Campaign, Ike!
Ike walks up to the fellow and stares him down.
"You'd think you would be a bit better at lying in your line of work, buddy boy. I never forget a stench." He inhales for effect. "Pretty heady mix you got there."
"Anyway, you got two options here. Either you try to find those guards your buddy in the main hall told you about and I unfortunately have to cut your head off on the spot, or you come along with me and repeat the conversation you two had to the Headwater and you get to walk away. I wouldn't be entirely unhappy either way, so I leave the decision up to you. You don't strike me as the kind who'd be dumb enough to persist in the face of some long odds, hence why I haven't gutted you already. Always better to make new friends, that's what I always say."
Be entirely ready to remain true to my word and fuck this guy up in six different ways if he tries anything. Or, if he were to see reason, lead him quietly back to the Headwater to blow this conspiracy wide open.
The man looks terrified and trapped in indecision. He doesn't seem to notice that you don't have your sword with you and thus cannot execute your threat. Or maybe he thinks you can make blades out of your armour. Or maybe he's just smart enough to realise you can probably take care of him without any weapons. Or it could be something else.
Whatever the case may be, he finally seems to agree with your proposal.
"O-Ok. I'll come."
He certainly sounds a lot less sure of himself than he did yesterday.
I'm going to need you to be a bit specific here. Let's say the guy is willing to follow your directions (as long as they aren't something too bad or too crazy). What are you doing here exactly? Walking him back into the meeting room with you behind him and leading him to wherever the Headwater is?
"IKE SAID SO!"
Scissors it is! Run with scissors after Ike.
At least you edited it so that you wouldn't Tsar them. That would be an anticlimactic way to die, tripping and getting stabbed by your enlarged scissors. It would have been like something out of a Canadian PSA.
Let's say you make it to the entrance of the meeting room. You'll catch up with Ike next turn, assuming he doesn't start running in the opposite direction.
Maybe something that makes a lot of noise?
It's like he doesn't even know who he's dealing with.
Alan stares off into the distance and giggles faintly. "Yeah, I can do something like that, my bucko. Very much indeedy."
Make sure Brad knows what he's getting himself into.
((Paris, could you PM me the skill tree thing of Alan's? I've lost the PM you sent me originally and I've forgotten which points I've put into what areas.))
Hmm.... Why don't you tell me exactly what you're going to summon? I have an idea.
And sure, I'll send it. I also need to update your upgrades with all the stuff you've gained since the mission started at some point...
Theri let Irine explain the situation as she tried to infer what River was trying to tell them. She was empathic to the situation, as she could readily see the difficulties in the way of communication, and tried to connect the ideas being said.
"More- there is more to where those birds and otherwise came from? That must be a powerful magic source. I'll try to ask questions that can be answered concisely so. . .is this in anyway connected to-" she mentioned the people the refugees she had earlier met described.
Gentle questioning, continue!
Well, River either doesn't know or can't understand much about the political situation in the kingdom at the moment, so those names don't mean anything to him.
"Also do you think we should turn back and go help Ike? I think knowing the general disposition of those people accomplishes our scouting mission. Do you agree Irine?"
River barks in agreement.
((FYI, you're several hours forward in time compared to Ike and the rest. And unless you decide to try sprinting, it will take about a day or a day and a half to make it back there. So when you go back, if nothing happens along the way, I'll probably have to pause time so that you two can catch up and I can prevent paradoxes. I might just speedup the healing of River's mind to at least give you a bit more to talk about.))
Tess, introduction?
Tess was terrified. This was a mistake. A mistake, a mistake, a mistake. After a moment, she taps the car's undercarriage with her left hand, then rises to a crouching and dashes in the opposite direction from the... thing. She's careful not to touch anything with her right hand.
((Do you wanna go to the spaceship mission? Note that it is hard and has a chance of permadeath.))
You push the car with your left hand, helping yourself get up and marking it in the process. The man in the car is quick to follow your lead, speeding away with a screech of tires against the blacktop a few seconds later. He passes by you followed by a gust of wind, disappearing somewhere around the turn at the end of the street. Glancing behind you, you can see that the ones caught behind the creature are not so lucky, as the traffic doesn't allow them to reverse away from the thing. So instead they either get out and start running on foot or merely lock their doors, hide and hope nothing bad happens to them. The thing itself appears to be watching them, though you can't see its expression from here.
