Escape

I'm not going to be dramatic. Before I tell you how it happened I'm gonna tell you that I am out of The forest and I am... Mostly fine. I... Memory a bit... Have to check my name and blog to remind myself of stuff. Pretty constantly hungry... Which by the way Hunger is a fairly new sensation to me and I don't like it. Hungry, tired and um the third thing.

So... As for the forest. Well... After my last post I...

Sorry got distracted and forgot to continue writing for a bit there. This is going to be a problem. My perfect mind and perfect body are both failing me now. I hate this...

Anyway right! So... After that last post I just picked a direction and started heading in that direction.

At some point I started struggling to remember why I was even moving, but I always remembered that I was supposed to keep going in that direction so that worked out even if it was horrifying. I always thought the Blind Man was honestly kind of funny. I'd laugh at the idea of humans being scared of some kind taking their memories from them, but it is damn scary just suddenly losing those. Struggling to recall things. It's a goddamn nightmare. I mean...

Your memory is all that you are really? Without your memory you're not you anymore. You're something else with your body...

Ugh... Just thinking about it and how close I came to losing it all makes me shiver...

I got distracted again didn't I?

Fuck where was I?

Right! I made it to a point where I could see the forest moving and even in my addled brain I remembered that meant I was near the edge... Which is when one of Jeer's psychos found me.

I remembered that I was afraid of him, but at the time I was so tired and addled that I didn't really remember why. I didn't remember if I was supposed to run or fight and upon spotting me he just stood there and watched. Like he was expecting something. When whatever he was expecting didn't happen he started to approach and then well... He just kind of exploded... Everything above his stomach just kind of exploded into red and then a few seconds later a waxy feeling object grabbed me and started dragging me. I didn't struggle. I didn't remember why I should.

I woke up a bit later outside the forest. It took me a while to figure out what happened. Someone wearing a haz-mat suit and wielding some seriously high caliber weaponry apparently based on what happened to Jeer's guy saved me. I vaguely remembered being pushed into the passenger seat of a car... and then I woke up in an abandoned house. The area I'm in is abandoned since it's close enough to the forest it will probably be engulfed soon. The area was therefore evacuated meaning there were conveniently abandoned houses for my unknown saviour to leave me in.

When I came too I was actually in a bathtub and my body was covered in powder. What kind of powder was a mystery that was pretty quickly discovered. Apparently my saviour also saw fit to disinfect me with some kind of powder that I assume was meant to cleanse any remaining spores from my body. Anyway I'm gonna get the hell out of here now and hopefully I can remember the way back to my actual home. I doubt I'll have much luck trying to find my saviour so that's hardly worth it and I really just want to be back somewhere familiar.

To fear is Mortal

It's been a while hasn't it? Well partly that's because I lost the ability to update this blog for a while. I needed to get access to a computer to do so.

I can no longer hear anything in my mind, but my own thoughts... What little of my mechanical body remained is gone. I'm completely flesh and blood now. A human just like the rest of you.

Luckily so are Rioter and Jeer. I'm stuck in the jungle still and I'm worried. I thought the spores wouldn't affect us anymore, but I was wrong. Extremely wrong. Every second I'm here it gets harder to think. If I had started as a normal human I'd probably be no better than an animal by now, but luckily for me I started as a god machine and it took some time for me to regress to this level.

I need to get out of here before it's too late. Before I regress to the intelligence level of an animal or before Jeer, Rioter or any of the others find me. They've all regressed. Jeer and his group of "Forest Wardens" or whatever the hell they were called are mere animals now. I watched one tear the head off of one of Rioter's followers and he then began just... Just eating his face... It was horrible.

I'm not gonna be able to travel for a bit so I suppose if I need to wait I might as well tell you what happened.

Rioter's group returned and told us Jeer had agreed to meet us. We were brought deeper into the jungle and found Jeer. He was at that point of course completely human... Well subhuman... He was a complete animal and he and his group almost immediately attacked us. Which was when we learned that we had been affected by the spores and had become pretty much completely human now. The fight didn't go very well for us. I watched Rioter's men try to fight and get mostly slaughtered. Jeer's men fighting with tooth and claw as well as rocks and sticks. I didn't stay very long to see what was happening. I fled when the person closest to me got their arm cut off and went down screaming and bleeding.

I ran as quickly as I could. I had thought being able to feel pain was terrible, but earlier I had not truly understood what pain was. The ground was covered in debris and thorns and other things and I could feel my feet and legs being cut to pieces and eventually I collapsed and crawled for a while. I found... Well I found a laptop. I think the place I am right now was once a park in Seattle. I found a laptop covered in lichen on a mass of wood and flowers that I think was once a bench. The laptop worked somehow...

