Diarneus was mostly silent during the group's trip out on the hovercraft towards the Dawn Garden Isle-way. He'd politely greeted Alyssa, the last member of their entourage, and made sure that his outward facing personality construct was set to nod and react automatically at the appropriate times. Meanwhile, he was putting a few last finishing touches to his research projects that had just come to him, in the event he wasn't able to secure a Va'nyr connection on the other side and met an unfortunate end. He also needed a few fractions of a second of primary focus to call for consensus.
The interior of the hovercraft vanished from his perception as his awareness opened a connection to the Va'nyrian Seed. First came a burst of light, digitized noise as his consciousness traveled across space-time through the Va'nyr network, before finding himself within a transparently crystalline shifting structure floating above Nexus City. There wasn't much point in defining the abstractly formed locale, as it was never the same form for more than an instant. Xilunexus' attempts to convince the Nexus-Entity to convergence were still ongoing it seemed. She didn't say so, but he didn't think the AI was happy to come here to find an existing awareness in the place she'd been building towards for so long. After another moment passed, the other's appeared. Wordlessly, he received the All-Mother's blessing to utilize his powers, and made sure that Fren'ja wouldn't be too distracted to share her mechanical expertise if needed.
He blinked back to real-space just in time to review the construct's interpretation of Ms. Vang's just finished brief about their mission. As the equipment needs were being listed, he ran through his internal system check:
Environmental suit; his vacsuit reported all systems nominal, the nanites under his epidermis were at peak diffusion with the materializers ready to forge new ones as needed. Forcefield; the zero-point energy channels woven through his suit were clear and properly aligned down through his skin and into his body, where the micro-reactor was on standby ready to generate the necessary energy for as long as their location's space could sustain normal matter interactions. Sampling devices and scanners; The many probing and sensing apparatuses within specialized cells and organ throughout his body all reported nominal, the long-range sensors on his suit were also in working condition.
He'd have to wait until he attuned to Dawn Garden to know which magic systems would function best, but if all else failed he'd still be able to reforge some of his nanites into a molecular blade. And direct some of the micro-reactor's energy into decently incapacitating electrical bursts. He hoped he'd be able to attune into manipulation of the elementary forces, and that the planet had a decent magnetic field. It'd been a while since he got to slide around friction less.
When it came to the helmets, he couldn't quite suppress a wry grin; an artifact of the personality construct's human emulation misinterpreting his relief when it came to being born with his eyes as they were, and as long as he could readily power it, he'd be able to use his energy manipulators to read and write vibrations into most atmospheric mediums; as long as the metaphorical angels on a pinhead had a set of lungs on them, he'd be able to listen.
Diarneus politely passed on any proffered equipment, but he did ask for a closer look at the helmets. As he held onto one, microscopic tendrils extended under his fingertips and in-between the structure of the helmet. A stream of diagnostic data ran through his mind's eye, which he fed to his Va'nyr connection to Freyn'ja. For a micro-second, Diarneus wasn't himself, but rather Freyn'ja, who quickly studied the device and broke-down it's capabilities down to the amount of torque used to screw it's internals and the base machine code it's software utilized. With a promise to extract repayment later, she receded and left Diarneus to be himself as he gratefully returned the intact helmet.
He'd now be able to utilize his Va'nyr Link to interface with the other's directly as needed.
They were upon the Isle-way now, and Diarneus quickly flashed a backup of himself to Xilunexus, moments before his Va'nyr connection in Nexus City vanished. In an instant, the hovercraft ceased to be within Nexus City, and was now in Dawn Garden. It was a simple enough distinction to most people. Go through this thing and arrive over there.
To his finely attuned senses however, a world of wonders was revealed. It was akin to a master musician appreciating the work of another. The way whatever the Nexus-Entity was achieved it's effects was so elegant that it stunned him and his companions everytime. No wonder Xilunexus was mildly jealous.
As the hovercraft made it's way through a cave on the side of a mountain—where the Isle-way rested on this side—, Diarneus excused himself and left his seat...to sit on the bare floor of the hovercraft. As swiftly lightening flashes of raw umber gave way to striated beige and sandy topaz upon the cave walls on their way outside, Diarneus assumed a lotus position upon the ground. He closed his eyes, and began to feel.
