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Author Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus  (Read 271186 times)

Pancaek

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2205 on: June 26, 2014, 12:04:20 pm »

"Aha! The reception desk is upstairs, ite seems. Must be some of that postmodern architecture at work here. James, support me! We are going up!"

Hope James supports me, try to get upstairs by carefully climbing the stairs while tightly holding onto the railing.
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Parisbre56

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2206 on: June 26, 2014, 05:28:17 pm »

"Ahh... That was good." Eta just sat there for a minute, happy for the meal she and her friend had enjoyed.

Clean the table.

"Well, I'm going to try some magic. Erm, don't stand too close. I'm not entirely certain about what will happen."
Remove the mattress from the bed and put it against a wall so that I can use it as a target. Put any pillows I have on the floor in front of it and the rest around it for good measure. Once my improvised firing range is ready, fire Volley of Golden High Heels at it.

Spoiler: Eta (click to show/hide)

Toaster

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2207 on: June 26, 2014, 09:39:00 pm »

((Man, I'm way behind.  Sorry about that!))

Larry snaps out of his daze.  The thought of what the angel voice described of heaven certainly appealed to him.  The bits about sharing knowledge kind of skipped past his ears especially when competing with the "be awesome" part, but whatever, right?

"And this ascension... how's it work?"
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HMR stands for Hazardous Materials Requisition, not Horrible Massive Ruination, though I can understand how one could get confused.
God help us if we have to agree on pizza toppings at some point. There will be no survivors.

Harry Baldman

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2208 on: June 27, 2014, 06:00:31 am »

Dave lives to serve, and immediately begins working on a thylacine river to send under the walls of the citadel.

[Dave's affinity roll: 5-1]

Immediately a brook begins to form, meandering through the area until reaching the outer wall - sadly, it doesn't quite seem to penetrate deeply enough, and merely moves along its side for a while, bubbling and irritably roaring as its occupants snake off into the distance.

* * * * *

Halesey knows that it's all or nothing now - he will be given potatoes, or he will be given death!

"Oh feck. Homies, shoot again!" he shouts.

[Finesse: Halesey, Angel, Squad, Regiment: 4+1, 3+1, 6-->5, 6-->6]

All of his homies obey immediately, the regiment reorienting itself most quickly while the squad runs closer to get a better shot at this giant beast!

[Mafioso Regiment's finesse roll: 5+2]
[Cassowary Angel's body roll: 3]

This time, the mafiosi are far more on target than before, and Halesey feels a few bullets glance off his shield as the angel is quickly riddled with a massive number of high velocity rounds of significant caliber, creating a small rain of silver blood that Halesey is more than partly glad he has been shielded from.

[Mafioso Firing Squad's finesse roll: 1-->4]

As the angel begins to sway unsteadily on its taloned feet, a few more rounds from the lesser mafiosi fly past it - the creature doesn't seem to notice all that much, honestly. It tries to rumble, but it doesn't appear able to inflate itself anymore. Halesey guesses he's making some pretty good progress, and thanks the potato powers for being gifted with such glorious homies.

[Halesey's affinity roll: 2+1]

And as he thanks the powers, he quickly conjures a small vortex on the body of the angel - it promptly begins sucking in the blood pouring from its wounds, evidently causing the angel some discomfort as its awareness of its surroundings decreases.

[Cassowary Angel's body roll: 4-1]

It slowly begins to move toward Halesey and swipe at his shield weakly, still a bit of fight left in it even as the supervortex nearby makes it increasingly unsteady on its feet.

[Cassowary Angel vs. Halesey: 1-1 vs. 4+1]

It's a little pitiable, actually, how it still tries to fight despite the way most of its internal anatomy has become external.

[Mafioso Regiment's finesse roll: 3+2]
[Cassowary Angel's body roll: 6-->1-1]

As another volley of bullets from the mafioso regiment hits it square in the vitals, the creature still refuses to die - Halesey actually wonders if it can, to be honest - merely swiveling around in confusion and crawling toward the mafioso regiment, hissing weakly.

