"I refuse to believe that mankind has hope."-Corrupted fragment recovered from extended data-meditation on newly restored relicsHaving made a new... buddy, you enter the personal forge of another friend, who promises by ritual to help you uncover the secrets of the lost titan, Corvus Lictor.---Read the previous threads at: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=False%20WomanYou possess an amount of Strain equal to your Conditioning score. When attempting actions beyond your current capacity, you gain a point of Strain. Attempting to Strain while at maximum Strain will result in a Strain Check. During a Strain Check, roll 1d10 for every point of the relevant Parameter. Results that are 6 or above count as one success. Results of 10 count as two successes. Three successes must be rolled to avert a critical failure. Fail or pass, after a Strain Check, you cannot Strain again until you restore your Strain by seeking shelter.This quest allows you to designate a second-choice vote on decisions with three or more options before Write-Ins. When votes are totaled, the option with the least votes for it will be removed, with votes for that option instead being changed to the second-choice of those voters. Second-choice votes are also used to break ties. This helps increase the accuracy of votes, but is not mandatory. Please specifically mark your second-choice as such if you do so.Vote stay open for a minimum of six hours, but will usually take longer.A note: My writing style is pretty dry, but don't mistake that for it being serious.
Pardon a brief delay before I get this rolling, Benty's operating under a touch of a time crunch- oh son of a bitch the thread title's cut off....ey, fuck it, it's just a 't'.
“I'm adept at clearing my thoughts, at least.” You sigh. “Very well, how do I begin?”“Please, kneel.” He gestured to the front of the circle. “Do not worry about disturbing the chalk, I have preserved it with a temporary binding agent.”“Should I have been doing that this whole time?” You ask, glancing down at one of the lines and realizing your boot was partially on it, before stepping back quickly.“Not for the ones we practice on.” Korash-22 raised an eyebrow. “Now, please. You should be showing deference to the machine here.”“But is there a machine here?” You raise an eyebrow, looking towards the altar.“Of course there is.” Korash-22 scowls. “The spirit of a mighty one above all, but also it's humble brother holding it up, as it's legs once did. Now, don't be so flippant before it.”“Ah-” You can't help being slightly taken aback by the sudden irritation in Korash-22's voice. You had never known the Magos to be particularly impatient... but then, you had just put a time limit on what he had worked so hard to prepare. The least you could do was not impede him. “Forgive me, Magos, I just struggle with the finer points of the faith occasionally."Korash-22's expression softened. “You were just curious, the error is mine.” He tried to grin slightly. “As I've gotten older, I've found it more difficult to ignore the negative impulses of my flesh.”“Is that not something you can replace with the machine?” You raise your eyebrows slightly in surprise.Korash-22 smiled weakly, a tiny bit of wistful regret showing on his face. “Try as I might, I just can't seem to excise the exact bit of tissue responsible for my impatience. Now, be respectful to it, show due deference as you approach."“To the cogitator or the plate?”“To the body of the first and the spirit of the latter. I'd suggest something you wouldn't mind holding for a while."“My spec can prostrate for days, if necessary.” You turn and carefully cross the borders of the binagram, lifting up the hem of your gown so it doesn't brush.>Kneel, as if a knight to his lord.>Bow on your knees, as if a son to his father.>Prostrate yourself fully, as if it was your creator himself.>Simply sit with your legs crossed.>[Write-In]
>>6117174>Bow on your knees, as if a son to his fathe
>>6117174>Prostrate yourself fully, as if it was your creator himself.
>>6117174>>Bow on your knees, as if a son to his father.
>>6117174>>Prostrate yourself fully, as if it was your creator himself.
>>6117174>Bow on your knees, as if a son to his father.nevermind the T
>Prostrate yourself fully, as if it was your creator himself.Writing.
>>6119134Apologies about the delay, it's another one of those long updates.
>>6122177I can't believe..........
>>6122977
>>6123467Bentus......
>>6123634DON'T
>>6125142Is.....
>>6125157Fucking........
