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Toughness Save (DC25): 1D20+8-1 = [11]+8-1 = 18


Failed; Troy is dazed as well as now at -2 on Toughness saves.

Another large crack appeared in the canopy crystal. It so disoriented the pilot that his counterattack didn't even scratch Lysa's plating.

Troy Melee Attack (DC 23 Toughness): 1D20+8 = [4]+8 = 12


That is a miss!

"Not like - nff! Not like the others, are you?"

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The question...so oddly conversational in the midst of a life and death struggle...brought Lysa up short with her fist cocked back to slam into him again.

She really wasn't like other warforged, of course. Her 'body' utilized materials and magic that could most likely never have been put into mass production. She still wasn't sure what her father's pitch to House Cannith had been. Those secrets were still buried in the Mourning. Her mind was human though. She remembered being born and growing up, and maybe it wasn't a normal life compared to most, but it was very much a human life...with all the bits that no true warforged had ever known.

Did that make her different?

No, she decided, thinking of Ratchet and the other warforged she'd come to know.

"That's the thing," she said, "We are just like them. Put a human in a metal body, and there's no telling the difference. So LEAVE THEM ALONE!"

The fist resumed its trajectory, smashing again into the massive war machine in front of her!

[SalmonMax] 4:05 pm: Hello all


[Asarasa] 4:05 pm: Heya  SMax
SalmonMax *rolls* 1d20: 14+10: 24
[SalmonMax] 4:05 pm: Nice

Damage DC is again 25.

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Troy Exosuit Toughness Save (DC25): 1D20+8-2 = [8]+8-2 = 14


That is his second failed save by ten, so he is defeated!

Lysa's fist shattered the cockpit, and Troy shieldedhis face from falling glass. Upon seeing how exposed he was, and with a look of pure malice in his eyes, he raised his hands up in surrender.

"Well? Going to cut me down where I stand, like a good little wind-up soldier? Just one more, yes?"

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"Don't flatter yourself," Lysa informs him angrily. "Even if I were that kind of person, which I'm not, killing you would be stupidest possible reaction to this situation. Incidentally, that's true of you as well, though you're long past the point of that mattering. With all the fighting in here, I expect the guards will be along shortly. You and I will be here, alive, when they arrive."

"Since that means we have a moment or two, I want to know something. Why DO you hate warforged enough to do this? This isn't just the ordinary fear of the unknown that I see every day. All this took time and money and connections...people don't throw that sort of thing away because warforged make them nervous."

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"Well, now. It's easy." Troy settled back into a general undercurrent of resentment.

"Warforged don't need to breathe, they don't need to eat, they don't need to sleep. They are a third again as productive as most other races, they consume fewer resources, and can live in far more environments. A lifeform with those innate advantages will eventually overwhelm the others it shares its environment with. It's inevitable.

"They tell us the creation forges are destroyed, but they can be rebuilt, and once the warforged figure out that that's the only way there will ever be more of them, they are going to put everything they have into recreating them. Once they do, they'll overwhelm us. You will wipe us out. These people just see the face of something that's killed their friends and family - when I look at you I see something that will eventually kill us all. All I am is a little ahead of the curve. They'll catch up, if there's any hope of the survival of anything not built out of wood and gears - "

The footsteps of Sharn's guards were heard, and Troy looked over Lysa's shoulders. He held his hands out to be cuffed.

"I'm right. Wait and see."

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"Only if people like you convince us that the only way to survive is to do it," Lysa rebuffs. "Your argument is inherently flawed. You said it yourself...warforged don't use the same resources as everyone else. Even if we did make more, we don't eat your food or drink your water. We can live places you can't. There's no reason we can't both be in the world. Your lack of vision is...breathtaking."

She looks around at the footsteps and prepares to give her account of what was happening here.

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Troy and Lysa were immediately separated, and there were questions to be asked and answered. Ezi showed up, and while the guards were unhappy to be talking to a reporter, he did have quite a ream of evidence of what they'd been pursuing so far, and so they agreed to let him speak.

Lysa couldn't help but notice that they were asking her all the questions - or seemed to be.

So what all do you wish to tell the guards?

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Lysa told the story of what happened, privately very glad now that they hadn't bent the law much when following this up.

"It all started when a friend of mine, a warforged, was injured by a magic weapon. At the time he recognized it as a military-made force wand which seemed very out of place in the hands of an ordinary citizen. My friend and I," she indicates Ezi, and steps over to stand beside him, "followed up on that suspicion. He found out there had been other similar incidents in Sharn, and we determined that the weapons were coming through the black market...and that many of the people involved in other attacks like this had been associated with a bar called The Rusty Wheel."

"Ezarion and I went there, and he was able to gain the trust of some people, who set up a meeting for him to supposedly buy some of these weapons. Of course, it wasn't him that showed up for that meeting. It was me."

"I confronted them...this was the altercation in the alley not far from here...and in the process I heard commotion in the flophouse here. After taking their weapon..." she waves at the force staff she took, now lying on the floor being tagged as evidence, "I entered the flophouse and discovered another group of these...I don't know what to call them. Thugs? They were kicking a warforged skull around." Lysa pauses at that. "Like a ball. A toy."

