There was a castle, not an unusual turn of events in Mythopoeia. What was unusual is that I had not been immediately aware of it. I felt ... small. Extending my awareness was effortful, and there was an upper limit, the barrier they had fallen through to arrive here, a barrier that I had passed through to follow Lawlimi. I tried to turn my head, to tune in to some of the other players I liked to keep tabs on. Nothing happened. I was cut off.

How curious.

I apprised Lawlimi of the situation as the heroes rounded the mycoloth shelf, and he attempted to clip off a short message to Tasma for when she logged in again. His messaging functions were disabled.

"Can anyone send messages?" Lawlimi asked.

"By pigeon?" Damwise asked. "I've done so often, but I doubt we can avail ourselves here."

The others checked their menus and were appropriately disturbed. The designer of this zone had made it insular, disconnected from the rest of the system in ways I didn't fully understand. Were my unconscious processes still active in the game, or had the encyclopedia stopped working as soon as I crossed the barrier? What did that say about my awareness, if it could cross barriers, be in one place and not others, when I had always been a being of multiplicity? As a quick test, I split my visual feed so that I was watching on both sides of the shelf, then from over the shoulder of every player. Simple enough, which meant that my unique sensorium and dual processing functions were still accessible but confined to this locality.

Neat.

And the castle was interesting. There was no curtain wall, which made it vulnerable to siege. A collection of towers and support buildings were shuffled together with no evident central planning; oddly shaped turrets, bristling with rods and pins and pennants, like squatting horny toads. Most remarkable, the construction was not of stone. From the tops of its turrets to its foundations, this castle was a thing of glass and steel.

At my urging, Lawlimi collected chunks of the Drissil before they went beyond.

"What's up?" Sashimibandit asked him.

"My conscience is telling me to keep this stuff."

"Ooookay." The others pulled ahead of him, and he bit off a chunk from the cakes he had collected. It was soft and moist, and the spores melted like powdered butter when exposed to saliva. His hunger and thirst conditions were immediately satisfied, and he began to eat more.

"Careful," I told him. "Too much can cause psychological issues."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, but it would be preferable to test that on one of the other players."

"Cool." Lawlimi packed his cakes away and hurried to catch up.

The castle was farther and larger than it at first appeared. It might have been a city fashioned by giants for their own kind, as well as for the use of their human servants, for the skyscraping towers had doors at their base of a mortal size, encased in arches of black steel.

"How do we get in?" Lawlimi asked. The others were already gathered around the portal in various stages of frustration.

"No handles," Sashimibandit said. "No locks to pick. It's kind of bullshit."

Silva got down to her haunches and worked her fingers to get some purchase, then tried to lift. While the flexing and grunting that followed was admired by all, the metal slab didn't move an inch.

"Maybe we should look for other entrances," Damwise said.

"They're all like this," I informed Lawlimi after a brief survey. Out of curiosity, I sent out a generalized ping for any ADIs in the zone, to see if one of the gods had their hands in it. There was no immediate response.

Just as Lawlimi was approaching the door to examine it more closely it started to hum like a crystal charged with mana. They all froze.

"If this goes boom," Sashimibandit said, "I quit."

Silva banged on the plating with her fist. "Hey! Anybody in there? We're heroes and we fell through the sky, so we're pissed!"

At the center of the door, a palm-sized section irised open to reveal a dim ruby like an eye with a gloss of light for a pupil. It flickered between them before shuttering again. The steel slab stopped humming, then rose and disappeared into the top of its arch.

"That was convenient," Lawlimi said.

"Who knew," Sashimibandit said, "all it took was a woman yelling."

Silva pushed him absently before leading the way in. Beyond the entrance was a well-lit corridor of the same dark metal as the castle. It had a rough, oxidized look, with visible bolts and screws and oily stains at the seams of the panels. The smell was sharp, actinic, mechanical, like the workshops of the artificers of Dadaea. Giants lived in those mountains. Perhaps they had made this place, or it had been made for them and then abandoned by its designer mid-build.

The corridor led to a ladder and a wheel hatch which opened onto a prep room. Psychoactive skins hung in preservative crystal lockers along one wall.

"Shit," Sashimibandit said. "That's creepy as shit."

It did look a bit as if human beings had been perfectly flayed, fingers and all, their bodies removed from these ghastly sheathes through a single slit along their spines, but that wasn't the case. Psychoactive skins were an advanced alchemical, magical construct that one wore like armor to protect from inclement environments.

Silva examined one, accessing the item prompt.

>>

Psychoactive Skin - Heroic 6

Availability : Rare

Condition : Excellent

Coverage : 95%

Toughness : 30%

These highly adaptive body suits protect the wearer from extreme temperatures, acidic, arid, and aquatic environmental hazards. Highly responsive to alchemical enhancement. Complements well with wearable artifice.

