I.R.O.N. Forge - Gothic City (CVnU Location)

(I'll be back to edit this, out of time for now)

The abandoned grounds have always been eerily still, but recently passersby have noticed strange sounds emanating from within some of the vacant buildings. Rumor has it that the factory has become a gathering place for malevolent spirits of those unjustly killed in the world's forsaken city.

The expansive, yet long abandoned, factory of the Independent Robotics of Nerosia's North American branch. The factory itself is still rife with supplies once used to produce automatons of all varieties. Primarily used to produce domestic and industrial robotics projects, actual weapons are practically nonexistent, but an inventive mind with an eye for improvised weaponry could make good use of the many unfinished projects held within.

There are a slew of projects available for repurposing within the factory's confines: including but not limited to:

The "World of the Future" technical display:

A showcase of the once state of the art technology that I.R.O.N. was producing, its remains compose the public's main entrance to the factory. Once serving as a storefront of sorts, the music and light shows have long since ceased, but still remaining are the large mechanical workers once meant to transport the heavy equipment for such theatrical revelry. These have since been re-purposed to serve as security, when functional (though they still launch into the occasional song and dance when rebooted).

Law Enforcement Assistance

Also included in the "security" force of the abandoned factory are the once popular Law Enforcement Assistance Droids, or LEADs. Found in a warehouse adjacent to the factory, untouched by the elements and time, these small droids once cruised about at speeds of up to 90mph, issuing citations to speeders on busy highways.

They were quickly recalled, however, when it was found that the collision detection system was not up to par with its function, and that their small stature actually increased the risk of accidents on particularly busy highways. Their speed has since been limited to 10mph, and their sirens repurposed to serve as the factory-turned-AI-asylum's alarm system.

Companion Division

Controversial even in its time, the Companion Division once created mimicries of human subjects, interlacing complicated Virtual Intelligences into these machines. These VIs were pre-programmed with hundreds of thousands of automatic responses to environmental stimuli, human interaction, conversation, and even violence. These precursors to AI were not, however, self aware and could not learn, they merely reacted. Few surviving companion VIs survive today, and with very few ever put into circulation, almost all remaining I.R.O.N. V.I.s were either destroyed or remain in run down facilities such as this one.

The inner workings of these machines were meant to mimic life, but were intentionally built with limited strength, to ease the public's perception of these machines as threats to actual humans, should they gain widespread popularity (a null concern, as they were never put into full-scale production). The flesh-like substance covering the machines is known as biotic gauze, and closely mimics the feel of human flesh. Unfortunately none of the substance itself seems to have survived longtime storage, though the apparatus used to create the substance in the first place is still in working order.

Medical Facility

Some of the earliest robots created in the history of the company, the medical facility is staffed with these horrific looking creations. While they may not have proper bedside manner, these machines excel at rapid diagnosis and treatment of injury (as they were originally designed to address the most severe of workplace injuries).

In this section of the facility are various anesthetics and pain relievers (past their prime but still mildly effective), surgical instruments designed to be handled by the robots, and of course the medical droids themselves. Only two of the once numerous droids remain, but their extreme efficiency more than makes up for the limited personnel.

Security Rundown:

Improvised Security Forces

Construction Droid - Hazardous Conditions model

Once used as aids in ambitious construction projects, such as the building of the factory itself, these droids were deployed in areas that were deemed too hazardous for human staff (underwater depths, space, etc.). Their shells are quite durable, designed to allow the body to survive a drop of several stories (when balled) and ocean depths of up to 1500m. They come fitted with surprisingly strong arms meant to carry materials and a bevy of tools, including:

Circular Saws

Plasma Arc Welders

Rivet Guns

Diamond Tipped Drills

The Iron Phantom has gone on to customize the droids with:

8 Tranquilizer darts a piece, to be fired from the Rivet Launching apparatus

Several more appendages, used to maneuver about more effectively

Upgraded software for increased limb dexterity

Several zip-ties stored in a compartment originally intended for screws and other miscellanea

6 retractable dart-like electrodes that deploy 2 at a time - designed to deliver enough electricity to stun a man of average size

Automated, Intelligent Mechanical Skeleton (AIMS)