[Mafioso Firing Squad's finesse roll: 5]
[Cassowary Angel's body roll: 5-2]

After being pelted with more small arms fire, the angel slows down further, the only sounds it makes being a set of mixed gurgles and sloshes.

[Halesey's affinity roll: 5+1]

This sound is immediately cut off by a sort of wild, desperate roar mixed in with the sound of less than gentle tuber streams as Halesey decides to widen the potato vortex on its body, increasing it vastly in size and power!

[Cassowary Angel's body roll: 1-->1-2]

It appears that sudden, massive gravitational alterations are not good for a creature that's only really barely holding together due to the low gravity of its environment - the creature's heads, unable to resist, are immediately pulled into the vortex and also ripped off their body, and the flesh of the angel begins to flow over the edge of the vortex, its body collapsing in on the dimensional anomaly forming on its surface - pieces of loose, torn skin peel off, followed by chunks of gray meat, and soon its very bones begin to separate from one another, ligaments tearing apart as the back end of the creature violently opens in a flower-like manner, the silver blood of the creature flying out and arcing in response to the pull of the vortex - the angel is reduced to a mess of parts, all of which disappear into the vortex, and then, when only a patch of flesh that the vortex was localized on remains, that begins to bend inwards as well, the vortex undergoing a process that Halesey can only begin to wrap his head around, but that looks a lot like the thing's very much unknown structure beginning to turbulently whirl, the vortex promptly folding in on itself, leaving nothing behind except sticky clumps of silver-stained moon dust all over the place.

"Fatality!" one of the chunkier mafiosi in the regiment says, and a few others nod along with this assessment, smiling with approval at Halesey.

"Sweet work!" Reuben the Clown shouts at Halesey from afar, evidently having gotten back from completely ruining a nearby temple and currently jogging victory laps around the potato acolyte and his retinue.

* * * * *

With the help of Joanie, THE DUNKER is on his feet in no time at all. He is about to consider his situation, but Joanie, evidently not a big fan of standing in a room full of electric watermelons flying around, pulls him out of the hotel, and they move along for quite some distance before stopping.

"Right, so... urk... I'm bleeding kind of a bit, and I don't know about you, but I think we can make it to my leyline from here. It's not far - a couple of miles of walking, I'd say. A draw on them ought to fix us up. Feel up for a walk and a bit of power, or do you wanna go to a hospital?"

* * * * *

John, though not a big fan of stairs in the state he's in, feels he might be able to scale these - with James' help, obviously. He hasn't tried moving against gravity much, but it can't be all that hard, can it?

"Aha! The reception desk is upstairs, it seems. Must be some of that postmodern architecture at work here. James, support me! We are going up!"

And James does so - but sadly, the stairs are quite slippery, and oddly wet for some reason, and in an inopportune moment both James and John tumble down the staircase, John feeling a tad bruised while James seems to have remained unharmed by virtue of landing on the limp, relaxed form of John.

* * * * *

After enjoying a wonderful meal, Eta and Lois clean up the remains of breakfast, preserving untouched leftovers, washing the dishes and getting the kitchen in a presentable state once more. And when that's done, it's obviously time for magic. Setting up a firing range of mattresses and pillows in order to prevent any undue property damage, Eta prepares to cast a spell.

"Well, I'm going to try some magic. Erm, don't stand too close. I'm not entirely certain about what will happen," she says, and Lois, quite aware of the dangers magic can pose, if only from her recent cheese-eating experience, takes several steps back and hides in a doorframe.

[Eta's affinity roll: 2+1]

As she points her finger at the mattress, a single pair of golden stiletto heels shoots out - as it lands softly into the mattress, then falls down on the pillows, the entire room becomes that much tackier suddenly, and Eta gets a strange urge to remove the shoes from the premises as quickly as possible.

