentacle that came crashing down as we entered, and we found ourselves in the bowels of this enormous keep. The Forge, the central control point for the entire building.
I could see a dais in the centre of this room. Unfortunately, I could also see a number of mechanical tentacles rising from the smelting metal, and even coming out of the walls themselves. This Kraken has been busy since Derek had to retreat from here.
The fight flashed past quickly, Boosya linking the two large men, Damian, and Alastair, along with lucky with tendrils of arcane energy, bolstering their will and strengthening their resolves.
I vaguely remember using a spell that ripped a hole in this plane, and falling out of a twinned hole next to the dais, as the hole closed behind me, I looked at this dais. As I leaned in, my pendant brushed the surface of it, and a keyhole opened in the surface. I plunged the key in and turned it, only to hear the kraken grind to a halt and fall from its perch on the roof of the keep. At the same time, I heard the clockwork spin up in the very walls of the keep, and finally *TICK. TOCK* I fell to my knees, eyes unseeing, as deep in my minds eye, I saw endless clockwork plains, entire continents revolving on gears, an entire planet made of clockwork, all turning, all spinning for some grand design. I looked down to see two gravestones, also clockwork, connected to one another even in death, still part of the Great Machine. But even here, at the centre of a great behemoth of a machine, something was still wrong. A piece; missing. A piece, a familiar shape to me. A single cog ⚙️. My pendant. I heard a voice, such an unbelievably vast intelligence behind it, unfeeling say: “COME TO ME. FIX WHAT IS BROKEN. JOIN THE SIDE OF ORDER AND OPPOSE CHAOS”, and I realised I was hearing Primus, for the first time in my life.
I snapped back to the keep. Seconds only had passed. It felt like minutes from my perspective. I felt something pulsing on my chest, and saw that my pendant was changed somehow. It now moves and rotates under it’s own power, and I can feel it pulsing in time with my heartbeat, and the ticking I can hear is far less discordant...almost soothing in its regularity and uniformity. Once I recovered, we left the forge and we soon found Derek and were recompensed for our trouble. He unfortunately did not tell us that his fail safe would also shut down the spark from his Modrons. They lie where they fell in the forest. I feel sorry for him, but finally, finally I know.
I know where my parents rest, in the cradle of Primus. In Mechanus.
I know what I need to do, but for now...for now at least, there is time.
There is always time.
*TICK. TOCK*
Original art by Sux2BeMe on Deviantart
www.deviantart.com/sux2beme/art/Clockwork-Eye-2-0-423788468
My life can be summed up in those words. Ever since my parents died, off who knows where, my life has been segmented down to the second. Little slices of time, tick-tocking away. I thought only I could hear it. Then I met Derek, and I know SO much more.
I’ve been in the Dawnlands for a few months now, having taken a few jobs here and there, getting some lessons from Pipper (a fantastic teacher, I would recommend speaking to her if you need something made.), assisting others as often as I can. But always, in the back of my mind, I know that time is ticking away. For what, is unclear, but whatever it is, time is slowly running out. Something is wrong. With the world? It’s hard to find the words that encompass this feeling, this CERTAINTY that something is broken in the world. I thought I would find answers when I came to the Dawnlands about the fate of my parents, but all I have had are more questions, distractions. I guess my time for that ran out.
*Flashback*
My family have always had a fascination, and some might even go so far as to call it an obsession, with mechanical workings. As a child, in half remembered lessons in family history, there was a half remembered story about my great great grandfather (Mordex Bihar II), who apparently took part in some great mechanical march that only happens every century or longer, and as a reward for taking part, received a pendant made of a gear cog ⚙️ from the great machine he marched to. This has been passed down the family, father to son, since.
My parents had left on an exploration of a newly discovered portal to somewhere called the Dawnlands, while I was away at school. They had only been away for a few weeks, when this pendant was sent to me. I do not know who sent it or when it arrived, but one day it was there, lying by my bed. Of course I picked it up to see, and as soon as I did: *TICK. TOCK.* The ticking of some vast machine could be heard. Of course, I didn’t understand, but something felt different, changed, altered from before. Where before I was waiting expectantly for my parents to contact me and tell me how things were in Kantas, now it was as if I knew I’d never hear from them again. It was maddening! I didn’t know how I knew, but I KNEW they had died. I KNEW this pendant was important and part of the answer to the noise I kept hearing. I took to wearing it around my neck as a talisman, more than a family relic. I’d noticed that sometimes when I was wearing it, I could reach for an object and suddenly it flew accross the last few inches to me, and I began experimenting with other effect. It took me 6 months after I left school at 18 to save enough gold to arm myself and book passage across the seas to Kantas.
