Emergence Game Thread

There's dust hanging in he air, and fog in your brains as you shake off the percussive force of the explosion. The room is perfectly still and silent, save a wailing baby who has flecks of blood on his forehead, probably not his own, but it's hard to say for sure. After a brief healing session, Rhiv, without saying a word walks over to the door an pulls the lever. Immediately gears and cables launch into motion, and there's an uncomfortable grating sound as the door, which appears to be a solid slab of some unfamiliar metal, rises into the rock above.

You find yourself in a hexagonal room, and directly across from you is a sight like you've never seen. An entire wall of gears, pipes, pistons, and pulleys; floor to ceiling.



The room is about 30 feet tall and 60 feet in diameter from corner to corner. Except the wall of gears, the other five walls appear perfectly smooth, carved directly from the mountain. As you turn to take in the room, you see above the door you entered a large clock, probably five feet in diameter, with all the inner workings exposed.

Around the room, there are five hexagonal pedestals and a blank space where a sixth one would be if they were symmetrical. They are positioned to equal to the corners of the hexagon, but are 15 feet from the walls (meaning the pedestals are about 30 feet from each other, measuring across. From the door, clockwise around the room, their heights are 3ft, missing, 3ft, 3ft, 6ft, 3ft. In the very center of the room is a hexagon in a circle, about ten feet wide, with a single dwarven word in the middle.

The floor is impossibly clean, and shines like waxed marble. You can see your reflections in it, as several small magical lights on the ceiling light the room.

As Rhiv touches the 6 foot pillar, six holes open, one in each wall, about 3 feet in diameter. Six robotic spiders in synchronization jump deftly to the ground and sit completely still. You can hear their gears humming.

Harp swiftly draws and throws two daggers at two adjacent mechanical spiders. The first is a solid hit, right on what might be considered the single large eye on the front, and clangs of the bot's metal outer shell, while the second hits the ground in front of the "creature" and skitters off, coming to treat against the wall. The other spiders either didn't notice the attack or don't seem to care.

Something odd begins to happen to the first arachno-droid. Even though the strike appeared to do no damage, the sound it produces behind to change, as though something is out of alignment. Rather than the perfect humm from before, the sound is now wobbling, and there's a sad grating sound.

All of a sudden, a voice comes from the droid. In a low gravel, the voice says, "taveir cylindrumm fjhornir", and again. There appears to be some kind of recording that is now stuck in a loop.

Almost responding to its own command, the malfunctioning bot strides forward to the six foot tall pillar, and hops on top. The pedestal starts sinking into the floor. As it does, a pedestal begins rising out of the floor where the empty space was.

Once all the pillars are the exact same height, the spider leaps of, but before it goes the ground it explodes, little years and springs flying all around the room.

There's now a small half-carcass of a mechanical spiders that's been shredded to pieces lying on the floor next to the pillar.

"i'll try... I wouldn't want you to miss seeing my beautiful face... You just keep focused on blinding these buggers if they do anything aggressive."

As the blade is drawn through the spider's husk, I attempt to learn from my mistakes and sidestep with the backwards momentum of the blade, keeping my gaze on my prey, but removing myself roughly 10 feet, and begin to circle around it, retaining my perimeter, but putting my back against the wall while eyeing the location of the other monsters.

Harp's sabre glides through the unknown metal like soft butter, and he dances away as the small machine explodes in a small ball of fire and large puff of smoke.

The other spiders continue whirring softly, remaining still.

A few seconds after the explosion has finally died down, the baby finally stops wailing and has quieted to sniffles.

You hear the legs lock into place as you pick the droid off the floor, just as a child tenses their body as you pick them up.

It weighs about 40 lbs.