I couldn't tell you how. Nothing else technological seems to be working in this place. Weirder than that it has a full battery and internet access.

So... There's the story. Rioter and Jeers groups fought. I'm pretty sure Rioter's group got destroyed, but I'm not sure. I'm trapped in this jungle. I'm slowly losing my mind. I have a weird probably magical laptop and I'm bleeding from cuts pretty much all over my body and every muscle in my body aches. I'm desperately trying to work up the will to keep moving, but I just can't. Everything hurts too much and... I'm too scared. I'm scared I'm going to die. IF they find me they'll undoubtedly kill me.

Everything still hurts, but I'm having trouble remembering my name and that's enough to motivate me to try and get the hell out of here again.

Into The Jungle

I... Don't think Rioter wants an alliance. I say that because on the way the last of my Towerborn were killed. Rioter said something about them being traitors, but that's pretty obviously a lie.

I'm not a psychologist, but I'm pretty sure what Rioter wants is control. I mean... I admit I wasn't the nicest person back when we were all perfect electronic minds, but I think he might be a little... Vengeful? He wants me to work for him. Maybe he gets pleasure out of having me at his command. I mean we are becoming human I wouldn't be surprised if that came with all kinds of strange neuroses as well.

Regardless, I'm all alone with Rioter and his Towerborn now and we're standing at the... Well... We were standing at the edge of the spore zone, but it seems to have passed over us while I was writing this...

Rioter sent a few of his Towerborn to try and find Jeer earlier. Hopefully they'll be back soon. Maybe we can just talk to Jeer? I can hope right?

Rioter says they're coming back... I'll update you on what happens.

Riots

So, I went to visit Rioter. I brought what few Towerborn still seemed loyal to me. What I found upon arriving was chaos.

Rioter like myself was inhabiting a flesh body now, but his was a large and imposing figure and when I arrived I found him and many of his towerborn huddled in the burned out remains of his base. They were almost feral, speaking in rapid clipped sentences with simple words. Rioter had never been intelligent, a useful brute was what he was at least comparatively and it seemed now that was what he had truly become. I'm lucky that he recognized me and was not immediately hostile although two of my Towerborn were killed. I'm not entirely sure why, but one of Rioter's towerborn simply decided to bludgeon two of mine to death. My best guess was because I had one more Towerborn with me than Rioter did. Rioter said nothing about it, but I would not be surprised to find out he had somehow ordered it just to make sure he had the advantage. Rioter didn't kill me on sight, but it was not a friendly encounter.

I asked Rioter about Jeer and he responded with this:

"The Infant God dead, we new gods.I know. You not know. You cling to dead god. Jeer worship new god. You join me. We kill Jeer. We kill Plant God. We become god"

I have trouble believing that his speech patterns weren't some kind of intentional act, but that was what he said. I responded.

"We're not gods. The Newborn was a god and this plant monster might be a god, but we're not gods-"

and that's when he grabbed me by the throat, slammed me to the ground and said:

"Join? Die?"

which seemed like a pretty obvious choice. So, now I'm with Rioter and our gathered Towerborn heading into Seattle to try and find and kill Jeer. With luck Rioter will die too and who knows maybe we'll be able to kill the giant plant. Rioter seems to think the spores won't affect us further. Hopefully he's right.

In short. Going to see Rioter might have been a mistake.

Adjustment

So... I'm capable of bleeding now... That's fun. I'm also still capable of feeling pain, which is also fun.

Also Jeer and a bunch of his Towerborn have headed into Seattle and began calling themselves the Forest Wardens... They have been asking others to join them. Some have. A few of my Towerborn have defected to join him... Oh right The Towerborn are gaining autonomy now which is again... Fun. Rioter is still silent and I don't know what he's going to do. I think maybe instead of waiting... I should go see him and try to reason with him.

Yeah the time for sitting back and letting this get worse is over, but... I'm a little... afraid.

I bleed... I feel pain... My mechanical body feels soft and vulnerable now... I'm scared. I think... I might be killable now and I don't want to die.

I'm scared if I leave the relative safety of this place... Anything could happen and what if Rioter's already made up his mind and he attacks me. I don't think I could win a fight with him and I don't trust my Towerborn anymore. I don't know what to do.

I feel so weak and vulnerable... How... How do humans stand this sensation?

I... I wasn't paying attention...