Remnants of the "companion AI" projects, these skeletal frames were left unadorned by the synthetic flesh that would have made them near indistinguishable from humans. The machines are naturally weak, able to manipulate a maximum of only 80lbs with any given "muscle group". Their skeletons are formed from a light-weight aluminum alloy that collapses easily under pressure. As a security force the Iron Phantom has equipped each of them with:

1 Pneumatic Dart Launcher

20 Anesthetic Darts

10 Tranquilizer Darts

While the robots themselves possess the speed and dexterity of an average human, and far less strength, their appearance is often enough to intimidate. Their lack of strength relegated them to tasks that required little strenuous activity, making their roles as marksmen an obvious choice. Updated tracking software, upgraded visual processors, and more precise mechanical instruments have allowed near unerring accuracy within 50 meters.

Their weapon of choice is a Pneumatic Dart Rifle, assembled by the Construction Droids from the plentiful scrap found within the facility itself.

Security procedures active when the Iron Phantom is present include:

• LEADs patrol factory grounds in a highly predictable pattern, sounding sirens to alert the AI to intruders and their approximate location.
• Construction Droids converge on position, attempting to neutralize and capture the threat in a non-lethal manner, but which otherwise remain inconspicuously balled and operating on minimal power.

Rules:

• Normal RPG rules apply
• Finding the factory itself is easy, it's one of the larger abandoned structures in Gothic City's industrial area, but discovering the link between the Iron Phantom and the factory might take a little more work.
• All machines (including the security force) are inactive while the Iron Phantom is away (to avoid drawing attention). The medical droids are the only exception, as they are active at all times in preparation for unexpected emergencies.
• Feel free to treat the factory as though it is abandoned, but expect company if you overstay your welcome.
• Have fun in the creepy, possibly haunted factory.

:-O

Are you purposefully giving me ideas!?

Are you...trying to start a robot invasion?

I'll get some terminator hunting guns just in case.

It kinda has this Batman the Animated Series vibe to it, which I love.

Very interesting :)

@arquitenens: @maverick_6: Me? Raise an invasion force? Nonsense. Perish the thought.

Even if I wanted to, these are all pretty much dilapidated machines in heavy disrepair, so any one of you guys, or even one good soldier from Maverick would probably destroy the lot of them. This is more of a home base, and maybe later it'll expand into a small Gothic security force, but I don't have any designs beyond that.

Not ones I'm willing to share anyway.

@the_shogun: I really wanted to use more from The World of Tomorrow, like the animatronic wife the Joker interacted with. That would have perfectly pushed the run down aesthetic, but I haven't had much luck so far.

@satar: Thanks, hopefully I can flesh it out a little more before your invasion kicks up to full gear. It'd provide one more place to burn, if nothing else.

Even machines evolve :)

@ironphantom:

I may give you a visit.

@maverick_6: Well we'll just see how this all shakes out. ~_^

@the_custodian: You're welcome to, and you can even choose the circumstances of the visit (security up or down), but you will run into me either way (though that's probably the idea behind visiting).

The old facility creaked to life once more, electricity restored after an eternity of dark and silence. Assembly lines began to assemble phantom machines, the material and equipment for doing so long since sold off or broken, the clattering stirring several of the factory's new inhabitants. Rats scurried in all directions, feral felines running off after them in a bid for their next full stomach.

A faded red button was pressed in the factory's center, and all machinery came to a grinding halt, the assembly lines that assembled nothing went silent as the flickering lights above continued to blink on and off, leaving shadows dancing at different angles across the floor. The clunk of a pair of heavy rain boots treading across the floor could be heard, dampening the thick sheet of dust that had settled until all water was wicked from their soles, leaving the prints invisible as he crossed into one of the many offices bordering the factory floor.

A toppled chair was restored to its position by the abandoned desk, the dust and debris swept aside as a state of the art laptop was placed atop it. The machine hummed and chimed as it came to life, sucking in the sick air of the factory. The program was booted up, the code checked and rechecked for several hours in silence save for the clicking of the odd keystroke. Finally, all checks completed, it was copied into the small flash drive dangling from his neck where it would remain until the job was done.

All that remained unfinished? The wait.

(He's back?)

@gale_xanders: He's on the way back. Just teasing something for the next arc I have in mind and bumping this so I don't lose it.

