You lift the wooden board with some difficulty and open the door with a loud creak that echoes in the darkness beyond. You stare, making sure not to cross the threshold. You can see the stairs leading up to the entrance, the cobblestone street beyond it and... that's it, that's about as far as the light goes. You can also see reflections of the light coming out of the door as well as the light coming from some of the upper floor of the building you're in. The reflections are probably due to some windows about 20 metres away, from what you can tell.
As your eyes adjust to the low light you start to make out details of things closer to you, like the wilted remains of shrubs on some large plant pots and the indistinct shape of distant buildings. You could go out there and explore if you wanted to, though you probably wouldn't be able to make it very far without a light source.
"Merde!," Napoleon swore as he failed to discern any other objects in the distance. Without a bright source of light like moonlight for example, there is no way in hell he would be able to determine where or when he is. Even if he decided to use a handful of dolls to carry lit candles or lamps, there is no telling what dangers could be lurking in the darkness. Needless to say, he quickly shut the door and put the board back in its place. Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Napoleon began to process the information he gained from his findings.
"Hmm, let's see: last time I remembered, asphalt has largely if not completely replaced cobblestone as paving material and oil lamps and candles have been replaced by electric lighting. However, I'd witnessed both of those things just now. I'd also haven't tripped any alarms as far as I can tell, neither did I spot any cameras, and the security guard I'd slipped pass didn't look like any modern security...wait, it cannot be. Did I... travel back in time?"
Deciding to wait until morning to explore the town, Napoleon decided to explore this place for a bit. Perhaps he can discover what this place is and the current year. He decided to start by exploring the communal dining area.
Well, you're not necessarily back in time. Maybe this is simply one of those creepy theme parks or one of those creepy old mansions in the middle of a deserted forest, the kind you see in Halloween movies.
You decide not to go exploring out in the dark, so you instead close the door and secure it again. That done, you make your way to the dining area. It has two large tables on either side, probably meant to serve as a buffet. The rest of the room is a wide open area, probably meant to be used differently and filled with different things depending on the occasion.
The walls and ceilings are decorated with great frescoes, though with only the light coming from the entrance it's hard to appreciate them fully. You look closer at one trying to discern more details. It... looks like a woman in colorful clothes, standing in front of a field of golden wheat, holding a basket. There's more people behind her, you can discern-
You are interrupted by a scream coming from the floor above. Okay, another thing to check off the "creepy tropes" list.
Somewhere else...
You raise your head and look around without getting up. Your little investigation doesn't reveal much more than a camera with a blinking blue light screwed on the wall opposite to you, close to the ceiling. There's also some sort of intercom next to the mirror. You can also see the glimpse of a door behind you. That looks like an exit.
You're feeling better now, so you try to get up. But the moment you get up, you feel dizzy and weak again. You try to steady yourself but you accidentally manage to kick the chair away. You are forced to slump against the cold metal table to stop your fall, impacting it with a rather loud *bong*, accompanied by the *clang* of the falling chair. A few seconds of breathing later you feel the sense of dizziness fading away once more. They must have given you something to render you more manageable... whoever they are.
You push yourself off the table once more, being extra careful not to fall backwards. It wouldn't do to trip on the chair and break your neck after surviving for so long. You feel better now so you manage to walk around the fallen chair and up to the door. It looks quite simple, a normal wooden thing (or maybe plastic, you can't tell for sure) with a metal door handle. There's a black keypad with a small cyan light on it, some sort of lock probably. You test the door by pressing down the handle with your elbow and sure enough it's locked. It looks like it's made to open inwardly, a bit of a peculiar design choice for the door of an interrogation room.
This interrogation room overall feels like there's something wrong with it. Maybe it's just all the small details that seem off that are unnerving you, maybe it's the drugs that are making you paranoid or maybe it's something else, something deep in your gut telling you this is bad, this is dangerous, that you should get out now.
If possible to do while handcuffed, pick up the chair and do the following:
Attempt to break down the door with it. If that won't work, then approach the camera and try to break it with the chair (gonna try to lure someone to come check on me so I can fight them and get out).
