((Oh man, I didn't know half of the shit that was in that recap. So convenient to have everything consistently named and in the same place like that.
Also, welcome back! And don't worry about being gone, taking time off for mental and physical health is good all-around.))
Campaign, Ike!
Ike coughs and maybe has a glass of water. Being a key witness was somehow worse than jury duty, who knew?
"Don't look now, but I can smell the shady dude who gave me that hex-thing," he whispers to the Headwater. "He or maybe someone who has his stuff just came in, so when I make him out I'll point him out to ya discreet-like, and then you decide what to do with that information."
Time to sniff out a would-be criminal mastermind! Carefully scan the crowd and mingle until I've found the offending scent. If found, quietly describe/point out the chief suspect to the Headwater.
((Well, that's the problem with things that are connected to each other and have happened within at most a month in game time happening over such a long RL timespan. I hope this helps make things more clear for the players, if not for the characters.))
The Headwater doesn't look too surprised to hear that.
"You do? Hm. I suppose it makes sense for them to be nearby. Can you identify him with certainty? If you can, then point him out to me, discretely if you can but be loud if you have to. He will soon know that you betrayed him, if he doesn't already. And now that he knows, there's no telling how he'll act."
You start walking around the pool, trying to follow the scent without drawing too much attention. It's not easy, as many people are looking at you, some of them trying to ask you questions. You politely refuse and try to keep moving. The downside to being famous, you suppose. Now everyone knows who you are, including people who might want to harm you.
The smell is getting stronger now, so you pause for a moment and focus your ears on that direction. You manage to make out perp's voice and soon enough you can see him through the crowd, secluded in a corner of the meeting room. His build matches what you saw yesterday in that shady alley, the only difference being that now you can clearly see his face as he whispers to the ear of the man in red, the one the Headwater identified as Griman.
"What are we going to do?"
"It's too late now. We must be ready to act while we still can."The woman in yellow and her friends are helping the two have the necessary privacy, intercepting and delaying anyone who may wish to speak to them.
"Tell our men in the guard to gather nearby and be ready to arrest him. Then continue as we discussed.""It will be done." the perp says with a nod.
The perp turns around and starts hastily walking away towards the exit while Griman looks around, spotting you looking at him through a gap in the crowd.
I'm gonna go find the record keeper now and see if he's interested in learning about alternate universe technology. If Nik doesn't get to spur on some sort of technological revolution in this backward world he will be very upset.
You ask the Headwater to get you your magical cloaking device but he seems to be busy carefully watching Ike uncover conspiracies at the moment. So you just ask him to point you towards the record keeper instead. He points you towards a man in brown robes.
"Hey man, wanna know about technology?" you say like an overeager door-to-door salesman.
"Huh? What kind of technology?""Alternate universe technology. It's radical!... lly different than what you know.""What kind of alternate universe technology.""I dunno. Hydraulics?""Ah, I'm sorry, I'm not interested in sewage systems. I already have one man trying to persuade me to copy his book on the subject.""HYDRAULICS DOESN'T MEAN PLUMBING! What is wrong in this world?"
Yay! He wasn't hostile!
<Could you let him down please? I think he might be back to being himself again!>I inspect those gashes of his, trying to figure out if the shadowstuff is River's or his attacker's.
<What happened while you were away River? How'd you get hurt?>
<As you wish.> the sword says, letting the small canine go.
He brushes against you with his side, leaving some blood on your fur as he does so. He sends... something to you telepathically, though you can't really make out what it is. It's just a flash of broken sounds and images smothered in grey.
<We could try examining him if you wish.>((:V
TFW the GM comes back on the day I'm gone due to external weather and other conditions.))
Photobucket is now asking me to pay to host my images on other websites. Guess I'll have to look for a new image host...
((Join me on imgur :3 I moved my avatar there after photobucket became a jerk))
Theri stared at Irine, then at the puppy, then prepared to heal that pupper up!
((Sounds good. But I'll have to move all those images sometime and fix all those links... Probably not anytime soon.))
You approach the puppy and extend your hand towards it so that he can approach and learn your scent.
