Staging Area
((I'll start the briefing so that you have time to process it. Assume that everyone who's interested is there to hear it. If you also want to continue what you were doing before, then just this once you can be at two places in space and time at once.))
"All right then. Let's begin."Charlie strikes the surface of the water in the fountain, sending water flying. It never falls. Instead, it keeps floating in mid air. He reaches out and begins shaping the floating water droplets, weaving them into a framework of tiny streams supporting larger droplets of various shapes and sizes.
"This... is... the Sage Cluster. Or at least the parts of it that we have mapped. " he begins explaining as he puts the finishing touches on his work, drawing streams going towards the edges of the grid.
"It is an area of shattered inter-dimensional space, of loosely interconnected worlds of various sizes. A world of worlds."He turns around to face you, the roughly eggplant-shaped structure still floating behind him.
"It basically means that each of those droplets is a universe. A place that could be from a bit smaller than a standard Earth world to a few hundred light-years across. Each with their own shape, each with their own quirk. And those tiny strands connect those nearby mini-universes together."He begins throwing tiny orbs of shadowfire at the grid, some of them getting captured inside droplets and filling them with swirling smoke, others bursting into a tiny flickering blue flame floating in the centre of the droplet.
"The Light and the Dark both independently chanced upon universes of the cluster. Naturally they began claiming those worlds. And by the time those claims made it to the Library and someone figured out what they meant, well, nobody was willing to step back.""We had no desire for conflict. So we came to an agreement instead. We would cooperate." Stellar says, moving her luminous form closer to the fountain.
"The Sage Cluster was important, not so much for its resources or its location but for what it meant. The unknown. Its potential for new knowledge, new possibilities.""So we agreed with the Light's proposal: this group of universes would be owned by nobody. Both the Light and the Dark would be able to peacefully research it and benefit from it. Or that was the idea."He turns around to face the fountain but continues talking.
"Those that had already claimed sectors.... would retain them. But all other sectors... would be explored and settled by joint operations." Charlie says, now drawing more water from the fountain and using it to form a much larger, somewhat spherical body of water.
"This... was one such world. Lonely Sandbox." he declares while drawing a line of shadow-cloud from the sphere to on of the smaller droplets in the structure behind him.
"An outwards unremarkable universe a couple of light days in size."He picks up a bit of dirt and gravel and tosses them into the sphere.
"These were some of the larger rocks in the sector."They don't slow down, they keep moving, approaching the 'walls' of the sphere, skimming them and then getting propelled back into the sphere on another trajectory depending on how the wall is deformed at the time.
"Not terribly interesting, just chunks of inanimate matter of various compositions. What was interesting though..."He starts drawing blue flame from within his shadows and pouring it into the water.
"Was that its centre... had this... This is the anomaly. We called it Aimless Hurricane."The fire gathers into its centre and then starts spreading out with thin tendrils, an organic shape like the roots of a tree or the synapses of a neuron, expanding outwards beyond the surface of the water blob.
"A great bundle of aberrant energy with no immediately apparent origin, influencing all sectors around it."Indeed it does. You can see flickering blue light spreading through the streams and into other droplets.
"While we had encountered sentient beings in the Cluster before, this was the first concrete sign of something more being there. The direct influence of some sort of Outsider, some being that could be responsible for the... influences we were seeing in the cluster. The one responsible for the 'machinery' ticking inside it. There was no doubt we needed to study it. We needed to know what we were dealing with. There could be a way to understand more about whatever being resided there and how to best approach it. If it was intelligent, we could come to an understanding.""Or we could find a weakness to exploit, we could know our enemy and how easy it would be to subvert them and keep taking their worlds."Stellar makes a motion with her hand and a yellowish dot appears in the blob, like a tiny star.
"That is why about four months ago we established the research station Barbaric Donut in the outer layers of the sector.""Unfortunately, while we had some of our most advanced non-invasive sensors on it, we received no useful information. Passive observation from a distance just wasn't cutting it. The Anomaly was a tougher nut to crack than we originally anticipated. So I decided that a more invasive procedure was necessary."He materializes draws a shape that looks much like a hamerhead shark. A relatively flat front, with one side being slightly larger than the other, a great body with three triangular fin-like sections protruding out of it and a great array of bulbous attachments on its 'tail'.
