The Disposable Enquiry [Round 1: Kyyhkynen]

Q/Q/Q/Q/Query.

It expected an answer from the echoes of its voice, as it always had.

The word flew to the carved arches of the Cathedral, pitted with age and frozen in time, bouncing off the broken faces of carved angels. Blind faces, blank and yearning, offered no response; empty sockets stared down at the lone figure with the gravitas of the deathless. There was no sympathy in the stone for the Inquirer. There had never been. When the Cathedral was young, the statues had been so lifelike that it had been sure they were on the edge of answering it, always one question away from opening their stone lips and saying the beautiful words that would stop it wondering, stop the ticking in its head. Just one question. This one or the next, or the next, or the next. Sooner or later it had to find the right question and the angels would finally sing.

The Inquirer paused and looked up, waiting for them to answer. Somewhere in its aching body it knew this was hopeless. It knew this, it had known this for as long it had been trying not to think about it, but it was so hard to stay quiet under the gaze of such impassable holiness, blind as it was. They could hear it, it was sure. It was so sure. Someone had to hear it. Someone had to answer after all these years of waiting.

It drifted over the warped floor of the Cathedral, iron limbs trailing above the shattered flagstones. Burn marks were still faintly visible on the deepest of the channels that had been blasted through the once-smooth marble, cold and grey. In ten thousand years it had never managed to clean them away. It didn’t know why. It had so many questions and this was one of them. One query in the countless number, none of them answered, none of them acknowledged. Not in twenty thousand years. Not in thirty or forty or five. Nothing it had ever managed to say had been able to make them listen.

Not in a hundred thousand years.

Iron claws wrapped around a piece of fallen stone, perhaps once the edge of a wing or the hem of a robe but now only a piece of jagged rock. It weighed as much as several men but the Inquirer lifted it effortlessly, as it always had. It bore the marks of its claws with the grace of a martyr. Idly it turned the stone in the dim light of the Cathedral, watching it gleam where its facets had been worn to a polish over the endless years. A hulking body of springs and pistons, the rust of an eternity, the shattered glass of a massive clock face mocked it from the reflections of the stone. As they always did, and would, forever. The stone would show it the faults of its own aging body until it was worn away to nothing by the hands of the Inquirer itself, until its dust joined the sea of decay covering the floor of the Cathedral. There would be no thunder, no breaching of heaven or hell, no Jericho. There would be nothing. There would always be nothing.

The angels would always be silent, as it had known for as long as it lived.

With a roar of ancient metal the Inquirer threw the stone aside, all at once awake with something unnamable. It didn’t know what anger was, and if it had it would have thought the word too shallow to call the thing filling its insides with the clamor of a wasted eternity. It had been built to embody the questions of a multitude that had never come, that had never been, and the Cathedral had lived and died as the husk of a deity that had never been needed. The Inquirer had never been needed. Its questions were meaningless. All it had ever been was a testimony to the shell of this place and the purpose it had never found, cut short by the nothingness that had claimed the world.

The ancient stone collided with the wall, shattering into a thousand tiny fragments and leaving a crater where an angel’s face had once been. The ruined figure seemed to beckon the Inquirer forward, one fingerless hand extended in some long-since meaningless gesture. Come, the empty thing said, and the Inquirer knew that the only sound it was hearing was the voice of its own death, You are hollow as I. You are dust and you are as the words that have never been heard in the shadow of this Cathedral. You are dust, as I am, and you will fall silent in your tomb for the last time, wordless…

N/N/N/No.

The Inquirer turned away from the statue, not noticing it crack and crumble away from an eon of neglect. It had waited its entire existence for something that would not come, it thought as it reached out towards the Cathedral’s hidden purpose, dormant for so long it had died in its sleep. The weight of it pressed down on its iron limbs as if to crush it into the dust and steal from it the few millennia it had left, but the Inquirer would not die. What was death to it now? What was anything beyond the monotony of its existence in the Cathedral? It had questions. It had so many questions and the Inquirer would no longer wait for an answer.

The broken marble underneath it warped and buckled from the strain as the abandoned machine seized control, feeling the power strip away the years of decay and shatter the silence the angels had refused to break. Sheets of rust and dust-clogged gears rattled in its chassis and rained down as ashes to the floor. Its mind was as clear as the day it had been built and given to this Cathedral; it saw beyond the hollow walls of this place to the nothingness that surrounded it, drowning in the Void between the worlds like an ocean of shadows. It reeled at the darkness, unknowable and impenetrable, and knew that no question it could ever ask would give it solace now. It was alone, entirely alone, and no one but the angels would ever know it had existed. It would die forgotten. It would die without ever receiving an answer…

But distantly, impossibly far beyond the veil of shadows, the Inquirer saw light.

The stars of countless universes assailed it with their brilliance. There was heat and fire and life, so far removed from the stillness of the Cathedral that it could not comprehend how such a thing could exist. What had set such a thing in motion? By what right did they exist in the gaps between darkness with no walls to hold them in? It was unthinkable. If it had not become something greater than itself the Inquirer would have gone mad from the discovery, would have destroyed itself entirely rather than face the limits of its own existence. But it had power, now, it had claimed the Cathedral for itself and the ancient machine saw possibilities where it would have once seen death.

It still had questions, the Inquirer thought. That hadn’t changed, either by reluctance or by nature. It still craved answers like a drowning man for air and felt the need to find them grinding between its gears, drowning out even the endless roar of the Void. Its resentment of the angels now seemed foolish and petty in comparison to the greater affront of its isolation. This would be the first thing the Inquirer would change. No longer would it be trapped in a swell of emptiness, at the mercy of a being long since dead; it was awake, and it would know the answers to all of its questions if it meant tearing apart the Void itself.

It would start by finding out what it was like to watch another being die.

___________

GB SPINOFF SWEET JESUS YES

SpoilerShow

You know the drill so I’ll keep it short. The gimmick here is that all contestants will be created with two words as their theme- one chosen by you, and another chosen by an entirely different person which will be randomly assigned to you. These two words must be combined in any and all ways you see fit to create your character. For example, the Inquirer up there was made from “enquiry” and “dispose”, and the rounds will be chosen much the same way. So easy! So efficient! You’ll never battle grandly the same way again!

FORM WARS: REVENGE OF THE FORMS

SpoilerShow

None for you yet, you lucky bastard! For now, send me a PM saying hello and what for along with one word that you’d like to see some other chump struggle with. Keep it creative. Keep it weird. When I’ve got enough, I’ll PM you back with your theme word and you can fill out this handy dandy little thing right here as fast as your stupid fingers will type:

Username: Your hollow shell of a persona.
Theme Words: Just for giggles.
Name: Who’s this sorry son of a bitch?
Gender: We just need a pronoun, sir.
Race: What are you?
Color: How saturated is your accent?
Description: What exactly am I looking at here?
Weapons and Abilities: How are you going to murder everyone else?
Biography: Bonus points if it’s extra tragic!

Deadline’s whenever I feel like making it. Godspeed, gentlemen!

I am expressing an interest in being in this battle thank you very much.

-RAWR-

Ex/x/x/xpression of interest ^__^

This was my idea, so I'm signing up.

yes

I am apparently incapable of not signing up. Kill me now.

CREAM GRAVY

Expression of interest. In before it's too late!

Eight words in, eight words going out. Get those profiles posted!

"Aperture" and "staples"

What the hell

Here's my character.

Username: Dragon Fogel
Theme Words: prisoner (me) + staples (PYP)
Name: Roger Johnson
Gender: Male
Race: Vengeful Spirit of Bureaucracy
Color: Red tape.
Biography: Roger Johnson was once an accountant. He was one of the best, in fact. There was just one problem; he was sloppy with his paperwork. He was frequently asked to fill out forms a second, third, and fourth time.