"How do you know he's River?" River? That you? Hello? You're a cute puppy?The puppy takes a couple of steps to reach you, licks your hand a bit and then sits down and looks at you straight in your eyes with his own amber eyes. You have no doubt that this is River. You can't put it to words, maybe it's your subconscious or maybe it's magic, but just looking at him and feeling him nearby, you know. It's like meeting a close friend you haven't seen in years and instantly recognizing them despite how they have changed. You feel a fragment of a memory enter your thoughts.
"friend"
You kneel next to him and begin bandaging his wounds. He sits patiently and lets you work. His wounds are not bleeding too much, you think he's going to be fine. Still, he feels too weak and skinny. You feel like he probably needs something to eat.
Theri brings up a good point, though I trust the sword to have made an accurate ID. This is a chance to see if I can feel bond-formers or not now, as a side-effect of what happened with me and D. Do I feel River? Can I independantly confirm that River is the puppy?
Well, he had the same telepathic markers as he usually has in those fragments he sent you. And you can sort of just tell that he is him... It's a bit hard to describe. It's like remembering that coldness you felt when his mind touched yours and the echo of his soul in yours, the same feeling you got from touching his soulsphere. You can feel how he is different than the world around him. Though you don't have a very big sample size, you think that's the sort of feeling you must watch out for.
Staging Area
John takes this opportunity to reassess the entities pitching the proposals for the campaign. Can he detect their motives?
Well, you haven't recently gained any sort of telepathic powers (and even if you had, you doubt you'd be able to sense any thoughts the entities didn't want you to sense) but you can sort of guess based on their previous interactions with you.
Charlie doesn't want to go, but once you're there you're certain he'd do anything to win. And by anything, you mean anything.
Stellar would prefer this mission didn't happen at all, but once you're there, you're certain she would focus on doing what's right, which would probably translate to protecting you, healing you, trying to make sure you don't stray too far and take the last amount of risks and generally being like an overprotective mother. You wouldn't be surprised if she even packed your lunch.
Roger would probably just forget about the mission entirely and just have fun, unless something forces him to act or he gets a chance to show off. You guess he'd protect you and help you, in his own particular way, but he could just as easily prank you, accidentally injure you or waste time playing music over the PA. He could even punch you in the face if you get him angry enough.
Darkstar... you have no clue. You haven't talked with him much. Even Charlie, who has some sort of relationship with him, said this would be a bad idea, so you'd guess something bad. Eat you? Ditch you in a black hole?
Icarus seems like a good boy but a bit too emotional or impulsive at times. He'd help you, sure, but you think he might view this more like an adventure than a dangerous mission.
S0 is S0. He probably believes he could complete this mission perfectly on his own if given the chance, but he'll follow the objectives to the letter and take you along anyway. He'd probably either order you around or just act on his own and see you as dead weight.
...Wow. That's one censor'd word of a recap. And I'm just going off length here. I mean, 12 parts over 3 posts? Simply ludicrous. That fact alone makes me want to finish reading the thread from whatever early point I'd left off, and even make a character, too. How does a character that can randomly generate all sorts of objects sound?
I once pitched a character like that to... Beirus, I think? I called him Pockets, he was wearing pants and a trenchcoat that were full of pockets and his special ability was basically Adventure Game Inventory Syndrome, the kind of thing that can lead to an extended disarming scene. He could reach into his pockets and attempt to pull out anything, with varying results. The downside was that this was always active, so the moment he put something in his pockets he wouldn't be certain he could pull it out again. If you're interested I could give a more detailed description.
I'm fine, honestly. I was looking as more literal random generation. Fniff's, for example, or maybe some things from Seventh Sanctum. I don't simply mean random weapons, but, honestly, anything. Randomly generate a sandwich if I'm hungry, a pet if I'm lonely, a shield if I'm in combat, etc. It doesn't need to be permanent, either. If you really wanted, you could make a small table to randomly choose what kind of thing I randomly generate, to balance out getting a weapon on-demand, maybe.
So you just wish for X and it magically appears near you? With the downside that it is a randomly generated X and disappears after a while?
Poll
15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1145371 times)