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.
"Mon Dieu, as if having any reason not to be *ahem* ...slightly tensed within this creepy house isn't enough!" Napoleon grumbled in annoyance. Unsheathing the sword, Napoleon slowly crept toward the stairs leading to the floor above. Not sure whether the scream was a response to him stealing the sword, Napoleon thought better of it and unsheathed the sword. Hiding the sword inside his clothes, Napoleon strained his ears as he ascended the steps. He'd seen scenes like this play out in horror movies. First the teenager who looks suspiciously like a grown up is attracted by screaming and once he arrives at the scene, he is confronted by either a dead body or a room that is splattered with so much blood that there is no way in hell it could've come from a single person. At worse, the duped teenager/grown up could be wandering into the clutches of the waiting killer.
Of course, such a coward is no match for the unrivaled intellect and combat prowess of the Doll Prince himself! Hah, the murderer would be begging the French wonder doll not to turn him into the murdered! With this Napoleon assured himself as he carried himself majestically up the stairs, even as his rapid breathing fluttered through clenched teeth.
Try not to stain one's underclothes while attempting to determine the reason and location of the scream.
You start climbing the stairs, but when you reach the top you notice that some of the lamps further from the stairs have been extinguished, making the corridor quite dark. You're about to get some of your dolls to bring you some candles from downstairs when you hear something moving about 10 meters in front of you, like stone being dragged on glass. You think you hear someone crying, sometimes whimpering something you can't make out.
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.
Ugh, this is not my day.
Walk over to the intercom, activate it, and say "I'm awake. Who are you, why am I here, and what do you want?"
You go to the intercom, push the button with your body and speak into the microphone. There's no reply. You try looking through the one-way mirror but you can't make out anything in the other room, you can't know whether or not there's anyone in there.
You're about to try repeating your message when you hear something on the other side of the door, like something is being dragged against it. A few seconds later the electronic device next to the door beeps and blinks green. You see the door handle being twisted experimentally, someone testing if the door has unlocked.
Well, that's no good.
<<Zero, can you hear me out here?>>
((If no, then this question is directed at Icarus instead.>>
<<Summoning hurts and is making my interface beep. Any ideas?>>
Let's get moving.
Find/stick with the team. Get close to the turret and start sensing around for a way to disable it.
<<Zero, can you hear me out here?>>: Affirmative. : comes the reply from your interface, piped through your visor's speakers.
<<Summoning hurts and is making my interface beep. Any ideas?>>: Potentially harmful interference detected. This unit recommends corrective actions. Additional information available upon request. :You sense the segmented area around the turret. Though it's shielded against your senses like most things around here, it feels like it's supposed to move in order to cover the turret or the hole if the turret is not there. If you got it to close in the 'turret is not there' configuration, you're pretty sure you could crush the turret, damage it or at least stop it from moving. Though your limited telekinesis is not enough to directly move the pieces around, you could find another way to move them. Maybe you could use raw power to break through the shielding or maybe you could find an unshielded control panel you could access.
Of course, you could always go for a more direct plan of attack, like stabbing the thing with your spear. Or, hell, this thing is probably filled with explosives, if you got lucky you might be able to just use your ability to detonate any torpedoes it has inside.
Kosak Durar:
Right, start fisting the tubes.
[insert eybrow wiggle gif here]
You jump down towards the bottom of the bowl, aiming for a cluster of tubes. Your rather enthusiastic attempts at fisting the giant tubes goes poorly however as you completely misstimed your jump and ended up jumping just as the cluster rearranged itself. A great metal tube whacks you hard and sends you flying into the wall of the bowl. The strike hurts like hell and knocks the wind out of you but leaves you without any serious damage (though you're pretty certain your entire body is going to be one giant painful bruise in a few minutes).
The flow at the walls of the bowl isn't quite as strong (at least not on the side you're on as there are quite a few vortices formed in the flow-shadow of the turret) so you easily manage to reattach yourself to the wall, hidden in a small nook where you are not in danger of being whacked by the tubes again. As you lay there, trying to catch your breath, you notice that there's a great door at the bottom of the turret sphere. You can't see it clearly due to the speed the turret is moving but you can make out its general shape. Probably meant to be used to resupply the turret.
