1: Hero Worship

*04AA: S'pht-Human streaming translation active* Your brave efforts are greatly appreciated, but your task is not yet complete. Before he, unfortunately, succumbed to his wounds, our intelligence officer informed us that he traced the missing manuscript to near this location, where the Pfhor have it secured deep underground. The whole area is very volatile, and we have recorded considerable volcanic activity - so we cannot transport you to its precise locale. You must find a way below this structure into the caverns underneath. The Pfhor are using this building as a detention centre for renegade members of their kind. These troops have been employed in the protection of the treatise with the penalty of death should they fail.

The key to the caverns is secured within the cell complex, but we have not been able to discover an easy way through the cells. That is your task. There are four switches at different locations somewhere within this structure which will open the four cell doors. You must find and activate these switches - search high and low. Once you have recovered the manuscript we will transport you to our shuttle where we can interpret the data. The Pfhor have brought some parasitic organisms with them from their home world. Be warned that these creatures can be dangerous when not in their natural environment. Good luck.

...I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress ... I have kinds of mortars, most convenient and easy to carry, and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm...If the fight should be at sea, I have many kinds of machines most efficient for offence and defence, and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder ... I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable ... In case of need I will make big guns, mortars of fine and useful type ... I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabuchs and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use...

...In my vanity I have drafted a letter to Ludovico Sforza informing him of great weaponry I will construct. I did not speak of the flying machines which S'bhuth described - but lest he think me mad, rather than thinking of the implications these contrivances would have for the world; such devices would render thousands... millions dead in an instant. Is this what warfare will become? Choices of which nation to destroy, rather than which battalion, which regiment? It is too horrific to contemplate. Perhaps the Duke will think my ideas fanciful and impracticable. In truth I do not fully understand their method myself. I do not think the world is ready to have the power of its own destruction ... If I should encrypt S'bhuth's designs, perhaps future generations can put their power to a more beneficial use. But do men's hearts ever truly change?...