Topic: The Other Door

Warlock

Date: 2010-05-15 13:00 EST
Silas' return to Greyshott Applied Magick & Engineering, and the lifting of House DeMuer's "exile" on him, coincided (very deliberately, as it turned out) with his appointment as Minister of Magic to Governor Sheridan Driscol. Besides delivering a speech, for one week he neglected the office and put his other affairs in order: moving back into his apartment near the Marketplace and bolstering it against Denubae attack; renewing GAME's largest research and development contracts; and, most importantly of all to him at that time, relocating the efforts of the 'Friends of the Workshop,' the vigilante group tasked with hunting down and destroying the Denubae, back to the GAME workshop itself.

It took seven days until he realized that he had left no contact information with anyone, at least not officially — no way for concerned citizens to reach him about arcane matters they might want his attention or advice on, and no office to go to, either! So one evening, after careful planning and spell preparation, he and four gnomes with large black umbrellas went to a spot along a brick wall within sight of the Governor's office. It began with him tracing a tall arch with white chalk on the wall, but further work was obstructed from view by the now-open umbrellas.

In spite of the warnings he himself had issued, in spite of the simple fact that the magic-eating jackals still roamed the streets of RhyDin, and that while the herd had maybe thinned it was more cunning and certainly still hungry, the new Minister of Magic went to work erecting a portal right next to a busy street, seeming oblivious to the attention he drew...

* * *

Hunger. Far beyond the uncomfortable emptiness, beyond the pain of his body devouring itself, the sensation overwhelmed every part of him. He knew they were in danger now: there were pictures, visions pasted onto thin things that looked like him and the others like him. The pink and brown and black things looked at the pictures and knew what they were, and many showed less fear.

There were traps. Food, mah-jick, would be brought out on its own long after the sun fell, one of the fleshy upright beings dragging it alone, and when they swooped in to feed they were attacked. Hunters came, creatures without fear, and cut and smashed them with heavy things, and the things they called "hammers" especially. These people knew who they were and wanted them to come out and hunt, and sic hunters of their own on his kind.

The weakest of them were left to scavenging, and this one was old and weak. Injured in the place where they had feasted on small fleshy things in green fur with the bright lights and loud noises, and now he nosed through the trash for things that tasted good. This one tried not to be seen and slunk away when spotted, and for weeks he had suffered in the heat with little food.

The pack was strong, the leader wise, but this one was hungry. They did not fear the monsters anymore; maybe they did not know how to hunt them, and he would hunt and kill and eat....Four strange black furs, broad and thin and curved, stood in the way, but he smelled what he could not see. A man, the man they called "wizard," who had killed many and drawn so many of his kin to their doom. He had slunk away from the pack and now found the wizard looking away, creating food, unseeing and uncaring....This one would kill him and feast, and be fat and full, and teach them to fear again, and know no more hunger...

The beast could take it no longer. It lunged.

* * *

THWOCK!

The gnomes backed away and exclaimed in disgust while Master Greyshott merely winced, smiled to himself, and continued to work. The beast was skewered on the end of a great brassy spear driven partway through its skull, twitching and bleeding: no man or woman held the spear, but a stout suit of clockwork armor, without any arcana and only a mundane battery to power it. Gears clicked as it retracted its weapon, letting the creature drop, and then a gravely robotic voice said, "Sprayers engaging. Please step back."

Something began hissing inside of it, steam building, and Silas finished his spell and skirted out of the way in just enough time to avoid a soaking; like in the vegetable aisles in a Star's End grocery store, a cool mist of water sprayed out from a number of little holes in the suit of armor. Water coated the fallen Denubae, and eventually the stinking mass melted away.

"Have a nice day," the machine croaked automatically, and went upright again.

The dense cloud of mist cleared away in moments, revealing Silas' handiwork: a tall black wooden door with a brass knocker, with a little stained glass arch over top of it. Directly overhead, in English or Common, were the words "Silas Greyshott, Minister of Magick to Governor Sheridan Driscol," in spite of the way that it had been spelled in all previous press announcements, and contradictions in some of Silas' own writings. Then, fanning out all around it and following the shape of the doorway down to the cobblestone street, the message was repeated in the two-hundred-and-fifty-six most common languages for "metaphysically-inclined" visitors to RhyDin and the adjoining cross-realms centers. Some of the messages were quite small, and others (such as English, French, Russian, Drow, Dwarfish, Gnomish, and a few Elvish dialects) seemed to be the biggest. It did not help matters that packed in under and around each of the messages were the simple instructions,

Please knock four times to be admitted into the lobby.