She waves a hand at the door she'd burst through when pursuing their leader. "I saw one run through there, and decided...he must be going for a weapon. So I chased him, and got to him just as he was getting that magitech suit on. We...had a tussle, I guess you could say, and I was able to subdue him. And then you all showed up."

Her voice was thick with regret when she said, "I think a lot of them probably got away before you arrived. Maybe we should have contacted the guard sooner...but we didn't have anything but suspicions to go on until the very end, and by then it was too late to do anything but try to stop them myself."

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The guards had questions - lots of questions - and Lysa felt a little testy at the attention and at a few insinuations that there was something wrong with "her programming." But a few hours in - and a reminder from Ezi that Lysa could just fly away whenever she wanted - they relented.

The next couple of days had her repeating her statements under oath, and the evidence came down pretty strongly in favor of Lysa and Ezi's interpretation of events. It helped that while the guards that first responded were not very trusting, the case worker actually seemed sympathetic to the warforged murders and thanked Lysa for bringing this evidence to their attention.

Troy had been arrested and there were several other arrests made - not all of them, but enough to put a serious dent in their activities - and when Ratchet was finally discharged from care, he met with Ezi and Lysa with a note of pride in his voice. He took them to a mural in the lower parts of Sharn, where a wall had been decorated with the kind of mechanically precise etching and art that often signified a warforged hand. A picture of her flying up, up and away from the depths of Sharn, warforged cheering her as she rose into the blue sky.

"What is your perspective?" asked Ratchet. "I am aware of the artist's true identity. I can relay intelligence about your opinion."

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"Not all. Not many soft targets - apology, not many humans and human-adjacents. But many warforged ranks are looking for a new way to be, and not too long ago there were many whispers about what the Lord of Blades is saying. Those whispers still pass, but now this passes around also." He waved towards the mural.

"What your ally Ezi would call 'a narrative.' The Lord of Blades agrees with what you said the human Troy talked about. This unit concludes..." Ratchet paused. "I conclude, that there has been enough war. I like this narrative better. Not sure what the meaning is yet. Maybe that part lies unpainted so far."

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"But..." Lysa groped for a response, but still didn't really understand the question. "...I don't even know what this means." She waved a metallic hand at the mural. "I mean, I was fighting. It wasn't war, exactly...just me and a few people...but is this 'narrative' really different from what the Lord..." Lysa broke off, finding even saying the title distasteful, "...I know -I'm- different. But I see all those warforged, and they're looking UP at me. Because I smashed up a suit of magitech armor and punched out a cell of anti-warforged radicals? I'm not a leader, Ratchet. I'm not...some kind of example to follow. Nine hells, I'm only even warforged because of an accident. How can I be an example when I'm only barely even one of them?"

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"As stated, not sure what meaning is yet. Abstract symbols are new to us. Perhaps because you fought to stop atrocity rather than tell all warforged to commit new ones.

"Very few have intel on how you became warforged. Do you think this would change how they see you?"

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"Wouldn't it?" Lysa returns. "If they knew I hadn't gone through the same things, if they knew that I hadn't faced the same challenges? I mean, I admit I have a bit more insight into what happens to warforged than most other non-warforged...but I'll never know what it was like to wake up in a Forge. Or be treated as property. Forced to fight every day, and then just turned loose without a second thought."

"I can imagine, maybe, how that might feel...but I can't know. Not the way you do."

She turned away to look at the mural again.

"I feel like...I'm afraid they're seeing something in me that's not true. A lie of omission is still a lie, isn't it?"

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Ratchet thought for a long moment. Lysa could tell he was in thought and not just inert by the tiny clicks of his optical sockets as he looked over the mural.

"Perhaps you tell Ezi, and give Ezi authorization to tell others. Leave valuable intel out that traces back to your origins and your manufacturing batch - but let Sharn and its warforged units know that you are atypical."

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Lysa considers that for a moment.

"I think...I can't just make it seem like an accident that people find out about. I have to come forward and just tell everyone, and let them make up their minds. A lot of people won't believe it, and that's their business. Some will, and think I'm some kind of hypocrite...and I can't stop them from thinking that. Some may decide it doesn't matter. I want to help the warforged, and other people too, regardless. As much as maybe the warforged want someone to look at for an example, I think it would be better not to have one than to have one who lied to them to get there. This way they can at least find their way, even if it's harder."

"The other...well, they might just lose faith that there IS another way if they put their hopes into someone, only to have it all destroyed when the truth comes out."

She nods.

"I'll talk to Ezi. He'll know how to get the story out."

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Ezi sat across from Lysa, his writing utensils and his notebook in his hand.

"Now: since you have technically saved my life more often than I can recall, the usual interview rules aren't going to apply here. I won't ask probing questions and I will give you the opportunity to take whatever you have said off the record. I'll let you review it before I publish it. So with that in mind: what do you want to people of Sharn - all its people - to know?"