"This is the Research Vessel Latte Maximus. The size of a small city, it was jointly designed and built for the purpose of exploring the Sage Cluster. It is built to strike a balance between high tech, resilience and stealth, between automation, self-sufficiency and redundancy. As such, it does not carry our most advanced technology and while it can theoretically operate without a crew it carried two hundred beings, most independently recruited with a few members of the Light and the Dark to accompany them."He materializes a small orb of orange fire next to the station. It starts moving towards the larger fire at the centre of the water blob.
"At T minus 52 hours Latte Maximus departed from Barbaric Donut with the objective of performing high energy tests on the Anomaly."The orb of fire reaches the anomaly and sticks on it, following its flowing movements.
"At T minus 20 hours it reached the anomaly and at T minus 15 hours it breached the outer layer and started analyzing the field so it could venture deeper without disturbing it. "The small flickering orange flame moves deeper into the blue and disappears.
"At T minus 5 minutes and 29 seconds it had completed its analysis and begun its descent. At T minus 1 minute and 16 seconds we lost contact with the Latte Maximus. And then..."He materializes a blunderbuss (that looks more like a hand-held cannon) and shoots the water-blob in one swift motion. It and several others around it explode in magnificent slow-motion, spraying water everywhere, while the entire structure begins wobbling dangerously.
"This is the Sage Cluster at T zero.""This is your brain on drugs.""At T plus 7 seconds the monitors sent out an APB. First responders battlecruiser Fist Biter and goliath transport Rainbow Lama each independently attempted to jump in Lonely Sandbox at T plus 1 minute 24 and 1 minute 35 respectively. They both failed to find a stable materialization point and aborted. After several unsuccessful attempts, they instead made their way to nearby sectors and attempted to find a strand leading into Lonely Sandbox. At around T plus 15 minutes they reported total reality collapse in the strands leading to the target sector and its surroundings and aborted their mission. They were unable to proceed and were instead ordered to remain in place and continue taking readings. Flagship 523.02 and the Solar Flare Wave Rider were ordered to begin preparing to force their way into what's left of the sector. They have the equipment and energy output necessary to maintain three dimensional reality for a while, hopefully long enough to gather any useful intel-""Or any survivors-""Yes, or that." he concedes with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"But then, at around T plus 27 minutes, we received a signal from the Latte Maximus' automated distress beacon. And it came from right here." he says, pointing at one of the water drops at the edge of the structure.
"A sector on the edge of explored space, one we have scanned remotely but had no concrete information on. The automated mapping software responsible for its discover had named it Deserted Haystack.""It is now nearing T plus 30 minutes since the event. We're still no closer to finding out what happened in there. We're receiving no other signals from the area, there is no response from the ship or its crew. That is why we are sending you. Your objective is to investigate the sector, retrieve any useful intel and if possible repair the ship and get it back into entity controlled space. We won't be monitoring the mission directly so if one of you dies and you can't revive them on site, you'll have to retrieve their interface so they can be revived later. Otherwise, their death is permanent.""There were two low level Guardians aboard the vessel. One a representative of the Light, the other of the Dark. If they're still active, they could help you repair the ship and figure out what happened. Even if they've been rendered inactive, their systems could still hold important data, so retrieve them if you can. Most likely location is their individual quarters." he says pointing at either side of the ship's 'head'.
"Other than that, most likely places to hold intel is the primary bridge" he points at the front of the ship
"the AI core and primary databanks" he points at a bit forward from the ship's centre
"the external labs" he points at two of the 'fins'
"and the sensor and communication array." he points at the third fin on the top of the vessel, which you can see has an antenna protruding from it, making the ship look kinda like a remote controlled toy.
