Through the Living Heir

Nick goes back to breathing. “What did you even do!” scrubbing the fungus-like film off his eye, he continues, “and why did you do it?!”

Nick, asleep, suddenly feels cold. His eyes snap open, but he can only see through one of them. "SIMON?" he asks, but the speakers on his suit are cold and dormant. Beneath his now-deadly covering, he shivers violently. The outer layer above the clear eye covering begins to turn to black fuzz. "WHAT did you DO!" he yells, muffled by the mask. Around him, the other part of the suit, released from what keeps it in order, begins to grow wild. The channels into Nick's body, where the suit was feeding him nutrients, reverse, as his own calories are the only energy source left for everything but the outer layer. Nick, both eyes covered now, takes the ice covered rock and tries to pry off the mask, so he can breathe. Almost out of air, he rolls over, trying to wake up his companions. "HElp me." @J. Magi @The Stormfather

@The Stormfather @J. Magi @AltonicKeys As night falls, Nick continues to lay down. "The light catching spread is pretty well insulated. SIMON will go around you guys, but if needed, you can go under the biofabric and stay warm." His two fan-like contraptions have been frozen, causing water to drip down them, and the sheet keeps growing outward.

Nick just keeps talking about thermodynamics, mostly oblivious. SIMON notes it, but doesn't comment.

"I... see." "I'll explain the physics while I'm waiting. Most of my games got corrupted, so it's not like I have anything else to do." His suit slowly grows over the ground. Two fan-like shapes also begin growing, both for better condensation, and other reasons...

Nick takes it, and sets it on his knee. “Depending upon how well this works, I can set up some flat pieces of fabric for better surface area.”

“Ok. Let’s set that up. And use an inanimate object this time, please.”

“It is cold though, right?” The xenosuit has already started growing outward. “I could condense what humidity there is…”

“Ok, then.” Nick sits down in lotus position, then changes his mind and lies down all the way. “My limiting factor here is water. When your frost thing melts, does it produce any?”

“I can get some actual scientists to look at it when I get back. My job is just to figure out what something does and how, and take one of those two things and make something useful. I’ve got two ideas; we can either check out those digging things, or I can see how far my xenosuit can spread out to get as much power as possible, so we don’t starve to death doing whatever we’ll be doing.”

“Huh. Maybe it has something to do with the relative strength of the surface it’s on…”

"Where did you even get that?" Did you see Nick's plan from earlier? We make stuff from invincible frost.

“I am hungry, but the suit can convert things that aren’t edible into food for all of us. We should save our good food.” He shuffles in place. “What I really need is a better energy source. Normally, we just plug these things into a fusion reactor and call it a day.”

“Ok… you should probably do that. Is it otherwise unbreakable? I could make a structure from cloth or something, then we could freeze it for armor, or a building, or a hang glider. Would that be allowed?” Nick walks over to Larry. “Is that a stormtrooper?” @AltonicKeys

Same! *fist bump* I was gonna say this earlier, then I didn’t, but I’d be happy to GM the next games.

Aronin Eltoris, the last alchemist from the short-lived alchemist guild from a decade ago, walks over to his work table. “Now, what was I doing here?” he asks himself, then pours some of all four pots into a beaker. “Huh. No reaction. Not even an explo-“ A muffled boom can be heard throughout the city. Windows rattle and tables shake from the shockwave. Aronin Eltoris, the last alchemist from the short-lived alchemist guild from a decade ago, sits up from the remains of his shelf, covered in at least five Substances. His skin glows gold as it knits back together, while secondary explosions from his stock mixing together send glass shards flying. He looks down at himself, and is surprised to find a table leg sticking out of his chest. “That is odd. Very odd indeed.” Standing up, he pulls the table leg out, then watches the fatal injury repair itself in a glow of gold. “Have I truly done it? Have I just discovered the secret of immortality?” Striding across his ruined lab, he bends down and picks up a beaker, gold crack lines glowing from where in must have shattered, then somehow pulled together. At the bottom of it, a thin layer of bright gold liquid can be seen. “And here it is! The fountain of youth! I must go tell my colleagues!” He runs out through what had been a door thirty seconds previously. @TwinSouls, I can have the healing wear off if it’s too overpowered.

SIMON records the demonstration, then goes over it in slow motion, watching for how the frost spreads, where it goes, what happens to the crystal. Nick, on the other hand, appears very startled. “How do we get him out?” He goes over, cuts a xenosuit strip left over from it gathering energy, and tosses it at the ice. If it doesn’t freeze over, he touches the ice with his hand, trying to see if it will melt. (Not that that will do anything. The xenosuit is pretty well insulated.) Speaking of which, @J. Magi. Kaleb just froze you for an ice crystal demonstration.

I had a whole theory that multiple spikes of one attribute cause an increase of several that couldn’t normally be stored. I’m too lazy to find it, but I believe I concluded that koloss get extra strength, speed, nutrition, and determination, in exchange for slightly weakened emotional stability, senses, and intelligence. I then proceeded to extrapolate to other koloss-like constructs. Here’s the post:

A message shows up in the corner of Nick’s glasses. It’s from SIMON and says, “whoa whoa whoa Nick, calm down. I know he says it’s magic, but it could just be some sort of precursor tech or a strange organism.” Nick grumbles to himself, “Nobody ever lets me mess around with cool stuff. Not a xenosuit seed, and not this, apparently.” Then he continues speaking to Kaleb, “Sorry for asking so many questions. I was just excited; I don’t have any magic. Until just now, I was confident it wasn’t real, but then I showed up in a wasteland with no idea how I got there and a time traveler or something is talking to me, so I’m reconsidering some assumptions I had.” He shrugs, “how much would you be allowed to explain or demonstrate? Would I be allowed to examine the frost? We’re kinda stuck here, and it’s my actual job - or at least it will be once I finish college - to take items or creatures that do interesting things on their own, and build something useful from them. It’s how these suits were made, and it’s how I’m gonna get us out of here.”

Nick’s visible eye widens, “Magic? Can you reuse a crystal? How much frost can one crystal make? Can I have one to look at?”

“You’re the one who moved me, right? Thanks for that.” The suit doesn’t allow facial expressions to be seen through it, but he sounds grateful. “There was a jungle? How did we get here?” “My xenosuit woke me up because it reached enough biomass to have both me and it in a functional state. It’s still gathering more from the air, but it’s just putting it in storage in case I need something. Unless they start to go bad, you should keep your rice balls. The suit can manufacture food for us, but it won’t be particularly appetizing; making a steak instead of protein sludge takes specialized equipment I’m too low on resources to consider growing.” @Ancient Elantrian “Interesting…” Nick muses, “how does that work? Simply freezing the creature or machine would be helpful, but depending on what exactly happens, I might be able to generate power or construct a machine that requires cooling. Or both. I could make some sort of laser…”

Oh. Ignore what I said above, then. “Huh. Maybe this is some kind of machine ecosystem. That’s happened before. SIMON, you’re recording, right?” Turning to the others, he says, “We’re going to see if we can get on to one of those. What do we have to work with?” @J. Magi @AltonicKeys @Ancient Elantrian

Nick puts his hands out in a calm down gesture. “We’re all right. We can just go down to the digging machine and ask them for directions. As long as we’re out of the way of where it’s digging, we’ll be fine.” He proceeds to do just that. @The Stormfather If Aki (@J. Magi) and Larry (@AltonicKeys) want to follow Nick or talk to him before he goes to see what’s happening, feel free.