"Huh... so those are golden high heels? I wonder if they fit either of us."

* * * * *

Larry, still loitering about in the lot of what used to be Klein's pawn shop, snaps out of a daze he's been in.

"And this ascension... how's it work?" he asks, and his palm responds readily.

"Oh, you still there? Okay, ascension works kind of like this - you become holier and holier until you don't really belong on the earth. And then you ascend, and become one of the angels. Kind of like a heavenly VIP in a way - gets you into all the heavens, not just the one you belong in. It kicks a lot of ass being able to travel freely in the stars, let me tell you," the voice of his guardian angel, interrupted in some task or another, replies. The angel pauses for a few moments, and Larry can hear it speaking to someone else. Laughter is audible. "Listen, I'm currently on Saturn, there's an afterparty in progress here. Wanna come over? I can drop in and pick you up."
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Xantalos

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2209 on: June 27, 2014, 06:26:42 am »

Leyline? Ah, whatever. You probably have donuts at your place, let's go there.

Be off before she can educate me as to the horrible truth! To the leyline!
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lawastooshort

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2210 on: June 27, 2014, 07:08:59 am »

"Thanks, Mr Reuben. Good work, guys. Nice shooting - I'll have to find some decent way to show our appreciation... You're the best Mafiosi that have served me yet!"

Halesey brushes himself off a bit, and waits for the stupid desks to fade.

"So... Mr Reuben. Shall we go? This part of heaven seems pretty dull really, these vowbreakers are a little too apathetic and the scenery a little grey... Perhaps we could find some more co- oh, Larry's gone. Damn. Hope he isn't gone in the potato vortex sense. So. Anyway. Can you give me your blessing?"
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The Froggy Ninja

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2211 on: June 27, 2014, 07:17:52 am »

Cast Thylacine River on Thylacine River. It's not rivery enough!
Spoiler: Dave (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: June 27, 2014, 07:22:54 am by The Froggy Ninja »
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Harry Baldman

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2212 on: June 27, 2014, 07:23:31 am »

"Thanks, Mr Reuben. Good work, guys. Nice shooting - I'll have to find some decent way to show our appreciation... You're the best Mafiosi that have served me yet!"

Halesey brushes himself off a bit, and waits for the stupid desks to fade.

"So... Mr Reuben. Shall we go? This part of heaven seems pretty dull really, these vowbreakers are a little too apathetic and the scenery a little grey... Perhaps we could find some more co- oh, Larry's gone. Damn. Hope he isn't gone in the potato vortex sense. So. Anyway. Can you give me your blessing?"

"Oh, sure! Here you go! Abracadabra!"

Your hand - the one that doesn't have the angel blessing, which we'll assume is your... right hand? Yeah, the right hand burns for a long moment - looking at it, you spot a very crude image of a spiky crown, glowing bright orange on the surface of your palm. You suddenly feel altogether less holy.

"By the way, I see you've got one of those angel blessings as well - not bad at all! Say, you mind if I take your gang of mobsters and liven this place up a little? Maybe take over and decorate one of these temples? I can drop you off where I picked you up, and maybe we can catch each other later - just talk to me through the sign, 'kay?"
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lawastooshort

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2213 on: June 27, 2014, 07:51:29 am »

"Yeah, sure - I think they're hungry for some action. And possibly pizza too, if you can find them some up here? I'd best get back to the potato god, so yeah it'd be nice if you could drop me back."

Leave!

((bother, interrupted so will have to get back to visting the potato god shortly))
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Parisbre56

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2214 on: June 27, 2014, 12:55:46 pm »

"Only one way to find out!“

Try them on!

"This gives me an idea..."

Try the same thing (EDIT: that is, casting volley of golden high heels on the mattress), but this time focus on making them as small as possible.
« Last Edit: June 27, 2014, 05:14:11 pm by Parisbre56 »
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Pancaek

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2215 on: June 27, 2014, 01:33:33 pm »

"James, do you have any idea why the stairs are this slippery? You think it's the postmodernists having a giggle at our expense again?"