There is only one other person around, a woman that quickly joins you in running away. The streets here are narrow and the buildings are tall long things of red brick that lack windows. You hear some thuds behind you but you don't turn around to look, because now you've reached the end of the street and the next moment you tunr right and you're around the corner. There is still that tall building of red brick on your right, but on your left there are several rows of small shops, everything from electronics to paint to clothes and shoes to bakeries. You can see more intersections in the distance, the stores giving way to short stubby residential buildings with balconies full of flowers and plants. The street looks quite normal, all and all. There's signs and fire hydrants and parking meters with old cars next to them and a payphone and a giant cigarette advertisement painted on the side of a building... The only thing wrong about all this is that you can't understand anything, not the things written in the sings, not the license plates, not the numbers above the store entrances, not the things people are saying to each other or shouting.
But as different as the language of those people may be from yours, they are still human so their expressions are not hard to read. It doesn't look like people here are panicking yet. Some of them are looking and pointing at the portal still hanging in the sky (you can't see it from this side of the street, the brick building is in the way) while others are looking at your direction. A few seconds later, you hear a siren in the distance, getting closer.
There's an alley about 5 meters (~16 feet) away, on the other side of the street, where a man who was in the process of throwing out some trash through a fire escape door has paused to look at the portal. Close to the next intersection, about 15 meters (~50 feet) away from you and on the same side of the street as you, there's a man in a brown coat and a fedora, talking into a blue call box. You can feel the car you tagged getting further and further away.
Sounds fun. I like both the ability and the character behind it. Just a couple of question so I can finish the character generation and make the appropriate rolls. Are dolls permanent and completely under your control once summoned or do they require constant effort? I mean, if you overextend yourself or become unconscious they will disappear or become inanimate or start acting on their own? And when you say shape them after creating them, you mean changing them to any other doll-like configuration you want? Does that mean they can be destroyed/desummoned at will or are they permanent unless someone else destroys them?
1. Controlling the dolls do require constant effort, meaning that if Napoleon is taken out or overexerts himself, they will crumble to dust.
2. Concerning the ability to morph the dolls according to what situation is at hand, perhaps I should've said 'mutate' instead. For example, if something needs to be taken from a shelf that he cannot reach. Napoleon would either cause a doll to morph its fingers into claws to scale the walls or to grow wings to fly up to it. Once the doll reaches the object and push it off the shelf, a few more dolls would be waiting at the bottom, already mutating to become softer in order to catch the object without breaking it. However, they are unable to be mutated to gain new powers.
3. They can be desummoned at will.
((Okay, sounds good to me. Final question. Do you want to go to the mission IN SPACE! we are currently starting? Note that it is hard and has a chance of permadeath.))
You wake up. You are sitting on something hard. You open your eyes to see the floor made out of black marble blocks. They have grey and red impurities, forming lines on it. Raising your head, you notice there's a
display case in front of you containing a mannequin in a lavish dress, full of red, purple and gold, fit for a queen.
A queen that wants to project the image of a warrior, you add to your previous thought as you notice the short golden scabbard hanging from her hip. You notice there are other display cases in this room. Behind the display case you notice a window, but it's dark outside, you can barely see what's out there. Even in here the lighting is low. The lamps overhead are all extinguished and only some of the display cases have lamps burning besides them. The lamps create moving humanoid shadows in the walls, making you feel as if you're being watched by things in the dark corners of the room. The marble bench you're sitting on is cold, making your hair stand on end.
{Allrighty then, no sense in wasting a map.}
<Svajoklis, Starting area>
Go find the best seat on the ship and claim it.
As you climb the ramp and cross the threshold of the ship, a relatively thin layer of black spandex-like material replaces your clothes and shoes, covering you from top to bottom like a diver's suit, the only place left exposed being your face, your ears and part of your jaw. You don't see any zippers or even any seams, so you think you're not supposed to remove it. It's quite lightweight and adjusts to your motions, the only hard mechanical parts you can feel being close to the back of your neck and on your temples. There's also your interface on your right hand, but this time it is a real physical object rather than that weightless thing that appears only when you pay attention to it. Still, it's not too heavy, so it will probably not get in the way. You remind yourself that you have to try to keep that thing intact, it's supposed to be what they'll use to revive you if you die.
Though Icarus' ship (the one he calls the Phoenix) is shaped like a fighter jet, it's actually a bit larger than one when you look at it from up close, large enough to be able to transport your group, but not much larger than that. The interior of the ship is rather cramped and spartan, just a single line of chairs with various mechanical bits surrounding them. You notice that some of them end in various tubes, probably meant to be attached to that machine at the back of your neck. At the front of the passenger area is a section where heavy equipment is meant to be secured. It is currently holding a rather large black rectangular cuboid with two handles on its front and back that make it look kinda like a battering ram. Probably the power source you can use to jump-start the target vessel's pulse reactor.