If I am unable to lift the chair while handcuffed, then instead do the following:
Walk over to the intercom, activate it, and say "I'm awake. Who are you, why am I here, and what do you want?"
The door looks quite sturdy. You doubt you'd be able to break it down with your hands behind your back. But you might be able to break the camera or at least make it look away. You bend your knees and grab the chair. You then get close enough to the wall that holds the camera and try to spin around and throw the chair at the camera. But your throw is not strong enough, the chair bounces off the wall and hits you in the chest. Ow. You did not think this through.
Tess, Introduction
"Please don't make me go back! It's... it's horrible back there! I can't even describe how bad it is!"
Tess quickly places her left hand on the individual's knee, before letting it slip off, in what would seem to be a gesture of desperation. She does a similar gesture with her right hand, seemingly accidentally missing his other knee. She makes great care not to touch her right hand to anything yet.
"I'm sorry, but there really is no- Well... There is one way you can legally cross the barriers between worlds. But it is not pleasent. It won't be easy, but if you can succeed then you will be free to go wherever you want. Would you be willing to do something like that? Compete in certain challenges to earn your freedom?"
<Svajoklis, Deployment seat|Unknown liquid>
"I do not fancy my chances out in the open and unable to move."
Attempt to free myself and my gun. If successful, swim towards hull and then towards turret. See if I can find and help Brian or WMD along the way.
"Brian, the first thing about being impaled is to not remove whatever has impaled you. It's the only thing keeping you from bleeding out. Other steps require things that I'm not sure we have.
You push your arm as hard as you can and manage to push one of the mechanical arms back a bit. That done, you use that extra room to wiggle around and start hitting the arms holding your arm down as hard as you can but it's not very effective, you only manage to tear away some of that protective gel. So instead you put all your weight and all your strength against one side, using your arms and legs to push as hard as you can. Suddenly there is a click, something unlocks and you find yourself flying out of the chair as the mechanical arms suddenly retract like the legs of a dead spider. You barely manage to grab and hold on to one of the mechanical arms. You maintain your grip long enough to open the chair's storage compartment and retrieve your shotgun. That done, you pull your feet up against the seat and push away as hard as you can, propelling yourself towards the hull. You half-swim half-glide your way there and attach your boots to the hull.
The area around you (what little you can see with the light coming out of your visor) looks mostly flat save for an antenna coming out of the hull, bending due to the flow of the liquid pushing against it. Said flow has carried you some distance away from the others, but you should be able to catch up if you hurry.
Hmm... Let's see if you can spot WMD... Roll says no.
Tess, Space-Mission-Thing,-The-Title-Of-Which-I-Forget
Tess, forgetting which direction she's supposed to go, and only barely remembering the entire point of the mission, picks a team member and follows them, taking great care NOT to fly off.
Kosak is the one closest to you, so you decide to follow him, being careful not to lose your grip to the hull.
Ow. That's... not good.
Summon a ball bearing. Does it hurt now?
Also, verify I have my spear and core-less rifle. If I can't make new gear I'll need to rely on what I already have.
Orient. Find the turret and start moving toward it.
"Let's get in and move closer. We all here? I'm not sure my summoning is working right..."
Summoning a ball bearing stings a bit and causes your Interface to start beeping for a few moments. You can probably summon things, assuming you can ignore the pain... and assuming that this pain isn't an indication of and/or a prelude to something worse happening.
Your equipment was stored in the storage compartment of your seat. You have your spear in its compact, bracelet-like form and your rifle and deactivated power core.
Walking Tank, Spess Mission
"I shall remove the arm holding thee. An I believe I can help with thy exsanguination."
Summon a supersharp sword and cut off the arm holding Brian. Then summon a gauntlet enchanted with bestowing regenerative capabilities to its wearer and give it to Brian.
Brian Hoss, Hull of the Maximus
"I'm here, but I won't be moving for a while... Does anyone know how to deal with getting impaled?"
Try removing the arm from its base.
You try to free yourself, but it looks like Saevus is willing to give you a hand, so you decide to wait for him instead. He lets his shield dissolve and summons a sword instead, aiming to cut the arm holding you in place with it.
