Episode 08: Assuming Direct Control

The arms inside Mechanical

## Episode summary

Following last episode's battle, Angel loots the Deluvian assassin's corpse and finds a magical crossbow with a precision enhancement. However, given that it was too large for her and Draven already has the effect from a feat, the bow is of little use.

The party follow the blue-armoured warforged to the lower bridge, where he reveals that the water now draining from the facility is used to absorb energy, both protecting Ginaron from external interference and preventing any harm befalling the outside world from research accidents, including the creatures which have escaped from the Fel and Fey labs, hence the holes in their doors. These were minor elementals of the Shadowfel and Feywild that Ginaron had been using to study planar energy as part of their experiments with teleportation portals.

The party return to Water Management and Draven turns the water inlet back on, but there is no way do deactivate the emergency drain and the troughs will completely empty in about 45 minutes, taking hours to refill. Given that this would not be a desirable outcome. the warforged suggests that the party speak to the controller, which resides in Mechanical. He adds to mention to the workers that "the old priest" sent them.

The warforged stays behind at the core, protecting it with a wall of force that he can summon using energy from the facility. The party leave Seven behind to facilitate communication and Tirim, Greypike and Daggerface for speed, heading up to Mechanical. On the way, they realise that Ginaron has become louder, as if the water had been dampening sound.

Upon arriving at Mechanical, they find Temple 1 hiding in a corner, having fled the violence and danger of Kua Commander's strike team. They relay the old priest's message to the workers and are granted passage, the constructs pulling the metal panel out of the way just long enough for the party to squeeze past. Past the barricade, they find two sets of mechanical arms and a dead armoured Dwarf (see infobox image). Temple 1 steps onto a platform between two of the arms and they magically and mechanically repair him.

Examining the Dwarf, they find dried blood but no sign of damage on his armour. Stripping him of said armour, they discover slashing wounds on his chest and soon realise that after he was killed (presumably by the Deluvians), the worker constructs dragged his corpse to Mechanical where the arms attempted to repair him, but could only repair the armour, not the organic flesh (although they can apparently repair the organic components of warforged).

The party head down another passage and soon find themselves in a room with a six-inch layer of water covering the floor and another on the ceiling. Both pools glow with the same soft blue as the light bars throughout the facility and in the middle of the room sits an orb on a pedestal (see image, right). Little One steps into the water and discovers that it is not electrified. The orb introduces itself as Ginaron controller and explains that its function is to run Ginaron and protect both occupants and outsiders from its dangerous content. It further explains that while it was designed to be able to observe the entire facility, its sensors have been destroyed (whether over time or by the Deluvians is not specified) and it now relies on the worker constructs to be its eyes and ears, although they can provide only indirect feedback.

When asked to stop the water draining, the controller reveals that while it has begun an emergency refilling procedure, it cannot override the emergency drain and that the water will still fully drain away before it can recover, taking two hours to reach full levels again. It also reveals that the remnants of Di Corso's Steward's party is in Supply Area B, along with the magic spoon he came to find, having been sealed in to protect them from the invading KT. Demonac notes that this means they have been in that room for three months.

Temple1 then steps forward and engages the Controller in conversation, first thanking it for repairing him but then begins asking about the Ytarran orders liberating warforged, arousing Little One's suspicions as this is so out of character. Temple1 then asks the controller to activate the portal, and when it refuses on safety grounds, T1's eyes turnn red and it lunges at the controller with a weird u-shaped tool. Little One grapples Temple1, but fails to stop him before he reaches the pedestal and attaches the ends of the tool to it (Little One rolled low and T1 got a natural 19), at which point the warforged's body goes completely limp and a red swirl slowly takes over the blue orb, like blood polluting a sphere of water.

The controller (or rather, the entity controlling it) emits a wave of force, pushing everyone (including the limp warforged body) back to the walls with a +25 bull-rush attack, before electrifying the water and surrounding itself with pillars of ice. The party attempt to break through them, but the entity can create two more each round and the party only have five attacks per round between them, with Little One only being able to attack twice if he forsakes the majority of his manoeuvres. Also, the entity keeps freezing the floor, preventing the party from moving until they can smash their feet out of the ice.

Finally realising that they are unable to withstand the electricity and fireblasts, the party retreats. The entity begins poking around Ginaron's internal control crcuitry, turning the pools of water red. According to Seven (who has been comminicating with Draven telepathically), the lightbars outside have likewise redenned. GE-7 exclaims (via Seven) that "the portal has become energised" and the entity commences the "portal activation sequence".

As Seven conveys Draven's perceptions to GE-7, the ancient warforged realises that the mysterious entity must be a Dark Ancient. He provides a potted history of the Warforged and Ancients, but this information is not immediately useful as the Dark Ancient overrides the safeguard that prevents the controller from diabling the portal's manual override and then repossesses Temple1's body, before using it to dimension door away, with the parting words "Astral Plague has a nice ring to it. Goodbye, meatbags".

The controller is left inert, and as the party leave the room they find that all of the worker constructs have reverted to a default state, wandering the facility looking for things to tidy or repair. However, one worker falls on it's side and begins tearing apart its own internal mechanisms, creating sounds that are just about intelligible as the words "I am Ginaron Controller. You must get to the core. De-activate portal".

Realising that they suddenly have two immediate objectives, the party rush to Supply Area B to collect the Dwarves, noticing on the way that sounds of battle are clearly audible and some of the light-bars are beginning to burn out. They are suddenly attacked by dog-sized tentacle things that climb onto the bridge from below, creating this episode's cliffhanger.

In the after-credits scene, GE-7 reveals to Little One that the draining water enters a winding natural tunnel, flowing into an underground lake miles away, almost certainly killing Kua Commander. The party, however, express scepticism, knowing full well what it means for a notable antagonist's body not to be found.

## Trivia

* The party are revealed to be level seven during the events of this episode.
* This is the only episode in which Seven is shown to communicate with anybody other than Draven.