Campaign
Irine, Campaign
I recollect my flames then split them into three orbs, the first one I send through the portal and attempt to maintain control of it as it passes through and afterwards, aiming for the wooden door and creatures on the other side to provide me with some more fuel. the second, if the first is successful, goes through right afterwards, if it is not, then I recombine both orbs and try to have them pass through at the same time as I do. if I can control flame through the portal, then the last orb comes through behind us, being used to prevent pursuit and assist stragglers.
You start moving the orb towards the portal but River has an objection to that.
"Wait."You manage to stop it in time, only a small part of it touching the portal.
The portal pulses, rapidly expanding and then immediately contracting several times per second, taking a small chunk of your orb with it every time it returns to its previous size, the image visible in it distorting as it does so. It stops doing that the moment you stop pushing the sphere against it.
"Portal... unstable. Fire control... hard... through it." he adds, sounding very tired and out of breath.
You assume that means that it's best to bring one big orb with you as you cross.
Although that unstable bit sounds troubling. And the part of your orb that was swallowed up by the portal still hasn't appeared on the other side.
Hmmm. Well, you can't do anything else except go through the portal right now, so there's probably no use worrying.
Campaign, Ike!
"This is probably a very poor idea!"
There's doors that respond to touch and behave like funny glass bubbles. Behind the one to the left is what can best be described as a dark spider singularity. It seems to mean us harm, which is further evidence of its spidery nature. It has already given Jesus a fire and shockwave-based makeover. Also, the shadows vibrate and absorb sound at the same time.
Jesus smells okay, in other news.
River increasingly reminds me of Ted.
Yellow land octopuses are apparently present and possibly quite dangerous!
Update: yellow land octopuses aren't so bad when you stab them in the center of mass repeatedly and firmly!
The room on the right has a set of four large eggs, surrounded by eight sizable benches and eight not-so-large eggs.
Clearly whoever built this place has a strange fascination with the number four, or multiples of four. This either completely rules out or utterly confirms the involvement of the Nipponese.
I am starting to get slight flashbacks to the start of the previous mission!
Yellow land octopuses can become invisible! Or maybe there's a breed or species of invisible land octopus! May require some breeding to get a clearer picture of their relation. Still yellow on the inside, though! In addition, they appear capable of making mortal mindslaves without any trouble at all.
In addition, people live here. Or humanoids, at least. They seem to have been subjugated by the yellow land octopuses, or octopodes. One's a nice red and purple lady, and the other one's dead as a doorknob.
Also:Well, the creatures' anatomy is the same. Just a small central part filled with organs with a large number of very thin and long but surprisingly strong tentacles sprouting out of it.
Slicing a tentacle in half, I discover that they lack muscles, which kinda begs the question of how they managed to move them in the first place. Instead, they are composed of four tubes (two large and two small) arrayed around a central part that feels and looks like very flexible cartilage. Around those tubes are very small, almost invisible clusters of black things, (some sort of organ, probably) that correspond with very small dimples on the outside. Maybe they emit something from there? Or maybe it's some sort of sensory organ? Or maybe it's used for camouflage? Or communication? Who knows. The area between the tubes and the skin of the creature feels very mushy and soft, breaking apart easily.
With careful observation, you notice that when the tendril twists, a large number of very small spikes are pushed out of its skin on the inside of the curve. You can't discern whether this is meant to inject something like microneedles or if it is just a means to grapple things and achieve better friction.
A quick inspection of the place the creature wrapped its tendrils around my arm reveals very tiny yellow needle-like things stuck in my skin, although none of them have managed to penetrate it.
An inspection of Nikolai reveals something similar. The fact that his skin has become more red around that area and has started to bruise prevented me from noticing it with casual observation, but he appears to have very tiny holes around the places the creature wrapped its tentacles around him, some of them bleeding slightly. Hopefully he won't start turning into any sort of octoman.
After that, I move to the central part of the creature. A thing of note is that it lacks any sort of visible mouth, eyes, nose, means of excretion or any of the other things I'd expect the central part of a creature to possess.
A large section of the central part of the creature is composed of two sacks, one larger, containing that yellow goo (or white with a whitish tint in the case of the later ones) and the other containing a black substance. Each of them is connected to the tubes that compose the greater part of the creature's tendrils, the black with the smaller ones and the brighter one with the larger one. The rest of their insides are filled with organs, although I can't tell exactly what they do. They have some connections between them, but they don't reveal much. Curiously, while I can identify many organs connected to the bright tubes, none of them are (visibly) connected to the dark ones.
