User:Nextoy/Dissidia Alto/Manikins and Mysteries

Day 0. Partially cloudy, with no signs of impending rainfall.

Physical Status: Seemingly uninjured.

Emotional Status: Slightly annoyed, yet highly curious.

Equipment Status: Corrupted beyond use.

It seems my experiment backfired, causing a massive explosion. Who knows the state my lab is in right now. Whatever happened in that explosion, I found myself in a new world. It’s remarkably dreary, but at the same time I feel rather delighted.

I suppose the irony here is that I was trying to invent space travel against the wishes of High Command. I honestly have no idea why such things are banned, so few people show interest in it. Really, we’ve learned how to be completely independent from the planet, thus not wasting any of its resources. Even carbon is slowly not being a problem anymore.

Hell, maybe that explosion killed me and this is some kind of strange afterlife. Who knows? As a woman of science I can’t believe in such things, or at least not at face value, but I can’t take it off the table just yet. It would explain all those weird looking people. An old fashion cowboy type, some priestess, and even a medieval knight!

Oh ho ho, but that’s not the only part of all this. Far from it, in fact!

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">I’ve discovered a crystalline lifeform <span style="font-size:6.6pt;font-family:Arialfont-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:super;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">1 <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;"> here. Yes, indeed I have. Well, technically I was already made aware of their existence, so maybe “discovered” isn’t the most scientific of terms, but still!

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Sadly, I cannot analyse it just yet. It seems all of my equipment was corrupted in the explosion. I think I can repair it, as the devices themselves are undamaged, but it’ll take time. This also means my digitizer, as well as anything that I may have had stored in it, is no longer usable for the time being.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Technically I could activate it and utilize its functions, but the risk is too high. With the corrupted state my hard drive is in, using it at all before at least doing routine scanning and basic defragmentation could lead to a catastrophic malfunction. Like I need that issue in my life right now.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Back to the crystalline creature <span style="font-size:6.6pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:super;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">1 <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">. The material it’s made out of appears to be some kind of organic ore, I think. Its mineral composite is definitely “alive” though. If I had to guess, I’d say the entire creature is one giant, brain-like organ. However, this is just preliminary observations before I can get my equipment working.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Honestly, it’s kind of a pain not having access to my things. I still have my knife, sure, but that made it so I had to sneak up on these things. Didn’t take too long to figure out they had healing properties, either. In fact, everything here does. I even heal from things I shouldn’t.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">To test this I even jumped off a cliffside that I estimated was probably four or five stories tall, only to find myself sticking the landing with no noticeable harm. Hurt like hell, but I was relatively fine.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Maybe next time I’ll do a running jump. That’d sure give the commander, or any of the people I was summoned with, a good scare!

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Either way I have three hypotheses I wish to test:


 * 1) <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">These creatures are made out of some kind of nonmagnetic, crystaline ore.
 * 2) <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Their entire bodies act like a brain, giving them intelligence based on size and shape.
 * 3) <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Everyone here is granted the same healing properties, regardless of their actual durability.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">I do believe #3 would be the easiest to study under the current circumstances, but I doubt anyone would let me run around randomly stabbing people. That seems rather inappropriate.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">My reasoning for #2, however, is that these creatures seem to have personalities based on the form they take. I saw one that looked very flamboyant yet deranged that was skipping through a field near where I’m writing this. Seeing him so happy is… kinda creepy, honestly.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, he seems too dangerous to approach at this moment. He possesses some form of energy manipulation that I don’t fully understand. Conjuring flames, electricity, and some kind of lift that makes it so he can float in the air. Nevermind that he can flash freeze an area in front of him into a miniature iceberg.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">What makes this all the more disturbing to me is that I’ve notice others of these creatures defy gravity as well. The most bizarre of which was one that looked to be regaled in armor, which was simply floating with the tips of its “feet” barely touching the ground. Oh, but it had some kind of probe that it could manifest and then recall at will, not unlike my digitizer.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">I wish to study that variation the most at the moment!

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">But no, instead I grabbed the one I could easiest get ahold of. Some knightly-looking thing that used this strange double-sided weapon that looks to be part of its body. In fact any weapons held by these things feel to be part of them, even if they detach.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">The more I find out about these things, the more I wish to study them! Sadly, I must gauge my priorities first. So far I have this thing properly secured in a net I was able to weave, even if it’s crude, and my knife seems to be able to keep its attacks at bay well enough. However, given the strange properties of its attacks <span style="font-size:6.6pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:super;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">2 <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;"> I don’t know how long I can keep it contained.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">This ends today’s report. Let the record show that any time spent not defending myself from these creatures or keeping my new experiment contained was spent working on my equipment to repair it.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:6.6pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:super;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">1 <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">: Apparently these things are known as “Manikins.” I suppose the name is fitting enough, as they do remind me of the ones I often see modeling clothes in department stores. Although the idea of these things being dressed up in high end fashion is rather amusing. <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:6.6pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:super;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">2 <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">: I’ve noticed that any time something attacks something else here, these small “bits” -- for lack of a better word -- come out of the impact. At first I thought this was just simply what happens when these crystals break, but I noticed myself expelling some as well. This is to be investigated, but is currently on the backburner.