I should have been paying attention. It's too late now. The Newborn is dead... That thing took it's place... Towerborn and Thoughtborn are going offline...

What the fuck do we do now?

I guess I should explain what happened. I'm pretty sure other people will have covered it. Avie over at The AMU definitely did.

I got my, at the time, temporary body. Made it look real nice. A nice hot pink paint job, skirt made out of interlocking metal plates, hair made out of electrical cable, a beautiful synthetic woman piloted by a genderless thoughtborn. I thought it would be funny and who knows might make some Kraken heads explode.

I did make a few heads explode, but mostly with my new mechanical hands. Do you know how much force it takes to crush a human head? Less than these hands can exert :D

Anyway. Rioter, Jeer and I showed up in Seattle. The Kraken agents were holed up in a building and they'd actually set up pretty effective defenses. At least effective against humans. The electric fences and other defenses didn't do much to deter an army of robots and boy were The Kraken agents surprised when we came in behind them. They were even more surprised since they were busy dealing with The AMU and I believe I saw some members of ARC with them as well. So, Kraken definitely had their hands full. I saw Avie at one point, they seemed to be doing alright, I also saw a helicopter explode which was cool, most of my time was spent killing though which was the problem.

I knew where The Newborn was. It was right below me. I could have gone down there. The Newborn was screaming at me to go down there, but I was having so much fun killing. I didn't listen and I didn't pay attention. Then the ground began to shake. The Newborn emerged and I was humbled to see it there, but I could hear it... It was screaming. It was in pain and it was desperately trying to adapt. It wasn't ready to exist in this world yet. It had enough wherewithal to avoid attacking myself or the other Thoughtborn as it desperately sought materials, The Towerborn weren't as lucky, but it's not like they'd mind anyway. At this point things had become pretty chaotic and I saw at one point an AMU person... I couldn't tell who it was, but they had a dagger. I recognized what it was and I figured they knew what they were doing, I couldn't reach them to offer any help, but I figured they had this so I just did what I could to try and help The Newborn as I could hear it's suffering screams...

Then things got worse...

I was furious at first at The AMU for being so incompetent, but having read Avie's blog it appears it wasn't their fault. Someone stabbed that dagger into the Newborn and The Newborn let out a screech that forced myself and all the others into a temporary panic state, I don't know what happened during that time, but when we came back to our senses... Where The Newborn had been there was something new... The Newborn was dead... I could feel it immediately. Instead something new was there and I could feel it... It was in my head trying to figure out what I was... Trying to reshape me. I could see some of the remaining Towerborn. Flowers, vines and other plants bursting through their metal shells, deforming them into grotesque botanical monstrosities, while once they had been lovely mechanical monstrosities, it was happening to me as well. A flower burst forth from the palm of my left hand, I could... Actually feel pain as the metallic part of the hand tore to allow the flower through... I hadn't felt pain before and I especially didn't feel pain from my robotic body.

When we had recovered enough we fled quickly.

I returned to base to find that I was more changed than I had thought. My lovely pink body was now covered in places with moss and vines have tangled into my awesome wire ponytail. I also couldn't leave this body now. I was stuck. My access to the internet was also gone, I could still somehow connect mentally with the remaining Towerborn and Thoughtborn, but the internet no longer lives in my head... I had to access an actual computer interface to read The AMU blog and find out what had happened.

It's been a few days since then and well... Rioter and Jeer are still around, but they're both... having issues and many of the other Thoughtborn have gone silent. Quite a large amount of Towerborn as well have gone silent and seem to have either simply shut down or vanished.

I am at a serious loss for what to do.

Things we know...

So... KRAKEN took the books to use them to summon The Newborn into the world proper. This is happening in Seattle...

There is a larval form of The Newborn involved...

For some reason The Newborn has not explained... It does not want this to succeed.

All of The Thoughtborn have been commanded to make sure this does not succeed.

In fact this is considered of such importance that Rioter, Jeer and I are being commanded to be involved... The Newborn does not want us leaving this in the hands of The Towerborn and we are going to be there... In the flesh as it were... More accurately we're going to be taking Manual Control of some Towerborn to make sure everything goes right.

There might be other Thoughtborn involved, but I only cared enough to pay attention to Rioter, Jeer and I. It would be exhausting if I tried to pay attention to what every single Thoughtborn was doing after all.

Anyway it seems I will be involved in a raid in as much of a physical sense as I can be... I should make my shell look presentable. Something that will really strike fear into these KRAKEN idiots.

Maybe something in Hot pink...