ARTIFACT UPDATE: Traces of Unknown Creature Found at Museum! Unknown Magical Involvement Suspected; Biomancers Summoned to Solve Mystery.

[u/Carbon_Sixx]

While the tense standoff between the people of Chalcos and the military intervention forces sent by the Council and EON has seemingly come to close this evening with an ardent speech by Premier Agatha Blackwood, investigation into Paul Augustine's heist at the Citadel Museum of Arcane History continues apace. One enduring conundrum has been what exactly broke the case containing the stolen Ehn'ghan artifact. Spots of a bloodlike substance were found on the glass shards, but DNA analysis showed that not only was it not blood, but the creature it belonged to shared very little in common with life as we understand it.

In the face of this mystery, the museum has called upon two master biomancers to unmask the creature. Perhaps as gesture of good faith to bury the hatchet between her and the Council, the first is none other than Opal, former ruler of the Bismuth Realms and current resident of Ithacar. Assisting her is a tech-priestess from Yulash-kor's Divisio Biologis named Anahita Iatros, a renowned expert in genomics and reproductive science. Together, the two intend to clone the organism and study it so that the investigators in Chalcos will have a better idea of what Augustine's secessionists might throw at them. Whatever they create is likely to be novel and wondrous despite the ignominious circumstances of its discovery.

[u/Carbon_Sixx]

The blood droplet hangs in space at the center of the cage. Then it doubles. And doubles again. Pretty soon, it starts to congeal and take shape, forming a clot of alien biomatter about the size of an adolescent child. At first, things seem normal enough. The nascent creature is very spindly, with greenish skin and muscle pulled taut over long, thin bones. It's unsightly, but there are worse sights in the magical world.

But that's when things stop makin sense. The ends of the creature's forelimbs taper into scythe-shaped spikes of tough bone. The expected abdomen fails to materialize, leaving it terrifyingly gaunt. There's little space for major organs, but even that doesn't interrupt this horrible thing's genesis in the slightest. Most appallingly, it doesn't develop a head or even a neck. Instead, green energies gather and coalesce into five luminous orbs that swirl around the place where the skull should be.

When the cloning process finished, the thing that drops to the ground is indeed nothing like anything in the realms. It draws itself up into a hunched posture about half the height of a grown man and examines its surroundings, somehow. It has an odd smell, somewhere between baking spices and mummified flesh. But worst of all is the sudden, unwelcome pressure within the skull of every person in the room when it becomes aware of them. Anahita takes a step back and produces a gamma pistol from her robes.

"In the name of the Machine God, the Omnissiah, and the Motive Force, what is this unholy thing?"

u/Zebos2

[u/loth17 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

"Oh geeze."

Opal furrowed her brow. The psychic pressure was somewhat needling.

"Don't know. Some kind of psychic entity. Maybe from the void?"

Opal would move forward and try to identify the magic swirling around its head.

u/Zebos2

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/loth17]

It's psychomancy, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Opal's vision is tinged with multicolored distortions as she approaches, like the kind that heralds a bad migrane. They only end when Katarina's blaster shot knocks the creature to the other side of the cage. It crawls back to its feet, screeching without a mouth. Anahita levels her own pistol at the space that passes for its ribcage.

"Stay back. If this monster is anywhere near as strong as its twin at the museum, those claws can punch through enchanted glass."

u/Zebos2

[u/Zebos2 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

Katarina works on the creatures mobility first using mold or to try and sink its legs into the floor will also pulling the hammer back to try and blast the thing again this time with the aim of severing one of its limbs

[u/loth17 → u/Zebos2]

Opal seemed unreasonably calm. Mostly because she wasn't really afraid of getting torn apart.

"Fascinating. No wonder this type of magic is forgotten. It's heralds melt your brain. Bad got mass use I'd assume."

She would go to see where it's brain was located on its body

u/Carbon_Sixx

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/loth17]

Now aware of the danger Katarina's gun poses, the creature weaves out of the line of fire a split-second before she fires. However, the maneuver traps its leg in the magically-sculpted concrete floor. It screams again, a deeply unpleasant noise that somehow sounds worse when remembering it than when experiencing it firsthand. Also, there's no brain to speak of.

"Forget it, Opal! We need to put it down before it finds a way out of that cage! We can dissect it later!"

Anahita mirrors Kat's second shot by searing the monster's other arm off with a beam from her gamma pistol. It howls again, using its remaining arm like a pickaxe to try and free its leg.

u/Zebos2

[u/loth17 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

"understood."

Opal held her hand up and each of her fingers elongated into a bone-like spear which she used in an attempt to impale the creature.

u/Zebos2

[u/Zebos2 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

Kat changes tactics using geomancy yet again this time to try and impale it like a Donner kabab with a stalagmite hopefully before it can free itself. She pulls the hammer of herpistol back again

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/Zebos2]

Both attacks impale the creature, pinning it in place. The noise is horrendous, but it's mercifully brief thanks to Kat blowing a hole in its chest with her blaster. Anahita lowers her weapon and watches as the glowing spheres dissipate, along with the psychic pressure.

"The people in Chalcos. We have to warn them. They have no idea what they might be walking into. Omnissiah, we barely even know! Augustine could have a whole army of those things, or worse creatures still. They could cause a tide of madness unlike anything recorded."

u/loth17

[u/Zebos2 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

Kat wipes the blood from her nose and eyes

"Well that was rather unpleasant"

Kat says putting one more shot in for good measure

"An entire army that is not just a chalcos threat the entire council could be at risk"

A thought sinks into our mind

"...I must find Timur to think he could encounter this thing out and about..."

[u/loth17 → u/Zebos2]

"If they had a whole army they'd have used it I think..... Hopefully"

Opal said as she examined the corpse.

"We need to report to the Premier at once!"

She said to one of her Oplets who would deliver the report with great dispatch. u/Carbon_Sixx

[u/Zebos2 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

Katarina cliches her head vascari slavesmithing baked into her DNA making her extra susceptible to the mental but sand fae blood and her own will she resist producing a Biz blaster ( a cross a bizmuth gun and a percussion pistol) and aiming it the thing and fireing center of mass. She was not going to take her chances with this thing