"We're hoping that it's a simple matter of reactor shutdown. We'll be giving you a Seed that can restart one of the vessel's Pulse Reactors. With that on-line, the ship's on board fabrication facilities should be able to produce most of what you need to get the ship in working order. You also have John to help with repairs, but since this is an unexplored universe I have no idea how his abilities may be affected and how many resources he would be able to summon. He might be better off modifying what's already there. Same goes for the rest of you, don't trust your abilities to work as they should until you've tested them.""We won't be porting you in. You'll be traveling with a low-power mid-tech vessel that will navigate through the strands connecting those worlds in order to reduce the chances of you attracting unwanted attention. ETA is T+45 minutes to T+1 hour, so whatever happened it will hopefully not be too late. This is a high risk voluntary mission, so you'll all be getting good pay. 3 points for participation, more team points for objective completion plus individual performance bonuses.""But you will not have to face the dangers of this challenge alone.""Yes, unfortunately, the others voted that you might need a little help in this mission. So if the mission proceeds, you the players can choose one of us, a member of the Light or the Dark to accompany you. I suggest that you choose to proceed alone. If there is something wrong there, an Avatar might attract too much unwanted attention. Plus...""I'm going to be frank here."<I thought you were Charlie.><Sshhh.><Oh, right, sorry.>"The only reason I want you for this mission is because you are strong while also being expendable. You also don't have that much of a stake in this. Your entities are from multiple groups, you won't be accused of hiding evidence or doing things to favour this group or that or other kinds of foul play. Sending an Avatar there would defeat the whole 'expendable & trustworthy' bit. But, a vote is a vote and I will respect the outcome whatever it is.""So, to sum up, if we're lucky, the crew just did something wrong without realising it and accidentally the whole anomaly. You'll just retrieve the data, reactivate the ship and get out of there.""If you're not, however... you could unknowingly find yourselves leading a charge straight into the opening salvo of an inter dimensional war with something that does that to worlds." she warns you, pointing at the still exploding mass of water.
"So be careful.""So." he says, clapping his hands loudly for emphasis.
"That was the briefing. Entities, cast your vote when ready."((Vote to say if you want your character to go to the mission or not. In story, this is the entities voting for their players so if you think that this is not the kind of thing your character would do but you want to do it anyway, just say your entity volunteered you to do it. If we don't get enough players for this mission we'll continue as normal,
picking a gametype or a mission. Which is why I wanted to get this briefing out there.))
"Right, then, naptime."
Deactivate it.
Now let's try a rifle. Let's say... a nice energy rifle, military grade. How fast is it summoning now? How fast would it take to copy?
You cut the bot's power and it shuts down with a sad *bwoop*.
You summon a nice plasma rifle. It has a long barrel with various superconducting magnetic focusing rings. Its main body is circular, holding the synchrotron and the power source, a miniature fusion reactor. It vents part of its reactor content and magnetically accelerates it at high speed. The plasma is contained by the spiral magnetic field the beam itself creates, allowing it to travel a good distance before it dissipates. Even unfocused it could wreak havoc on unarmoured organics and unshielded electronics. Frankly you're not sure how it can work, it would require some very alien physics-breaking materials, but it does. And you are able to arm an army of armoured automatons with it within minutes, so who cares?
Hope the fizzy bottles are going to launch me like a rocket instead of blowing up. If I do get launched in the proper trajectory, use my momentum to try to impale the dragon with a spike and fire it. Otherwise, keep firing at him and use my tentacles to keep him from getting too close while I charge.
You use your anchors to angle your core, hoping to jump right at him. The bottles explode and propel you upwards just as he brings his head down, roaring right at you with a distorted cry. The air in front of him distorts for a moment. And then the snow between his head and where you stood explode into steam and so does the liquid you were expelling. He swings his head upwards, the explosions following you. You can feel their heat. You try to angle away from the attack but you don't have much control while in the air like this. Whatever effect he is using breaks through your flesh and defensive barrier with ease, cutting away a good number of appendages, the flesh melting and dissolving like it was butter.
You don't have time to focus on the damage though, for the next moment you slam into him, driving one of your spikes through his wing. You immediately start firing bolts of energy like there's no tomorrow. You wrap your tentacles around him, trying to keep him from striking at you but he is too damn strong and slippery. Now that his body is no longer superheated he is once again getting covered in ice. He manages to slip his head through your defenses for a moment and take a bite at your core, tearing out something that felt important, the torn flesh spraying multicoloured liquids as it flies away from you. You tumble through the air for a few moments, each of you trying to gain the upper hand, bolts of energy flying through his wing and to the spinning world around you. For a moment the wind cuts off. And then the two of you slam into the ground, making a small crater in the snow. Good thing you landed on him.
Your attack appears to have half-melted the joint of his wing, weakening it enough for the fall to break it off. The lifeless piece of black material is slowly sinking in a puddle of boiling water as it sheds the heat contained within it. But he doesn't seem much worse for wear. He immediately uses his good wing and his tail to twist you around, getting himself on top of you. He seems even more angry than before, if that was even possible. Your body grows brightly for a moment and your lost tentacles begin regrowing. But this time they are not made of flesh and blood but of wood and leaves, sluggishly responding to your commands with creaks and cracks.