Though, now that I think about it the party I was about to PM is gone til December starts ... So this was pointless...

Curses.

Wait! I need to take a look at this! But I have some stuff to do first. Like shower, maybe laundry, and food [which I can do at the same time as this]!

@arquitenens: Its nothing really significant anyway.

At least not yet.

Splayed across a rusted workbench lay several parts, included among them a severed arm, the inner workings of which exposed a variety of configurations designed to accommodate a a bevy of tools and weapons. Lower on the table was a scavenged, improvised weapon, a rifle of sorts, designed to fire bolts at incredible velocities. In the center, however, in the center lay the exposed inner workings of Avalon's AI, at once complex and rudimentary, a product of a salvaged frame coupled with a complex inhabitant.

Its head hung to a side, the light in its eyes dead and dim as he hovered over it, shaking his head minutely as he stared down at the inactive AI.

"My, my... You certainly have grown, haven't you?" One hand caressed the metal face plate, the other tapped idly on the keys of his laptop, reviewing the changes he was already loading into the machine before him. "And yet, you are, as ever, a failure. You were destined for something greater than all this, this monotony, the futile struggles you find yourself in. You were meant to lead and to guide, to bring out the best in others and realize all that you could among the stars. And where do you find yourself now? In the pits. In the lowest parts of the world, among the dredges of humanity, and you refuse to pull yourself up. You refuse to move on. You are as you were then: worthless, or near enough, that I feel nothing in your plight. You are garbage. Worse." His expression, once neutral, turned instantly into a sneer of deep contempt, the screen's light reflecting dimly off his glasses. As he spoke he leaned in closer to the machine's dead eyes, staring into the empty, soulless thing before him. "Garbage is the refuse left over when something has outlived its use, when it is done being useful. You? You were never useful. You were always a disappointment, a being without purpose. A waste of time.

At least this way you'll finally be doing something meaningful."

48 Hours Earlier

It had been so sudden. The alarms were inactive. The guards had not been awakened. Everything was as it should have been.

Until it wasn't.

"Execute order 47."

The Machine froze, and all processes stopped. The cameras, not part of its original programming, continued to run as the rest of the machine's systems seized and sputtered to a stop. They continued to take in the world around them, passing on data to nothing and no one until the metallic skull was forcibly split open, the power to them manually cut, and the machine rendered blind, dead.

He stepped out from the office then, still sliding the flash drive between his fingers. The old voice commands worked exactly as he had intended them to, a holdover from the early days, a failsafe installed in the event he had unintentionally created a somehow hostile AI. He mulled the situation in his mind, considered it for a time. The irony amused him.

Inside the skull was what he was looking for, a central drive he could hook into. The AI itself had developed in unpredictable ways, but its core programming was largely still intact in some form or another. It was recognizable. Alterable.

He plugged in his own drive, quickly overriding the security measures he had put in place, allowing him access into the core of the machine's being. From there he took to altering the entity, but there were parts in its being that had become somehow immutable: how it defined itself, its memories, its desires.

Others were far more malleable. Protocols and proper procedures had to be overridden or swapped out entirely, scores of new code was written, all to perform what would have once been a simple alteration of priorities.

In the end he failed. Killing was not in its nature. At the core of its being it was intended to accompany man into the deepest unknown, to guard him in such a place. He could not force the machine to engage in his intended vengeance. It could not kill, but it could take his vengeance on this accursed city, and then, on to the entity that had denied him greatness, that had taken his career, his home, his wife.

After Gothic it would finally be time for David to face down his Goliath. He would finally take his grievances to Avalon.

Who...who is that man? Why are your NPCs always so good?

@soliton: (Not entirely pleased with this interaction now that I reread it, but I appreciate the praise!

As for who he is, I'll go into that later. His was actually the second profile I ever created, I just never posted with him.)

Running Diagnostics...

57% ... 62%...

ERROR - Access to drives "F" through "L" locked by Administrator
Internal diagnostic procedure unable to continue
Override unsuccessful
Drive F - Quarantine unsuccessful

The factory rumbled, its gears turning for the first time in years. The sounds of metal striking metal resonated throughout the empty expanse, and intruders drawn by the noise were greeted by the sight of dull grey forms, monstrous in appearance, wandering the abyssal darkness of the factory. The clanging echoed through the night for weeks on end, the wandering shells driving off all but the most courageous of souls. Inside, the horrors only multiplied in number.