Untangle myself from James, lick one of the wet stairs with the tip of my tongue to see what is making it slippery.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Toaster

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2216 on: June 27, 2014, 02:42:09 pm »

Well, that's hardly something you can say no to.

"Sure.  I'm... uh... by what used to be Klein's Pawn Shop, if you know where that is."

Accept that offer!
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HMR stands for Hazardous Materials Requisition, not Horrible Massive Ruination, though I can understand how one could get confused.
God help us if we have to agree on pizza toppings at some point. There will be no survivors.

Harry Baldman

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2217 on: June 28, 2014, 01:18:49 pm »

Completely uninterested in any particular specifics of this matter to a greater degree than one would typically expect of a shot wizard, THE DUNKER speaks without even a smidgen of intrigue. It's probably that blood he's lost, he guesses.

"Leyline? Ah, whatever. You probably have donuts at your place, let's go there."

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Joanie says, and the two of them begin to wander off - THE DUNKER walking blindly, guided by the girl. They walk for the better part of half an hour, Joanie seeming slightly more unsteady on her feet than THE DUNKER himself, when the slope of the ground changes slightly abruptly, and they begin climbing upward a little. Joanie says absolutely nothing during the whole trip, but after a moment pipes up once more.

"Okay, mind the step."

THE DUNKER does so, and it seems to work miracles for his prospects of not tripping and falling down in a forming puddle of his own blood, and he follows Joanie into what seems like a building. At this point he hears somebody approach.

"Hey, Joanie, what the fuck happened to you?" the voice of what THE DUNKER imagines to be a very unpleasant ginger man rings out in what sounds like an otherwise empty hallway.

"Shit. Lots of shit," Joanie replies.

"Who's that guy? And are you bleeding?" the man asks concernedly.

"New helper sort of guy. Donut idea worked. And yes. Need some magic right about now," Joanie says irritably. "I'll answer all of your questions... momentarily. I just need to get to the leyline first."

"What about him?" the man asks.

"He helped me out, so he gets magicked as well, okay?" Joanie says, pulling THE DUNKER ahead. But THE DUNKER isn't paying all that much attention to what they're saying - instead, his attention is very much grabbed by something he can currently sense - it feels like an indoor sun for the mind, vast in size, vast in power, and yet within his reach. It smells of two things - victory and fresh donuts, though THE DUNKER can't say he can smell it in the classical mammalian sense. Rather, it is a more sophisticated feeling, or it seems like one at the very least.

* * * * *

Dave, knowing that his dead great great grandma could make thylacines flow better than that, presumably because they weren't extinct in her time, tries to increase the marsupials per second flow rate of this dinky little stream he's got.

[Dave's affinity roll: 2-1]

Unfortunately, he doesn't really know how to make rivers on top of rivers - for one, does he want a lengthening? Deepening? Widening? Branching? Maybe a flood? That would be interesting for sure. But these thoughts, while interesting, distract him most perilously! What if he accidentally magicked up a marsupial deluge just now? That would have been catastrophic! Maybe somebody would behead him for such an accident. Maybe they'll behead him even if he succeeds. Who knows?

"Psst," a nearby voice distracts him from this pattern of thought. He looks around to see who it might be, but sees no one.

"Psst," the voice says again, and Dave does the only thing he hasn't yet - he looks up. Nothing. He looks down, and finds that his mount appears to have formed a toothy mouth without any sort of provocation, and seems to be regarding him conspiratorially.

"Why are you helping profligates?" it asks with good humor. "Why would you do that when you could betray them for the good of the Three Shadows?"

* * * * *

Halesey, not minding renting out his mafiosi to some clown to cause havoc with, agrees with the proposition laid out before him.