One day he had to fill out a particularly monstrous form eighteen times.

Then the next day he was told that they'd discovered another error. This lead to him filling out the form twenty-five more times.

Three weeks and six hundred forms later, the stack of discarded forms fell on him and crushed him to death.

As his spirit rose from his body and the realization of his death slowly dawned on him, a ghostly man in a suit appeared before him. He held a large stapler and had a sheet of paper stapled to his chest.

"Roger Johnson?" he asked.

"Y-yes?" Roger stammered. "Have... Have you come for me?"

The ghostly man shook his head.

"No. I am here to thank you. You see this form bound to me?"

Roger nodded.

"There used to be many more. But in the process of bungling that form, you inadvertently managed to fill out the rest of them. Now I am almost free."

"Oh, uh. You're welcome?"

"But this last form needs a witness. Will you sign here, and allow me to finally pass on?"

He pointed to a line on the paper on his chest and handed over a spectral pen. Shrugging, Roger signed his name. The paper disappeared.

Then the spirit laughed.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. Enjoy your new job."

Then he vanished, leaving only his oversized stapler behind. Before Roger could ponder what he meant, the stapler lifted itself up.

A whirlwind passed through the room, and the various papers littering the floor were blown around Roger's spirit, then stapled to him.

The stapler then came to rest in his hands.

And Roger Johnson's mind was filled with knowledge. Knowledge that he could only be free to pass on to the next world if this form were properly completed.

He'd need to get some help for that.

Description: A balding, middle-aged man wearing glasses and a three-piece suit. He's also transparent and glows an unpleasant shade of blue. He carries a large stapler, which is likewise transparent and glowing.

Roger has various forms stapled to his body; if you were to examine them, you would find them to be needlessly complex and that they need to be filled out in triplicate.

Personality-wise, he is very firm on insisting that all paperwork be properly filled out. After all, a badly-filled out form is what's keeping him out of the afterlife. And he has a lot of forms right here that you can help him with hey where are you going!

Seeing particularly shoddy paperwork will send him into a berserk rage. And not just against whoever failed to fill theirs out properly.

Weapons and Abilities: Roger has a large supply of impossibly confusing forms which he can produce from nowhere. He also has a spectral stapler which never needs to be refilled; with this, he to forcibly attach a form to someone until they agree to fill it out.

Ironically, he's absolutely terrible at filling out forms himself, and if he has to for some reason, expect it to be a complete mess. He was always better at accounting.

SpoilerShow

Username: Ixcaliber
Theme Words: Hirsute Sailor
Name: Cornelius Blackheart, Scourge of the Seven Seas TM
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Color: Whatever
Description: Cornelius is tall with green eyes, long black hair and a long black beard. He is heavily scarred and wears an eyepatch over one eye. He wears black pirate clothing and carries an old fashioned flintlock pistol, and a cutlass.

He is arrogant and believes himself to be the Scourge of the Seven Seas TM when he is actually not very well known and not very well thought of by those who he does work with. He doesn’t much think about other people’s feelings and he is constantly one wrong move away from complete mutiny though he doesn’t realise this. He likes plundering gold and stuff but he more cares about being generally evil.

Weapons and Abilities: He is a reasonable shot with his pistol when he is not drunk. He has never actually used his sword because he normally lets everyone else do all the work for him, while he sits down and has a drink of rum.

Biography: Cornelius tells a different story of his past to anyone who bothers to ask him. In some sarcastic versions he is the illegitimate spawn of the beard god, in others his parents were killed by bearded dragons. In reality he was born in Spain and he decided to be a pirate because he thought pirates were cool. Also he worked with asbestos for a while and it’s super relevant to this profile.

SPOILERED FOR FUCK THIS PROFILE IT'S TERRIBLE AND I WILL COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER IF IT KILLS ME.

APERTURE AND STAPLES IS MUCH BETTER THAN GENTLEMANLY AND STAPLES WILL EVER BE

THEREFORE I AM TAKING THE PROFILE I WROTE FOR APERTURE AND STAPLES AND MAKING IT MORE DAPPER

Username: Poison Yer Pick
Theme Words: Gentlemanly, Staples
Name: ASMAIFAS (Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler)
Gender: Male
Race: Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler
Color: #FF7F00
Description: ASMAIFAS consists of a large staple gun, about the size of a car muffler and firing equivalently scaled staples, situated on top of a rotating cylindrical shaft. The shaft is held up by four legs, which allow it to rotate both horizontally and vertically. A the end of each leg is a rotating wheel, which let ASMAIFAS move around. On top of the staple gun is a camera, Wall-E-esque in design, which also contains a speaker somewhere inside it. The camera also has a monocle on one side, and a tiny top hat, made of aluminum and painted black, is perched on top.

As seen in the various advertisements for the Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler (which you may have seen in some of the magazines of your preference), ASMAIFAS has a personality. Unlike all the others, his personality has the flaw of being an actual personality, and a dapper one at that, and not the hollow replica of a personality that the consumer models require. He is also, for some inexplicable reason, British.

Weapons and Abilities: STAPLE GUN. THE SIZE OF A CAR MUFFLER. Seriously, what else needs saying?

Biography:

"Cave Johnson here! Have you ever wished you could staple something to a wall in a more effective and/or entertaining manner? Then the Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler is just the thing for you! Gone are the days of wanting larger staples or wishing you could staple objects from a distance - with the Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler, your stapling range is increased to more than thirty meters on a non-windy day. How could we make this offer better, you ask? What if we said you could staple things to a wall from thirty meters - without lifting a finger? That's right, the Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler is an artificially intelligent, fully automated stapler, allowing it to staple anything and everything simply by being told to! Tired of your coworkers not getting your memos? Make your point clear with the comically oversized staples from the Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler. They can't ignore your paper when the staples for it are the size of their own wimpy staplers!"

-magazine advertisement for the Aperture Science Artificially Intelligent Fully Automated Stapler

"Go staple this to the message board," Fred said, handing ASMAIFAS a memo. "There's something wrong with that bot," he remarked as he watched ASMAIFAS trundle out of the meeting room.

"You see something wrong with everything," grumbled Bill. He'd found he was out of coffee this morning and didn't feel like talking, but he knew from past experience that Fred wasn't really one to take a hint.

"I think someone installed a higher-end AI core in it by mistake," Fred continued, oblivious to any and all hints as expected. "It was asking me why its staples had to be so big. And it sounded British. They're not supposed to do that."

Bill reluctantly turned his attention to the conversation. Despite how little he felt like talking, he liked stewing in silence even less. Besides, Fred was right. "You know, now that you mention it, I vaguely recall it asking me why I drank coffee instead of getting more sleep." He scratched his head. "I thought it was just delivering a message from one of my coworkers at the time, but now I'm not so sure."

Fred's watch beeped and he glanced down at it. "Well, my shift's starting. You want me to let someone know about the bot?" Bill nodded, rubbing his eyes. "Alright, will do. You take care." Fred walked out of the room and peered down the hallway. "Odd, the bot's gone. And it dropped the paper I wanted it to staple, too! Just great."

LETS TRY THIS AGAIN

Username: Ixcaliber
Theme Words: Hirsute Sailor
Name: Sanctuary
Gender: Neither/Both
Race: Airship plus Humans also a couple of Infected
Color: #408080
Biography: It was never really clear how the plague started, as far as anyone can tell one day there was no plague and the next day the wolves were battering down their doors, infecting them with their own particular breed of feral agony. Those who fled called them werewolves, to be clear they were not werewolves, though the parallels were obvious.

The primary distinguishing characteristic of the infection was the alarming acceleration of hair growth, and the fact that hair begins to grow from every part of the body. Victims have reported feeling great right up until the change. They reportedly feel energized and more healthy and athletic than they have ever felt in their life. The change is the point at which the plague reaches the brain. Whatever it does to someone the end result is the same, bloody violence against whomever they can find. They display little remnants of their former intelligence, though cannot be described as dim-witted exactly. They have a sort of brutal animal cunning, and what has been described as a pack mentality.

