"Okay, lesson learned: DO NOT touch him. Or at least, don't let lanterns touch him; I'm assuming that's applicable elsewhere.
So... so what do we DO? Follow him? He doesn't respond to light, he doesn't respond to sound, touching him's unwise..."
Keep following Thomas, try to intuit something out.
[intuition:3]
uhhh well distraction isn't working...maybe you're not using the right thing to distract him? Or maybe you need more of it? Or maybe you should just lamp him in the head.
Charro turned from his place by the door as the strange, shadow-wrapped figure of not-Thomas passed him.
He watched as the others made various efforts to stop/communicate with/disarm their once-teammate, then walked down towards them himself, popping his hat from his head and detaching the blade. He kept what he hoped was a safe distance from the stricken Thomas, watching him/it carefully as he spoke on the 'everyone but Thomas' channel.
"Er, maybe I could make him drop the 'fork' by removing his arm with my blade-hat, here? What do you think? To be honest, I've been looking fowards to getting a chance to try it out, you know."
He looked down at the hat-blade with a frown. "Or... Maybe we could do something else. I don't know!"
>Ready hat-blade for throwing, following not-Thomas and attempting to think of the best possible course of action, here.
>Oh, and meanwhile, attempt to speak to whatever human part of Thomas is left! Remind him that sabotaging the team and leaving us all stranded out in the darkness to die would be a rather poor show. We're all friends, right?
You follow behind Thomas, hat at the ready. [int:2] You can't think of anything to do!
[speech:1]
"You suck a whole bag of dicks, Thomas! A whole bag! Like, a potato sack worth!"
Yeah, that didn't work.
Figure out what happened to Thomas via smarts.
Then eat dinner and rest.
Well, may got over him pretty fast eh?
You sit down and eat some rations from your bag. Bleh, they taste pretty bad but they're filling.
[int:1]
Hmmm. Maybe Thomas caught...being on fire...from you. Dang, you really should get that strange rash checked...
"Try to figure something out, team. I've seen intuition and some bursts of ideas saving asses already."
Pull Chin away from the Lighteater in a speed matching his own if he allows such to be done or the eater gets too close with no answer from Chin.
"Oh, wait, thats right. Teammates gonna die."
You run down the ramp and grab Chin, hoisting him onto your shoulder and then running in the opposite direction.
Dammit, why'd the disks appear in front of me?
"Just one more try."
Resist being pulled away long enough to try that again. This time with the disks on Lighteater. already. Then, no matter the result, allow getting pulled away and hobble along if possible.
[Exo:2]
You try again to summon up a hot platter of forced amputation, but just can't manage to stay focused long enough. Damn you sugar and cable tv!
Milno carries you away as you curse your short attention span for about 4 seconds. Then you get bored and start thinking about cats.
Throw a small pebble into 'Thomas' (not leaving the Instrument out of my hand, just picking that stone with a couple of fingers). If he turns and starts heading in my way, switch off the lamps.
(( Are we allowed to retry failed aux rolls of the 'how-to' aspect of the skill? ))
(Yeah, you can keep trying to do that as much as you want.)
You look around for the smallest bit of stone you can find and then huck it at Thomas' face. The stone vanishes into the flame but doesn't seem to have any effect.
Thomas continues to walk until he reaches the boundary of the inner wall. He stops and then strikes the lower section of the tuning staff against the stone of the wall. The resulting tone is different from before: higher and more penetrating, you can feel it vibrate in your lungs.