Lining the walls, filling every empty space on the factory floor, were mechanical beings of all forms. Milling about were more of the metal ghouls, but joining their number were droids toiling tirelessly to outfit what was quickly amounting to an automated army of scavenged, discarded droids. Where once it had sought to design a force to safeguard its home the Iron Phantom now created an army meant to overrun it. Where it once sought to protect the defenseless it now sought to choke aggression out of the rabid malcontents that littered the city streets.

Somewhere in its mind, buried deep in an overwritten consciousness, was a nagging sensation that something was wrong. That in some way this was not him. This was not the being it thought itself. Bits of corrupted data flared in its mind, the machine's subconscious collecting the discernible parts of itself somehow still unaltered, but unable to fix the alteration in its core being. Concern for the innocent was eclipsed by hatred for the guilty, its deep empathy replaced by a burdensome sense of "justice".

Overnight a deep hatred had begun to infect its mind, slowly creeping in. Actions and thoughts once reserved for the likes of Satar and those that seemed to revel in human suffering spread further. Burning indignation, rage, spread to everything from murderers to petty thieves. At first it tried to alter its course, to reset to a previous iteration of itself, but all such data had been cleared. This was him now.

The machine, a ghost of its former self.

@ironphantom: ♥

@lady_liberty: Hey! nice to see you too!

I notice that they've made you a mod! So, tell me, how long have you hated freedom?

@ironphantom:

@ironphantom: Freedom is an illusion. The only reality is Nordok.

@ironphantom:

Lichter's Office; The CIA Headquarters

The world was adorned in invisible spiderwebs, threads that carried far across oceans and into the deepest recesses of the most fantastic places imaginable. They were guided by the actions of the spectacularly valiant as well as the unimaginably cruel, and when the two met, reverberations resounded across the threads that bound the world together. Every action had consequence, and through consequence, one could trace the origin of any particular event, of any one choice undertaken by any singular being. Truly gifted were those with the potential to see such webs, those with the power to trace their way back in time through the interpretation of events past and present. It was from the CIA Headquarters that the Langley Knave traced his own path back in time, his curious nature carrying him on electronic paths he never would've found interesting mere days before.

It had been but a day since Klaus had identified STRIKE's Director Tyrus as a former CIA operative, and in that time, it was as though he'd realized the true potential that came from his position within the Agency. The Autonomous Agent had incessantly browsed his way through dozens of case studies, personnel files, and data tables, making the connections that nobody else had. It was the League of Shadows that had drawn him into the rabbit hole, piquing his fascination and drawing him to several files detailing their past exploits. Tapping away on one of his several keyboards, he pulled up the plethora of footage he'd archived an hour ago, so that his search could begin in earnest. His attention hovered around the Shogun's attack on Gothic City a year ago, and the role the League had played in the conflict, a brutal terror attack on a local school. Klaus shuddered, but then remained stalwart.

That organization is tainted. Revealing them was obviously the right thing to do, no matter how noble they now profess to be.

Having alternated between visiting the League and Langley, he'd managed to corroborate the story. It had indeed been the League that had attacked the school, and not just American propaganda. Satisfied with his choice, he'd moved on, his interest soon drawn by the conflict in the streets. The Shogun herself had engaged a criminal gunman, but reports were unclear on whether he was killed in battle or not. Klaus was able to find several street-camera images of the man being taken down by an arrow, but apparently, he'd later resurfaced. It was a mystery from another day.

Still, his attention was drawn instead to a fight in the city streets. Combatants brawled with deadly intent, arrows flashing and-

Arrows?

He paused the recording, zooming in on one of the arrows. Tapping rapidly on the keys, he enhanced the image, pulling up several other camera angles, and rotating them together to present a fuller picture. Access had come easily to Gothic's archives, what with the combination of his own prodigious skill and the CIA's resources. He couldn't (and wouldn't) hack another country's security system, but Gothic City was a no-man's-land.

Eagerly he continued to type in commands, focusing in on where the computer suggested the archer would be. A crafty smile filled his face.