: Are you sure this is a good idea? :: Cease thy worrying, I am very well trained. :: You mean you're a doctor? :: No, I am a very well trained swordsman. :: That's not very reassuriiIIIIING! :With a swift slashing motion, Saevus cuts the arm holding you down and the tip of the piece of metal sticking out of your chest. He doesn't stop, instead twisting the blade around to slash the piece of metal sticking out of your back. You are now free from the chair, though you still have a piece of metal stuck in your chest. As expected, it hurts when you move around.
: Rise renewed for battle! :: I don't think I should be- :You are interrupted when Saevus shoves a glowing gauntlet on your arm and proclaims
: You are healed! Do not fear! 'Twas but a minor wound. :With that, Saevus turns around and starts walking away, towards the turret. You look at the gauntlet for a moment. It does feel like it's making your injury hurt less.
: You know, when I asked you to give me a hand, I wasn't being literal. :You can move around, but you should probably try to take it easy, otherwise you risk causing more damage. You should probably also try to get that injury looked at by someone who knows a thing or two about fixing wounds rather than one who knows mostly about making them, preferably when you're somewhere dry. You could pull the piece of metal out of your chest, but that would probably cause a lot of bleeding and you're not certain if that thing Saevus gave you is enough to stop that sort of thing.
((Remember, enchanted equipment take a lot of power to maintain, so if you go too far away from Saevus or he has to use a lot of power for combat I'll have him desummon it to prevent the drain from weakening him too much.))
Kosak Durar:
"To the turret!"
Locate the turret, head towards it. If turret is reached, start looking for important things to break.
You start making your way towards the distant explosions. As you approach, they become clearer, louder. Soon you start making out the silhouette of the turret. From this distance it looks like a hemisphere with a long thing sticking out of it and two smaller things near its top, kinda like a big nose and cat-ears respectively. You can see it constantly moving around, presumably trying to track the Phoenix. Judging from the turret's motions, it looks like the Phoenix is trying to not get too close to the turret and stay mostly on the side opposite from you so as to lessen the chances of a torpedo exploding above your heads.
It hasn't been a long time before the Phoenix makes another pass overhead, flying perpendicularly to your direction of movement so as to not risk a torpedo exploding above you. The golden form of the Phoenix seems blurry and indistinct when viewed through the liquid, but it looks vaguely humanoid.
: *static* --can't confirm life-signs. Energy concentration at the side away from the main gun, 35° down, 15° clockwise. It has launched 30 out of-- *static* :The turret shows no signs of slowing down, throwing torpedoes like they're going out of style. It
really wants to kill the Phoenix. You can feel the hull vibrate with every torpedo launched. It can't turn around fast enough to launch them directly towards it but the tracking on the torpedoes seems good enough for it to not matter.
The area around the turret is sloped, like a small angular hill or maybe a pyramid. It also seems segmented, like it's supposed to open up or detach somehow. The turret itself is quite large, about the size of a small building. From here you can tell that it is actually a spherical thing hidden inside a big bowl. It is anchored to its surroundings by several clusters of segmented mechanical tubes, thick armoured things that can change their length by extending or retracting, allowing it to face different directions. It all looks like a machine designed so that it would imitate something organic, like hydraulics acting as muscles for moving a giant eyeball.
WMD, Space Mission
Try to ignore the pain and focus through willpower. Make my way down the fin and along the hull in whichever direction doesn't require me to go around the fin. Hopefully that'll be the way I came from. Try to find the others, and try to get the Pheonix to give the others my location if it passes by.
You try to ignore the pain and the incessant beeping of your Interface as you walk down the fin and towards the direction you (think) you came from. The light coming from your visor is not enough to illuminate more than a few meters around you, you have no idea where you're going. Don't people say that without a point of reference it's nearly impossible for a human to walk in a straight line? If that is true, then making your way to the others could be quite hard.
You walk for about a minute, not sure if you're going somewhere or just moving around in circles. There aren't even any seams in the floor for you to follow. At least you don't encounter that fin again. Then you notice that your Interface has stopped beeping. And then the light of your visor flickers and dies.