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For a moment, Lysa's brain went totally blank. She didn't really WANT them to know anything! She just wanted to do her studies and research and... And what? Fly around in peace? Occasionally assault anti-warforged cells in anonymity? The choice she had was clear. If she wanted a normal life, she could have it. But if she wanted to stick her neck out, it behooved her to recognize that she'd gain attention. If she didn't try to control what kind of attention, other people definitely would. She might not like the results.

 

"I was born a human woman," she said at last. "I...I'd rather not be too public with the details of my identity, at least so far. I was in Cyre on the day of the Mourning, in a Cannith Forge, and in a way I still don't understand, I...became a warforged. My mind feels like it did before. I have my memories, my feelings...only my body has changed."

"Since this change, I have seen a lot. A lot, sometimes, I wish I hadn't. Not because I don't want to see problems, but because I'd rather the problems weren't there to see. I was a magewright, I am still one. I was all wide-eyed at the magical wonder of the Forge, and I didn't stop to think about the real-world problems with what Cannith was doing. I was part of the problem in that way, I guess. I knew they were making people, but I somehow managed to forget...why they were doing it. They were making people to fight, and die, so that people who are born in flesh don't have to. I hope I don't have to explain why that realization is so deeply troubling to me."

She's quiet for a moment.

"After the Mourning, I was warforged. That's when I found out that most people see warforged as soldiers, not people. Soldiers without a war. Dangerous...things. At the same time, I got to meet more warforged than I ever had before, and get to know them. They are so intelligent, and so inquisitive, and so eager to understand the world they find themselves in...and excited to find out who they are, now that no one's telling them what to be."

"I lost my family in the War, but sometimes it felt a little like I had a new one, in the warforged, and the other people, I met after it."

"I want everyone to know that I'm not a 'pro-warforged' activist. I'm a pro-person activist. I want to protect our better natures, against our worse natures. Most people are just afraid of warforged, and I can understand why they might be. To someone who's only seen other people of flesh, a warforged looks like...armor, all the time. The mark of someone who's ready for violence. And for those who fought in the War, they may have had to fight warforged. Every warforged I've spoken with though is tired of war, and fighting. As young a people as they are, they already know they can do more, and better. And every person of flesh I know who's really made an effort to get to know them...and I include myself in that classification...has found themselves wanting to help them."

"That's our better nature. That's what I want to protect. Fear, and hate, can take on a life of its own if it's given a chance. It can live on long past the point that there's any justification for it anymore, and that's what I want to protect us from. Us all. That's why I did what I did."

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"Well done." Ezi smiled, as he made the final penstroke. "Lysa, I know this couldn't have been easy. Thank you. You've done good today. I'll run this tomorrow. One last thing: if you don't want me to run it with your real name, what pseudonym do you want me to use?"

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That set Lysa back. She hadn't even thought of that. "Uh."

Dear gods, how did you pick a NAME? How did you compress a person into a single word or phrase? Let alone when that whole person was your SELF?

But it doesn't have to stand for me, exactly. Just...what people see in me? It's not like it's my real name after all.

She thought back to the mural. It wasn't hard...it had been on her mind a lot lately. It was such a strange mix between the literalist realism common to warforged art with a streak of impressionism in how it had depicted her with an almost featherlike quality to her adamantine wingblades. The artist had made her look a little like a bird made of metal.

Hmm.

"Metal...bird?" she hazarded, and at Ezi's rather astonished expression quickly amended to, "Er no! How about Eagle...uh, iron. Iron eagle? Except...no."

Iron was kind of a dull metal, wasn't it? And it had bad associations for fey folk and so on.

"Adamantine Eagle?" The moment the words were out of her mouth, she didn't like it though, and it showed on her face. "That is...that sounds pretentious, doesn't it? Uh, okay, think smaller. Smaller. Falcon? What about something like..." Lysa hesitated again. This was hard for her. Adamantine was literally what she was made of, but it sounded like a challenge when you made it a name. Come break the Adamantine Falcon! Like a boast.

What was a good metal? Mithril was too expensive, too...rarefied. Then it came to her. What metal represented a sort of progress? Stronger than iron or bronze, but still easy enough to make and work that it was commonplace? The sort of metal you could build with, build on.

"Steel. Steel Falcon. Is...is that okay, do you think?" She looked at Ezi anxiously.

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"I think it sounds great. Really rolls off the tongue. Okay then, Steel Falcon it is!"

The piece ran the next day, and for a few days it was something of a sensation amongst the chattering classes of Sharn. Surprisingly few warforged had a problem with the Steel Falcon coming from such unusual origins; many had questions, and while some of those questions bordered on rude, most were born of genuine curiosity. The few that were hostile tended to have the bladed warforged snap-on components that denoted sympathizers to the one building a kingdom, off in Cyre.

Amongst the other races, learning of her origins did cause them to look at her differently. Some saw her as akin to a wounded war veteran, her physical state something unfortunate; others saw her as evidence of a burgeoning new post-war cult, warforged worshippers. But after a nasty fire and ash spill that could choke lungs and burn wood was dealt with swiftly by a flying, unstoppable warforged, many more came around to her and pointed, up in the sky, whenever she flew overhead.

Ezi was right. "The Steel Falcon" really did have a nice ring to it.

 

TO BE CONTINUED...

...in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF EBERRON #1!

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