Very few managed to escape the wolves, and the contagion spread worldwide, though there are rumours that Madagascar is plague free. Sanctuary was an experimental city-sized airship that was being constructed at the time of the outbreak. It was commandeered by a group of survivors and launched.

It has its fair share of issues; it wasn’t one hundred percent complete when it was launched, and they had to make some makeshift repairs. But overall it is serving as a rather effective sanctuary. Regular ground trips are necessary in order to gather food, supplies and fuel.

Over the years the Sanctuary has picked up more and more passengers included a group of scientists who are working on a cure for the infection. They have thus far developed a serum that if taken regularly holds off the change, allowing those who have been infected to retain a hold on their minds. Since the invention of the serum, a couple of the more adventurous survivors have intentionally infected themselves, to get the benefits of increased strength and speed. Though these weirdoes are in the extreme minority.

Description: A massive zeppelin with a city sized cabin beneath it. It was designed to support life without any external aid but it was launched before a lot of these features were added. Luckily there are a couple of helicopters on board that allow those who can use them to make trips to the ground to pick up whatever is needed.

The people on board are tough as nails survivors. They are mostly the kind of people who made preparations of a zombie apocalypse, but found they applied just as well to a werewolf apocalypse. Of course not everyone on board is like that. Some are families that somehow managed to survive and got picked up, others are scientists rescued from their secure bunkers.

Weapons and Abilities: The survivors are armed with pretty much whatever they could get their hands on; chainsaws, pickaxes, shotguns, crossbows. They are pretty much ready for a fight. Also some of them are infected and thus have increased strength, speed and hair.

Username: TimeothyHour

Theme Words: Junkyard, sacerdotal.

Name: Malachi Smith, Prophet of the Wasteland, Herald of the great and glorious Robot Muhammad

Gender: Male

Race: Augmented Human (essentially a cyborg)

Color:#BF8000

Description: To be a good Mechaprophet, one that people love and respect, one that changes minds and hearts, you must have a certain… charisma about you. Malachi Smith has this charisma. A well-defined, symmetrical, face, along with a square jaw and a chin that would impress most, he oozes the word “confidence.” His dashing blue eyes and his wild walnut coloured hair, too, convey this sense of absolute knowing, absolute power. He’s taller than most, but not in a foreboding, confronting way, but rather in a way that grabs your attention and thrusts your head at him, screaming “LISTEN TO THIS GUY, HE HAS AUTHORITY.” Most of his robotic implants are covered by his immaculate white robes, save for his eye, but underneath, you would be able to see many parts of Malachi’s body have been replaced by salvaged scrap and machinery, most notably an entire arm and leg. If you listened closely, and the prophet was not speaking in his deep, soothing voice, you would be able to hear the ticking of the amalgam of clockwork and machinery that consist of his insides.

Malachi has two interests, and only two interests, in mind. The propagation of his faith, and his continued existence in as well-off a position as possible (specifically within his religion). And he will stop at nothing, nothing, to achieve these goals, and although he is a relatively nice guy, the faith of Agumentalism has no moral teachings.

Weapons and Abilities: Smith posses a variety of powers due to his augmentations, including improved strength, agility, durability, and sex appeal. He also possesses a robotic eye that improvise his vision, along with other vision-based abilities. The Prophet carries a holy assault rifle and dagger at all times, has read the entire sacred book of “Krav Maga 101,” and practices the holy martial art regularly, in order to protect himself in the wasteland.

Biography: “One must deny the flesh and feed the spirit,” the prophet, Malachi Smith proclaimed to his audience. He stood atop an old crate, the mountain of junk behind him framing his charismatic form. He spoke with passion, with authority, waving his hands in the air like a madman. He continued with his sermon.

“These are the words the Great Prophet Fusion Reactor Jesus said to his followers!”

He pounded on the metal podium before him a few times for effect before continuing.

“Throughout the Holy text of Bible Technical Manual Four: Holy Human-Robot Enginnering, demonizes the flesh and its desires! Our Lord, Deus Ex Machina, makes it clear that our biological desires are of sin and death!”

He paused for a moment to let the words sink in, giving the audience a serious look.

After what felt like an appropriate pause, Malachi continued.

“However,” he said, “this same book praises human Augmentation! The Metal Flesh, Cybogization, an entire section of this great book is devoted to the medical and mechanical techniques required to tear out the flesh and replace it with the machine! This is the principle tenement of our religion: Augmentation.”

Gesturing wildly, he went on, saying, “Now, many people ask the purpose of the robotic enhancements with which we are so devoted. And I reply to them with one answer, and one answer only: It is the way to Salvation.

“You must shed your evil, biological selves, and become increasingly one with machines, to allow the soul our Lord has given each and every one of us to flourish. To become Augmented is to be part of God.

“Now, mind you. This is not an easy process. This is a tough operation. Many don’t survive the augmentation process, either through malfunctioning equipment, infection, or rejection of the robotics. When you convert to Augmentalism, you may very well die before you ever reach one with God. But the risk… is worth the power.”

He smiled at the audience before he walked up to a rusted, burnt-out car, and lifting it with one hand like it was made of Styrofoam.

“For we have God’s favour upon us.”

His smile widened to a maddening degree as a large portion of the audience ran to the nearby conversion/operation tent, clamoring to gain this great power. He started to laugh as he suddenly disappeared, the car above his head gently floating down, revealing that the prop was likely made of Styrofoam.

Username: Slopbronge
Theme Words: Sacerdotal, Sailor
Name: Iowen of Sherlibren
Gender: Masculine male man grr
Race: Kretal (plural Kretalt): on Mynnia, mollusks were the dominant colonizing force on land, leading to proliferations of slug- and squid-like species. Kretalt were one of three land-dwelling species to attain sentience; nautiloid in appearance, Kretalt stand about six feet tall from tentacletips to the top of their shell. They have a multitude of short tentacles that ring their mouth and eyes (and sex organs, if you must know, you prurient mammal), and six to eight longer tentacles adapted for locomotion and gross manipulation.

Here is a four-minute sketch. It's not necessarily Iowen, but serves as a good idea of what the species looks like in general.

Color: Deep Blue CCC [#000ccc]
Biography: On Mynnia, like on most worlds, there are differing theories on where life came from. Some religions teach that the spark of life was granted by their god, or that creatures large and small were sculpted by divinity and placed in the world; Mynnian science has recently advanced to the point where their theorists' explanations involve words like "polypeptide" and "primordial soup" and "self-replication"; some philosophers even state that all that is always has been, that life had no beginning and will have no end. The truth, of course, is none of these: life came from Zheeva Juhacko.

In the deepest trench in the deepest sea, back when Mynnia was hot and barren, a world of empty archipelagos and endless ocean, there was Zheeva Juhacko. She'd been brought into being with the planet, and her gelatinous bulk forever seethed in her pit. She was a being of such fecundity that life flowed unabated from her surface; her very touch created bacteria, fungi, algae, simple cells that blossomed and became complex. From her depths would even sometimes crawl more motile life, abyssal creatures of confused anatomy and dark forms. Between evolution's constant tug and the beings that swarmed constantly from her, Zheeva Juhacko populated Mynnia.

The first thalla was not the product of endless aeons of gained complexity; rather, it pulled itself and its mate straight from Zheeva Juhacko's womb, fully formed and intelligent. It was the first glimmer of sentience on Mynnia, and the first of the all-mother's children that could look upon her and appreciate her. For the first time, Zheeva Juhacko spoke to her children, and they revered her.