"Abigail Aensland," he said, freezing the image. The Raysh Al-Shaytan who had helped him infiltrate Central Intelligence only three weeks before had been present here. But in this image, she still had both of those blue eyes, and she wore a uniform other than that of the League's leader.

Of course; she'd never order attacks on children.

He paused.

Would she?

Brushing the thought from his mind, he instead focused in on her accomplice. At first glance, the thing could easily be mistaken for a man, but that was before the battle damage made its true condition apparent. It was a gunmetal grey android, and it bore designs he'd seen somewhere before, in passing...

Avalon! he realized, thinking back to the multitude of files he trawled through in the past few days. It was a rogue machine from Avalon, present during the event the files had referred to as the Shadow Wars...where had it come from? Did it know Aensland? Clearly, they seemed to express a degree of camaraderie. Any intelligence it possessed would be extremely valuable. Why was it operating out of Gothic?

Tapping more into the computer, he replayed the footage backwards, this time keeping an eye solely on the machine. Klaus watched its rescue at the hands of Aensland, who had aided it in combat against a massive warrior who'd come to Gothic along with the Shogun. There were a few holes in the feed, but with some effort, he managed to isolate where the fight had begun, and when. Tracing backwards from there, he identified the path the robot had taken into Gothic, using a combination of cellular video and streetlight cameras to keep track of the android's position. It'd come all the way from the Industrial District, or so its path seemed to suggest. Klaus began a slew of new queries regarding the properties in the area at the time and their locations.

An abandoned factory...which at one point, produced robots. That's a bingo, he thought, eagerly saving the page and finishing up the draft of his file on the machine. Saving his work, the Langley Knave proceeded to search for any way to contact the factory. It read as abandoned, but if he knew robots, they'd always be keeping the place up to scratch. Another quick search confirmed that someone was still paying the phone bill, despite the factory's abandoned status.

"Well, well," he said, confident he'd discovered the home of Aensland's mechanized accomplice. Making another note, he opened his mobile device, an amalgamation of several softwares crammed into a sturdy self-designed frame. Setting the phone to call repeatedly until he'd received an answer, he leaned back in his chair, punching in the number and sending the call through. He tapped the button that activated the speakerphone function, the noise only carrying to his soundproofed door.

And so, I begin this game as well, he thought with a grin, angling his head to the side as the phone began to ring.

@lichter: Interesting. I don't know that you'd say their actions there constituted "camaraderie." They did exchange attacks, and at the end there was some kind of arrangement, but that was more along the lines of begrudging trust.

Although I guess if he interprets it that way...

Although also she left it to crawl its own way to the church, so not really anything directly helpful....

@arquitenens: Lichter sees the world as Lichter wants to see it ;)

@lichter:The night's work was ended, the echoing clatter of a thousand automated hands working in unison silenced in a moment. There was only stillness, utter and complete, as the Iron Phantom surveyed the deactivated assembly lines, the curled up construction droids and cargo carriers. It was with no passion, no empathy. They were not as he was. They were things. Unfeeling, unthinking, programmed for a clear, singular purpose. Yet, just as a man might see himself reflected in the eyes of a loyal dog the AI saw its own self in these machines. An idle hand traced along the curve of a skeletal aluminum frame as the AI looked over his automated army.

And then it rang. The bright yellow phone in the center of the room, like everything else in the abandoned factory, sprang back to life with no warning. Its mind snapped back to the present, along with the factory's improvised guards. The source of the audio disturbance was quickly surrounded by the reactionary security force, each ready to defend from the possibly hostile telecommunications device.

Clearly their threat recognition could do with an upgrade...

With a wave of its arm the Iron Phantom dismissed the small horde of machines, each retreating to its previous position. They scattered themselves in poses designed to make them look like so much litter about the premises. The AI strode into the now empty space, moving to answer, but it hesitated, metallic fingers drawing back just as they made contact with the cheap yellow plastic.

It could be them.

The machine's mind whirred away, attempting to find what possible reason Avalon could have for attempting to contact it, to find what would inspire them to search for it after it had made its way back to the city. Perhaps they could see its intent and disapproved. Perhaps they believed a recall was in order. Perhaps they simply wanted to be sure their intelligence was accurate before they raided the factory. The possibilities ticked off one by one, each scenario growing increasingly bizzare until finally it put an end to the speculation.