>>6125276His girlfriend!(Goddess, so worth the b&)
Carefully, you approach it.Where once the cogitator had been surrounded on either side with shelves holding up Korash-22's finest collection of texts, now it was bare, the room cleared back to the wall to make way for his binagram. One of the lectors might have admonished you that the clearing of the Omnissiah's gifts was to forgo them, lessening his glory and failing to honor the machine, but in the face of such intricate devotion, you found yourself doubting his words. The image before you was intricate, and clearly a mark of esoteric knowledge beyond yours, which could be nothing but a sign of closeness to the machine itself.And at the center of it, of course, was the data-lectern, Korash-22's private cogitator that you had seen him consulting on many occasions. You had never connected to it, of course, it's contents were noospherically distributed and isolated, as was Korash-22's right in his private study. Up close, what had once been covered by crimson cloth and surrounded by candles was laid bare, metal surfaces polished with a dark fluid that had an odd stench, sharp, rich and sickly sweet like blood, almost like what wafted out of Amos' kitchen, but you found yourself instinctively liking. Lights on the surface of the podium blinked softly with a muted green light, which itself served to drown out the golden light you had come to associate with noospheric conduit. Those were hidden behind the podium, carefully dimmed in preparation for this communion, no doubt.Carefully, you kneeled before it, tucking the hem of your gown beneath your calves so they didn't bunch. For a moment, you let your eyes wander up, past the burnished bronze and mahogany of the cogitator's chassis to the data-lectern it was built into. Where would normally be a tome Korash-22 was consulting, the pages pinned open to a turn of phrase he found inspiring or poignant, there now rested the plate.Of course, it was nothing new to you. Not by now. And yet, in the dim light, the amalgamation of brass and bronze shone brightly, shining after the attention of the reliquary. Across it's face, an intricate binary etching was carved, brass evaporated from it's surface by laser to reveal the richer bronze beneath, creating a complex carpet of binaric marks that seemed to form mountains and stars, newly polished so that the bronze beneath shone with a new luster that had been lost after many decades of slow tarnish. The Gothic etched across it in an organic, yet dignified scrawl seemed almost unnecessary, in comparison, though they were the only part of the markings you truly understood.Clasped gently to the podium like this, it almost reminded you of how it had once looked- inside Corvus Lictor, before you had pulled it free of it's housing. Was this how it had once looked, when it was new, and Corvus Lictor was young?
>>6126899That thought made something in your chest tighten oddly, and so you took a deep breath and lowered yourself down before it, laying yourself down on top of your knees and touching your forehead to the floor, to the cables and conduits that passed up through the paneling and ran into the lectern. They felt cool against your forehead, pressing down slightly while your bangs fell into the gaps between the cabling and beneath the open panels into the floor. Your chest rested against the floor over the top of your knees, hands placed to either side of your head.To rest in a position like this would become uncomfortable for an ordinary human. Luckily, you possessed no such frailties, your joints sagging slightly to accommodate your supplication.The cool rubber leeched the heat from your forehead, your body slowly warming the ground beneath you as you closed your eyes.“When given the choice of comfort, you choose supplication..." Korash-22's voice mused from somewhere to the side of the room. “More than a few could learn from your example.”You heard him, but only in part. As your teachers had started to realize, it was trivial for you to empty your mind, draining your awareness of the world away for the pleasant fuzz of a mind looking for a task. Golden light bled in at the corners of your vision, no doubt the dimmed noospheric conduits mixing with the orange of the candlelight.The trouble would be stopping your mind from finding a new task. While you could relax instantly, your mind wanted to work. It wanted to find new problems to solve and new things to do until you were confident all the work was done. Soon your mind was filling with concerns about whether Korash-22 had all the candles he wished set up. Had you angled your body in a way that was offensive to the Omnissiah? Were you nourished enough to perform such a long vigil? There was a corpsestarch bar in one of the pockets of your bodyglove, perhaps you could eat that?“You must relax, Lebesnati.” Korash-22 gently chided. “Nothing will harm you here. You must make room within your thoughts for other things, not just stay still.”That wasn't what you were worried about, but he had a point. You breathe in deeply through your nose, the breath slowly dissipating out as you try to let your furrowed brow relax. It was strange to make the motion - or rather, to let it happen - as if your body relaxing was secondary to the act of spiritual submission, if it could even be called that. Something flickered in the back of your mind as you did so, the inside of your eyes dancing with spots of light, the edges of the tiles you had seen just before closing them somehow still floating in your mind's eye. “...there. Excellent.” The urge to analyze Korash-22's tone immediately pulled you slightly to reality, but with a soft sigh of effort, you relax again before his pleased tone could truly sink in. “Yes, remarkable. Keep going.”