*End Flashback*
I received a very unusual message the other week, one from a person named Derek. Normally, just getting a message wouldn’t be unusual, however part of the message stood out to me. A string of 1’s and 0’s were staring at me, and something about the way they were arranged was familiar to me. There was a repeating gap between the characters, precisely at intervals of 8. “Some kind of cipher”, I thought. After a few days of working at it, I cracked it! A cipher based on a two state only with the positioning of each digit having significance!
Contained within was mostly coordinates, and something I didn’t understand about tendrils? Branches? Roots? Tentacles? I’m not sure if I missed a few numbers with that part. Surely it can’t be that important?
I met my friends, Boosya and Lucky in the Three Headed Dragon, and we were shortly joined by Damien (the tallest man I’ve ever seen) and Captain Alistair Smyte, another large man, who I’d not met before.
I showed the others the letter and explained that I’d been requested to go to the Clockwork Keep northeast of the Daring Heights walls. And invited them along to see what aid was requested that we could render.
As we reached the forest on the route to the Keep, we became aware of something following us. A strange mechanical construction with 4 sides, wings, and four legs.
A combination of my half remembered family knowledge and a sense of a vast intelligence jolted me. This was a Modron! Or more accurately a Quadrone! I thought they existed far into another plane of reality, but here was one in Kantas!
It didn’t seem hostile to us at all. And so we decided to follow it to where it was leading us.
It led us to a clearing containing a larger Modron, this one a tridrone, that looked like it had seen better days.
Derek informed me that he had created all the Modrons around the clearing, and not only thst, but some mechanical monstrosity he called a Kraken!
He seemed reluctant to mention any of the heirarchy of his Modrons, Due to the “Mad Jack(s)” hexadrone incident a while ago. He also showed me his devotion to Primus, God of Machines, and I responded by showing him my pendant. He told me that Primus had spoken to him offering to give me answers if I helped Derek with a run amok mechanical menace of his own devising.
I needed no persuasion, unlike some of my companions, who haggled so effectively they managed to get Derek to raise his initial offer by 25 gold pieces each. I think Derek was confused by that outcome too. Derek gave Lucky a large clockwork key and told us that there was a fail safe built in to this Kraken that would shut it down if we reached it with this key.
We made our way towards the keep, and as it came into view, I immediately saw there was a big problem. The Kraken has wound its tentacles into, through and around most of the working in this keep, including the clockwork from which it derives its name! The machine was stuck! This needed to be fixed immediately, was the feeling I got when seeing it.
We rushed into the keep, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a metal tentacle that came crashing down as we entered, and we found ourselves in the bowels of this enormous keep. The Forge, the central control point for the entire building.
I could see a dais in the centre of this room. Unfortunately, I could also see a number of mechanical tentacles rising from the smelting metal, and even coming out of the walls themselves. This Kraken has been busy since Derek had to retreat from here.
The fight flashed past quickly, Boosya linking the two large men, Damian, and Alastair, along with lucky with tendrils of arcane energy, bolstering their will and strengthening their resolves.
I vaguely remember using a spell that ripped a hole in this plane, and falling out of a twinned hole next to the dais, as the hole closed behind me, I looked at this dais. As I leaned in, my pendant brushed the surface of it, and a keyhole opened in the surface. I plunged the key in and turned it, only to hear the kraken grind to a halt and fall from its perch on the roof of the keep. At the same time, I heard the clockwork spin up in the very walls of the keep, and finally *TICK. TOCK* I fell to my knees, eyes unseeing, as deep in my minds eye, I saw endless clockwork plains, entire continents revolving on gears, an entire planet made of clockwork, all turning, all spinning for some grand design. I looked down to see two gravestones, also clockwork, connected to one another even in death, still part of the Great Machine. But even here, at the centre of a great behemoth of a machine, something was still wrong. A piece; missing. A piece, a familiar shape to me. A single cog ⚙️. My pendant. I heard a voice, such an unbelievably vast intelligence behind it, unfeeling say: “COME TO ME. FIX WHAT IS BROKEN. JOIN THE SIDE OF ORDER AND OPPOSE CHAOS”, and I realised I was hearing Primus, for the first time in my life.
I snapped back to the keep. Seconds only had passed. It felt like minutes from my perspective. I felt something pulsing on my chest, and saw that my pendant was changed somehow. It now moves and rotates under it’s own power, and I can feel it pulsing in time with my heartbeat, and the ticking I can hear is far less discordant...almost soothing in its regularity and uniformity. Once I recovered, we left the forge and we soon found Derek and were recompensed for our trouble. He unfortunately did not tell us that his fail safe would also shut down the spark from his Modrons. They lie where they fell in the forest. I feel sorry for him, but finally, finally I know.
I know where my parents rest, in the cradle of Primus. In Mechanus.
I know what I need to do, but for now...for now at least, there is time.
There is always time.
*TICK. TOCK*
Original art by Sux2BeMe on Deviantart
www.deviantart.com/sux2beme/art/Clockwork-Eye-2-0-423788468