Their insides don't smell so good, especially the ones of the creatures I encountered earlier. Smell like rotten and oil. Now that I think about it, the earlier creatures looked far worse than the later ones. The later ones were more of a whitish yellow than pure yellow, they were slightly larger and their internal organs were in much better shape.
Gee whiz!
In addition, I think Darkstar just sucked out a woman's life force with a straw? Or maybe cracked her like a giant egg from the sound of it.
Smells registered in the wastes outside that wacky teleporter building - copper most prominently, as well as hints of ashes, dust, ozone, basalt, sulphur and the inimitable musk of the yellow land octopus. Lily-livered fellow travelers seem very affected by it.
Proceed! Let us go Beyond the Dark Portal. Focus on dodging once on the other side.
Zog zog.
Campaign, The Twoface of Luck
Well, if I'm going to an alternate dimension I should look good.
Give myself a few spritzes of hairspray, then charge mah lazor step through.
Looking cool Mr. Alan.
Through the portal.
You take a deep breath and run through the portal.
Wonder what would happen if you went under the portal. Or fell in it like Flynn in the MCP.
Good thing that magic seems to take care of all those little things. Imagine what would happen if the portal was actually somewhere very high or under the ground. Or not anchored to the ground, moving around freely.
Campaign
"Move through! I'll keep my shields with us!"
Move through the portal, keeping the shields around the group as best as I can. Once I am through, rearrange the shields to face 210 degrees to my front and sides.
Beam me up, Scotty.
EveryoneGoing through the portal is like... nothing much. No psychedelic light-shows, no dark tunnels through spacetime filled with eldritch horrors. You take another step forward, there's a very bright light and then you're shoved to other side, falling face first on the stone floor. That's it.
It is, however, for some reason, very disorienting for half the team. While River, Ike and Irene don't look like they felt anything other than mild discomfort, the rest feel very much like someone shook them around and then gave them something nasty to eat, like they must throw up.
Irene manages to catch almost all of the fire that went through with her and reassemble it into orbs before it dissipates. Overall, she didn't loose more than a quarter of her fire.
Zechariah manages to maintain most of his light shields, although he looses about a third in the transfer and the disorientation that follows. He does his best to rearrange them in a defensive formation.
You get up and prepare for combat, but even though the room is full of those creatures and their slaves, most of them seem to be ignoring you for now. A couple of them turn to face you, but they don't move towards you yet. Looks like you have a moment of respite.
Then again, there were a lot of those creatures following you. They could enter the portal soon. And if they remember you, then they probably won't be very happy to bump into you as they exit. Not to mention that one of the creatures in this room might take interest in you. So staying here for too long while the portal remains operational might not be a very good idea.
The other side of the portal is mostly like the images you saw through it, a large rectangular room. The air is much better here, although it is very hot and humid, almost unbearably so, a jarring transition from the cold windy world you were previously.
The floor is made out of large red and light brown stone blocks, with the occasional black block among them ((the black squares in the map)).
The walls are made out of blocks of various shades of brown rock that form simple patterns.
The ceiling is very high and made out of the same material as the walls. It has some simple circles and lines engraved in it that have been encrusted with metal, mostly gold. They look kinda like constellations, not random but also not very clear about what they depict.
The portal stands close to the centre of the room but it looks a bit different on this side. It is surrounded by red and purple fire and the images seen through it look less clear.
The ethereal ghostly fire surrounding it is supplied by three claw-like things surrounding the portal. Two of them are red while the other is larger, taller and purple. They curve more and more as they get higher, their tips almost touching each other above the portal. They look like they are made of stone, but they are glowing with an internal light, appearing transparent. The light they emit is strong enough to pass through some of the many dozens of parasites wrapped around each of them, giving you a shadowy image of their internal organs. They appear to be unharmed by this though, so you'd guess the light is at least partly magical in nature.
There are some boxes on the south-west side of the room, along with some sacks and barrels. Based on a broken barrel revealing water inside, they probably contain supplies.
There are many alcoves on the walls, many of them higher than ground level. Almost all of them have at least one of those octopuses in them. The ones that don't have one reveal dark red stone slabs resting inside them, probably what the octopuses are interested in. The slabs the octopuses are wrapped around are glowing slightly.
The single exit to this room is towards the south, a large wooden door with metal bands and nails holding the boards it is made out of together.