Hello DarknessLovely.
Campaign, Alan 'Accidental Timewrinkler' Rickybickystickyvick
((Well, my plan was to have you explain how you would tackle each situation with me always giving a description with the results of something like a 5 to show the best possible case. Then I would actually execute the plan in one turn once the situation in the temple was resolved and see how horribly you succeeded/failed. That way I could avoid paradoxes while still having you do things and I could simply fast forward to a point where you could sync up with the guys in the temple. But if you wanna go ahead and cause paradoxes, I'm fine with that, I'll just use my divine powers of retcon magic.))
((Ah, I see. I should clarify, I'm not bored, I just thought this guy was being excessively detail-oriented for whatever reason and was RPing along that path. Why don't we go with the plan you originally had, that seems like it'll be less of a headache for you. My apologies for the misinterpretation on my part.))
See above. On the question of how Alan would navigate the temple interior (which was the next question as I recall), Alan would use some combination of a cardboard box, appropriate-coloured paint, green for sneaking around outside, grey for inside, and several gigantic music-playing gift cards to serve as a distraction while he and his buddy stealth their way inside.
((Eh, I think the other guys will wrap things up soon, so let's just get on with it.))
Even though Brad was not 100% sure about this sort of thing, your plan goes on perfectly. You navigate the fields of the Walled Garden, using giant music cards to cause distractions and your painted box to slip through them in the darkness while they are distracted (either by your cards or by chasing people trying to sneak in and steal food).
Things continue to go well for you, as there is only one guard manning the front gate of the temple. Either they're short on manpower or they didn't expect anyone to really get this far and try to cause trouble. You should easily be able to sneak past him or find an alternate way into the temple. You could even try to bluff your way through the front gate.
The front gate itself is a grand thing, a large stairway leading up to a great entrance, divided by pillars with letters and murals on them. There's also a great pool of water there that is fed by the water falling from the mist-covered top of Chizra and that in turn feeds small streams that branch off into your surroundings. It is the same pool the Headwater used to conduct the morning purification ritual. There is a light mist in the air due to water falling from the waterfall above, though the entrance itself is protected from the mist by a balcony held by great pillars.
Campaign, Ike!
"Ice cold, Mr. Headwater!" Ike says delightedly as he gets up. "Love the smell of collateral damage in the evening!"
Loot Griman and my shady friend as the situation in the room develops, await further instruction from the Headwater.
Well, the assistant was already looted by Nikolai, so you just loot Griman instead. It looks like mundane stuff. A flask of water with... something else mixed in, a pouch of gold coins, a simple knife... You don't think there's anything- Wait. Your ears pick up a strange noise coming from him. You follow it to find a... black thing hidden on the underside of one of the folds of his robes with a glue-like substance. It's pretty well hidden, you don't think anyone could had spotted it without a very thorough investigation. It feels kinda weird when you touch it and even when you just have it in your pocket, it reminds you of how it felt to touch those Void stones River had given you.
As you loot the man, the Headwater address the crowd and speaks about how this attack is proof of the Sovereignty's inventions to claim this place for themselves, how the fact that they managed to turn one of the masters shows just how serious of a threat they are and how everyone must support his plan. He doesn't do it so dry, he talks about unity and standing together and remaining loyal to him and the temple and other platitudes like that, but that's the gist of it. The man does
not waste time when it comes to politics, it seems, walking literally over the corpses of his political rivals to achieve his goals.
((Do you want to ask any questions or request anything? Otherwise we'll just fast forward to the next day or to whenever something important happens depending on Alan actions.))
"You call this collateral damage?"
"...medic"
Chill for a bit and await medical attention.
The crowd doesn't seem too eager to help you. They keep their distance, looking in fear... all except for a woman in violet who comes running through the crowd, yelling
"What'd I miss? What'd I- Oh."She searches through her robes and retrieves a vial of a cyan substance. She empties its contents in the wound of a woman who's missing half her chest. The liquid begins bubbling, forming a translucent, bubbly replacement for her chest that stops the bleeding. The woman in violet makes a motion towards the crowd.
