A Strange Visitor

cosmicarus · March 4, 2008

Rose strains again, wresstling with the thing like it was a crocodile and she was someone else. She was gonna hurt this thing!She let it go and swung both of her fists down, trying to catch the elusive beastie in a powerful crunch!

Veiled Malice · March 4, 2008

Nanowire skidded in midair, reorienting himself so he could take another shot at the nimble little spidermech. His reactionless thrusters boosted him forwards and he brought a fist down on the machine.

Veiled Malice · March 4, 2008

Nanowire skidded in midair, reorienting himself so he could take another shot at the nimble little spidermech. His reactionless thrusters boosted him forwards and he brought a fist down on the machine.

Heridfel · March 5, 2008

The spider falls to bits as Velocity's punch sizzles in. The child cries even louder as a small piece of the spider hits it in the cheek, but it doesn't even look like it broke the skin. No other spider-bots are concentrating on the child, though several seem to be looking over at Velocity.

Nanowire's blow breaks the spider-bot apart. Rather than falling inert, its innards leap out at Nanowire, trying to latch on. One of them finds a data port and jacks in. The voice that spoke earlier in response to the more humanoid nanite swarm is speaking inside his head.

"Pico-band data transfer technology recognized. Unit is not wholly inorganic. This presents a tactical advantage against the Sentinels. Commencing Data transfer...Data transfer complete."

There's a great deal of information flooding Nanowire's mind. Despite his inorganic nature, his mind is still mostly human, and ill-equipped to process all of the data at once. He gets flashes of ideas, but some key points emerge as he tries to cover it all.

OOC: This will probably take more than one round to fully grok. Figure one bullet point automatically per round; three (total) if you spend a move action, five (total) if you spend a standard action, and all of them if you take a full round action.

1) Both the Vanguard and the Sentinels are intelligent non-organic races. The Vanguard naturally evolved on their world, where the basic atom of life was silicon, rather than carbon as on most worlds. The Sentinels were created by organic races after the Vanguard was discovered.

2) The Vanguard eventually achieved interstellar travel capabilities and contacted the greater galaxy. The organic races were threatened by the Vanguard's ability to rapidly adapt to different environments, and declared war on them. The Vanguard was surprised, but adapted to war against the organics as quickly and efficiently as they did other hostile environments, and the tide soon turned against the organic races that had attacked them.

3) The Sentinels were built by the organics as a way to end the war. They are the counterpart to the Vanguard. They were built to preserve organic life and destroy non-Sentinel, non-organic life. They are designed to do whatever is necessary to do so. Take any measure, use any resource.

4) The Sentinels' programming came to a conclusion that is wholly logical. By preventing organic life from developing technology anywhere near the complexity needed to develop artifical life, there is no possibility that they will create allies of the Vanguard. The names of the races that created the Vanguard are lost, but evidence suggests that they have been forcibly returned to a pre-industrial state by their own creations.

5) Both the Vanguard and the Sentinels can merge with others of their type and increase their fighting capability. The Vanguard "leader" is the size of a medium sized planet[Some 312 times Earth's size] and can effectively engage an entire star system in Melee Combat. Combat tactics of the Vanguard include [DATA ENCRYPTED]. By contrast, the Sentinels [DATA ENCRYPTED].

6) Both are from a far-flung region of the galaxy, and these two were caught in a spatial anomaly that left them here. Both the Vanguard and the Sentinels can only travel in super-light speeds along specific corridors in their portion of the galaxy, though they can communicate at super-light speeds over greater distances with the proper equipment. Because of their non-organic nature, both races can draw upon all of the knowledge of their galactic brethren to aid in reproduction strategies.

7) Both could effectively reproduce, using the resources of the entire planet. This has the potential to be a Terminus-level threat.

It's a lot to process, and Nanowire knows he's barely scratched the surface. The last thing is almost a feeling, but Nanowire can tell that the Sentinels will not kill him because he's still partially organic - and that means that he can help the Vanguard more than anyone else besides the other hybrid.

Heridfel · March 5, 2008