A slightly shimmering radiance began to emanate from his skin, and the air a few inches from his skin radiated quickly dissipating heat-waves. In his mind's eye, his awareness fractured in two.
Half of his consciousness focused on the mechanical.
His fashionable—to him anyhow—belted, tight around the legs billowy on the chest, cowled outfit flashed a series of geometric designs in a goldenrod hue just underneath the outermost weave of 'fabric'.
It began to smoothly morph it's shape: Directly against his skin, a layer composed mostly of nanites emulating cloth fused together, forming a vacuum proof seal that was a few millimeters thick. This was the most basic function of all their clothing, but they'd found that for modesty's sake it was best not to run around in skin-tight polymers. To the right bits for propriety came more padding. His cowl stretched widely, forming an elongated bowl shape where it draped over his shoulders and held the long-range sensors, with a tight oval around his head that only revealed his face where the polymer face-plate awaited engagement.
Out of his shoulders came several long strips of fabric, thickly woven and glittering with visible crystal beads woven in. These loosely collected into a sort of 'cape' but it was clear each one was still an individual component. A few inches from tips they were divided into five smaller rectangles, still held together but with visible lines showing where they could be split.
Aside from the 'padding' around the modest bits, a couple of blocky compartments rose out of his thighs, and several others formed around his midsection. No proper adventure could be begun without a utility belt, or so Diarneus gathered from the fragment of memories he'd downloaded from the Starbreath earlier. The rest of his legs simply looked like comfortably tight trousers, somewhere between pajama pants and yoga pants.
Different textures arose around the whole outfit, some areas appeared sandpaper-rough, others had the sheen of polymer.
With his technological kit fully extended, he could feel faint energy signatures coming from several points in the planet's sphere, with the greatest concentration found in orbit. He also felt the threads of the Va'nyr network's extension within the local space-time's higher dimensionalities, but left it alone for now. Too time consuming to energize and he'd nothing to report. He could tell there were no Elo'Rantian signatures here.
Meanwhile, Diarneus' other mental half was focused on the "magical" spectrum. And things were not looking good for this planet. Even before he saw it, he knew what he'd see. Brilliant, thriving, bursting life filled half of the world's aura. Arcane leylines pulsed with vibrant energy ready to be tapped into. The planet did indeed have a robust electromagnetic field. It was also conducive to spatial and force manipulation.
Unfortunately, large swath's of the planet were, in magical terms, simply not there. A tangible absence met his magical senses when he probed into this, and he did not push further at this time. Better not to disturb the magical balance until he knew if it would push back.
Animation, Binding, Growth, Connection, and the classic Elementary, he thought to himself. Good standard magics for a rounded toolkit.
Diarneus came out of his trance as they arrived, and the somber mood of the place threatened to subdue his empathetic sensibilities. With a small pang, he tweaked his personality construct to keep his feelings hidden. The landscape was a verdant wonderland to one side; shoots bursts upon shoots in a thriving soil, strong leafy vines gripped weathered stone. If there were a wind, the place would be filled with the song of blades of proto-grass. But there was no wind. Diarneus made a note to model the atmospheric patterns as they went along, as he turned to behold the other half of his field of vision.
From where he stood, to the horizon...utter desolation. No ground, no stones, no microscopic life he could detect. Whatever that strange matter was that coated everything, it was clearly not of this world, and was in fact anathema to it.
At the mention of "colonists", his personality construct flashed him a warning that additional resources were utilized to subdue anger micro-expressions. The universe was vast. Any universe you spoke of. There shouldn't be orbiting structures and colonized land in a planet this young. He tried to quell a flash judgement, but Diarneus sincerely hoped that what transpired here was not the cause of hubris. He was not fond of interference borne genocide, and considered the wealth of life that could have arisen here to be on the hands of whatever was responsible for that...ash.
"I detect a faint electromagnetic emission three miles in that direction," Diarneus said as he pointed towards the flourishing side of the horizon. His finger formed a straight line down their field of view to where a small ridge dominated the center. It was perhaps 150 feet in height, and obscured what would have been visible from their vantage point. "The emission is consistent with a power-source roughly the size of the hovercraft's here. I will not be able to detect anything smaller until I encounter more sources for calibration." he explained.