You're not sure which exactly is the best spot on the ship. None of them have anything like TV screens or windows to the outside or seem more comfortable than the rest. The front seat feels a bit less cramped, but that's about it. If movies have taught you anything, then spaceships tend to get cut in half during combat, so being in the middle is probably the worst idea. Being in the back puts you in the quickest escape route but it also means that if something shoots you from behind, you're the most likely to get hit. The front might seem like the best option, since it puts many of the vessel's mechanical parts between you and anything that might shoot at you. But if those parts are made of explodium, then you're the most likely to get a fireball to the face. And if that power source gets detached, then it could fall on you and crush you. Hm... So maybe the best seat is the second from the front? Yeah, probably. You go and sit there. It's surprisingly comfortable.
Staging Area
Get in the ship.
You get in the ship with pretty much the same effects as Svajoklis. You notice that you cannot keep your vortex-'eyes' inside the hull of the ship for more than a millisecond, as if something is repelling them. You can keep them outside the ship though (or inside the passenger area, although you're not certain the others would appreciate that if you didn't position them carefully). You might be able to get them to cross from the inside to the outside or the reverse with some effort.
WMD, Staging Area
Find some good whiskey or moonshine, then go to the ship.
Roger hands you a nice bottle of whiskey.
"Good luck man, stay safe out there. Oh, and try not to blow up everyone? You can permadie if your interfaces are not brought back, so, you know, probably not a very good idea to accidentally the entire party. Hard to recover from a TPK."With those parting words of wisdom and/or warning, you enter the ship. You notice the same things as Svajoklis.
Kosak Durar:
To the ship!
You were somewhat afraid that the chairs would be too big for you, yet they feel surprisingly comfortable, even through your spacesuit.
Staging Area.
Well, only one way to start this right.
"Hey Roger! One more of your ciders for the road? Can't leave out without a nice drink."
One for the road; quick goodbye to Roger and then hit the ship.
Roger hands you a bottle of cider and pats you on the shoulder.
"Have fun machine man. And do try to keep the others alive, if you can. I know it's not always easy. Other than that, Icarus is a good boy, if you treat him well and help him he'll do his best to bring you back alive and well."As you walk towards the ship, Charlie's shadow form emerges out of the ground and starts walking besides you.
"This mission will not be easy. And completing it is important. Don't be shy about giving advice or taking command and giving orders if you have to. Even to Icarus. Especially to Icarus. That thing sometimes acts before it thinks. Being an entity doesn't make you perfect. Well, unless you're me of course..." he says with a laugh as he disappears back into the ground, just as you're about to reach the ramp.
The first thing you notice when you touch the ramp is how it mutes your ability, as if it is resisting your ability to understand it. You can feel its general shape but its inner workings are behind a veil. You could try to force your way through it, but you're not sure if this is such a good idea.
Your spacesuit on the other hand seems to offer no such protection against supernatural influences. However that doesn't make it useless. You can feel the various systems on it. A heat dissipation network, probably meant to keep you from cooking alive or freezing to death. Moisture reclamation and waste processing meant to handle all your body's excretions, from sweat and tears to other things and then feed them back into your body. A network of tubes, wires and barely felt hypodermic needles meant to monitor your vitals and inject you with various substances, probably to counter the effects of zero G. A visor that can extend from your temples with the click of a button, equipped with a radio and an air filtration system, covering your face with an airtight seal. An air recycling system that can extend from your back to attach to your visor to allow you to breathe in vacuum, a good chunk of it taken up by an emergency repressurization charge, probably in case you engage your visor without any breathable air trapped inside it.
Everything seems centered around that part on the back of your neck full of tiny electronics and miniaturized machines. It's not powerful, but it's sturdy, it's lightweight and it's efficient. The only part that's protected from your senses is your interface, now a physical object on your right arm that appears to act as a secondary control point for the suit. Its presence accompanies your spear which is currently on your left arm in its bracelet form. You guess it might be useful to have the Interface connected to the suit, you might be able to control its systems by talking or directing your thoughts to the interface.
((I dunno man, whatever works for you. Would you be happier if you poofed into existence and then disappeared?
It's not that, I THINK I'm going to go in as Logan, as I haven't thought of any better ideas yet, and he was an unusually fleshed out character for being made by me on such short notice.(the "by me" is the main contributing factor there to why it's unusual)
It's just me bringing up how I hadn't even begun playing yet in the first place, so I wouldn't even be dropping out or switching characters if I were to decide to do either of those things.))
Well, we can say your character is in a quantum state of either not existing in the staging area or lying unconscious on one of the chairs of Icarus' ship, same as Coolrune's character, until you definitively decide if you want him or not.
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Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1146011 times)