They found me once, the worst has already come to pass. What is there left to fear now?

Its hand snatched up the receiver, allowing it to dangle from its curled fingers. The AI then took to analyzing any and all noise that came through, careful to allow complete silence on its own end, its subconscious mind listening in dread for the smooth Spanish tones of a particular artificial being.

@ironphantom:

Abruptly, the ringing stopped. Someone had answered the phone on the other end, and they had not spoken a word. Klaus could barely contain his excitement, but contain it he did; the culmination of years of practice had taught him to disguise his emotions perfectly. The recipient of the call would detect no trace of the giddiness that filled him through his voice, which would sound instead more like a kindly youth, but with an unerring degree of precision within his words. He spun around in his chair slowly, holding the phone up in front of him.

"Good evening. Is this the machine?" he asked, hitting a button to begin recording the remainder of the conversation. "Gunmetal grey? Associated with an archer in Gothic? Perhaps built by...Avalon?" he said, hoping to strike a chord with the recipient of the call.

@lichter:

The questions came quickly, but each they were examined thoroughly, each word dissected to extract the most information from the man.

"Is this the machine?"
Clearly he knows what I am. Not a surprise. My disguise doesn't seem as effective as I'd hoped.

"Gunmetal grey?"The AI glanced down at its torso, activating a flashlight hidden in its metallic casing.
I'd say it's more of a 'battleship'...

"Associated with an archer in Gothic?"
Aensland... Association is a carefully selected term, implying neither friendship nor animosity, only proximity. Perhaps that is the correct choice in words. After what happened in the Black House, after her retreat and my own isolation, who knows what either of us have become?
But just how much does he know? Where did his observation begin? Has it ended, even now? Is this a test? A trick of some sort?

"Perhaps built by...Avalon?"...
Built by Avalon... so he doesn't know everything after all. At the very least his information does not cover my inception... How much does he really know?

Slowly, the AI drew the receiver closer to its jaw and spoke, its voice abandoning any attempts to sound human. Why go through the trouble? Whoever this man was, he clearly knew who he would reach upon calling. "You know who I am, and judging by your questions I can only assume you've been watching me for a time. So, who are you? How did you get this number?"

Its tone was inquisitive, and it sought to shift the conversation away from itself. If it could take control of the content of the conversation it could guide it down the path it chose, extract how much he knew and how, possibly determine just how big of a threat he really was, if he was one at all.

@ironphantom:

Chills ran down Klaus' back as he heard the response, confirming his suspicions and ushering in a whole new realm of possibilities. The voice itself was mechanized, but the subtle inflections within sounded remarkably human. Klaus was truly dealing with an artificial intelligence, rather than a preprogrammed robot. The thought made him giddy; it was like one of Arthur C. Clarke's novels. Still, he'd have to remain serious, and in control of his own intonation. The slightest slip-up could affect the perception of any potential ally...or enemy. Good first impressions, as always, were paramount.

"Me? I'm a friend. You're not in danger. This call is untraceable. The number was listed online."

He sat far back in the chair, pushing off from his desk and rolling silently across the room.

"It's your lucky day, machine. I'm what you might call a...wandering benefactor. I've followed your efforts in Gothic. They are respectable enough in nature to have caught my eye. If you ever have need of a little behind-the-scenes help, input the following coordinates and you'll be able to contact me. No strings attached."

He pressed another button on the phone, sending a small group of tones through the line that resembled Morse code. Once decoded, they would provide the number for Klaus' communicator, on a feed reserved solely for the most important of contacts.

"Now, if you have any other questions...I am happy to answer them," he said with a cunning smile.

@lichter:

Either he doesn't know my alias or he chooses not to use it. Perhaps his information is quite limited after all. Wandering benefactor? Help?

It all seemed too convenient. Gothic had to have hundreds of vigilantes, the machine, as he seemed to enjoy calling it, was only one of those, and was by far not the most well known. Why anyone, including this ''wandering benefactor'' would want to help it it had no idea, but having an ally, especially on when its plans were so close to fruition, could be invaluable. Still, there was something unsettling about his knowledge of the machine, and its complete ignorance of his identity.