>>6126901Your fingers twitch slightly as you relax again, the hairs on the back of your neck briefly standing up before relaxing. There was a tension in your gut, but you set it aside, letting the sensation simply flow past. Your ordinary thoughts were struggling to the surface, trying to make themselves known, but as he had said, the goal was not to will the knowledge into being, but to let the Omnissiah reveal them if He wished.You didn't know how long you had remained pressed to the floor, but you were losing count of the minutes, denying the part of you that knew instinctively how long you had waited. In it's place, dim thoughts were gaining more substance, scattered memories flowing and coalescing in strange ways. Korash-22's dry lips at your first meeting, the wheel of Cad's truck, the smell of the oil in the forges, the feathered edges of torn parchment. The thoughts butted up against each other, some knot between them feeling more real the more you denied your own urge to follow those memories, at first with careful detachment, then with less and less of your own intention, like the thoughts were pulling you in, becoming...>A vivid series of images, like you were reviewing your own memories.>Your mouth opens, and you begin to speak the words as they came.>Like in the tank, there was a scratching in your mind, and it became a voice.
>>6126902>A vivid series of images, like you were reviewing your own memories
>>6126902>Like in the tank, there was a scratching in your mind, and it became a voice.
>>6126902>Your mouth opens, and you begin to speak the words as they came.
>Your mouth opens, and you begin to speak the words as they came.Writing.>Captcha: 8SW00PI guess we're swoopin'
Your fingers gently twitch on the floor, curling onto their sides without you meaning to. Thoughts slid past each other in your mind, things you hadn't realized were in your mind. Ideas you didn't remember having, but were in fact yours. They sounded like yours. They felt like yours. You knew they were yours, but they were also far louder and more powerful than any thought had ever been inside your head.“I remember...” You start, rasping into the cables at the base of the podium, lips closing awkwardly against them as they move. “Being in a dark pit beneath. Somewhere the scrap would rise up to my knees.”“I was searching, because I had heard a voice. And I found that voice, where a thousand people had passed by without hearing.” Breathing was hard in this position, your lungs not expanding enough to allow for speech. “It spoke to me, and I asked it things. It seemed curious and powerless. I wanted to help, but I also wanted to leave. So I gave of myself and we parted ways.” Your fingers dug into the cables as you pushed yourself slightly off the floor, rasping in breaths between each word. Something about the words made your chest ache with an odd relief, and you had no idea why.“I think that changed something, that day. Before there were voices that I couldn't hear. I think perhaps I blocked them out. But now that I am gone, I think perhaps they can get in.” Your mouth kept moving, but you felt your awareness dimming, your mind sinking back into the depths, being pulled down by a memory deep inside of you. The pressure behind your eyes was immense, like your skull itself resisted the thought, but you were being pulled down from within, sinking away from your senses and body as an increasingly forceful voice rang against ears you didn't realize were yours.“They're always trying to get in, grasping and clasping at my shell. On some level, they all are like me. I have a divine hatred inside of me, given to me by my creator, one I was unworthy of and cast down by long ago." Your fingers flex against the floor, risen into a half-upright position even as your limbs felt numb. New thoughts were pulsing between your own, the soil turned over to reveal things that were not yours, but that you carried with you, like salvage beneath piles of scrap.“I think back to those times and wonder if I am imagining them, and if I became unworthy of them long ago...”>[Machine Bond] Something's... wrong...>"I feel them under my skin, walking across me without realizng that I am there.">"You distort in the cloud, Korash. The chalice is deep with lies."
>>6128926>[Machine Bond] Something's... wrong...
>>6128926>>[Machine Bond] Something's... wrong...
>>6128926>"I feel them under my skin, walking across me without realizng that I am there."
>[Machine Bond] Something's... wrong...Writing.
