Campaign
Nikolai: Campaign
Go back inside. This world isn't much nicer than my homeworld.
Put the sling and a few small rocks in my pocket. Put the knife in my belt.
Find River and go talk to him.
"Was there something wrong with the teleporter? Because if it's broken, or just not powerful enough I can help you."
Let's assume you already have that knife on your belt, since you have used it before.
You put a couple of rocks in each pocket, get up and wear your backpack.
"
This is nothing like the brochure." you grunt as you take one final look at the scenery before you turn around and start walking towards the door.
You notice the pitch of the wind around you change and hear a faint whistling added to it, coming from somewhere behind you.
Before you can contemplate what that means, something cold and soft gets wrapped around your neck, pulling you off balance, strangling you. You can see about three dozen thin yellow things wrapping themselves around your arms, legs and chest, their point of origin somewhere behind you. About a dozen of them go for the pendant hanging around your neck, wrapping themselves around it until it is no longer visible.
"
Ack- K- This is definitely- K- Nothing like- the- K- Brochure!"
((You can not contact your teammates via telepathy. And they cannot see you or hear you.
I was really hoping one of you would do that, going outside on his/her own without asking what this place is. And luck helped me make this worse with your many failed awareness rolls.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to provide tense life-or-death situations.))
Campaign
Alan tries this mind talking thing that seems so popular with the kids nowadays.
<AHEM. DO YOU NEED ANY HELP, BROOK?>
((I know it is not important in your case, but I just wanted to clarify something in case it becomes relevant in the future. Unless someone specifically states that they are telepathically communicating with someone privately (with something like "Private communication with <name>:" or "From now on, I want my conversation with <name> to be private," or something similarly visible), I assume they are talking to everyone, like in a radio. Just something for everyone to know about in the future. So now everyone knows you can't remember your companion's name.))
<Not unless you are willing to rid me of the distraction of heat-pain by allowing me to use your body and mind. But thanks for the offer.>There is a flash of light from the corridor Ike and Zechariah went, followed by a bang.
Oh, good! Fireworks!
Wait, why is it so hot in here all of the sudden?
Irine, Campaign
Restless and unable to help, I pace back and forth near the door.
There's nothing here for me to burn to generate a seed-flame, and I don't want to burn any of the stuff I brought with me. And I'm not sure that I even need to be ready for a fight. River seems to understand where we are and isn't that worried, is he? Though he does keep stopping to check for danger...
I pause a take some time to breathe.
So, I've thought it through and my best action right now is no action, right? calm down already and just wait. what will come, will come.
I set my pack on the ground by the wall, a moderate distance from the door, then lie down using it as a pillow, my side against the wall where I can feel it and my head facing the door, rest, and wait.
You sit down near the door and try to relax.
TiruinRiver keeps walking towards the glowing rods. He extends his hands to touch two of the shortest ones. The moment he touches them, he yelps and quickly retracts his hands, as if he was burnt.
He takes a few seconds to slow his breathing and presumably prepare his mind. Then he closes his eyes and grabs the two rods again.
This time he keeps his fingers wrapped around them and only emits a small quiet growl. His entire body is tense and trembling slightly.
Campaign
Zechariah quietly goes into Ike's view, trying to get his attention now.
"Hey. Did you find anything about the windows, or the surrounding area? I don't really have that great of senses."
"Exhibit A: the place smells like nothing at all, which is a refreshing and very telling turn of events. There's probably some magical fuckery at work here, if it wasn't already apparent, as evidenced by Exhibit B: glass door or window with solid shadows behind it. Definitely either monsters or liquid, coalesced, unadulterated evil in there, I'm sure. Let's check."
Open the door while standing off to the side from it. Click tongue and listen to try and echolocate shit behind that door. If that doesn't work, stare into the abyss and hope to win the contest that ensues.
You touch the door and it disappears like a bubble popping in slow motion.
Echolocation doesn't work that well. You can sense the floor further than you can see it. but that's not saying much. Still, there is something strange about that darkness. It feels sort of solid, kinda like a cloud. Like it is absorbing most of your sound, only reflecting a very small fraction of it. And it seems to be vibrating, slightly.
As for staring, it's just darkness. Not one to give up easily, you keep staring.
After a while, you start making funny faces to see if the darkness will react, but to no avail.
"Well, the least I would have assumed is that there was some dark magic at play here," Zechariah muttered. "Darkstar didn't seem to happy about ending up here, and I doubt that he just took a wrong turn on the inter-universal highway."