The damage done to you has slowed down your charging a bit, but you're still close. Maybe about 20 seconds left. Though you are not sure you're going to survive long enough to use it.
<Svajoklis, Staging area>
Go to the courtyard for the briefing.
Don't suppose the shotgun comes with any special ammo?
((Damn I look away for five minutes days and stuff starts happening))
"Now, why would I do that? What do you think this is, a charity? We don't give out free upgrades. Get your own special ammo. Earn it, steal it, whatever, I don't care."<Or befriend John and ask him to craft you some. And hope they won't explode in your gun.>"Bah. Friendship is for pansies. You earn that special ammo on your own. Like a man! And if you die, you die! Come on you ape, you wanna live forever?"((Sorry for being a bit inactive.))
Slowly peek into the room. Can anyone see me?
You peek into the room. The man in the lab coat is currently standing over another man, restrained on a bed similar to the one you woke up on but with much more restraints, so many it would probably be impossible for him to move. He has been shaved until there is no hair left on his body and has several electrodes attached to his head and other places, wires mingled with IV tubes and respirators. The man in the lab coat is in the process of injecting the restrained man with something. The man in the bed looks at you with pleading eyes for a moment before he falls unconscious. As his grip on reality fades you can hear the machines' beeping slowing down, becoming less urgent until they stop completely. As they do so, the lights in the room flicker back to life and the ones in the hallway stop flickering altogether.
"All done here. Situation Normal."
: Roger
▓▒░▓▓░▒ ah, proceed with FS and
▒▒░▓▓░▓░▓░▓ down to F2 and report. :
The man turns around to face the door. You hide as quickly as you can.
"Got it, I'll-"
He pauses. You aren't sure but he might have seen you.
Wait whoops, there's gonna be a new mission? Ya lol can I move my char there?
Like I said, you can assume you're there. I'm just getting the briefing out of the way because if you vote against it we'll have to start another mission.
I particularly like Neon Death Road.
((Oh hey a new mission that's cool I'll just-
Why am I on the inactive list? I've only been gone for nearly a year wow that's unexpected.
Erm, I'm still allowed to join in on this mission, right?))
Sure. Just let me remember what you were doing...
Yeah, OK. Assume you were there the whole time. Or maybe you just popped into existence like a wizard's familiar.
Campaign
Private to Theri: <River took their food, not a random animal, and those people wandering about were probably zombies of some kind. finding out where and when those happened could be important.>
No action yet.
You hang out on Theri's shoulder like some sort of fox parrot slash evil advisor.
<But that was this 'morning'. As in, 'in between now and when we met "River" in the church'. Anyway I'll thank them for their politeness and keep San by my side, or ask them to voice their concerns.>
Do so! Alongside asking pertinent questions for both safety and details on "what's going up west"
And also inquire as to the tracks of those 'zombies' Irine suspects in a way that I can {Roll a stat for my word power maybe?}, like "How long ago was it since you saw..." or "Did they leave any tracks?" or "How hard does the wind blow in {that direction/place}"...
Ask the man on their ideas; where will they go? Mention San's goals and where he mentioned--does it have any relation to the man's village? (and give a wave to the other villagers in the background dialogue)
They don't have much to add to the matter beyond what they've already said.
You ask them about the 'zombies' and they say they saw them a couple of days ago, while close to some hills. They're not sure where they went though. They might have been heading south.
They're not sure where they'll go. Probably head towards the south and hope things are better there.
San's village is close to the one they came from. It's how he knows San. He doesn't know much about what San is looking for though. Maybe you'll have better luck when you get there.
Ike steeples his fingers.
"You make a fine offer, good sir, I will take it under careful consideration!"
What's this hex? Is it cast on me? If that's the case, I'm going to need to refuse. If it's an object, however, he can hand it to me in that case.
Then pack it in for the night. Make sure to find and tuck in Alan lest he get too restless.
It's a glass orb with another orb filled with a dark grey substance floating inside it. You should break it when you're inside the room to make sure it affects them and that you have enough time to get the items you need.
Well, trying to find Alan by following his scent leads you to a couple of monks inspecting a ladder on the wall separating the outer section of the monastery from the farms. Uh oh. Depending on how bored he was, this could turn really ugly.
