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It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

6 (21.4%)

I wish I could have joined in.

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Total Members Voted: 28

[WillowLuman]

[Checked back, apparently, I'm "grey-red" colored. BTW, your image link is broken.]

[Worked some on TVtropes page. Waiting for others to be online.]

[Gizogin]

[Yeah, I'm thinking traditional European dragon as well.  Six limbs, massive wingspan, spikes, and fire breath.  That sort of thing.]

After depositing his haul in the tank with the rest of their stuff, weird returned to the control room.  There, he found Gizogin surrounded by disassembled computers and cannibalized machinery.  "I see you've wasted no time," he commented.

"Ah, weird, just in time," the doctor replied.  "You can help me bring this mess back."  Between the two of them, they managed to carry most of the loot that Gizogin wanted, and they walked back to the portal to the entrance.  Weird went through first, followed by Gizogin.

Lana greeted them when they were through, and announced that she would be closing the portal.  "If I allow it to close on its own, there's a danger it'll destabilize local space-time briefly," she explained.  "It's not a big deal in the long run, but it makes quite a mess.  That, and sixth-dimensional manifolds give me a headache."  With that, she lifted her hand, once again wreathed in shadows.  She made a slashing motion, and the portal collapsed in on itself, leaving the wall exactly as it had been before she'd drawn the portal on it to begin with.

There were still some pieces of equipment to load into the tank, and between that and all the salvage weird and Gizogin had returned with, it was a tight fit in the back, but they managed to get everything in.  They rode back to the fortress much as they had before, except that Gizo X drove this time.  Gizogin didn't feel up to it, and ended up sleeping most of the drive.

[Speaking of sleeping, I'm off to bed.]

[Eric Blank]

[Checked back, apparently, I'm "grey-red" colored.]

Spoiler: Hugosaurus left of center! (click to show/hide)

[WillowLuman]

[Somehow, I doubt there would be much salvageable in terms of electronics, at least not immediately. Perhaps it might not be best to go back and try to pry things from the mainframe, though.]

ninja'd due to browsing that infamous site. BTW, that is pretty damn funny Eric

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

..BTW, your image link is broken.]

Are you kidding me.  Here's one that should work:


I am surprised that there has not been any activity on this thread today.

[OREOSOME]

[Well, i've been stuck in traffic on my way back to albany from cape cod. Although i did go on an awesome seal watch while i was up on cape cod.
...
That and i'm waiting for the others to return from the tower.]

[EDIT: Well darn, i didn't believe that the other forumites had returned already. ]

[Gizogin]

[Hmm, a full day without a post, and then I get insta-ninja'd by OREOSOME...  Odd.  I've fallen back into my obsession with Kid Icarus: Uprising (a thousand curses upon you, Fiend's Cauldron!), which has kept me from doing anything productive with myself.

OREO, we actually just got back from the tower in my last post.  I guess I should have made it clearer that we arrived.  Everyone who went to the tower is now back and free to do whatever.]

Everyone disembarked from the tank and went off to deal with whatever they needed to do.  The Gizogins left their equipment in the tank, having nowhere to put it until Eric finished re-excavating the fortress.  X then promptly disappeared, saying something about a vital test he needed to perform.  Gizogin and Lana went to the hospital area, where they discovered a certain Othob lying comatose on one of the cots.  The Mk. VIII filled Gizogin in on what had happened to him, and he soon had the sick dwarf back on his feet.

[WillowLuman]

HugoLuman slunk off, looking for Eric. He found the foreman still digging down in the fort, working to open up what remained of the living quarters. "Hey, we're back. You want some news?"

[Eric Blank]

"Sure. While you're yapping, I could use a little extra muscle tearing down this wall of crap. There's a body on the other side, I can feel it. Just watch your head, I guess. Save us a lot of time..."

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I think some dragonic mining claws are around in the base somewhere.  It is what Maectur, the dragon from earlier, used.

[WillowLuman]

[Need to unearth those. Also, for the record, The Great Sparrow wandered off and is still somewhere in the depths of the base. He probably faded when Wierd left, but I don't know how that works.]

HugoLuman put his foreclaws up on the stack of rubble, and pulled down a large chunk. "Well, we found out how we got here."

"How we got here?"

"In this world. Apparently the RNG literally wants to kill us."

[wierd]

Wierd disembarked from the now horribly cramped cargo compartment of Gizogin's tank, stretched, and cracked his back in 15 places. He'd always had a problem with making loud popping sounds, and being stuffed in confined postures for long periods always agitated it.

Rustling around inside, he removed one of the twisted blobs of transdimensionally damaged adamantine chain links he had salvaged when he had been forced to teleport the anchor links to get the chains free from their holdings. He wished he had pockets.

The links in the chain were quite large, and had they been made of steel or iron, the deformed blob of material would have weighed several pounds. As-is, the hunk of metal that used to be a chain fitting weighed less than 1 newton.

He had been at the tower for who knows how long-- and the journey there and back took the better part of an hour each way. He could still feel Sparrow in the back of his mind. Well, with the launch key in his backpack, there wasnt a whole lot the old ghost could do over there, with 10,000 year old relics. He deserved to have the chance to look around in that old dump.

He decided to go check the kiln.

As he approached, a crazy scene laid out before him.  About 8 peasants were assembly-lining clay harvesting, brick molding, and stacking greenware, while another pressgang was dutifully unloading the massive kiln from its previous charge. All around the kiln yard, huge pots covered in a lovely light green with spots of mottled brown salt glaze sparkled beautifully in the sun, interspersed with small mountains of fired pink brick, and chunks of smashed clay sagger.

Rikod had been busy today...