There is blood on the ground, both human and octopus. There are scorch marks on the floor and walls. Even the slaves are not in the best of condition, as some of them are missing a limb or have their robes burnt or stabbed through. Strangely, despite these obvious signs of combat, there aren't any dead bodies around, octopus or human.
Most of the lighting in the room comes from the portal and the spikes around it, but much of it comes through a hole in the northeastern wall that looks the result of an explosion. The floor has started collapsing near it, the blocks forming it becoming loose. Through it, you can see red sky, the kind of sky you'd get in a polluted city during sundown. There are black and white clouds of smoke in the sky, as if there is a great fire nearby.
Further down, you can see rocky mountains in the distance and a road that crosses the barren terrain and leads to the walls of a city. The city your structure is in, you guess. From the looks of it, wherever you are, you must be pretty high. You can't see the entire city from your current position inside the room, but the parts of it you can see aren't looking good. There are a few fires burning in the city, but that is probably not a very big problem, since most of the buildings are made of stone and it doesn't look there are many flammable things near them.
The biggest problem is another type of creature, one that you haven't seen before. They look like big wrinkled sacks that float above the city, long appendages hanging behind them like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Every once in a while, they suddenly change their altitude, swooping down. When they rise up again, they almost always hold something moving held by at least one of their tentacles. Something living. Something that is brought closer to their central sack and disappears under it, not there when the tentacle is extended again. There are only a couple of them (that you can see from here), but they don't look like they'll be stopping any time soon.
"The magic... Power... Complexity..." River says with faint joy in his voice as he scans the room and you, his eyes doing that thing where they turn black again.
"Interesting."He keeps one hand over the wound in his arm, applying pressure. In the brighter light of this room, you can see that he is bleeding moderately, the blood soaking his dark brown coat.
He looks at the hole in the wall and narrows his eyes.
"Worse... than I thought. The city... is falling... from the flow." His eyes return to normal again.
"I will... not lead... for now. Need time."
"No traps... I can see. Only parasites. Watch corners." he adds a second later.
Map:
http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/ac165/parisbre56/map_zps5c6eddbe.pngRiver (NPC) ->
BlackTheri (Tiruin) ->
TurquoiseIrene (Lenglon) ->
OrangeZechariah (DarkArtemisFowl) ->
Light turquoiseIke (Harry Baldman) ->
PinkAlan (Xantalos) ->
RedNikolai (NAV) ->
GreenSwordsman slaveUnarmed man/woman slaveParasite
Staging Area
"Thank you. My name is a relic of bygone ages of my culture, that I could only find through extensive research. By which I mean that I slammed my assistants face against a keyboard for a few minutes. Or was it one of the funny sounds he made while I was mashing his face against the keyboard? I can't remember. I can't remember what my name before that was either, except it was quite funny when I suddenly stopped responding to my old name. Took about a month for the residents of the city to figure out what my new name was. And also provided an excellent excuse to ignore them when I accidentally disabled the main repulsor-engine. Which I did fix and improve within 5 minutes, but they only remember the bit about the city falling half a kilometer. Anyway, the point is that all of the best history is written by mashing keyboards with other people's bodies for no apparent reason.
Not that I have that out of the way, do you mind telling me your name?"
Sit down
A short, amused laugh comes through the squawk-box as you recount the story of your name.
"Hahaha. Yeah, yeah, I agree."
"Good. You look like you could be fun."You sit on one of the armchairs.
"Anyway, about my name. Mysterious, rich, powerful man with many connections, talking through a box, his face never seen. Likes working indirectly through people he employs. Three armchairs. Trusts almost nobody. Did you guess it yet?"The symbol on the screen disappears, a waist down picture of the back of a middle aged man in an expensive suit taking its place. He is holding a cigar in one hand and is being embraced by three attractive women.
"Isn't it obvious? I'm Charlie."There are a few seconds of silence and then the noise of papers being shuffled again.
"Wait, where are you from? I didn't check. Earth right?"
"Because if you aren't from the right place or if you're from the wrong time period then this probably won't make much sense to you."
OOCI'm leaving for France tomorrow. I'll have internet access so I'll probably be able to post a turn, but just in case I am not, that's probably why. I'll definitely do some dialogue or minor actions though, if you have any.
EDIT: Okay, there are definitely words being eaten here, either by the forum or by Firefox, but I don't know why. Sorry if there are any mistakes because of it. I read through the post and tried to fix it, but there might be some that I missed.
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15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1141513 times)