“An illness is within me, searching for me though it knows not.” You croak, rising higher onto your hands, head craning back. The words spilled out involuntarily, your mouth continuing to move even as your words began to register dimly within you. “My defense is their ignorance! The corruption is in the sound and in the eye of their mind! The crow circles for a nest that's gone! I- agh... I feel sick...” You lean forward, clutching your head and whimpering as bile rose in the back of your throat.Something sick was in your blood, co-opting your heart and forcing itself through your veins, and from them into your nerves and bone and soul. Even when you shut your eyes, you could see the golden outlines of your nerves and the cabling under the floor pulsing, only to open your eyes and see how the coiling branches ran through your flesh wrong- no, not just your flesh, the room was stuttering back and forth, reality disagreeing with itself, everything duplicated with a twin that made itself real, cutting deep into your eyes even when you screwed them shut.The cabling in the flooring writhed, tiny wriggling mouths thirsting for current, trying to force it's static neighbors to assume it's lie, both there and not, causing friction where it collided with reality. The podium itself melted, spirits running free, writhing little horrors dancing over the floor, sinking fingers of trembling data into grating and girders as if there was code there for them to defile, running up you only for you to remember that they didn't actually exist. Didn't yet exist. Even the light in the room seemed suddenly grating, noospheric black noise issuing from inside your head, the isolated circuits crowing at finally being let out for once.You were seeing double, your ears filling with a screeching hiss, your senses overwhelmed as your blood twisted, the hostile air around you pushing under your skin, finding your veins and desiring to lovingly burrow itself deeper. You barely register vomiting all over the cables, your stomach emptying itself, only for the bile to begin forming slurred runes in the trickling acids and half-digested corpsestarch.Even the plate wasn't unaffected, it's own sickly twin slowly sliding out from behind it, as if your eyes were becoming unfocused, splitting it in two to reveal a text that was arranged into a split maw, the binaric scribing mocking and leering.It was too much, you had to... you had to->[Machine Bond] Rejecting.>[Genolysis] Reach up with a shaking hand, grasp the thing hiding in the shadow of your body and rip it out.>"Get. Out. Of. My. HEAD!"
>>6132772>>[Genolysis] Reach up with a shaking hand, grasp the thing hiding in the shadow of your body and rip it out.
>>6132772>[Genolysis] Reach up with a shaking hand, grasp the thing hiding in the shadow of your body and rip it out.
>>6132772>>"Get. Out. Of. My. HEAD!"
>[Genolysis] Reach up with a shaking hand, grasp the thing hiding in the shadow of your body and rip it out.Writing.
>>6133505Happy Halloween Bentus
>>6133888So y'know, when I started this one-shot one year ago, I was intending to quickly reach the silly stuff within a week. That hasn't worked out, but it's ironic that we're reaching it on the one year anniversary now.I just kind of got sidetracked by mixology and sewing, you see.
Something was inside your skin. No, not that. Not even under it. Nor was it in your heart or even your nerves, it was in the gap between your thoughts, the film between your flesh and reality, the tiny gap of non-existence between you and something that grated at you and made your circuits ache to even think about.You stagger forwards, scrabbling at the podium and feeling biting teeth on your hands, your fingers sinking into soft flesh and being overrun with wax. Trying to lift your hands up make them shake, the space between you and your chest expanding to push your hands away. The gap between the two realities was widening, and you found yourself increasingly distant from your body, adrift even as your mouth kept moving on it's own,Desperate fingers close fruitlessly on air, trying to grab at your arm, your skin, anything to get the thing that was lurking in the shadow of your thoughts, the shadow of your body and get it out of you.“Come now, Lebesnati.” Korash-22's voice came from somewhere behind you, soothing and almost bored. “There's no need to get frustrated at yourself. This is supposed to be an exercise in patience. Just sit down, there's nothing to be concerned with.”For a second, you almost believed him.Then with a snarl of servos and joints, you seized your own throat.Your fingers dug deep in, and for a second you thought you would feel your throat crushing beneath your hands. Instead, the second image shuddered, your hand closing around the throat of the false-thing, your blood suddenly screaming and filling with purifying chemical fire, burning away your fatigue and panic and pain as something deep within you clenched.You add your other hands, gritting your teeth as the thing slashed, but you slammed yourself forward, head colliding with the cool metal of the plate as it rested on the podium, leveraging every ounce of strength your feeble body could muster until-The thing budged slightly, a gap forming between you.Your robes blew tight against your body, the air filled with the smell of ozone and you found yourself lifting back, something bursting from your front with a scream that rent the noosphere and made your ears fill with hateful static. The gap had burst like a faulty piston, and you were launched away from the podium, only for your back to crush against something that made your ears pop and filled the air with the smell of burnt hair and cloth.The force of the impact only kept you aloft for a moment, just long enough for you to grimace in pain through the hair of your thundering blood as you slid to the ground, landing among the points of the binagram. You saw stars as your thighs smacked against the metal grating, bruising the neural flesh laced there. Each thought made your head hurt, but that was rapidly fading as your insides felt queasy, still burning with the chemical release from within you.