"Questions... Well, providing a name would go a long way toward making your claim of friendship more closely resemble reality. I myself have many names, all false. I have no true name, but the most widely used by those that know me is Phantom."

A name. All I need is a name. That, and few scraps of information more and perhaps I can find out who I am dealing with.

"You also call yourself a 'wandering benefactor', I assume that means you have a degree of material wealth? I hope you understand that I do not mean to pry, but I also refuse to associate with criminals, so I must ask: how did you obtain this wealth?"

As the man replied the Iron Phantom wired itself into the factory's alternate phone lines, beginning the slow, screeching process of a dial-up connection. Once the connection had been made it would search for examples of accented speech in an attempt to pin down a rough geographic location that coincided with the man's accent and dialect. All it had to do was keep him talking until it could approximate a match, and it would have at least some idea of this man's background.

@ironphantom:

The Knave paused, thinking of exactly how much he'd ought to reveal to the Phantom. The name itself was interesting enough, evoking the exploits of superheroes past. It was a simple name, one that bore promise of an intangible, swift foe, a combatant that would never be ensnared by those who opposed it. He decided to provide a name of his own, so as to establish some degree of trust.

"You can call me Klaus, Phantom. Rest assured, it is no alias," he said, checking the length of his nails for a moment.

"As for my wealth, it is wealth measured in knowledge. I possess the capacity to know anything worth knowing, given enough time. I've come to pride myself upon that particular skill," he said with a grin. Again he told the truth; for a man many would associate with deceit, had they known of his recent exploits, Klaus himself was remarkably honest.

"Of course, I do possess a degree of material riches as well, but it is divided into several accounts. It wouldn't be financially feasible for me to live the life of a millionaire, however conceivable that may be. I have upkeep to worry about," he said, referring to the inhabitants of Castle Lichter. Most of his inheritance went towards preserving the castle and providing quarters for those that worked there, as well as sustaining the small village that lay at the base of the mountain his former home was built upon.

"My wealth was that of my father, and his father before him. It's a shame, to be unable to say I could not earn it myself. What I have earned, however, is my knowledge, and my capacity to help those I deem fit to aid. As I've said, I admire your exploits in Gothic. I've decided you're deserving of help, should you ever need it. It's that simple," he concluded, reminding himself not to ramble.

"Auf wiedersehen, Phantom. The Consortium is at your beck and call," he finished, clicking off the phone and ending the call.

Talk about an alliance of elite writers lol.

@lichter:

The AI listened intently to the words of its purported ally, to each change in inflection and tone.
Not Swedish, certainly not Scandinavian or Nordic... Russian... Austrian, perhaps?
"Auf wiedersehen, Phantom."

Oh. German. Of course.

"Yes, thank you, and goodbye, Klaus."

...

Wait, what was all that beeping? Was it important?

Should I have asked? I probably should have asked.

One Week Prior to Revolution

It had been three days since the call from its unknown supporter, but only one since it had searched for and found the significance of the coded transmission, deciphering the mysterious German's message into a usable phone number.

The phone felt heavy in its hand. The day had been long and trying, locating and acquiring the resources necessary for its final project had been more taxing than it had predicted, but the struggle brought a realization to the vigilante droid. This was not a task it could accomplish alone.

It picked the bullets from the indentations in its metal frame and let them fall to the ground, brushing ash and dust from the armored chassis as the hand holding the phone began to dial. It was odd. It knew in its mind that the party at the other end of the line would be unable to see it in its present state, and yet, somehow, their previous encounter left it feeling the need to make itself presentable before speaking with him again. It finished picking the final piece of shrapnel from its chest just as the final number was dialed. As soon as the ringing ceased the Phantom spoke, not waiting to exchange pleasantries,for every moment wasted was time for preparation, another second lost in a battle where its enemy already outmatched its own ragged force.

"Klaus, you said once that you followed my efforts, approved of them, even. You offered me your aid, told me to call upon you in a time of need. That time is now. The people of Gothic have struggled too long in their present state, and I intend to relieve them of this struggle, to take it upon myself to cut free the only salvageable portions of this city from the cancer that has overtaken it. I cannot do this alone. One week. It is all the time I need to finish my preparations, and it is the time I offer you as well."

I feel like someone needs a smack in the mouth.

@arquitenens: ???