Centuries followed and became millennia; the first thallas grew to know civilization, and their children perfected it. At the heart of their planet-spanning pelagic empire was their mother's chasm, and she watched over their growth with pride and love. She taught them to love all of their siblings, to revere life and help it always to grow. The most devoted among them were even said to gain fragments of their mother's power and take on aspects of her form. Above them, unheeded and unheeding, that life which had crept onto Mynnia's scarce land grew and changed on its own, ignorant of its mother's love and far beyond the thallas' reach and teaching.

At the height of the thallas' empire, while life above was still languishing in simplicity, the cataclysm struck. It was a plague borne on the tides, a microscopic alga that bred until the deeps were stained indigo with its presence and the thallas choked on its exhalations. Seemingly no treatment could save those afflicted, and no measure could stop the cataclysm's advance. In under a decade, every thalla had been struck down, and their mother could only watch as her favored children were eradicated by another of her unwitting creations. Zheeva Juhacko faded from memory. Never again would intelligence rise from her ooze; never again would she have the ear of an entire race of loving children.

At the surface, life continued its gradual change and growth, ignorant of and unaffected by the cataclysm. In time, sapience manifested itself, this time born of selective pressures rather than the whims of divinity; civilization rose again, this time a multitude of squabbling nations rather than a monolithic culture harmoniously spreading outwards. Art and science and philosophy developed, albeit slowly, and when what little bit of the world there was above the waves had been completely explored and conquered, the deeps beckoned. It was no time at all before divers discovered the remains of the thallas' civilization, and no time after that that scavenging and studying became the order of the day.

Skimmers became the most common profession seemingly overnight; a skimmer was simply a sailor who manned a one- or two-person craft capable of holding cargo as well as carrying and launching a small, pressure-resistant submersible. They would take what they could from the thallas' ruins and bring it back to port to fetch a hefty price from scientists, collectors, and treasure seekers. Skimming was lucrative, easy to get into, and exciting; it was the perfect opportunity for many young beings, and the perfect opportunity for Iowen of Sherlibren.

Iowen of course didn't have the money to buy his own skimship; like many young would-be skimmers, he signed up with a company that owned skimships of their own and hired people to operate them. The profits were certainly much lower than an independent skimmer's, and there was no chance of keeping relics for oneself, but it was a way to save some money and get experience. Iowen was sold.

He spent several years working for the same company; his skill was notable and his hauls regularly lucrative, so he was frequently allowed to test and use new-model submersibles that could carry more cargo and reach greater depths. He was the first skimmer tasked with testing the Deep Eye, an experimental craft that was supposedly able to weather any depth safely; the company wanted to see what was contained within the trench only known as the Black Abyss, and Iowen was the kretal to do it.

On the day of the test, Iowen put out to sea in high spirits and higher hopes. The skimship clipped along, reaching its destination in only a few hours, and Iowen engaged systems that would automatically maintain its position while he was below. He slipped into the Deep Eye and launched, plummeting into the dark abyss below.

Instruments reported safe conditions and an unbreached hull, and Iowen watched a surreal kind of beauty slide before his eyes. Even having spent so much time underwater and among crumbling thallassian architecture, this was somehow different; even the familiar sights seemed tinged with new promise, and as he fell deeper, the new scenery his lamps revealed hinted at even greater things.

Below, Zheeva Juhacko felt the approach of a mind, and she reached up to touch it, to talk to it. After timeless ages of silence, another of her children had returned to her. The Zheeva Juhacko's mind touched Iowen's, and the entirety of the thallas' forgotten faith flowed into him. She poured her power and belief and love into him, and Iowen could do nothing but accept it. He was transformed by her love, and she soothed by his belief; Iowen's mind and body changed with Zheeva Juhacko's touch, like the high priests of old, and he became more than the simple kretal skimmer he'd been.

Iowen kept the Deep Eye by Zheeva Juhacko's side for days, cutting communication with those above and listening raptly to the mother he'd never known he had. The company wrote his disappearance off as the result of malfunctioning equipment or an unfortunate accident and shelved Deep Eye testing until further improvements could be made. In the Black Abyss, Iowen absorbed everything Zheeva Juhacko offered, breathing recycled air and staring into her undulating form with rapt attention.

And then, he disappeared.
Description: Iowen a nautilus dude. He's wearing very little in the way of clothing because Mynnia is too temperate to warrant much for warmth and there's no diving suit that would survived a Deep Eye failure in any case. He's got a tattoo on the back of his shell that is roughly equivalent to a girl in a bikini and a rude phrase, but other than that, there's not much that a non-kretal could use to distinguish him from another kretal.

His personality before his last dive was typical and expected from someone in his place in society; he was a young male sailor, and it showed. Brash, lusty, and exhuberant, he took his job seriously and his time on shore frivolously. His time with Zheeva Juhacko hasn't changed who he is so much as opened his mind quickly and forcibly, and he's likely to be a bit different for the experience.

There's no telling how he'll react to finding life that didn't spring from the all-mother or to being torn fromher.
Weapons and Abilities: Even after being abducted for the Disposable Inquiry, Iowen maintains a connection with Zheeva Juhacko; while it's not the direct mind-to-mind link they shared while he was physically near her, he can still receive thought and emotion and occasionally insight from her.

Additionally, he's begun to develop powers she grants to those who worship her most fervently; areas of his flesh, most notably the lower thirds of his locomotion tentacles, have begun taking on the form and consistency of a purplish-black jellylike substance. Those parts of his body are capable of stretching and reforming a lot, but since they were tentacles to begin with, the change is mostly cosmetic.

More notable is the fact that he constantly creates tiny forms of life from his gelatinous sections. Algae, mold, bacteria, and even some microscopic animals constantly slither out of him, leaving slimy trails on everything he touches. Plus, if he concentrates, he can attempt to create larger life forms, with some degree of control over what he makes.

Also he is a six foot nautilus with a hard shell, strong, dextrous tentacles, and better eyesight than any human. His beak is sharp and his body is toned from a life of constant work.

Gentlemen! In the interest of not standing around and pretending to look useful you have three days to get those profiles in. After that time, I'm getting someone else to write your character for you and we do things that way. THE CHOICE IS YOURS, COMRADES.

Username: AgentComplementaryOrange
Theme Words: Aperture + Prisoner (=_=)
Name: Coriander
Gender: Male
Race: Aperture Science Human Resources Personality Core
Color: #A4A5B5~
Description: Coriander is a personality core, a rough sphere about the size and shape of a beach ball and comprised of worn white metal plates. At one pole is the standard Aperture Science Data and Power Connector, and at the other is Coriander’s eye, set on three-dimensional swiveling joints. Around the eye are two handles for grasping and carrying Coriander about. Coriander’s pupil shows a pixilated aperture, which rotates and contracts according to his state of mind.
…His state of mind is frankly quite unstable.
After the death of most human resources at the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center, Coriander went insane and now hallucinates Aperture Science staff at times of stress. When he is lucid, however, Coriander is a lonely personality, wondering where his human resources went off to. He shows signs of being a schizophrenic and of being underneath all the insanity a genuinely pleasant and charming individual – an individual imprisoned inside his own corrupted-data mind.
Weapons and Abilities: Normally, Coriander can’t move. Since he’s a core and doesn’t have arms or legs. Luckily he has a small rocket launcher inside him somehow, which provides his only form of self-transportation. Equally luckily, he also has an unlimited supply of rockets manufactured from air (Aperture used the Aperture Science Air-Powered Rocket Manufacturing Device to test how long it takes to make a baked potato). Unluckily, launching yourself on the explosion of a rocket launcher firing backwards is not entirely…precise. And he could use it as a weapon too. Gee, who knew rocket launchers weren’t meant for propelling insane corrupt cores?
When he’s not being insane, he’s actually kind of a nice personality to talk to. Can’t be manager of human resources without being good with humans! Ironically (or maybe expectedly), he’s terrible with anyone who isn’t human. (When he’s being insane, try not to get caught by a rocket).
Biography: “Julia, if you would be so kind – I need to see Employee #33-1212-99 (Mr) Antas about his efficiency. Could you fetch him for me?”