Walking Tank, Spess Mission
Back to the shield. Protect the team.
You provide a convenient movable wall for your teammates to hide behind.
Brian Hoss, The Maximus's hull
Follow Saevus. Move one of my eyes to get a top down view on the turret.
You hide behind the helpful medieval Terminator and position one of your 'eyes' above the turret. From here you can make out the shockwaves created every time a torpedo is launched, though there's not a hint of the light coming from your visors to be seen. Those things on its top that look like cat-ears must be clusters of sensors, you think you see part of them have the silhouette of TV antennas and you can see parts that are round and reflective like lenses, reflecting the light of distant explosions.
WMD, Lost in Space Mission
"You're still here? I was starting to think you jumped ship somehow when I lost those anchors. Did you want something? Or are you just here to sustain yourself on my despair at a seemingly hopeless situation? Or were you going to offer help? If I die out here, you do too I'm guessing. If I can't come back, you probably can't either."
Talking with the demon. If it tries anything to harm me, beat it into submission with my Willpower.
Can't stop me
Can't leave me
Can't go back without meYou feel the pressure of a foreign influence against your mind. Not the demon. Something else. You fight back against it and it disappears. The lights on your visor flicker back to life.
Only two choices
Give up or
Give in to meYour surroundings have changed completely in this past minute of darkness. You are now in a great trench or maybe a corridor with a very high ceiling, you can't even see where the metal walls end. You're pretty sure your boots are still firmly attached to the same piece of metal they were attached to previously, though this doesn't make any sense because the floor is tiled here, whereas it was smooth before and you can see pipes and support beams in the walls.
HeheheYeah, laugh at your expense and/or feed on your despair sounds about right.
Tsar the little vial of medicine before having a sip.
"That should help a bit. Pass it around."
You enlarge the vial before trying to take a sip of the now-bubbling liquid. The woman in violet takes it away from your mouth with a worried look at first but then reconsiders.
"If you want to experiment on yourself with Chaos alchemy for Science!, who am I to say no?" she says with a smile as she hands the enlarged vial back to you.
You take a sip. You can feel the bubbling liquid, tingling your insides all the way to your gut. It makes you feel better almost immediately and you notice it slows down your bleeding. It also makes you feel slightly drunk. You're given a crutch and sent on your way to the makeshift infirmary.
Campaign, Ike!
Nod approvingly at the Headwater, this guy is fucking metal.
At some point do ask if he needs us to do anything else and if we (just maybe) get a reward for our excellent work or some other kind of assistance. If not, that's still cool, but if we do that's basically cool too.
Ask the Headwater about that bondformer thing we're looking for again, maybe recent events have rung some bells or at least persuaded him to let us take a look at the more secret archives and what have you.
Metal or mental?
Anyway, it's later that day, close to the evening. You (and anyone else from your group who wants to) are in a private meeting with the Headwater. The Headwater is confident he can give you his full support. Not 'full' in the sense of 'everything he's got' because he still needs to send people in other places and keep some here to defend the temple, but he can spare a lot more manpower and resources to aid you now that his faction has almost complete control of the council. He promises to supply your group and your little army with several potions and a few Water mages. He also says that he is willing to provide some magic items to you or even have his mages create a custom potion or enchantment for you.
He says he doesn't know anything about the bond-former you're hunting though he has retrieved several documents on the subject and is willing to answer any specific questions you have.
...
Show highwater the smudged paper and crude pendant in case they mean anything.
Get that invisibility mist artifact thing. Also ask Headwater if he would consider parting with any more of the artifacts because of all the help we've been.
He has no idea what the pendant is. He says it might be something evil, a part of some dark magic ritual. He suggests that you leave it with him so that he may look into it and keep it safe.
He says the paper looks like a half-finished and quite crude magic scroll. It has no value and could in fact be dangerous. He says that you should give it to him so that he may get rid of it safely.
See Ike's part. You get your mist thing and can ask for more.
Poll
15 (42.9%)
Author
Topic: Special People: Mechanical Syndrome (Read 1145000 times)