Morin shot Cain a thumbs-up as the rogue's efforts seemed to pay off, and the dangerous hum died down.  "Nice work.  On to the next one, I guess."  He took his place at the back of the party, letting the more martially-inclined types move towards the front.  "The door panel seems pretty simple.  No buttons or switches, just a light on the wall and a spot to slide a card through."

OOC: Moving to the back, to keep out of the melee characters' way and protect against ambushes.

Kalasha didn't yet understand what was going on with the metal and electricity.  However, she was interested, so she watched closely and sought to learn what she could.

When Cain dealt with the sparking threat, she gave him a respectful nod and began to move forward to see what else this strange cave held.

"What can I say, I am a man of many skills, brave and handsome. Oh, and humble as well." Cain states absentmindedly as he examines the tool he just used before moving on. "Maybe one of those cards we have can help us with the next door."

How many charges are left on the pick? Don't know if it started full or not.

Also, who's carrying the cards?

The party continues on with Morin's unseen servant leading the way. As the hallway reaches the closed, circular Numerian steel door it zags to the east before continuing north at a slight curve. Ahead, down the curved hallway is an open doorway on the eastern wall which seems to lead to another, parallel, curved hallway and further north in their hall is another open doorway at it's northern end. Beyond that doorway seems to be a larger room but little can be made out from the party's current angle and distance. More pressing, the door nearest them at the zag of the hallway remains closed with a translucent panel nearby, softly glowing brown.

Cain looks down the corridor, then back to the closed door, clearly unsure which way to go. "Let's... let's try the door first. Without a clear trail to follow, we might as well be methodical in our search."

He will try whatever cards he is carrying. Maybe one of them opens this door?

"Sounds right."  Zorden commented.

He kept looking up and down the corridor as Cain worked on getting the door open with one of the brown cards.

Kalasha nodded her agreement as well, and took up a position near the door.  From the grip on her new hammer, she seemed concerned with the possibility of the door opening to reveal new threats.  Dealing with potential threats had been foremost in her mind pretty much since coming through the water, so that was nothing new.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:19, Mon 23 May 2022.

After some brief consideration of his brown-striped card and the brown-glowing panel with the slit, Cain slides the striped end of the card through the slit of the panel and in an instant, is if by magic, the Numerian Steel door rises quickly into the ceiling with a hiss of air.

The air in this room seems to buzz and hum with energy. Strips of glowing rectangles light the room from above, while strange flickering windows line the east and west walls. A large glass-topped circular table sits in the middle of the room. To the north sits a large metal desk covered with blinking lights, while a humming pillar of purple-and-black metal stands nearby, its sides flashing with tendrils of violet energy. A single golden panel flashes with a soft but incessant light on the side of this pillar. A thick layer of dust coats everything, diffusing the lights shining from the various surfaces, and many of the machines seem to be damaged, cracked, or otherwise ruined.

Group 0 Map Updated.

Morin moved to the back of the group as Cain opened the door, doing his best to stay out of the way of the melee fighters in case things got ugly.  Seeing the empty room filled to the brim with tech gadgets, however, he immediately regretted not standing closer to the door.

"Ooh, nice!" He exclaimed. "That stuff looks important!  I bet we can find a lot of clues about what these ruins are meant to do.  If it doesn't electrocute us, that is.  Some of that stuff...kinda looks like it might electrocute us."

As usual, Morin sent the unseen servant ahead of the party to poke and prod at the machines on his behalf, while he tried to figure out what in the Hells he was even looking at.

23:30, Today: Morin Matzylford rolled 25 using 1d20+7 with rolls of 18.  knowledge engineering?
This message was last edited by the player at 05:31, Tue 24 May 2022.

"This stuff just looks dangerous to me." Cain stays outside the room, not wishing to risk another electrocution so soon. To him the room is a disappointment - no sign of Khonir and nothing obviously valuable or useful to swipe either.

Zorden took a look inside, but left it to Morin to puzzle more deeply over.  There was no doubt fortunes in knowledge and artifacts to be had in these caves, if you could avoid the Technic League coming down on your head.  However now wasn't the time to do more than take a cursory glance.

He stepped over so he had a line of sight down the arcing hallway in case anything should come thier way.

The unseen servant enters the room and does it's best to be disruptive to any traps, prodding and banging the lit torch against random items. Most of the room seems to abide the abuse, but as it begins to jab at the many lights on the metal desk at the far end of the room it manages to illicit a cacophony of disapproving beeps and buzzes. [Private to Morin Matzylford: Your best guess is that this room was used to do something important ... or else why would it have so many buttons and lights? The pillar to the west of the metal desk seems to be some kind of conduit of great power and the glowing, golden panel on it probably has something to do with that.] Zorden steps to the east to get a better view down the curving hallway, and when he does so he spots someone attempting to hide behind a pillar and watching him from the room at the end. Judging by the size of the head and the two clawed hands grasping the side of the pillar, this is related to what they had just fought--but certainly not a skeleton. It doesn't react as if it knows it's been seen.

Zorden did his best to look bored and otherwise inattentive while actually keeping the potential enemy in his peripheral vision.

When the electronic cacophony started up he called out to Morin, "Be careful how you break things in there.  This is technically someone's home, or whatever, and they are definitely watching us."  He admonished the gnome, while putting a bit of emphasis on his last point.  "So it might be nice not to ruin things."