Culturally appropriate substitutes were used in languages that did not have the word "lobby" or use it the same way. The largest goblin dialect they used simply called it "waiting area," while the second referred to it as a "pit of despair."

On either side of the door, but far enough away from the text, were the two sets of clockwork armor, stationary but hooked electrically into the doorway's various spells. Serious attempts to destroy them would be met with the same response given to the fallen Denubae; the water, too, as the Denubae was the only problem they seemed to really focus on from a security standpoint.

Upon four knocks, the door would then open into a small lobby/pit of despair, with a plain hardwood floor, a disgustingly ornate (and depressingly dusty) rug, several mismatched chairs, a pair of well-stocked bookshelves, and what at least appeared to be the ghost of a waif of a middle-aged woman behind a mahogany desk, bespectacled and engaged in a (wholly corporeal) trashy romance novel at any given time. Aloof and indifferent in appearance and attitude, she was still helpful and reliable, leaving messages, informing them when Silas would be available, and buzzing him in if he actually was available.

For beyond another black door at the end of the room was Silas' study in the corner of the GAME workshop all the way across town, linked to the lobby/pit of despair by an arcane trick.

With the door finished and the Denubae mess swept away, Silas and his co-workers proceeded through the black door in the brick wall near the Governor's office, passing through the controlled rift beyond into their workshop to return to their regular jobs.

Drake Valkonan

Date: 2010-05-20 12:22 EST
AIs — at least Valkonan AIs — can be at times, well, innocent. Childlike might be an appropriate term, since they were grown rather than programmed, and then developed by simulations that trended more towards the anthropomorphic the more the AI advanced. So it was that Hedronbot — a rather complicated specimen — had emerged from simulation to reality with as much wisdom, determination, confidence, and strength as any proud father could ask of, say, a sixteen-year-old boy.

Also a healthy dose of sarcasm, glib retorts, and wisecracking; Drake wasn't sure exactly where all that came from, but kids grow up weird sometimes. It didn't bother the Scientist.

The upshot of all this synthpychology: a simple error born out of enthusiasm and a desire to do well. Drake had asked Hedronbot to keep him appraised of any large-scale supernatural disturbances related to the government office environment. His concern had been espionage, sabotage, or insurrection. His concern had not been the entirely legitimate activities of the Minister of Magic.

But he'd failed to note the specific exemption....and Hedronbot cheerfully and willfully failed to assume it.

So the isocahedron floated between the two guardian statues, offering the sort of hello appropriate to a fellow sentient creation (not that Hedronbot was at all certain they had even limited sapience, but courtesy is never a bad idea), projected force in four measured, sequential bursts well within the door's absorption tolerance, then entered into the office beyond — cataloging every spell, effect, source, or display on the way.

Warlock

Date: 2010-05-20 18:27 EST
After the four knocks the door swung inward, and the two gleaming golden machines, though they ought to have been far below the means of expressing sentience, thumped their spears into the ground as Hedronbot passed them by. The moment he had gone, the door shut again, and the silent guards did not stir.

There was only one being present in the lobby/pit of despair at that time, sitting behind her desk. The Noncorporeal Assistance Construct, Type Y (they called her Nancy to her face and Nasty behind her back) peered over her ethereal spectacles at the....Hm. Well. A minister's assistant even more surreal than herself. "Good morning," she said, shutting one of her actually very corporeal romance novels, one with a bare-chested orc on the cover with little of most orcs' characteristic crudeness, with an impressive six-pack and a swooning woman in his strong arms. The title read, The Don Juan of HerbivOrcs.

Whatever souls did not know what a real HerbivOrc was....were considered quite fortunate, by most who had the chance to know them.

"Can I help you?" The words left her lips with some reservation, as if she rather wished her fellow assistant (however curious) would leave her alone and let her get back to her reading, instead of holding her to any of her responsibilities to Silas' office and station.

The room was rife with the arcane, mostly sensory wards tucked into odd corners in case anything terrible happened, but the heavier spells were focused on the door on the other end of the room, which was not quite a door at all. It was a portal, linked up to an impressively robust arcane-electric power source on the other side, and this door's much heavier-duty types of warding and protective spells, and the ethereal assistant's power, were linked to the latent energies that were allowed to bleed into the lobby/pit of despair.

Drake Valkonan

Date: 2010-05-20 19:18 EST
"Good afternoon," Hedronbot said quite politely. "Please forgive the unannounced intrusion. I represent the Minister of Science and Technology."

