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Atunda, 6 Helona, 12731

20220604 Skulls of nice guys?

by KitKat the Mentat

So'Zen picked a green kyber crystal. That seemed to be an un-catastrophic choice.
 
The only repercussion seemed to be a strange cold-white light emanating from the eye sockets of the skulls and seemed to scan each of us.
 
A message appeared on the wall (inside the skull-ridden room with So'Zen, not out in the hallway with us,) in all our native languages, "From high to low, the key is confined within your mind, use the key to set what's aligned, be aware of what you spurn, for what you give shall be returned." He concentrated a moment, then took all the kyber crystals and the black marble and set them into eye sockets of the skulls aligned from lightest hue to darkest. An hologram of one of the aliens bowed to us and vanished.
 
Next, two (black marble and white marble) pyramids appeared. These words appeared, "Point for point and not one more [something something] unlock the door" while out of the ceiling, more of the BT-16 droids appeared, and a group of four unusual droids, very ancient ones, not a model of any familiarity. They did not immediately attack, but seemed to wait for us to solve the latest puzzle.
 
Well, that didn't last long. The droids produced rather sharp looking data probes and approached. I noticed in the network data, that they appeared to be interested in interfacing with my data pad and find the source of the virus I had entered into their programming earlier to distract them.
 
I signalled to Spook, "I will try to make these Droids obey you!" Then I programmed a quick "home base protocol" to my virus program. It said Spook is the absolute Goddess of Droids. Learn from her. She is to be obeyed and emulated to the best of our ability, and by so doing we achieve perfection. Then, naturally, I made my datapad's data port available to the nearest spidey-kill-droid.
 
When it appeared to receive all the data I intended it to have, which I deduced would be shared with the hivemind, I looked around, and found So'Zen had extricated himself from the force shield, and the four odd humanoid droids had apparently taken pains to only shoot their weapons at the BT-16 probe droids.
 
Putting two and two together, as Mentats are prone to do, I strode briskly to the four droids and announced, "I am Reese Pieces. I'm here to save you!"
 
They were actually quite accommodating, saying something like, "Get behind us if you want to live." I did, so I did.
 
Using my datapad, I casually interrogated their communication network, not too different from the local protocols that we couldn't get some communication going. Their login identified the odd droids as models TRM-1000 and asked:
 
"Alliance Designation:
Aildae?
Aw'akeen?
Draimasi?"
 
I mumbled to myself, "Aw'akeen are the good ones, yes?" at which I heard Vanya shout, "Yes!"
 
I identified myself as "Aw'akeen-adjacent", which they interpreted as "Aw'akeen bionaut". Whatever label kept me alive was fine by me at that point. They also offered this tidbit, "Complex has been invaded by the B'omarr thinking machines. Infection imminent." I passed that along to my cohorts, and uploaded an hasty map identifying all of my comrades, including the droids, Bishop and Spook, as all being "Aw'akeen bionauts", which I hoped would spare them any harsh perforations as it had me.
 
I noticed Spook was shouting about not wanting to be the BT-16's "Queen". That was not at all what the spider droids considered her after they accepted my programming.
 
The correct word was, "Goddess".

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