"Well don't just stand there! Help me out here! You, get to the third floor and get any healing potions we have up here. You two go help him. You three gather the healers and get them to the empty bedroom on the second floor. The rest of you grab the injured and get them there. Chop-chop!"This seems to wake the crowd up somewhat, the people she indicated moving into action, some of the rest following suit soon after. That done, she approaches you and retrieves another vial from her robes. She kneels besides you and uncorks the vial.
"Come here sweetie. Open wide." she says, lifting your head with one hand so that you may drink from the vial of red liquid she's holding in her other hand.
Campaign; Theri!
"Very good! That's it! You did it!"
<Theri gets a nice hug by Irine, the two fox-women feeling encouraged.>
"You should eat and rest for a moment Theri. Doing that took something out of you, literally. You need to let your body replace it. Don't try to do more right away. You've barely ever used these 'muscles' before, you're probably already tuckered out."
"I still have good stamina! It's just, this is all so...familiar? -to me?"
Theri felt understanding much like how a frustrated craftsman discovers the new ways to use a tool they were quaintly familiar with their whole life, and noticed that she lacked the vocabulary to express how it felt to her. Reality and time became a healthy mix of emotions and hormones as both elation, exhaustion, and the grim, serious reality came about. She knew she could invoke a bout of adrenalin, however, considering the power of this realization and having felt it happen; she was nervous though, and wondered how it would feel when done properly.
She looked at the man, giving a thought (moreso to Irine and asking her to repeat it)
You will live. We will help you all.
"I'll just- take a short rest," she said, standing and stretching, and realizing how long she had been in the same uncomfortable position a somber moment ago, with her legs feeling like they were about to cramp up. She looked back at Irine with a half-smile.
". . .Irine? Do you think I could use, erm, what I just did, with you, and your sword? Like that first mission we went on when you used your flames, and people had cars? I would really appreciate your help."
If GM is going to make a turn soon--concise actions are:
> Hug River puppy.
> Theri rests a bit, before working in tandem to heal, starting out small and focused on the most wounded. (Telling San to sterilize or find some specific plants or water sources, in helping our supplies)
> After doing what I best can measure is enough (knowing Irine and her awesome sword's powers), get San and River and add them to my inventory and head off to the Monastery at a forced march, at least (they can sleep on me. I made sure Im clean and floofy!)
River appreciates your hugs and licks you while wagging his tail in response.
As for healing, you've already done the best you can using the mundane means available to you. They should be able to stay alive until you can come back with help.
Now, for going to the 'go to the monastery' bit, I'll need to delay that for a while. You can speak with Irine/River/San about anything you wish to speak if you wanna do something else, I won't have it cost you any time so there's no need to worry. I'll let you know when time can move forward again.
I gently shake my head.
"It's really tempting to overuse this stuff Theri. You did good, really good, but you shouldn't go overboard. You should try to use mundane methods as much as you can. It's kinda like my fire. I try to never actually just straight-up summon a lot of it. I make a little, but then I use what little I made to make more instead of just summoning more. This is similar. You need to try to just get them healthy enough to be able to heal on their own. Let nature take its course as much as possible. Besides, if we keep using tons of magic we'll attract those birds again. What we need to do is get these people safely out of here. We need carts, and people to come help. You should go to the water monestary with San and River. I'll stay here and protect these people, You bring back help, and get San and River to safety."
Collect wooden debris and other flammables and prepare bonfires. Don't light them, but form a ring around the victims so that if I have to defend them from the birds, I'll be able to near-effortlessly light them and use them as continual flame sources to draw upon to drive back the birds.
You go around collecting branches and leaves off of any dead shrubs or withered weeds you can find. It's not enough to make a giant bonefire, but it's better than nothing. Assuming you focus all your day's effort on this and go around in increasingly widening circles, you could make them quite large.
Same thing as Tiruin applies to you. If you wanna speak with River/San/Theri/Sword, now is the time. Otherwise, just wait a while or maybe queue up actions for you to do while waiting for Theri to bring back help.
Poll
15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1144888 times)