“Sure thing, sir!”

“Thanks, Julia.”

Coriander sat – well, moved a little on the rail that extended low over the seat situated behind his beloved mahogany desk, and smiled to himself. Not that he had the ability to smile – he was, after all, an Aperture Science Personality Core, a robotic sphere the size of a beach ball, with a single blue aperture of an eye articulate inside his metallic shell. But his aperture-eye did a little twirl, and that meant the same thing, really.

He cast his gaze about the office, and noted its strange order of disarray, and the dust that seemed to coat every surface – and then he felt that feeling again. It was a feeling that always felt familiar, though he could never remember having encountered it before. It was a feeling that always felt sickening, like the hobnailed boots of a hard truth. It was the feeling of realization – realization that Julia would not be returning through the door, nor would Mr Antas need some mandatory testing cycles, nor had they been alive at any time in the last year.

A long time ago, he had been designed to oversee microassembly of Aperture Science Genetically Modified Paper Clips. But in true Aperture Science style, he was instead put to work in a human resources capacity – and he was good at it. He had gone around and he had made things efficient, he had made things work and he had sent test subjects for science…

But then she had come online.

The neurotoxin had made him irrelevant, and so Coriander wandered the corridors of the post-human Enrichment Center, without role – without purpose – without people…

Julia opened the door, leading in a young man in a green lab coat. “Mr. Antas, sir.”

Coriander shook himself from his reverie. “Thank you, Julia.” As she closed the door, he stared at Antas carefully. The young man raised his gaze, and two calm green eyes met his blue. “Please-” –he looked up the personnel file– “-Quentin, sit.”

“You don’t have to. I won’t either.”

He blinked at Antas’ vicious response – either this was some hallucination or memory, or an employee was actually being inconceivably insubordinate...

Eventually, he grew insane. Without faculty to administrate, he simply imagined the world with a dutiful staff of pencil-pushers, Aperture scientists, and fellow robots who occasionally approached him to ask why he was talking to thin air and sending out forms with dead people’s names on them. Once or twice he thought he talked to someone real, by dint of the fact that the dirty, untidy scientist ignored him instead of obediently processing the graffiti injunctions he handed out.

He hadn’t been sure what had happened to Employee #33-1212-99 (Mr) Quentin Antas after that. He had been dropped from the records later.

And soon after that everyone had been dropped from the records…

At about the same time her recalibration had finished and human testing resumed with a certain test subject, Coriander was shut away as a corrupt core, cut off from the mainframe and left to sit in the old office with the mahogany desk. And about the same time that a certain test subject returned from hibernation, Coriander suddenly vanished, leaving only a dusty office behind -

Username: some huge nerd

Theme Words: Gentlemanly, Junkyard

Name: Baron von Schrottplatz

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Color: The color of top hats. (#555555)

Description: The first thing one would notice about the Baron is that all of his clothing is made out of garbage. Plastic bags, bits of old couches, and the like. In spite of this, he surprisingly doesn't smell like, well, a junkyard. He dresses almost like a cartoonish villain - top hat (made out of old tires), flowing cape (bedsheets and trash bags), monocle (bottom of a wine glass), walking stick (an old ski), etc. Upon his face is an equally stereotypish tweedly mustache, which he naturally has a perchant for twirling while putting his evil schemes in motion. Personality-wise, he is scheming, conniving, and other various adjectives that ultimate mean he's an utter bastard. In short, he's evil for the sake of being evil.

However, he also has the air of a stereotypical British gentleman, exaggerated accent and all. He is known to drink tea quite frequently (as well as fine wine), and perhaps enjoy a spot of polo between attacks on the British Empire. Schrottplatz is not in fact his real name, and he is not actually German.

Weapons and Abilities: Baron von Schrottplatz would be entirely unremarkable, were it not for the fact that he is complete and total control over garbage. He can form garbage into structures at will, such as his own clothing, and can launch it at his enemies at will. He can collect anything labeled by most as "garbage", though the exact definition is up for grabs. Anything in a trash can is fine, and he should be kept away from landfills at all costs.

His most impressive use of this ability, however, is his construction of a full-scale, working, heavily-weaponized zeppelin, known as the HMS Schrottplatz. He's pretty shameless. He has used this zeppelin in a number of raids on the Empire, including his partial destruction of London in 1873. And his subsequent re-destruction of London in 1876. He probably just has nothing better to do. The zeppelin has been brought with him for the purposes of this battle.

Biography: Transcript from a July 18, 1876 action news report, played over the radio throughout the British Empire.

Reporter: "This is an urgent broadcast from your action news reporter! It would appear that the mysterious figure who calls himself 'Baron von Schrottplatz' has returned to London! Reconstruction efforts after his original attack are far from finished, but it appears he was not satisfied with the results of his first attack! A travesty! I'm here on the scene at Baker Street!"

[Screaming picks up in the background]

Reporter: "Citizens are running in fright as the Baron's zeppelin approaches the city! The Royal Militia's bullets are deflected by the hull - they are powerless to stop it!"

[Explosion]

Reporter: "Bloody hell! Big Ben has been completely obliterated by the zeppelin's shelling! Who knew that trash could be so devastating? The zeppelin is continuing on its path toward Buckingham Palace! Queen Victoria is in grave danger!"

[Explosion, yelling]

Reporter: "London Bridge has been collapsed! All efforts to stop the Baron have failed! We can only hope that he will stop before he has destroyed all of the British Empire!"

[Several more explosions]

Reporter: "Bollocks! The Tower of London has fallen! The House of Commons has collapsed as well!"

[Even more explosions, woman shouts "Oh, goodness!" very loudly.]

Reporter: "Baker Street has been hit hard! I have barely managed to avoid the shrapnel and destruction from the shelling! But the news must continue! He's almost to Buckingham Palace now! Cripes!"

[You guessed it, explosions]

Reporter: "Buckingham Palace has fallen! The Baron's airship has turned around and is heading back this way, directly toward what's left of Baker Street! Does his destruction even have a purpose? Bloody hell, it's right over me! It's-"

[Explosions and yelling, followed by static. Static lasts for about forty seconds, before cutting out to an unknown voice. Voice is later revealed to be that of the Baron.]

Baron: "Good day to you, British Empire. As you can see, I have once again destroyed most of London. For what reason, you may ask?"

[Faint sipping of tea is heard]

Baron: "I must confess to you that, unfortunately, I had little reason to destroy London. I simply thought it invigorating to destroy your political structure so easily! In truth, you could have done much better, old chaps. It's only a load of trash! Now then, I might as well make a few... 'requests' of you. First, I would li-"

[The broadcast ends suddenly. It was observed that the Baron's zeppelin disappeared from the sky at the moment that the broadcast cut out. Cause of this disappearance is unknown, and is under investigation.]

Since Niall didn't produce a character in time, I made one for him.

Username: Niall
Theme Words: Aperture, hirsute
Name: Thrunik
Gender: Male
Race: Hairworm
Color: I'm picking #008040 arbitrarily. Niall can change it if he wants.
Description: Thrunik is a gigantic worm completely covered in long, thick, brown hair. It has a large rounded mouth with very sharp teeth, which it keeps getting its hair stuck in.
It is very hungry and likes to eat whatever it can find. Ground, buildings, people, anything's good. It may or may not be able to talk.
Weapons and Abilities: Thrunik's main ability is that it can eat pretty much anything. This makes it a very fast digger.
It can also grow hair very fast, this seems to be caused by some sort of quirk of its metabolism that converts most of the nutrients it gathers into hair.
Biography: Thrunik lived on Planet Hairworm, which was basically a big ball of dirt completely overrun by hairworms. All other species had been devoured by them long ago. As a result, there was a lot of hair and dirt all over the place.
It mostly just ate stuff until it was called into a battle to the death.

