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Read to everyone:
Looking to unload the machine parts you’ve gathered, you head back toward the main gate. A merchant is jammed into a corner of the courtyard, complaining about not having enough space to show his wares. He’ll buy anything you’d like to sell at normal value, though he’s completely unwilling to haggle on prices.
Looking to restock your own supplies, he begins to show you item after item. One item, untouched at the bottom of a supply crate, draws your attention. The Focus gives it a label which doesn’t mean anything to you:
ACA3 Override Controller. But unlike the other machine parts, its Focus halo flickers between yellow, orange, and magenta.
If you act casual, and purchase other supplies, the merchant will throw in the Override Controller for free, just to get rid of it. He’ll explain that he bought it in an unsorted crate brought to him after the attack on All-Mother Mountain, but he doesn’t know more than that. He thinks it’s broken, or at least useless, as no one knows what to do with it.
If he senses eagerness, he’ll trade you for the machine parts you’ve brought, or he’ll charge you the same amount if he’s already paid you for them.
Obtaining the Override Controller, you can find a quiet place to inspect it. It will attempt to interface with the Focus of whoever is holding it, which takes several seconds. It will only work for that one person until ownership changes, again taking several seconds to resynchronize.
Using your Focus, when you can concentrate on the Override Controller its label expands to include a new list of icons under a heading of Available Overrides.
The icons are obvious: the curved body of a Watcher, and the quadrupedal shape of a Strider.
If you pass the Override Controller around among your party and let it synchronize with each, you’ll notice an additional list under the heading Friendlies.
Another list of icons, these are stylized renderings of your faces.