>>

"These are worth a lot of money," she said, tapping the translucent case. There was no visible hinge or locking mechanism, much as the entrance had appeared to be of one solid piece. Five skins and several empty lockers, there had once been more.

"We can come back for them," Lawlimi said. "We need to know more about this place."

The next-door slid open without having to be cajoled, and they were met with a choice. Corridors extended left, right, and forward. The passages were identical, lit by dim, flameless orange lights that hid within crystals studding the ceiling.

"Forward," Silva said.

"A confidence and courage that all the world admired," Damwise said like a high school drama student.

"Shut up."

They went straight, and while there were many doors on either side of the corridor, those refused to give entry, even with much pounding and shouting. Then they found the Mechanoborg.

He was sitting up against the wall with his legs stretched across the hall. If he had had clothing once, it was gone now, which provided an adequate perspective on his torturously assembled body.

>>

D4QP — Mechanoborg

Heroic Level 1

South — Metal — Orange

>>

Half of his face, part of his chest and shoulder down to one hand, all that was grease-stained flesh. The rest was iron bones and copper wires and veins of soft transparency that was no natural material. Mercury moved in them, or something like it.

"My gods," Damwise exclaimed, "He needs help!"

"I think we're past that," Sashimibandit said.

Silva stepped over the Mechanoborg, and the others followed, but Lawlimi hesitated and knelt beside the ruined creature. It did not breathe or blink, but the mercury still moved.

"My skills are no good for this. What would I need?"

"Craft Construct, or a high Lore. There is no need for either, however, as this unit is already active."

"Hey," Sashimibandit said, "all together, come on."

Lawlimi met the Mechanoborg's eyes. They were as dry as chalk and very much alive. He held very still.

"Hello," Lawlimi said, "what's your name?"

"D4QP," it responded in a grating voice. The others stopped in their tracks.

"Are you in need of repair?"

"Ye ... eeeeeeessss."

"Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"Uuuuuuuurrr … Spi … NAL … servooooo … re … place neeeeeeed."

"Okay, I don't really know how to do that. So, what can I do?"

"Mechanooooo … repair bath. Mechanooooo … fact ..."

"Mechano fact?"

"… oooooryyyyyy."

"Okay, great. Factory. How do we get there?"

"Che-e-e-e-est."

Silva crouched next to Lawlimi. "Sidequest, good call noob. Where's this chest?"

"Che-est."

"Yeah," Silva said, "where is it?"

Lawlimi stared hard at the Mechanoborg.

>>

(Perception Success)

>>

He slipped his fingers under the iron plate on the left side of the creature's chest and found a tiny latch. Pulling it caused the plate to loosen, and underneath was a flat compartment containing a few moldered scraps of paper and a steel rectangle. The scraps were illegible, and the steel was as thin as a fingernail, etched with an arcane design.

"What's this?" Lawlimi said.

Silva took it from him. "A map, it actually looks like a building blueprint."

"You can read that?"

"Get some Lore, noob." Silva stood and took the steel card to the others. Now that it was revealed, I knew its contents utterly. It was true, Lore was one of the most useful skills in the game. The designers had been frustrated by how many obscure skills there were in traditional RPGs; from Linguistics to Knowledge : Engineering. No one ranked those skills because they could never be as useful as Perception or Stealth. For the same reason that Use Rope once became a part of Survival as Dungeons and Dragons evolved, Mystic Seasons alloyed a dozen minority skills under the heading of Lore, making it indispensable for adventurers. Of course, Lawlimi had me. So, he could take it or leave it.

The map only revealed a section of the castle complex, something Silva had not yet realized. This place was much larger than it appeared, which was already quite impressive by medieval fantasy standards. I kept Lawlimi apprised of the new information, and he nodded as he rejoined the group.

"I've got this," Silva said. "We take this heap over to the robot factory, get him fixed up, and then we head for this area labeled "command tower." Maybe the heap can help us with that once he's up and running. Everybody cool?"

>>

[The Dollmaker's Error — Heroic Quest Level 1]

D4QP is in bad shape, and since you were kind enough to stop and talk with him, maybe you can play the good Samaritan one more time. Proceed to the Mechano-Factory using the map D4QP supplied. See that he is repaired, and you may be surprised by your fortunes.

Reward — 200 XP (Party)

>>

"Everyone get the prompt?" Silva asked.

"Nope," Sashimibandit said.

"I am always prompted to adventure on behalf of the needy."

Silva sent out a party request and everyone accepted. If they squinted, they could all see basic status information about each other, and the active quest was shared. Lawlimi's other quests, he kept to himself.