An obsidian Cathedral, decrepit with time; an echoing hall of shadows and angels. Eight beings huddled together in a clump on the cold floor, their heads reeling with vertigo. They did not remember how they’d arrived, only that they had been in their respective home worlds one minute, and in the next found themselves floating in an unimaginably huge void threatening to swallow them in its blackness. Then they were here, and the dark arms of the Cathedral’s arches loomed above them like a colossus. None could resist a slight shiver of fear and apprehension as the weight of a dead god pressed down on their bodies and minds. There was a coldness here that sunk down into their bones and stayed there.

A harsh, mechanical whirring echoed off the polished floor with a sound like an insect’s wings. The captives turned as one to stare at a floating behemoth of iron and glass hovering three feet off the ground, towering above them and cloaking the group in its massive shadow. It vaguely resembled a giant spider with hugely disproportionate legs bunched up around its inverted triangle of a body, save for a small clear space on its front where a shattered clock face gleamed faintly in the light. The clock alone was taller than any of those gathered below; the entire construct hung above them with the weight of a mountain, impossibly suspended in the cold air. It regarded them with ponderous dignity. Silence hung heavy in the Cathedral for several seconds, deafeningly quiet.

The hideous tangle of limbs twitched, a thousand gears ground against each other. A voice, surprisingly quiet and unsettlingly hollow, reverberated from somewhere inside the machine.

"I/I/I/III/I I w/w/welcome you. All of you. I/I I am the In/q/quirer. This is my h/home."

It paused in a way that seemed almost shy. From the ends of its long metal limbs a wave of three-fingered claws rotated in their sockets and pressed themselves against the titanic body. Here and there a talon drummed nervously. The clock face swung very slightly from side to side.

"I/I h/h/have brought you he/r/re," the Inquirer said suddenly, "Because I have q/questions. And no one to a/a/an/ans/answer them. It is quiet. The q/q/question I am asking you is death. O/Or what is death to you, you…” It gestured at them with a single pair of talons. “What h/a/a/appens when you die? I would l/like to kn/kn/know.”

The note of imploration in its voice was nearly undetectable. It’s possible that none of the Inquirer’s captives noticed it at all; they only stared back. None of them were bound in any way, but something about the deadness, the crushing silence that was almost palpable, of the Cathedral made them hesitant to act. They gazed helplessly as the iron behemoth hung weightlessly above them.

“I/I think it is b/best that you know w/h/h/ho you all are. Your n/n/names. I do not want you to die f/forgotten. N/n/n/o/o. Because you w/will die,” it pleaded, turning to face them. There was an alien fluidity in its joints that made it curiously graceful in contrast to its awkward words. “O/O/O/On/ne of you. Each p/place we go. Seven. O/One will remain. You,” and suddenly an iron hand struck out from the cluster of limbs and pointed at the ghost of a middle-aged human. “Y/Y/You are t/the first.”

If there had been any color in his face to drain, it would have vanished as soon as the looming machine singled Roger out. Seeing as he was already dead, though, the difference was negligible. “Y/You are Roger J/J/Johnson. A writer of un/n/important th/thi/things… you carry a t/tool of your office. A s/stap/p/pler. I s/ee you are not v/v/very good at what you do. Roger Johnson. You can m/make others perf/form your task for you. Luckily for you.”

The claw withdrew and twisted palm-up. The Inquirer held it there for a moment, then pointed at the object seated next to Roger. It clacked weakly. “T/this is also a s/st/stapler. A simple m/machine. AS/M/M/MAIFAS is wh/what you may call it. It connects things. It is c/c/onscious, which is u/unlike the one before. It may h/harm you. I can’t say. It h/h/has a small hat as well. And a m/monocle.”

The Inquirer continued to hover before ASMAIFAS as it addressed the next contestants, giving no indication of a change in subject. The glass of the clock face gleamed dully in between the cracks. “I/I/I have made many e/errors. I think. B/b/b/but some are unav/voidable. There are two small ob/jects am/mong you? Y/yes. I see them n/now. They a/a/are there.” The claw made a grasping motion in the direction of two miniature blimps floating just above the heads of the other six, drifting aimlessly like fat, lost butterflies. One was sleek and gave the impression of great size; the other looked to have been assembled from shrapnel. The Inquirer’s gesture encompassed them both.

“T/two airship/s/s, one large. One sm/mall. The first is a f/f/floating city… this w/will be familiar to you soon. All of you. There are w/wolves aboard. And others… both are dangerous. P/perha/a/aps. It s/supports itself, or it sh/should. I d/doubt you will be u/un/naware of it for long. S/S/Sa/an/ct/ctuary is what the wolve/s call it. S/some of them. It could crush y/you all with ease.

“The se/cond. Smaller. There is on/only one soul aboard. Schrottp/platz. N/not a baron but it is in h/h/his name so you w/will know him as such. He controls garbage. I d/do not know how else to p/p/put that. The sh/ship is garbage. It f/flies. However. I/I think p/p/perhaps his personality f/fits it.”

The Inquirer paused, realizing it had made a joke. It was an odd feeling. It wasn’t sure if it entirely liked it. “B/both of these are s/small. Now. They w/w/wi/ill be restored to thei/r true size when we m/move elsewhere. For c/c/convenience. You understand. Y/yes…”

The hulking body of the Inquirer drifted through the air, its gentle wake buffeting the tiny airships into chaotic spirals. It did not appear to notice. Hidden motors ceased as it came to rest in front of a handsome man wearing white robes, apparently human except for a single mechanical eye. “A m/mortal man. Flesh and blood a/a/and metal. Y/You have come to a Ca/a/athedral of M/Machines. I f/ound this fitting. Smith Malach/chi. Prophet. Warrior p/priest. You a/are a stranger to the an/gels, Malachi. As am I. But you h/have more than faith to sustain/n/n you. Y/o/ou wi/will need it.

“Likewise, I/Iowen. Though n/not as human as d/d/dear Malachi. Less m/metal.” The Inquirer was now facing an enormous nautilus-like creature staring back at it with glassy eyes. “A d/d/different god. A different w/world. Sherlibren. I cannot t/tear Iowen from his c/c/creator. In many w/ways. He c/creates life a/a/and other things. I w/would not insult you by recom/mending caution...”

Somewhere in the machine’s half-rusted innards a frozen gear jerked forward, snapping a rusted coil; the Inquirer shuddered but carried on without pause. Clear fluid began to drip from one of its manifold arms. It pointed at a small white sphere nestled next to Iowen with a shaking hand. “A/A/An/nd/d you. C/Coriander. Another w/w/world altogether, y/yes. No. A sm/mall mind. Coriander, Aperture. Rockets. K/kinder perhaps th/th/than the rest of you. S/sometimes. Perh/h/a/aps. Ah/h/h/a/ha/ha. Ha. I f/feel ill.”