"Yeah, sure - I think they're hungry for some action. And possibly pizza too, if you can find them some up here? I'd best get back to the potato god, so yeah it'd be nice if you could drop me back," he says, and the mafiosi look rather satisfied.

"Capital! I'm sure they'll have a blast in my company!" Reuben says, suddenly punching yet another hole in the nearby spacetime, providing another glowing hole for Halesey to step through. Halesey wastes no time and hops right through, leaving his mafiosi as well as a whole lot of direly unfortunate vowbreakers behind on the Moon.

The moment where six times the previous gravity kicks in is like being deprived of all of your life's happiness in a single moment by a smug fat kid, reality itself laughing at Halesey's moment of adaptation, it seems. But fortunately, he has not spent nearly the necessary amount of time on the Moon to be unfit for earthly habitation, so he can adapt relatively quickly. And he's in the same place, too! His friend's not around, though. Wonder where he went?

* * * * *

Eta quickly tries on the golden stilettos she just conjured, and finds that they are unfortunately a size too large, and that Lois' even smaller feet are even less suited to this particular pair of shoes, so any potential for fetishized bling will have to wait until a future date.

"This gives me an idea..." Eta proclaims, turning back toward the mattress and focusing her magical power once more, this time in the hopes of creating some more useful shoes with some intent behind the casting!

[Eta's affinity roll: 2+1]

This results in a pair of golden shoes the size of large pebbles flying out from her fingertips, barely impacting the mattress at all. Interesting, she guesses.

* * * * *

John, after untangling himself from James, has a very good question.

"James, do you have any idea why the stairs are this slippery? You think it's the postmodernists having a giggle at our expense again?"

"I don't know... but it is strange," James replies thoughtfully, yet uselessly. So John performs a simple test, getting down on his knees, he gives the staircase a little taste with the tip of his tongue.

He finds that it tastes like dust, for one, with a touch of the slimy sea. And also more obvious touches of vomit, fecal matter and like a gazillion infectious diseases, but those seem less important right now.

"Oh god, just what the fuck are you doing, John?" James asks incredulously.

* * * * *

Larry, in a direct reply to a mental question Halesey will ask himself in about ten minutes, just so happens to be in the progress of getting his ass to a heavenly party.

"Sure.  I'm... uh... by what used to be Klein's Pawn Shop, if you know where that is," he says, and becomes immediately aware of something next to him - the van! Out of its window peeks the head of his guardian angel.

"Of course I know where that is, Larry! I helped shunt it into the void of space, after all. Now come on and hop in!" he says, and Larry, though a little leery, does so - the van immediately takes off both horizontally and vertically, and the sky instantly becomes a darkish, soundless void - one that Larry is more than suspicious of, given the way he seems to be isolated from it by but a single easily opened door in a fairly crappy van.

"So, you see, Larry, there's a bit of a problem here," his guardian angel says, and Larry becomes a little nervous, suspecting the conversation may go in a most unlikeable direction soon. "You can't actually survive on the Seventh Sphere. You need a bit of a... holiness infusion for that to work. You ready for that sort of thing?"
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Toaster

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2218 on: June 28, 2014, 01:35:39 pm »

Larry was a bit nervous about that, but now was not the time for fear.  Now was the time for false bravado, something he considered himself quite good at; in concept, if not by name.

"Uh yeah sure, go for it.  So which sphere is which again?  Moon is first, Saturn is seven, Mercury is two, what else?"
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HMR stands for Hazardous Materials Requisition, not Horrible Massive Ruination, though I can understand how one could get confused.
God help us if we have to agree on pizza toppings at some point. There will be no survivors.

The Froggy Ninja

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Re: The Forgotten Art: Caution Meets Wind, Adventure Ensues
« Reply #2219 on: June 28, 2014, 01:50:56 pm »

"Because I don't know who either of those people are and that guy pretty heavily implied he was going to kill me if I don't help."
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