Even if they retrieved the servos, none of them could do the necessary repairs in the hallway, so they were obliged to bring D4QP along. He weighed 742 pounds, and Silva flipped him comfortably up into a fireman's carry so she could trot with him down the hall while Damwise played navigator. He had been floating a bit at first, but now that Silva had established herself as an alpha, he was determined to be her beta, or perhaps just her sidekick. Sashimibandit and Lawlimi kept pace behind.

"Hey," Sashimibandit made a discrete gesture toward Silva's heavy, shapely posterior. "Eh? Eh?"

Lawlimi pursed his lips, and gave a slight shake of the head, perhaps reasoning that it was better to avoid such musings about anything that could pop your head like a water balloon between its thighs.

Sashimibandit groaned good-humoredly. "What fun are you?"

The going was easy, as only the main corridor portals would open for them. I decided to scout ahead and found … nothing. Not entirely true but close enough. Whatever nebulous code composed my invisible person had been circumscribed as neatly as if I had been put in a box. Unable to see through walls, my sensorium was practically mortal. The only occasion I'd had the privilege of being curtailed in this way was in the presence of one of the gods. The ADI ringleaders of Mythopoeia were careful with their privacy, but I had never been locked up this tight before. It was mildly exciting. What was going to happen?

The steel etching led them to a highly advanced barn door, brimming as it was with gears and hydraulics and dim red eyes. The glossy white pupils in those ruby eyes flickered over them and then, to me, which was very odd and rather unsettling. I am not in any one place, and yet I felt our gazes meet. The door split down the center and rumbled open.

The factory was large enough to be a dragon's lair, though instead of gold and treasure it was full of machinery and half-built mechanos. There were workshop tables complete with tools and spare parts of flesh as well as steel, an assembly line with powered down constructs all around, and a row of large, hollow crystal lockers. Inside them floated Mechanoborgs in various states of assembly.

"Bath ..." D4QP said, clearly at the limits of his energy. They maneuvered through the workshop and stopped at the crystal vats, which had no visible breaks in their faceted surfaces.

"Do we need to find the servo things?" Lawlimi asked.

"In this place?" Sashimibandit made a face, the search could take hours.

Silva propped D4QP against a wall of pipes behind the vats. "Whatever it takes," she said, "I've got my catheter in."

"A lady of forward thinking," Damwise said.

"You know what," Sashimibandit said. "I could use a break myself."

"Find the servo first, then we can shove this wreck in one of these tubes and let it fix him. That's a good pause spot."

The group spread out to look for an artificer object they didn't understand labeled in a language they couldn't read. There were thousands of interactable objects in the workshop, ranging from individual screws to the elephantine constructs that manned the conveyor belts. I highlighted them all in my awareness, then pared them down to only objects that registered under the searches for both "spinal" and "servo”. Thankfully, though my reticular spirit had been circumscribed, I was still the master of my locality.

Lawlimi listened to my sub-vocalized report and proceeded to "discover" the spinal servos by accident after a few minutes of searching.

The party regrouped, and Silva pressed the damaged Mechanoborg against the forward pane of an unoccupied crystal vat along with the unattached servos. There was a brief resistance, and then the forward pane took on the texture of a thick gel. D4QP sank into the liquid and the pane became crystalline again. The vat gel changed hue as a green substance was pumped into it from an attached pipe, and the Mechanoborg went even limper than he had been, his eyes finally closing.

The gel hardened around the servos and around D4QP's body, manipulating them and bringing them together with an eerie elegance. His lower back tore open, revealing his spine, and several vertebrae were popped free by the hydraulic actions of the gel. I watched the surgery with fascination. This was not the divine healing of Elali or the wonders of Alchemy. This was not wholly of my world at all.

Damwise had to look away during the procedure, and Sashimibandit gagged. Silva appeared bored, and Lawlimi looked pleased with the novelty. He was a lot like me, in his way. The work finished while I was collating the contents of the room, and the Mechanoborg's eyes opened again. He pulled himself out of the vat, stretching and breaking the forward facet like the membrane of an egg, and plopped to the floor. His eyes were no longer dry.

His movements were jerky, and his arms stiff as he straightened, but his voice was clear.

"Thank you for your help."

"All right," Sashimibandit said. "I'm logging off for fifteen, and then I'm back in."

"It has been a difficult age for me, sitting disabled in that hallway, knowing the Maker had abandoned us all." D4QP made some small adjustments to his joints, and their motion smoothed.

"Guys," Sashimibandit sounded panicky, "something's wrong ... I can't log off."

"And now that I am whole, I will fulfill my purpose in rejecting all foreign intrusions." An alarm buzzed from the ceiling, winding up from a mild grind into a pulsing yowl, and the workshop came alive.