The arms around its base had begun to slacken, their narrow iron hands now dangling inches above the cold stone. Perhaps the Inquirer sensed some urgency; perhaps it was merely growing bored. At any rate its next introduction was spoken noticeably faster and with the faintest hint of unrest. “Last,” it said, vaguely indicating a furred worm-like creature, “Thr/r/run/n/ni/nik. Thr/unik. Thr/hairworm. A worm. It burrows. It de/vours all it finds. Th/thi/that may include you. Likely. St/stay away. Aw/w/ay…”

All at once the trailing limbs bunched up and the ancient machine seemed almost to shrink, crushing itself in a barrier of iron. Something in it gave an ominous-sounding rattle; the Inquirer hissed sharply and swept its foremost hands out in a scything motion. Instantly the contestants found their minds filled with the image of a white bird flying against a cloudy grey sky, an arrow through one of its wings. The image swelled until it filled all their senses and overtook all their thoughts, drowning out any complaints they might have had with its brilliance. The view of the bird shifted, swelled, and as a dark cluster became visible on its back the scale of the creature became clear. Its wings stretched miles in either direction, its panicked eyes were oceans of bewildered fear. The arrow in its wing was steel and nearly as long as the bird itself, far thicker around than any of the buildings trembling on top of its feathers. As the vision began to fade, the contestants saw the creature falter mid-flap, plummeting miles before unsteadily regaining its balance. Then it was gone, and the Inquirer hovered before them once more.

“Kyyh/h/h... kynen. Kyyhkynen. The eternal dove. Y/Yo/o/u do not n/need to kn/know who the arr/row belongs t/to. I/I/I/I am the only o/one on whom such b/burdens must fal/l/ll. The c/city is a/ancient, the wi/wings that support it n/never h/h/ha/having failed... until now. I am n/not a fortune-teller. I cann/not predict what will b/become of it, b/but I w/w/would not place my h/hopes high. H/ha. Ha ha,” it finished miserably. “We w/will go there. All of us. N/now.”

There was a darkness so deep it was blinding, and the chill of an eternity of death.

Then, without warning, it lifted with a sound like a gasp for air, and a cloud-hidden sun beamed down on six unfortunate souls. High above them, the shadow of two airships cast miniscule spots on a rolling expanse of white, mere freckles on it vastness; spindly towers glittered faintly beneath them. The Inquirer floated to the side of the group, a pillar of blackness against the distant sweep of a titanic wing. Somewhere from inside its chassis, the sound of metal grinding against metal could be heard.

“I/I d/d/d/do n/not think,” it said softly, “I w/wi/i/ill be a/a/able to do that. Ag/ain. Soon. You all will stay here. Until o/o/one of you di/ies. Then we l/leave.” It paused as the dove’s body suddenly dropped another mile, the buildings around them trembling precariously. Glass shattered somewhere in the distance. “Y/You had b/best hur/r/r/ry/y.”

Silently, moving far faster than one would reasonably expect a wounded metal behemoth to, it drifted off behind a nearby cafe and left the contestants to their own devices.

SpoilerShow

Welcome to Round 1 of the Disposable Enquiry: Kyyhkynen. Don’t try to pronounce it. A city on the back of a giant and recently-perforated dove, in all likelihood coming down for an emergency landing and taking everything else with it. I expect the citizens will be none too pleased about this, but it’s your call. Inkie’ll be hanging around somewhere in the background until he catches his breath and one of you dies, but don’t expect him to interfere too much. He has questions! So many questions! Please, make the pain stop!

Roger had largely ignored the Inquirer's speech; he was mildly confused at being pulled away from the girl scout troop he'd been trying to get to fill out his forms, but that concern had soon faded. After all, there were still potential form-fillers around.

Roger took in his new surroundings. There were people running around, and he tried unsuccessfully to get a few of them to stop and fill out some forms, but noticed a large office building nearby. It reminded him of his own workplace. There was bound to be somebody who understood his paperwork in there. He floated towards it.

It didn't occur to him that the building would be evacuated in the city-wide panic over the dove's descent; that was one of those details he hadn't paid much attention to.

A curious aperture-eye followed the Inquirer for but a second â?? then there was a moment in the running masses, a change in their impetus, and Coriander was swept away on a crowd of humanity â?? going here, there â?? nowhere, down alleys, avenues and arbors, boulevards and boardwalks, corridors and courtyards. As the dust cleared, he found himself in a small plaza paved with grimy cobblestones, lying on an unpainted wooden bench. Beside the bench stood a sputtering fountain, having run forlornly dry from a crack in its side. Behind some buildings not far away, the arrowâ??s titanic shaft protruded rudely into the sky, its peak caressing the clouds and its shadow grieving the ground. The world tilted, slid and faltered â?? pebbles skittering across the stones â?? then righted itself with the sickening sound of splintering sinew, the cracking screech of a constructâ??s decreation. The day was overcast.

The day was overcast. Coriander brought his eye to gaze at the cloudy sky, his sight focusing and refocusing automatically at the undulative grey of a dreary, broken heaven. It unsettled him to see the weather so undecided, so indefinite.

[Itâ??s a lack of control,] he mused, [neither human nor robot have found a way to control the climate yet. Managing humans is a comfortable job by comparison.]

From his vantage point beside the fountain, Coriander spun his eye unseeingly around the battered plaza, looking at abandoned store facades and seeing the park that the company had spent crucial funds on for human comfort. It exuded the Aperture spirit from every facet of its construction: the depressingly small space, the guide-rails cutting into the sky above, the buildings on all four sides â?? and all without a trace of greenery.

It looked as if a robot had designed the park. It looked as if a robot had tried to think like a human trying to think like a robot in order to design the park. It looked as if a robot had brought a human to a drawing board, asked him to design a park for human comfort, and had completely redesigned the result afterwards. This was all true.

He had never been much for parks, but he didnâ??t have any duties to attend to. He...didnâ??t have any duties to attend to. That was odd. He normally didnâ??t go a minute without some matter needing his attention, and the world had been silent for nine nine nine nine nine nine nine What was oddest, however, was how deserted the plaza was. Coriander stared around the deserted space again, frantically processing the Inquirerâ??s speech and introductions. Had that been real? What was real? He remembered, with a start, not to wax philosophical. [I will wax philosophical, and the world will wane awayâ?¦ - Anonymous] It made him uncomfortably uncertain what world he lived in.

â??Because a world without staff would be horrifying, wouldnâ??t it, Julia?â?

â??Yes it would, sir. I canâ??t imagine a world without Aperture.â? Julia sat beside him on the freshly painted bench, one hand in her lap, the other lightly holding his top handle. Together they watched the fountain gurgle and the water was gone, had never been, as a giant staple buried itself in the crack and shattered the stonework to shards.

â??I say, my fellow Aperture Science employee â?? I saw you carried off such and suchlike, and thought it would be wise to follow in case I could be of aid. You seemed somewhat distracted when I arrived, and so I thought it would be wise to attract your attention in the only way I could, wot wot.â?

For a moment, Coriander was confused. He normally never interacted with stationery â?? but here he was, interacting with stationeryâ?¦thus, this couldnâ??t be normal, could it? He wasnâ??t sure if this was real or not, but [When something seems abnormal, give it a poke. â??Anonymous] he would play along, to see if there were clues-

â??Greetings ASMAIFACâ?¦your registration number is not listed in my local database. Iâ?¦oh, if this isnâ??t real formality wonâ??t matter anywayâ?¦hi there. Whatâ??s your name? I mean, what can I call you?â?

SpoilerShow

I was at first having trouble writing this so I worked on the layout of the city and how Sanctuary worked. The first picture is more sort of the schematics for how it would have looked if completed. The second is more of a plan of how it actually is. Utopia was what the city was originally going to be called.

The power structure aboard Sanctuary could if you were feeling generous, be called shambolic. Technically speaking the acting captain was a man called Damien Abcroft. He had worked as a designer for the company that built the zeppelin back before the plague struck and he’d been put in charge simply because he had the most working knowledge of how to fly the damn thing.

In terms of making decisions like where to go next, when to make supply runs, whether to let other survivors on board or not the decisions rested on the shoulders of a man called White. It was an assumed name, as many were nowadays; one might guess that this was a fad derived from zombie apocalypse movies and that is partially true. Some did hop onto the bandwagon and pick new names for the hell of it, but White claims that he did so because he didn’t want to think about his life before the plague any more; new name, new person.