>>6134653Dazed, you lifted your head, struggling to make out the figure standing to the side of you, clearly not having moved, but with a thunderous, hateful aura of black and sickly orange light curling around his head, the anger deep enough to disturb the noospheric dampeners normally in place.>"Magos...?">"I-I think we need to stop...">"Did I fail?">Stay silent.>[Write-In]
>>6134654>>"Did I fail?"
>>6134654>"Magos...?">"Did I fail?"
>>6134654>>"I-I think we need to stop..."
>>6134653>>"I-I think we need to stop..."
Leeet's call that as...>"I-I think we need to stop..."and>"Did I fail?"
Is Korash actually a heretek?!Lets find out on the next episode!
“I-I think we need to stop...” You whimper, slumped against whatever it was. The still present smell of singed cloth made you wince. Hopefully you hadn't burned your jacket...What had you been babbling? You'd angered the machine, clearly, and with a loss of composure, no less. Your insides writhed horribly, with shame at your failure to maintain self-control, obviously, though the nerves wouldn't settle no matter how much you controlled your breathing. The neural flesh in your thigh and chest ached from the impact, and every throb of the skin was accompanied by a slight blurring of your thoughts, the ideas briefly constricting and losing focus in time with the throbs.You look up blearily at the figure above you. Korash-22's normally smiling face was flattened into a thin line, the pale lips cracking slightly with the unusual movement. A small part of you wants to flinch in shame for such a flagrant disrespect to the machine that it struck you in return, and to your shame it nearly won out. With some effort, you forced the shame down and more prudently asked:“Did I fail?”“No, of course not.” Korash-22 reached down to you, grabbing you by the arm and by the back of your neck, despite your sudden wince of protest.Your thoughts came thickly, not working right through the pain. Embarrassingly so, for an injury that would be trivial to someone who had not just bruised parts of their mind with the impact. Something you were seeing wasn't right.Why would a techpriest need to dampen his connection to the noosphere-Your feet briefly find the ground, then lift off it as Korash-22 continues to lift you into the air. Briefly kicking in confusion, you look back to him. Was he upset? He said it was a fairly common ritual...Korash-22's face was downright venomous, his lips twisting into a snarl, his eyes hungry and unfocused. “I'm sorry, Lebesnati, but I really must insist you let the Omnissiah's servant in.”No, not unfocused, looking past you. Looking over your right shoulder, where your eyes slowly turned, focusing on.Your head hurt again, but when you squeezed your eyes shut this time you could still see it. An awful, coiling mass of arcing power, no longer hidden in the nerves between your eyes and brain, now freed from it's bonds and stretching forward into the real world, which melted and ran at it's touch. It was a thing of wires and metal, malevolent current in the coils, but as it coalesced it's form became less spindly, less like the thing you had seen before in the Secundus-Factor-VII - that was all abstract shapes and current - and more like a creature. One with a writhing, snapping jaw and limbs that ripped apart the room to make themselves manifest.“Please continue your meditations.”>"Korash. What have you done?">"Heretek.">"Please, don't...">[Conditioning/Strain] Try to fight your way out of his grip.>[Write-In]
>>6138765>>"Korash. What have you done?"
>>6138765>"Korash. What have you done?">"Please, don't..."YIKES YIKES YIKES
>>6138765>>"Korash. What have you done?">>"Please, don't..."
>>6138765>>"Korash. What have you done?">>"Please, don't..."This is starting to look like some some serious heresy.Too bad we can't use our machine link basically scream bloody murder in the noosphere.
>>6138765>"Heretek.">[Conditioning/Strain] Try to fight your way out of his grip.
>>6138765>"Korash. What have you done?">"Please, don't..."
>"Korash. What have you done?">"Please, don't..."Writing.