((Continue reading.))
"Well, I'm Alan, I'm here to make friends and jump off that giant waterfall, and because I was doing a running hug! What's your name?"
Begin the friendinization!
She stares at you.
You stare at her.
She makes an angry frown.
You smile.
She keeps frowning.
You smile harder.
She chuckles.
You chuckle back and nod.
She nods back, knowingly.
And then she screams "AAAALEEEERT!" loud enough for birds to fly away scared.
...
A couple of minutes later, you are being thrown out of the Walled Garden by three particularly muscular monks.
"And don't come back."
The two of them slam the door shut and lock it behind them. You look up to see Ike admiring your achievements.
"Throwing you out already?""I've been thrown out of better water parks.""Well, it all worked out in the end. It is naptime.""Aw. But I didn't even get to ride the slides on this one."((Continue reading.))
Zechariah - presumably with Ike's group, according to Alan's will - follows Ike out of the tavern, but stays at a distance when he converses with the shady man.
If he plans to retire for the night, get my rest as well. It's hard work being a living zombie.
((Well, if zombies are by definition dead, then I suppose being a living zombie would take hard work.
))
"But Alan-""Ah!""Ah!""Ah!""Ghost!""Why are we shouting?""He surprised me!""You surprised me!""Don't surprise me like that!""What do you mean? I've been here the whole time.""Indeed you have. And yet somehow your presence is still surprising.""... Anyway. I think it is time to retire for the night.""Yes. Let's."You follow the directions Ike received from the bartender and find the house he suggested to you. It takes a while for the man inside to respond, probably because it's starting to get quite late. Ike talks with the owner for a bit to settle on a price before you are led to a tiny room with a bunk bed. One of you will have to sleep on the floor or share the small bed with someone else. But at least it beats sleeping outside with all the cold, the moisture and the bugs.
You wake up the following morning feeling somewhat refreshed. Or maybe you sleep in. I don't know. You're sleeping in the same room with Alan, so you'll probably wake the same time he does.
Those other clothes in the room are lingerie from the beautiful model I woke up next to and didn't notice until now, eh?
There is nobody else in the room with you. At least you think so. You take a few seconds to climb (it feels like an age) to confirm that there's nobody in the top bunk.
The clothes could belong to a female. Frankly they're so loose they could probably be worn by whoever and still be comfortable. You don't remember having any encounters of the romantic nature last night. Then again, you don't remember much about last night period.
Just in case, better see a cleric within 2d4 hours.
OOC((Hello.))
So, it should be pretty obvious at this point that I've been gone for... well, forever, in human terms. But probably only a few days to a few weeks in game, right? Still, that's quite a long time. By my standards, unacceptable, really, and I've only myself to blame for that. I can't say I wasn't busy, though. I've had a complete two or three changes in my life during that time. I recently moved from one house to another. School has been bearing down on me in preparation for college. I've spent a great deal of time enjoying life with my significant other. Life has been wonderful, but stressful at the same time, leaving little mental capacity for following many pursuits of mine in the past.
But now, I'm back. And I don't really plan to disappear like that anymore. At least, not unless I die suddenly. But I don't plan on that either.
Anyway, I'm horribly out of pace with the story thus far, and I won't make an attempt to make an excuse as for why Zechariah's been in a coma this entire time. I'll just write it up as if he suddenly reappeared normally. Someone else has been very kind and graceful, and has filled me in on the major details. I hope my memory can serve well enough to not be an embarrassment.
This will be my final apology for my absences, as there shall be none of those from now on. Not if I have anything to say about it.
Hey man. It's good to have you back. And it's good to hear things are getting better in your life. It's nice hearing good things happening to good people.
No need to apologize. My ability to post and keep up with the forum hasn't been that great lately either. When things are going well and I find my rhythm I can write quickly but every now and then something happens to either suck my time or my will to write. These last few days have been particularly depressing due to some family stuff.
Anyway, as always, I can't promise I'll have frequent high quality upgrades, but I'll never stop trying to continue telling this story and hopefully giving you some fun in the process. If there's anyway I can help you, please say so. And if you want any more help with mission stuff don't hesitate to ask. I'd be glad to help and, like you said, others would be too.
((!!Welcome Back!!))
Heh. I guess it's appropriate for the player of the firefox to give a welcome that's on fire.
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Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1145638 times)