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Babel Capital City 'Chaldea' - Columbary, OIA Underground AUGUR Observatory Facility.
In sensory deprivation where Augurs spent half their day instead of sleeping there was seldom ever a disturbance. Self-contained and floating in a tank of still heavy water, submerged but for the face itself it was the depth of the void itself where young psychics secluded themselves to cultivate their minds.
And by extension, their powers.
For there was no greater method yet discovered than to simply separate themselves from all but their minds and perform hyper cogitations and self-experimentation for hours on end much like a computer running simulation. While their minds processed at near computer-like speeds parsing mental data their bodies went into a near torpor and as the heart slowed to barely a few beats per minute their bodies could rest even if their minds never did.
For an AUGUR never actually slept. They could enter this trance, they could be temporarily disabled into a near unconscious state. But they never entered a state of REM and this state of sensory deprivation was the closest that they could allow their minds to run and drift off into a form of near-sleep and some of them could even swear they could dream...
But as there was little that could pierce this bubble of sensory null. It was not impossible for beings such as them to do so from the outside.
It was not a word. Not a projected thought. Comparable to a scream inside their heads and then a sudden spike in psychic emanation before being snuffed out it was like ice-cold water being thrown onto a sleeping person and each psychic came into clarity. Some were confused, others scared. Some thrashed and inhaled the water of their tanks and started retching.
But every single Augur in the Columbary awoke from a joint period they all had scheduled to spend in torpor at the start of each month.
Naked, there was the ever-present locker with a robe or shift as well as those who had field work; Their OIA issued uniform as AUGURS. With the situation at hand and minds racing as fast as computers by the time any of them reached the lockers they had already parsed information such as that they were not alone due to all the psychic probing in other rooms of their adopted family of psychics and that amongst the psychic and mental waves there was a passing feeling of dread and sorrow and grief as one or more of the earliest to rise discovered something and did not suppress their emotions which were picked up and passed on to the others within range.
Throwing on a robe or shift and a pair of slippers many of the psychics flooded into the long hallways of the Collumbary. Few exchanged words as they all came to the conclusion none of them knew any more than the last and the plap-plap of slippers on the tiled floors were abundant as were the sliding open of doors as every single psychic in the facility all convereged on the same location; The play room.
Play Room.
The play room was simply the name given to the main room roughly the size of a stadium interior that all the dorm rooms connected to. Containing various deployable and constructible modular facilities it was where the Augurs performed tests of their powers, and experiments with the researchers of BTS and the OIA.
As dozens of them crowded into the massive and bright dome-shaped room a hundred meters across at its widest point there was a collective pause as all of them processed what they saw and were in turn by the combined emotions and emanations of their psychic kin.
There was a body. In the center of the play room a form lay sprawled and motionless. Young, perhapse only twelve years old he was wearing the same shift as many of them and by the slowly lowering body tempeture they could pick off of his surface readings and the lack of any mental eminations it was clear that he was dead.
An Augur. Just like them...
His head was twisted 180-degrees around to face the wrong way. But even that was survivable for an Augur. No, what had killed him was what could and would kill all of them; His head had been caved in at the temple and the brain clearly destroyed beyond even their ability to self-heal from the baseline they all had. Curly ginger lockes fell over lifeless blue eyes that no longer glowed like theirs.
His name; And they all knew each other like family for each other were all the Augurs had, Had been Enkidu. He had been a war orphan just like the lot of them and like all of them shared an obsession towards some form of research or another.
Enkidu, who had yet to receive a designation from the OIA like some of them did of the tarot, had been striving to study the Baseline of the Augurs; The mental image each of them shared of their health that passively restored when given enough biomass. It allowed an augur all but dead to eventually right themselves so long as they could spare the calories and their own biomass they could heal themselves...
But not from this. Not from them.
For standing over Enkidus lifeless corpse were two assault-configuration Golem warmachines. Still in their bulky OIA suits they somehow got into and usually guarded the one entrance into and out of the Collumbary one now stood over Enkidu while the other leaned, clawed fingertips extended over the scene of the crime proverbially red handed...
