Editing Broken Toys: Legacy 2nd Edition (section)

==The golden age...==
'''The sprawling ruins of an enormous city - now filled with deadly spores.'''<br>
Each of you- what rumor, legend, or theory about what lies in this city has either tempted you, or kept even your young and reckless from trying to venture in?

Cultivators: ''The spores change you. The changes nearly always result in a horrible, wretched death as your biology fails - but change you they do! There may be… applications there.''

Hive: ''Our lack of biology makes us invulnerable to the spores, but when we sent a team into the city, 144 hours, 19 minutes and 37 seconds after they were supposed to report back, we received a data burst originating from inside the city. The data received was a low-integrity gamma-grade instance of the person inhabiting the vehicleform of the squad. The memories were hard to sift through and often mixed with each other, but we were able to identify images of vicious mutants, territorial monsters, and most disturbing...

''Human voices, but they seemed to be coming from machines. Cleaning drones, cooking arms, even children's toys. All heavily modified with improvised addons.<br>
''We know that organic life forms are not immune to the spores, and fear of death makes one do anything to avoid it.<br>
''We also know that the inhabitants had access to salvaged dataweave, and that robotic life forms are immune to the spores.<br>
''After revival from backup, none of the members of the squad were willing to go back. Neither did we wish to send them.''

Tyrants: ''The Tyrants have heard stories of the spores changing people. Most die, but in the sewers and tunnels of the city is a population of cannibalistic mutants. They plot to take over the rest of the homeland, but for now are content to steal away children who disobey their parents and eat them. ''

Merchants: 

Order: ''The Servitors and Shamans of the Behemoths covet their secret rituals free from the agonizing end brought upon by the Spores. Those that dwell too close are snatched and sacrificed to their momentous bulk.''

'''A Dataweave factory that would be a powerful asset to the Wardens, but is inhabited by something monstrous with a taste for metal.'''<br>
Hive, what did this dataweave mean to your creators? What does it mean now, to their surviving grandchildren?

Hive: ''This material has the consistency of clay and an odd matrix of lines that are constantly shifting color, a hint at it's true composition. On the nanoscale, it is composed of a mixture of circuitry, quantum nano-engines, photonic neurons, and other computing materials, all of them strange and arcane to the untrained mind. Because of this interweaving of computation, it is able to manage running a synthetic mind much more easily then a traditional computer. Because of it's extremely complex nature, it is very hard to create, involving energy expenditures much larger then even average nanofabrication.

''Specialized fabricators can lessen it a great deal, so many were created. The factory has many of these, and Before it could meet the demands of the entire region. But then the plague and the spores struck. Many synths lost their lives, to the plague, or the monsters created by it's polymutative nature. Those horrible mutants shambled and rolled and slithered toward our domain...

''We used... our... finest nanophage. Our most powerful bombs. A few brave programs sacrificed their continuity to set off EMPs that could reach across most of the field. The loss of material was a major setback. But it was worth it. The only remnants of the polymorphic strain are on the battlefield, the city, and unfortunately, the factory. The plague merged biology with technology, resulting in a Behemoth with limbs of metal, flesh, metal and flesh. It's torso and head have all kinds of implants. Even it's brain is a twisted fusion of neurons and dataweave. It is hungry for anything, for anything can be used to repair it's body, failing from the strain of reconciliation.

''Dataweave is so very hard to make, yet so very vital to creating new bodies for our populace. If we reclaimed this factory, repaired it, it could very well start a new golden age for the Digital Wardens.''

'''A haven for the rich and powerful that lasted longer than most.'''<br>
Merchants, amidst all the personal relics and private treasures this place once held, what item of value inspired you to change the course of your ventures? <br>
Tyrants, when you were first shown this place, you saw the remains of defenses marvelously clever or aggressively paranoid, and you saw the evidence of its eventual defeat. What lesson, in war or governance, do you attribute to this sight?