One advantage to being a robot that observed the world through a number of senses infinitely superior to sight, and therefore mostly lacking in body language, was the simple ability to direct attention quite literally anywhere. Truth be told, "attention" in fact was both literally accurate and completely unrepresentative. As a biological mind's "attention" meant the transference of information from sense memory to short-term memory, so Hedronbot devoted processor cycles to analyze stored sensory data. Hedronbot just transferred the data directly, though; full analysis could wait.

Yeah, Drake would really want to meet this kid.

But simple audio directionalism sufficed for an illusion of directed attention to another entity. And some quick thinking gave him an idea — the robot couldn't really admit he was here out of curiosity, or searching for supernatural events, now could he? "The Minister would like to arrange a meeting with the Minister of Magic at their earliest mutual convenience, to either transfer or translate technology for communications, and to determine exactly where the line between the two ministries is."

Prudently, Hedronbot did NOT mention that the Minister of Science and Technology would like to make several chortling references to Fudge and Scrimgeour, on the frantic and ill-advised hope that Drake would grow up for like ten minutes.

Warlock

Date: 2010-05-21 10:04 EST
Hedronbot's hesitation was long enough for Nancy to become bored and reopen her book. She found her dog-eared page, smoothed it again, and waited close to a minute until she was done with that page, and then she breathed a very long sigh (causing a small mirror at the other end of the room to fog over, suddenly, with frost). She extended a slender finger and pushed a brass-framed black button on the wall beside her, and gave the floating 'hedron a pointed look over her spectacles that said, Great. Now you've gone and interrupted my reading for an additional ten seconds. I hope you're happy.

* * *

"One hundred hirty-seven point four megawatts, Master Greyshott!"

"One hundred thirty-seven point four"!" The panic in the young Minister of Magic's voice was very clear, and whereas before every dwarf and gnome in the GAME workshop had been chortling with mischievous glee at the chaotic progression of their latest experiment in arcane-electric locomotive engines....now they, too, began to panic. Silas would often revel in this sort of chaos, but he knew they were in genuine danger of bringing the workshop crashing down around them. He thumped out of his study, clutching his staff with both hands, and watched the engine in the center of the room as it began to crackle, jagged lines of blue and white dancing around it. "Did we sever the link?"

"Hundred fifty point one, and yes, we did, three minutes ago!"

Silas ducked under a chain that had begun to dance erratically, and in spite of its great amount of slack it kept going taut in several places. These were the kinds of accidents that formed rifts. "Did we flush the auxiliary batteries — "

"And destroyed two outta five bleeding this thing, yes!"

Several large lightning bolts leaped from the engine, striking the upper platforms and one of the windows. A gnome screamed as he hit the deck, and somewhere across the street a cat yowled. The neighborhood committee was not going to be happy about this...

"Pushing two hundred!" A be-goggled dwarf was backing rapidly away from the machine as its metal surface began to buckle and split.

"Dwaylyn." Silas pointed at him. "Go to the Sinaldwin side, and move the New Birmingham battery — "

"The construct's hauling it up by chains, sir, thing weighs over four tons!"

"Cut it!"

A massive bolt erupted through the ceiling (making short work of the brick and tin in its way), dancing up into the clouds, but Silas maneuvered his way closer. Fearlessness was one of his newer qualities, and he was showing it now....With an ugly rending noise a gash appeared down the side of the engine, and the wizard set his feet and held his staff to the ground. Electricity danced all around him, and —

"Sir! Sir, it's the Minister's door, they're buzzing for you — "

"Heathen saints confound that infernal device, it can WAIT, Jilgard!"

"...y-yes, sir..."

Something enormous came crashing through the garage-tunnel door behind him, skidding to a halt with a prolonged scream of metal, and Silas did not look, nor did he wait for it to stop. The engine was threatening to burst, and finally he compelled it to — he tugged on the threads woven into the machine and willed, very precisely, Come to me.

A violent thunderstorm in miniature raced towards him and struck his staff, every bolt dancing around him but never once piercing him, and with intense concentration he bent the enormous energy and pushed it towards the four-ton battery behind him. Dials leaped to the red end, wiring burned, sparks showered down all over the workshop, until....suddenly, abruptly, it was over.

Silas pushed his goggles up over his stiff, smoking hair and hobbled his way past his cowering co-workers, down the ramp towards the battery which Jilgard was rather fearfully approaching himself. He tugged his heavy gloves more firmly into place with his teeth, then reached for a sizzling dial and played 'hot potato' with it just long enough to get a reading. "Ninety-eight-point-eight percent charge, sir!" he called to the wizard, gleefully.

"Okay," Silas sighed. "Well, ah....alright, then. It, ah....we're alive." He nodded to himself for a few moments, then looked around: "Clean up, gentlemen, I've, um, it seems I've an appointment today."

* * *

The portal between the workshop and the lobby/pit of despair was not enough to completely muffle the terrible noises his experiment produced: the sharp crack of artificial lightning bolts, the crashing of the massive battery down the ramp between worlds, the screeching of metal, and the heavy THOOM as the arcane-electric energy impacted the battery like some sort of massive hammer. After a minute, the door opened, and the still-gently-sizzling Silas Greyshott smiled awkwardly into the lobby. Nancy had been somewhat surprised by Hedronbot, but the most this wizard showed was curiosity, assessing its appearance and making conjectures about its workings that he kept to himself, for the time being.

His clothing (and much of his exposed skin) was covered in oil, grease and soot, and his usually fine hair had plenty of extra body recently fried into it, standing up in great tufts in several places. "You, ah....well, um, I suppose I should introduce myself, I'm Silas Greyshott, the ah, Minister of Magic to Mr. Sheridan Driscol's, ah, governorship....You wanted to see me?"

Drake Valkonan

Date: 2010-05-21 11:23 EST
Hedronbot waited patiently through the ghost's slow attendance to duty, while privately entertaining visions of coming back later with a particle accelerator upgrade. But that would probably be rude.

The distant noises of electrical chaos bothered the robot not at all; in fact, they gave the office a comfortable home-like quality. The isocahedron continued to wait. One advantage of artificiality: an excessive ability to amuse oneself.

When at last the Minister appeared from the back door, Hedronbot had all his most pleasant speech routines prepared, but the horrible general fault of his observations knotted up his processor before it could output directions.

Because he knew exactly what was going to happen if Drake met with the Minister of Magic now. Reeffingcalculating.

"Good afternoon, Minister Greyshott," Hedronbot said most politely. "My name is Hedronbot, assistant to and current representative of the Minister of Science and Technology, Master Scientist Drake Valkonan. I apologize for interrupting you. The Minister would like to meet with you at your earliest mutual convenience to arrange for the technological provisioning of your ministry and determining exactly where the line between the two Ministries is."

The latter statement meant all the more when one considers that, to observe Hedronbot with arcane sight — well, Clarke's Third Law.

"As I am knowledgeable with Drake's schedule—" by virtue of storing it — "I would be happy to arrange a time when you two could meet, respecting of course your current activites." This was the most subtle way the robot could think of to prod the Minister into saying anything but "Now is fine!"

Warlock

Date: 2010-05-24 20:38 EST
"...Master Scientist?" Everything about young Master Greyshott's tone said, Wow I have got to meet this guy! Uh-oh. He tugged one of his gloves loose and made a few very quick little signs in the air, and what looked like....runic algebra, for lack of a better term, shimmered briefly before coalescing into an itinerary that only he could probably read.

It did not look at all linear (nor Euclidean, for that matter), which even further did not bode well for this man's sanity and how it would likely interact with Valkonan's own Tesla-like urges. "Well, I think we'll be continuing work on arcane-electric engines all afternoon, but, ah, some of us, I imagine, will be tinkering with the reactor which I expect, at least I very sincerely hope, Master Valkonan would take some level of interest in....I'm fascinated, at least, ah, for my own part, in what he has to say, he seems very interesting."

With a flourish he tucked the glove up under his arm and the glowing, floating schedule evaporated: "This afternoon, I think....would be excellent. I'd be ready for him almost immediately....ah....unless, of course, Master Valkonan is otherwise engaged?"

Drake Valkonan

Date: 2010-05-25 10:58 EST
"That is the Minister's formal title. It is synonymous and equivalent to 'Archmage'," Hedronbot replied — then performed an internal power-flux that served as a robotic wince. That had been a mistake to say. Well, Hedronbot knew which sections of the lab had the best blast shielding. He made a mental note to watch WALL-E for notes on how to be a lone robot wandering a destroyed world.

As for the Minister of Magic's question....it wasn't in Hedronbot's nature to lie, at least not in a way so easily discovered, and, well, so likely to disappoint Drake. "The Master Scientist can arrive as soon as you are ready to receive him, not counting the brief transit time from the closest non-interdicted area to this office."