"I dunno if "home" is the right word there, Z."  Morin replied, eyes focused on the room full of machines.  "And if anyone does live here, I've gotta say their hospitality is pretty lacking.  Ruining their things doesn't seem too bad, if they're just gonna use their things to kill us."

After a moment's thought, Morin stepped gingerly into the room.  He followed the same path cleared by the unseen servant, but without all the banging about.  "There's clearly a lot of energy moving through that conduit in the corner, and I think that gold panel is an important part of it.  I wonder...is this some kind of necromancy machine?  Those skeletons just outside had glowing lights in their eyes, and now here's a room full of glowing lights.  Think about it: a mechanical necromancer!  Wouldn't that be a find!  Something like that would be worth a fortune!  Though...I guess there would be some, uh, moral concerns about selling it."

Keeping an eye out for any hidden dangers, Morin approached the blinking panel.  He looked for any obvious set of controls to it, or maybe a place to swipe an ID card.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:57, Sat 28 May 2022.

With no one seeming to catch the hint from Zorden, Morin follows into the room after his servant to get a closer look at the pillar. Nothing in the room reveals itself as immediately dangerous and as the gnome draws closer to the desk at the northern end he can detect a subtle, quiet hum coming from it. The black pillar is traced with purple lines--mostly straight but with occasional 90- or 45-degree turns as the move along the pillar--much like the innards of the two metal men except these occasionally pulsate as violet light travels along them. The panel on the pillar is largely featureless: a translucent face much like the door panels but without any slot for a card and with a golden light slowly and steadily pulsing behind it.

Zorden wasn't willing to risk alerting... whomever it was, that their cover was blown.  He'd attempted to try and mention it without actually mentioning it, but that sort of social sleight of hand wasn't his forte at all, so he wasn't surprised that nobody had got what he was trying to say.

Instead, while the others continued to poke around in the adjacent room, he did his best to keep an eye on the creature, person, whatever, without making it obvious he was doing so.

Confident that Zorden was covering the entrance, Morin stayed focused on the machines in front of him.  If the golden panel was the same as the one by the doors, it was probably also some sort of access point.  But without a card slot, how was he supposed to use it?

The bard wasted no time before poking and prodding the machines in any way that didn't seem obviously dangerous.  He held up his access card in front of the panel, then in front of the strange pillar, then tried tapping it against anything in the room that looked like it could be some kind of sensor, all the while shouting commands at the machines in ancient Androffan.

[Language unknown: Ourvenwertin!  Icleta Niek Fowepo Tostca m!  Tered vervoroul mian th!  Eenearone outverany! Erstincomthu mediicas...ateonsvir?  ]

He had already badgered one robot into talking to him using this method, so as far as Morin was concerned it was a technique with a 100% success rate.  Sure, the robot had more or less immediately tried to kill the party, but that probably had nothing to do with Morin annoying it.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:19, Sat 04 June 2022.

"Try not to get yourselves killed in there! Or worse, get me killed." Cain shouts to Morin from the corridor outside.

As Morin sets about trying to command, impress, and intimidate the inanimate lights and machines he manages to accidentally and simply touch the golden panel and immediately the rooms begins to spring to life; beeps, whirs, hums, muffled clicking and buzzing begin to report from the desk and very the walls of the room. The tendrils of violet light passing along the black pillar speed and soon give off a constant glow while glass panels on the desk and windows on the walls fill with black and white static. Mere moments later the large, circular table in the center of the room flickers before sending blue light up from its surface to hang in the air as some sculpture of light. No, not a sculpture ... a model. Judging by the familiar features of the figment, it is a scale model of the desert the party had just passed through. [Private to Zorden: A subtle, reddish light seems to be added to that of the sterile white light in the room at the end of the hall and the creature watching moves out from Zorden's view.]
150 XP each for ... whatever Morin just did.
Group 0 Map Updated.

"I don't know what you did."  Zorden called over to Morin.  "But whatever it was did something in one of these other rooms."

After a moment he then added.  "Or it was entirely a coincidence, but either way, something changed in there.

Kalasha stepped up to the model.  "How interesting!  A divination spell that displays the results for everyone."  She reached out to touch the model with her hand.

Cain joins Zorden, worried of something creeping up on them while they are distracted. "What do you mean?"

Morin stepped back as the machines whirred to life, with a huge grin spreading over his face once it was clear the machines weren't about to explode in his face.  "Another success for the Matzylford technique!" He declared proudly, moving to join Kalasha in inspecting the light model of the underground desert.

"It looks like a combination of divination and illusion.  Or maybe just illusion, I'm dunno if the picture is current." 

Climbing up onto the table for a closer look, Morin searched the scene to see if it matched the current desert.  The smashed skeletons would be hard to pick out at that "distance", but hopefully the dead tentacle beast by the entrance would be large enough to pick out if it was present.  He also searched the map for any points of interest the party hadn't seen.  He had been meaning to come back and go over the desert more thoroughly at some point, but if the hologram was actually accurate, just looking at it could be just as effective and much faster.

Lastly, he looked for anything that might be a control system for the map and the static-y windows.  He wasn't sure what the static implied, of course. Maybe that was how they were supposed to look, as some kind of alien decoration?

"The room, down on the end of the hall.  The light was pure white."  Zorden explained.

"Then, when Morin did whatever he did, as you can see now, it's a bit red, so something changed in there."

Cain frowns. "Somehow I doubt that's a good sign. We should proceed with caution, once the rest get tired of examining this junk."