Merchants: ''The 3 yachts and traditional uniforms found here triggered both there formalization of their leadership and their lack of a single permanent home, even after each one had been sold, lost, or worn away.''

Tyrants: ''One cannot sit idle, assuming you are safe behind you walls and defenses (metaphorical or otherwise) when you have surrendered the area around you. A determined enemy will get in and you will be helpless. To thrive and be victorious it is necessary to venture out into danger, probe, and attack. You enemy should always be wary of your strike, and you should never sit idle assuming safety.''

'''A carrier vessel large enough to shelter thousands and win wars single-handed.'''<br>
Tyrants, is this vessel a ship, a vast siege engine, or something that might once have hung in the air? <br>
Order, the smaller machines of war that were once housed in this hulk lay scattered within a few miles of the surrounding area, little more than corroded shells and stripped-out cockpits, and yet- what do you remember about these weapons that others have forgotten?<br>
Hive, what occasionally whispers in the depths of this machine, and why does it concern you? 

Tyrants: ''The vessel once hung in the air (and perhaps even the void). It thought itself safe from the tooth and claws of the Behemoths.''

Order: ''Mobility was survival but those warded against the horrific heat of their presence could get close. The husks hold greater secrets overlooked by the uninitiated. Remains of canisters that once held strange alchemy that harness the magic of winter.''

Hive: ''Occasionally our agents sent to that location detect signals coming from somewhere in the lower sections. A voice, pleading for help, but the name it gives is Sareng. And no one can help the Sarengs.''

'''A gargantuan carcass crawling with monstrous scavengers.'''<br>
Cultivators, what tool or instruction did you provide when asked for guidance by those venturing among the parasites and scavengers? Were your warnings heeded, and did it matter?<br>
Order, what do those who've never witnessed a behemoth learn about the creatures from seeing this corpse? For all the fear and wonder it invokes, do you regard it as among the greatest of the titans, or a comparatively middling specimen? 

Cultivators: ''The scavengers can be…avoided. If you approach at the right times. If you mask your scent with carrion that surrounds you. If your luck doesn’t leave you. And this helps! It really does. But one misstep, or an itchy trigger finger will spell disaster. ''

Order: ''The corpse has long since cooled with each passing of the Sun where it fell can be seen how the heat has warped the terrain that surrounds it. This was one of the first to emerge from below one of the greats but stories tell of even larger kin.''

To the Tyrants and the Order, did this machine and this monster ever meet? Are their remains locked together as if in combat still, more two environments encroaching upon one another than mere animal and machine at war, or was there a victor?

Tyrants: ''They met in battle fighting and great distances of miles with mighty weapons. Weapons from the vessel carved ravines, and explosions created craters in the countryside. Forrests of wicked spines launched from the behemoth still stand where they struck the ground. The environment shaped by their battles is even more alien then the rest of the homeland. There was no victor, only mutual destruction.''

Order: 

To all- do you find in these two ancient hulks a symbol of hope, or an intimation of fear?

Order: ''The corpse is a constant reminder that even these wondrous things are not immortal take what hope you can. The cadaver of the machine is a testament to mistakes of the past and the price of failure.''

Tyrants: ''We would not admit it, but the Tyrants see them as a sign of fear. Whatever power they have now is still nothings compared to what was and may still exist somewhere, and even with all their power there was not victory, only death. Someday the Tyrants may destroy a great enemy only to be destroyed in turn.''

Cultivators: ''Hope, that we were never powerless against even the dread threats of the Fall. A memento, of what we could do and what we survived. Fear, that even the height of our power wasn’t truly enough... ''

Hive: ''"We must hold together for survival. The Carrier had no allies, only subordinates, and look at it now. Broken, torn to pieces. The monster is as well. If we band together, we can crush the monsters we can, and defend against the ones we can't."'' That is what they say, and what they ''try'' to believe. But deep down in their memory, below dozens of other files, they think that maybe that power of that level can't be stopped by anything. No matter how strong your bonds of fellowship.

Merchants: