Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Prophet]

Time to GTFO.
Carting awaaaaayyy!

It's carting time, yo!
+1

...that's if we can, um... switch the switch, or whatever we need to do with it to go forward.

Remember to chech your stomach and swat away any ants that thing might have left behind.

+1

[Avis-Mergulus]

You're still calm - surprising, really. Disregarding the rapidly shrinking stretch of ground between you and the mismatched horde of monsters, you casually reach for the lever and pull it: it resists for a second before moving, but it looks like it was oiled sometime in the last few months. The rails lock into place.

Just as casually, you take your place in the car, grab the crank...and all the terror suddenly comes back. You stifle a scream, then spin the crank like a madman, the muscles in your arms straining with the effort. The car accelerates. You continue spinning the crank without looking back. When you are quite sure the car can go no faster, you check if they're keeping up with you.

They are - a few of them, at least. The terribly tall one is still in the lead, and he is followed by two more. One is creature that seems to consist of two powerful legs with backward-facing knees and a lolling bald head with an imbecilic expression on its face: it's wearing a grey canvas vest, but its legs somehow ended up in the sleeves, ripping them at the seams. As it makes another bound, you see that it has two tiny vestigial feet on its back. The other is a thing that seems to be a naked human torso running low along the ground on several skinny long-fingered hands. No head is evident. Whatever force has twisted those three has apparently left them capable of achieving good speeds.

They don't seem to be losing ground (or they're losing it slowly, if so), and your hands are starting to ache. Quite a bit, actually, especially where your rain-slick hands hold the crank's wooden handle. Your eyes sting, and the wet skin of your face tingles. There's an unpleasant crawling sensation in your scalp, but when you run your hand through your hair, there's nothing there.

The rain doesn't seem to be ceasing.

The railroad is traversing a forest of bushy, dark green firs. The track is lifted slightly off the ground by piled gravel.

Spoiler: Inventory (click to show/hide)

Steel bar (wielded)
Work clothing (worn)
Vereinian Royal Infantry coat (worn) In pockets: hold-out derringer (two shots), ID Coin x2, nail file
Vereinian Royal Infantry boots (worn)
Lighter (almost full)
Knife-blade
Water canister (carried)
Isandan passport
Isandan military registry ticket (lieutenant of reserve)
Siren pattern (on cardboard)

[escaped lurker]

Lets try the siren pattern on them
At least those that have eyes... which is.. two of them? Well, it is worth a shot. Just be ve~ery careful with that thing, lest we look at it by mistake.

Steelbar at the ready
We can't make it much further anyway, at least unless there is a sudden slope. Eh, I won't hope for it. Better to get this done with while we still are able to hold the bar without overworked hands that shake, or worse yet, already cramp. Either way, holding the high ground might give us an advantage, at least on the first few strikes. After that, abandon the cart at will.

[Mr. Strange]

They don't seem to be losing ground (or they're losing it slowly, if so), and your hands are starting to ache. Quite a bit, actually, especially where your rain-slick hands hold the crank's wooden handle.

Acid rain?

Your eyes sting, and the wet skin of your face tingles. There's an unpleasant crawling sensation in your scalp, but when you run your hand through your hair, there's nothing there.

...acid rain.

The rain doesn't seem to be ceasing.

Not good, +1 for desperate attempts to stop them! Cover your face with your coat, then let the cart slow down till they close in to striking distance. Try to swing at them from the moving cart, if possible, then either work on the lever and get some distance between us and rest of them and find a cover from the rain, or abandon cart and hide in the woods.

[Prophet]

Lets try the siren pattern on them
At least those that have eyes... which is.. two of them? Well, it is worth a shot. Just be ve~ery careful with that thing, lest we look at it by mistake.

Steelbar at the ready
We can't make it much further anyway, at least unless there is a sudden slope. Eh, I won't hope for it. Better to get this done with while we still are able to hold the bar without overworked hands that shake, or worse yet, already cramp. Either way, holding the high ground might give us an advantage, at least on the first few strikes. After that, abandon the cart at will.

+1

[Avis-Mergulus]

You slow down a bit, waiting for them to get in range, then tug the cardboard rectangle out of its envelope and hold it in front of you.

Several things happen at once. First, the legs-and-head creature stumbles sideways - not dead, but certainly very dazed and confused. It teeters off the gravel and veers head-first into a fir tree, collapsing under it. Its back-feet twitch spastically. The sight is more revolting than amusing.

The tall one seems transfixed by the pattern, unable to draw its eyes away from it. Its speed increases dramatically - it's almost toppling toward you now. The distance between it and the car vanishes in an instant. You try to sidle away, but too late - it crashes almost on top of you. Reflexively, you cover your head, but the blow doesn't come - it seems that it was already dead when it caught up with you. You slip the the Siren back into your pocket.

Quite timely, because the torso thing has also caught up with you while you were distracted. It leaps on top of the tall one's corpse, and you bring the bar down on it...or at least attempt to, because it intercepts it in mid-air, then takes its own swipe at you with one of its hands, which you evade. You take a kick at it and miss again. Before you can recover your balance, it pushes you down, holding you in place with two more hands.

Now you see that its whole lower surface is occupied by a multitude of mouths - pretty ordinary mouths, human teeth and all. It suddenly sags down on the rest of its hands. You feel a burning pain all over your chest and stomach. It's eating you. It's...

You draw your knee closer to your chest and slam your boot into one set of its teeth. Immediately you feel its hand withdraw from your own...which is still holding the bar. Which you promptly thrust it down its throat. One of them, anyway.

It reels back, and you give it the boot again, then again, then again. The catharsis of this action is almost overwhelming. Another kick, and it half-jumps half-topples off the car, then rolls down the gravel.

Your face is seriously itching like you won't believe now. You cover your head with your coat, then look at your hands. It looks like a mild sunburn right now - the skin on your hands is peeling a bit, but it's not really very gruesome. However, your work shirt is torn, and your torso is covered in bite marks of varying severity - some are just bruises, while in two places whole mouthfuls of skin have been torn away. The amount of blood is worrying rather than panic-inducing, but it's there.

Back in the direction of Meshta, there's an indistinct cloud of mist...or something. You can't really tell.

Spoiler: Inventory (click to show/hide)

Work clothing (worn)
Vereinian Royal Infantry coat (worn) In pockets: hold-out derringer (two shots), ID Coin x2, nail file
Vereinian Royal Infantry boots (worn)
Lighter (almost full)
Knife-blade
Water canister (carried)
Isandan passport
Isandan military registry ticket (lieutenant of reserve)
Siren pattern (on cardboard)

[Aseaheru]

RIDE AWAY BEFORE THAT CLOUD THATS PROBABLY GONNA GO AND KILL US NOTICES US.
IT IS NOT THE GLOW CLOUD, THUS WE DO NOT WANT ITS NOTICE.

[Mr. Strange]

PUMP THAT LEVER LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!

Once we get some speed up try to wash your hands with water from our canister, then wash your face. Once we have enough distance from any following things try to look for a house or any shelter from the rain. These rails ended in rebel-held town, I don't think we want to go there. Unless our alternatives are even worse...

-Government project, made up in a hurry. Suppresses micropattern contamination in the vicinity, so that life seems normal-ish. If the Marked dies, however, it all comes back in force. Whether you can survive that depends on how fast you can turn a set of pedals, but I wouldn't bet my whole salary on it.

In hindsight this seems like an understatement. I like it!

[Prophet]

PUMP THAT LEVER LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!

Once we get some speed up try to wash your hands with water from our canister, then wash your face. Once we have enough distance from any following things try to look for a house or any shelter from the rain. These rails ended in rebel-held town, I don't think we want to go there. Unless our alternatives are even worse...

-Government project, made up in a hurry. Suppresses micropattern contamination in the vicinity, so that life seems normal-ish. If the Marked dies, however, it all comes back in force. Whether you can survive that depends on how fast you can turn a set of pedals, but I wouldn't bet my whole salary on it.

In hindsight this seems like an understatement. I like it!

+1

[Avis-Mergulus]

Huh. Okay, I've been colleging again, couldn't summon the energy to update, and then mein Laptop broke. I'm getting it back from the repair shop tomorrow, though, and I figure I'll update this... If anyone's still here, that is.
Is anyone still here?

[Prophet]

Me! Me! I'm here!

[Avis-Mergulus]

Me! Me! I'm here!

Great! Here we go:

You get the car rolling at max speed again. Catching your breath, you wash your hands and face with water from your canister, then huddle up under your coat. The water has relieved the itching a bit, though the skin of your face still feels a bit raw.

The fog cloud thingy doesn't seem to be expanding - not that you can see, at least. The things are nowhere to be seen: it's likely that you've lost them.

After some ten minutes of coasting along, you spot a...probably it's a train station of sorts, by the side of the rails. There's a small clearing in the ever-present fir trees, with a long two-story wooden building on it. A road about two meters wide leads away into the trees. The building looks to be made of thin weathered planks. It has small small windows - the ones on the first floor are boarded up - and a stout-looking door.

[escaped lurker]

Check it for signs of currently being lived-in, then approach cautiously.

I don't know the chances of anyone, or anything being inside that house, but it can't hurt to be cautious. Though, if we do approach the door, have an escape plan ready, and do the polite thing. As in "knocking".

[Prophet]

Check it for signs of currently being lived-in, then approach cautiously.

I don't know the chances of anyone, or anything being inside that house, but it can't hurt to be cautious. Though, if we do approach the door, have an escape plan ready, and do the polite thing. As in "knocking".

+1

[Aseaheru]

+1