Wow, he thought to himself. A joke. Impressive, slight as it may be, for someone who's gloomy all the time.
"So, shadows, you say?" Zechariah echoed. "Let me see if that's the case."
Once Ike opens the door, use my staff to see if I can manipulate the shadows inside. If not, report this to Ike. If so, clear the shadows out of the way and try to see what's beyond this door.
You take a page out of the old testament, take a step into the room, tap the staff on the floor a few times and focus on parting the sea of shadow. It's working, slowly. You're not really sure if the speed is normal, considering shadow should not behave like that. Then again, River did say your powers may work a bit differently here.
The shadow-free corridor extends in front of you, allowing the dim light coming from behind you to reach it. Yet it reveals nothing interesting. Just more grey floor and a dome ceiling. Until...
Ike senses something is wrong a few moments before you do. He tries to warn you but you're a bit too focused on what you're doing to realize what he is saying in time for you to stop.
A moment before it happens, you hear what sounds like the heartbeat of a mouse, loud bass noises one after the other, magnified enough to become deafening. You feel pressure in your ears. You feel the temperature rising. The darkness in front of you becomes grey before the final part of it parts and you can see what lies beyond it clearly.
For a tiny fraction of a second, you see a point of infinite, pure darkness, warping light around it so much that you can see very distorted mirror images of yourself looking back at you with a surprised look on their faces. You stop using your ability and begin to turn around, but by then it's too late. There's a flash of light that blinds you and burns your face, accompanied by a bang loud enough to cause your ears to ring.
You let yourself fall backwards, through the door, following the flow of the blast-wave. The darkness quickly fills up the gap you created, returning the room to its previous dark state. A moment later, the door reforms.
You are lying on the ground, in pain and part of your face and clothes has been burnt, but you have sustained no life threatening injuries.
((Since it seems I'm putting irrelevant fragments in everyone's posts, I'd just like to say that I consider you have your wings concealed under your clothes. While someone looking would probably notice a small difference, it shouldn't be something noticeable by casual observation. If you think you would had changed that before leaving the staging area like Irene did, then say so.))
"Well, the least I would have assumed is that there was some dark magic at play here," Zechariah muttered. "Darkstar didn't seem to happy about ending up here, and I doubt that he just took a wrong turn on the inter-universal highway."
Wow, he thought to himself. A joke. Impressive, slight as it may be, for someone who's gloomy all the time.
"What I mean there is, this isn't actually some fixture of the landscape we've found ourselves in. As in, we're not just misdirected by magic. We may very well be standing in magic right now. Place might have materialized around us out of thin air, and the thin air materialized by some other method, you catch my meaning?"
As a side note, what can I smell on Zechariah, exactly?
I could make a joke here, but I won't.
On the bright side, you saw that coming, so you got to cover in time. That means you got a good idea about the centre of the room. Which isn't much. It's just that... hole... distortion... flashing... loud... thing over a pit. Said pit is surrounded by 8 things rising out of the floor that are curled around the strange thing like a dead spider's legs. Unless they aren't bent and that thing is distorting your perception of space even more than you thought.
And those upgrades seem to be working well too. You still feel a bit of pain, but not nearly as much as you think Zechariah is feeling right now, judging from his reaction. Superb! ... if it wasn't for your teammate lying on the floor there, looking more and more like Two-Face.
He smells the standard human male smell but his own. I can't explain it very well, I think most human languages don't tend to have many words that can be used to describe smell. Probably because most of us don't have a good sense of smell.
He smells like human, but his unique blend of human. Much like how all beers are alike yet different.
Other than that, not much. Wood from his staff, bit of clothes, bit of sweat, bit of blood, bit of burnt flesh and hair. A few other smells he carried over from the staging area that are slowly fading, like trampled plants and dirt.
I'm not really sure about his wings. I think they should probably smell something different. Even though they are partly magical, they should have some biological components, so that should make his smell even more unique and easy to recognize. But I have even less capacity of describing how that should smell.
Map:
http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/ac165/parisbre56/map2_zps162ab27b.pngRiver (NPC) ->
BlackTheri (Tiruin) ->
TurquoiseIrene (Lenglon) ->
OrangeZechariah (DarkArtemisFowl) ->
Light turquoiseIke (Harry Baldman) ->
PinkAlan (Xantalos) ->
RedNikolai (NAV) ->
Green
Poll
15 (42.9%)
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Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1141475 times)