He looked, and saw the old coot waving his arms around like a traffic cop directing his work crew, but the way the crew was acting was ... off...  As one passed him by, he looked at the slack-jawed yokel, and saw less sparkle of intelligence than usual, replaced with a dull, sullen expression and a thousand yard stare. Either they were seriously suffering booze withdrawl, or Eric was behind it.

"accidents" my ass, he thought.

"Hey Rikod!" he said, strolling through the zombie-esque workcrew, and narrowly avoiding getting plastered with a tossed wad of fire clay getting tossed up the assembly line.

"Wierd lad!" he said jovially, before cursing at the work gang again. "No ye idjots! I said put em o're DERE!"

"What the hell's going on? This place is a few demons short of a circus!"

"What's that? I dont ken---" said Rikod confusedly, before catching that he meant the pressgangs. "Oh, ye mean all t'e workers and such?"

"Yeah. What the hell is going on?"

"I dunnoo, I came out 'ere to check on our work, and all 'ese dumbarses showed up, and said 'ey was tuh help me with making bricks and whatnot. Wouldnt go aweeh, so I been doin muh bes' tuh get shite done...."

Wierd rounded on one of the peasants slopping up clay from the claybank, as he was essentially stationary in the supply line, and demanded to know who sent him.

"...wee..are..to..help....." was the cryptic, and stilted reply.

"Taint nuh use lad!" Rikod chuckled. "NO! As is earthen warr! I SAID DIG TUH FIRECLAY! O'ER DERE!"

"I take it you've been busy..."

"I's as been directin' this rabble all damned mornin'!" Rikod spat. "Aint got me hands dirty ALL DAMNED DAY! This lot o' morons cant tell clay from slip I tells ye! And I mean at straigh' up tuh! At one o'er dere as been tryin tuh fill brick molds wit' slip e'ry time I turn me back on im! I says, 'No, ye idjot! As is a PRESS MOLD!' but does he listen? Nae!"

"maybe you should get a big stick to hit him with?"

"Is right temptin!" Rikod bellowed, "but 'en some o' dese o'hers as would be tryin some other dumbarsed thing! Like T'ose two!" Rikod pointed over to a pair of heavily muscled, but glassy-eyed morons smashing up the bits of broken sagger into clay grog. "They's been tryin to smash up pots all day long! I says "NAE! ONLY DE SAGGER BITS!" but does d'ey listen? Ocourse not!"

"Sounds like you got your hands full..." wierd mused.

"Damn straight I does! At least *ye* aint got yer head on backards taday!----NAE! NAE NAE NAE! I Said tuh put it o'er DERE! O'ER DERE!"

"I have no idea what you've got going on, and I'd probably just get in your way... I'll go see about getting wood delivered for a proper firing tonight."

"Tha's the most intelligent thin' I heard all day!" laughed Rikod. "I'll leave ye tuh it! ---NAE! Canne ye NOT HEAR ME BOY!? ONLY SAGGER BITS! ONLY SAGGER! YE GOT YE HEAD UP YER ARSE OR WHAT!?--- Sorry 'bout dat... I could sure use a drink...."

"I dunno if I can deliver MIRACLES like that just yet--- but I'll sure see about getting some wood delivered."

Rikod and wierd both laughed deep and hard over that one, before the ceramicist broke out in yet another verbal assault on the misbehaving and poorly disciplined labor gangs.

After waving each other off, wierd scooped up a brick. He needed something to show Eric in order to get him to spare some of the wood quota. Maybe the adamantine would cheer him up too. Then again, trying to cheer up a man with a weedeater shoved up his ass like Eric was impossible.

[Eric Blank]

I think some dragonic mining claws are around in the base somewhere.  It is what Maectur, the dragon from earlier, used.

[Well, he doesn't need to actually mine, just clear some rubble. Hugo isn't an experienced miner, anyway, so his talent is best applied wherever someone stops and thinks "Well, it would be nice if we had a grizzly bear or rhino or something to do some heavy lifting right fast." Right now, there's more of that than there is mining to do. ALternatively, he can practice his fire breathing and reinforce some of the new masonry work being done to replace the various missing floors/ceilings. There's really no place where massive, muscular, fire-breathing lizards aren't in demand.]

"The RNG wants to kill us? Is that news? Hahaha!"

"Well, not literally the RNG..."

"Well, what? -You can stop now, I can reach the body." He turned around and yelled down the hall, "Besmar! We got another body over here! Bring a coffin!" He turned back to hugo while trying to scale the rubble pile and reach the body. "If the RNG wanted us dead, that would explain, at least, why it's taking such a long time to draw our numbers. A big damn hat to pull from, and only one card for each being in the world."

[wierd]

[Quite right... there's a load of fresh bricks that needs to be moved to the front door that just got unloaded from the kiln, and with the pot situation taken care of, the next charge will be almost all bricks. Hugo's gonna be a very tired lizard by the end of the week.]

Weird walked up to the main entrance, and distinctly hear eric shouting about bodies and demanding a fresh coffin inside. Just outside the door, off to the right, a pile of cheap wooden boxes layed haphazardly in the afternoon sun. With a wry grin, he placed the brick and melted blob of adamantine on top of one, heaved, and picked up the burden, and wandered down the hall.....

[WillowLuman]

"Well, there was this Dalek there-"

"Wait, what," Eric said flatly, almost dropping the dead leg he had began to pull on. Like everyone among the forumites, he remembered the carnage of the last fort all too well. "This doesn't have anything to do with... you know..."

"No. Well, not as far as we saw. Apparently, it escaped just before the great big kaboom via emergency time-travel. It's unprotected exposure to the timeline let it see the whole thing at once. And what it saw was that there's someone playing with us like some giant cosmic chess set. Clockwork saw it too, and he was trying to kill this manipulator somehow. And this being might have an agenda. That tower was built by the people who played Boatmurdered. We were brought here about ten thousand years after they died."