In sensory deprivation where Augurs spent half their day instead of sleeping there was seldom ever a disturbance. Self-contained and floating in a tank of still heavy water, submerged but for the face itself it was the depth of the void itself where young psychics secluded themselves to cultivate their minds.
And by extension, their powers.
For there was no greater method yet discovered than to simply separate themselves from all but their minds and perform hyper cogitations and self-experimentation for hours on end much like a computer running simulation. While their minds processed at near computer-like speeds parsing mental data their bodies went into a near torpor and as the heart slowed to barely a few beats per minute their bodies could rest even if their minds never did.
For an AUGUR never actually slept. They could enter this trance, they could be temporarily disabled into a near unconscious state. But they never entered a state of REM and this state of sensory deprivation was the closest that they could allow their minds to run and drift off into a form of near-sleep and some of them could even swear they could dream...
But as there was little that could pierce this bubble of sensory null. It was not impossible for beings such as them to do so from the outside.
It was not a word. Not a projected thought. Comparable to a scream inside their heads and then a sudden spike in psychic emanation before being snuffed out it was like ice-cold water being thrown onto a sleeping person and each psychic came into clarity. Some were confused, others scared. Some thrashed and inhaled the water of their tanks and started retching.
But every single Augur in the Columbary awoke from a joint period they all had scheduled to spend in torpor at the start of each month.
Naked, there was the ever-present locker with a robe or shift as well as those who had field work; Their OIA issued uniform as AUGURS. With the situation at hand and minds racing as fast as computers by the time any of them reached the lockers they had already parsed information such as that they were not alone due to all the psychic probing in other rooms of their adopted family of psychics and that amongst the psychic and mental waves there was a passing feeling of dread and sorrow and grief as one or more of the earliest to rise discovered something and did not suppress their emotions which were picked up and passed on to the others within range.
Throwing on a robe or shift and a pair of slippers many of the psychics flooded into the long hallways of the Collumbary. Few exchanged words as they all came to the conclusion none of them knew any more than the last and the plap-plap of slippers on the tiled floors were abundant as were the sliding open of doors as every single psychic in the facility all convereged on the same location; The play room.
Play Room.
The play room was simply the name given to the main room roughly the size of a stadium interior that all the dorm rooms connected to. Containing various deployable and constructible modular facilities it was where the Augurs performed tests of their powers, and experiments with the researchers of BTS and the OIA.
As dozens of them crowded into the massive and bright dome-shaped room a hundred meters across at its widest point there was a collective pause as all of them processed what they saw and were in turn by the combined emotions and emanations of their psychic kin.
There was a body. In the center of the play room a form lay sprawled and motionless. Young, perhapse only twelve years old he was wearing the same shift as many of them and by the slowly lowering body tempeture they could pick off of his surface readings and the lack of any mental eminations it was clear that he was dead.
An Augur. Just like them...
His head was twisted 180-degrees around to face the wrong way. But even that was survivable for an Augur. No, what had killed him was what could and would kill all of them; His head had been caved in at the temple and the brain clearly destroyed beyond even their ability to self-heal from the baseline they all had. Curly ginger lockes fell over lifeless blue eyes that no longer glowed like theirs.
His name; And they all knew each other like family for each other were all the Augurs had, Had been Enkidu. He had been a war orphan just like the lot of them and like all of them shared an obsession towards some form of research or another.
Enkidu, who had yet to receive a designation from the OIA like some of them did of the tarot, had been striving to study the Baseline of the Augurs; The mental image each of them shared of their health that passively restored when given enough biomass. It allowed an augur all but dead to eventually right themselves so long as they could spare the calories and their own biomass they could heal themselves...
But not from this. Not from them.
For standing over Enkidus lifeless corpse were two assault-configuration Golem warmachines. Still in their bulky OIA suits they somehow got into and usually guarded the one entrance into and out of the Collumbary one now stood over Enkidu while the other leaned, clawed fingertips extended over the scene of the crime proverbially red handed...