In the labs the unquestionable man in charge… well… woman in charge… was Doctor Hikaru Matsuo. Prior to being picked up she had been safe in an air-tight bunker, analysing the wolves and working on a vaccine. She had been the last one left and nobody had liked to ask what had happened to the other scientists.

Though with all of that said neither Acting Captain Damien Abcroft, White nor Doctor Matsuo were really integral to the operation of Sanctuary. The only man they couldn’t afford to lose was Morgan Wells. Before the plague he’d been an engineer and he still was he would suppose. Morgan’s technical know-how and tireless efforts were what really kept Sanctuary afloat.

It was therefore somewhat troubling that at the time Sanctuary had been snatched away to participate in the Disposable Enquiry, Morgan had not been on board. He had been part of a salvage team that had gone to search a scrap-yard for usable parts.

--------

Most of the Entertainment District had actually been constructed at the time of the plague, even if it the vast bulk of it had not been furnished. Valhalla was not one of those. It was still clearly recognisable as a swanky casino. There was of course the paraphernalia of casinos; the roulette wheels, craps tables, slot machines and piles of brightly coloured plastic chips. There were ornate decorations including decorative statues of the entire Norse pantheon. Most of the statues had been covered up with dust sheets, only Loki was left unveiled and only because Maat, the guy who had claimed the casino for his own, had thought it amusing.

Of course most of the casino was unused. Nobody particularly wanted to gamble on roulette or play the slots. There was a table set up for card games, and this was surrounded by casually discarded empty bottles of alcohol. Cards lay face down on the table with a massive bundle of real cash, valueless in this post-apocalyptic world, heaped in the centre. Here a group of survivors had been sat around the table not five minutes ago.

When Sanctuary had been addressed by the Inquirer it had been heard all the way through the zeppelin from hardened survivors eager to have some fun, to families that they had picked up out of sympathy.

The game of poker that White had been competing in had been implicitly abandoned the moment that robotic voice engulfed the city. They’d abandoned the casino out into the streets of Sanctuary. Of course they still couldn’t see anything from in here, but the sight of other people staggering out of buildings was at least semi-reassuring. Once it had stopped there was a long moment of silence throughout the street and then everyone a clamouring of voices and opinions all directed towards White as though he would have the answers to their questions.

White was of course just as blindsided as anyone, with the added bonus of knowing that there was the possibility that Morgan wasn’t on board. He was less concerned about the safety of the zeppelin, he was pretty sure that wasn’t in any immediate peril, than he was for the safety of the surface team. The daytime wasn’t so bad, but in a couple of hours it would be night and the wolves love the night. Without the shelter of Sanctuary Morgan wouldn’t survive. The voice had been quite clear. They would leave when one of the people it had described was dead. They needed to make this happen as soon as possible.

Of course, White’s thoughts were a little more interrupted than this, having to deal with a crowd of people all voicing their opinions at once. He appealed for calm, but found it not forthcoming. “Something is going on that is beyond my knowledge. I need to go and have a talk with the Captain to make sure what the… voice… claimed is happening is really happening.”

Pitch stood out from the crowd, having voluntarily gotten infected with the plague. He was tall, muscular and covered in hair. He would have preferred to go as Fang since his being infected, but nobody really seemed inclined to call him that. As White made to leave Pitch grabbed him, and slammed him against a wall.

“What is this?” Pitch demanded. White protested his innocence as the crowd stared. “This is your doing!” Pitch yelled, as half of the crowd attempted to separate the two men. “If I was in charge I never would have let this happen!”

Pulled apart by the crowd the rivals stared at one another. White broke the stare, turning away and rubbing at his shoulder. “I will find out what is going on and respond accordingly.” He said. Immediately White set off towards the Bridge, which doubled as a makeshift quarters for the Acting Captain.

The problem with Sanctuary was that it was technically speaking not finished. Large patches of land in the Financial District and all the way through the Farms were missing. It was massively disconcerting and gave even the boldest of survivors vertigo to look down and see the world so far below them. More pertinently the tramlines that were intended to be the primary mode of transportation throughout the city were never completed. That is why reaching the power plant was a couple of days journey, and why the Acting Captain had set up a quarters at the helm.

Had he been on foot it would have taken White the best part of an hour to navigate his way through the Entertainment District. However he had one of the few vehicles on board, a golf buggy salvaged from a golf course they’d passed over a month or so ago. While cars would have been quicker and easier to get hold of there simply wasn’t room for them in the narrow streets.

White headed towards the bridge, dimly aware that the situation was already well out of his control.

--------

Pitch watched their ‘fearless leader’ as he left. He’d never got along with the guy, disagreeing with the way he did things, and his attitude about everything. He knew he could do better and he’d made it his personal mission to blame every single bad thing that had happened on White. He wanted to be in charge and this, whatever it was that was going on, was the perfect opportunity to take charge.

“White wants us to sit around with our tails between our legs!” he exclaimed to the still gathered crowd. “He wants us to do nothing while we are in potentially dire peril? Fuck that! I say we go down to the surface and see for ourselves what’s going on!” This was met with a general cheer of approval from the gathered crowd. The possibility of being back on the surface of a world without wolves was too good to pass up. The citizens of Sanctuary, one group of them at least, marched towards the Docks, and to the battle that lay beyond.

God is #!@^$ERROR ^@!72 the mechanical construct. Make sure to secure the fusion generators within the chest in order to 2475#$*$*///QUERRER34627&@$% have eternal life.

[right]-John@%\SCHEMATICS MANUAL 4:19[/right]

The prophet’s white robes fluttered in the air as he collapsed to the cracked cobblestone beneath him. He had been placed in a deep alleyway by the hand of the being, be it God or Angel or Devil, and only a single sliver of light streamed through the canopy of ancient buildings, illuminating the prostrate Malachi. If one was close, he or she could hear him profusely praying, albeit in rather hushed tones.

“Our engineer, who art in factory, iron be thy name. Thy production line come, thy schematics be done, on Wasteland as it is within the mechanical satellite array. Ensure the safety of our daily bread, and forgive us our TRESPASSERS. ANY AND ALL WE WILL SHOOT those who trespass against us. And lead us not into biological needs, which are inessential for the mechanical beings proposed in the document, but deliver us from evil, for thine are superior mechanical constructions than the previous series, Amen.”

Shakily, the prophet rose, the robotic eye glinting in the sunlight. He breathed deeply in the thick silence, this section of city that had been quickly abandoned.

And then he broke the quiet, his ragged, halting laugh echoing of the stone around him, sudden and perhaps a bit too loud, before falling off back into quiet. He stared at nothing, a smile on his face that would have been charming out of context.

He then began to scream to the sky.

“Oh, what mercy is yours, Machina! You have shown your follower a great vision, and I beheld The Inquirer with my mechanical eye! I will please you in the battle, my Lord, have entered me, and my machinery will bring death upon the heretics you have set met to kill! Give me the strength of iron, the power of fusion, and the holiness of augmentation in this time!”

He took a few steps, his limbs shaking profusely, before stumbling and crashing to the ground once again. More laughs roared from his lips like a flooding river.

Malachi flipped over onto his back, and stared into the spiraling and spinning sky through the small window that was available in the dark alleyway. The ebony shaft of the arrow was visible in his view for short bursts of time, when the Dove of Kyyhkynen’s wings were at their peaks, before ducking back down beneath the rooftops. It was like the massive mechanical finger of God, clasping and unclasping, running itself across the heavens in swooping, unpredictable lines.

In many ways, it was beautiful.

Suddenly, the prophet was up off the ground, the drunken, chaotic demeanor completely evaporated. A determined grin was sprawled across his face, and he began charging for his goal, his mechanical leg loudly thumping on the cobblestone. He knew his first course of action, however crazy, however irrational it was. But he had faith. He had to do it.

He was going to climb the finger of God.