Turn 6Event roll: 3
A comet has appeared. Castle Arrip, being heavily distracted by repairs and defensive fire, doesn't notice it yet.
The Laputa continues to hold position, not due to new commands in engineering, but because it has become under siege by the herd of navy chickens, who had become smarter in secret. They are demanding action, piloting controls, rule over the sky castle, or all of the above. Lesser demands include fancier roosts and more space to graze. An assortment of quickly and arbitrarily-polled Laputae have no idea as to the right response and Baron Andrews has not been heard from ever since the call for diplomats. The diplomats are also under siege by the chickens for sounding moderately important by the way, although its more of a containment than a siege now that its been explained they represent other sky castles, not the baron. Rumors about the baron's vanishment range from the rather dumb (picture of a online message suggesting 'Like, he fell asleep super duper really early after partying like, all night') to clearly over the top conspiracies (scene of a public space with a mad Laputae shouting 'The chickens assassinated him with the eggs! Avoid all poultry and egg-based products!') We'll continue to cover the siege as we hear of it, unless someone shows us more interesting news or Baron Andrews reappears, but for now, back to the weather...
The winds have continued to blow west, and it is still night.
Dr. Coggington continues to grow in architecture, this time with some flat areas probably useful for grazing. Or more steam-based machines and gears.
Castle Zipworld discovers that if you pick up and examine the warp crystal insides off the table from different angles, you get different results entirely. One of these results involves seeing yourself discover you seeing yourself seeing this from this particular angle, and another one hasn't had has involved a time paradox. Placing the crystal back on the table afterwards just goes back to seeing the expected inside of the crystal. Meanwhile, engineering decided to idle on purpose this time, and as a result holds the castle in place (relatively) despite the wind.
Krarkkus, after being fed a sizable amount of mined copper, surges forth on the armor department and gains 5 integrity.
The
Devastator Airship, as usual, is not particularly happy with anyone nearby and shoots at them. The missiles and rockets fly off, but the flamethrowers do little, since if you're high enough to use cloud cover as a defense, you can't really reach the sea with flamethrowers at the same time, if we're even above the sea or not currently. They also manage to evade the nearby evil cloud by flying west to I17.
Heaven's Acropolis' messengers work overtime, needing to coordinate a number of significant actions at once. First of all, all the research equipment is tied down while the evac cars arrive. While most of that is completed, the rest is just stuffed into bags after the cars arrive early. Next, contact is reestablished with Drone A-1 near the edge of one of the purple clouds. Not drone squadron A-1,
Drone A-1. It reports major structural damage and transmits an almost uselessly scrambled report on the event that transpired in the purple cloud due to damage and total loss of all other squad-drones, and requests emergency pickup ASAP before engine failure.
An examination after its retrieval reveals this was the drone furthest back in the formation, and only gained the designation of Drone A-1 by virtue of surviving long enough for its systems to recognize the squadron had been obliterated. Whatever was in the cloud attacked it with what looks like almost random smashing and slashing attacks, no attempt at targeting critical components or even other forms of attack outside of 'crush destroy smash tear', as one of the examiners so eloquently put it.
Meanwhile,
Drone Squadron B, having missed the targeted missiles just barely due to overestimating their speedup time, turn around and ram the gas missiles, sending them northwest.
However, the torpedoes ahead the gas missiles are missed by the squadron entirely as a result. Two of the three torpedoes are shot down by precision laser fire, the last one doing little damage. (4 integrity out of 24 castle battle integrity, to be precise. It was an aerial torpedo.) The auxillary capacitor is engaged to the engines for a moment, and the great flying fortress
whooshes forwards, reaching further than usual even against a solid wind and ending up in G18.
Hive Cruiser Aeros Beta moves south to E13 and spots small objects headed towards it, gaining a point of growth in the process but starting to poke out from under the clouds.
Castle Arrip, in a state of almost-panic, quickly rushes the shield research and immediately begins transmuting metal into rope and maybe doing it more than needed. Rope structure #2 is repaired, Rope structure #3 is rebuilt, and a shield of 5 points is formulated from the rest of the metal reserves. Weaponry is fired in hopes of killing their nemesis and fending off the new, strange foe!
Fluxxstone is intent on a killing blow, and doesn't flee from the Eiral water magery. The Fluxx attacks!
The Hand of God, in a ruinous state (except for the
Armoire of Invincible Gleam, while still has retained its perfect gleam despite being deluged in magical waters for a significant amount of time and not having avoided some broken shelves from impacts), fire off one more salvo of shot and then
flee east as fast as possible, trying to outspeed the demonic bolts of water rushing towards them as Castle Arrip flees with the west wind, which also leads them closer to Fluxxstone. The Queen has a laugh at their choice of direction, remembering the little conversation that wisp of cthonic energy had with her earlier.
---Hit---
Magic Water Cannon Alpha towards Hand of God: 15+6 (21) vs 7+9 (16), Doom!
Magic Water Cannons x5 vs Orbiting Fluxx: 4+3 (7) vs 5+0 (5), hit!
Scourge of the Fluxx x2 vs Rope Structure #3: 8+10 (18) vs 1+6 (7), hit!
Tear Asunder x8 vs Rope Structure #3: 19+7 (26) vs 20+6 (26), draw.
-Tiebreaker: 3 vs 10, Point goes to defense.
Angel Fire Cannons vs Rope Structure #2: 3+15 (18) vs 13+6 (19), miss!
Toxic Spitters vs Rope Structure #2: 2+20 (22) vs 5+6 (11), hit!
---Speed---
MWCA vs Toxic Spitters: 19+4 (23) vs 14+20 (34), Toxin Spitters hit first.
Magic Water Cannons vs Scourge: 14+8 (22) vs 12+10 (22), draw. Magic water cannons hit first because I feel like it due to Arrip's tiny remaining structure. ((speed I'm not so worried about compared to actual hits, I don't think it needs a tiebreaker. Lower health castle shoots first in a tie.))
---Crit---
Toxic Spitters: 18, no crit
MWCA: 13, no crit
Magic Water Cannons: 20, no crit
Scourge: 19, no crit
---Damage---
Toxic Spitters: 6 - 5 shield = 1 damage minus 1/3rd from Rope Structure #2 = 0 damage!
Magic Water Cannon Alpha: 4 damage, which, if you were paying attention at all to the hit rolls, spells Dooooooooom for the Hand of God!
Magic Water Cannons x5: 2,2,4,2,4 = 14 damage minus no specialization reduction (stat is still zero) equals the destruction of the last Orbiting Fluxx, and 3 Integrity damage to Fluxxstone!
Scourge of the Fluxx x2: 5,7 = 12 damage minus 1/3rd from Rope Structure #3 = 8 damage to Rope Structure #3!
Fluxxstone is scoured but not severly injured by the broadside of water bolts, and continues to rip and tear at the rope fortress!
The Hand of God however, is not so successful. The toxic blast barely makes it through the hastily formed shielding before doing negligible damage, the main blaster of Castle Arrip strikes it squarely in the engine, penetrating the metal and biomass, impacting the engine core! The resulting explosion rips apart the Hand of God, flinging the
Armoire of Invincible Gleam towards Castle Arrip (it collapses into a still perfectly gleaming wreck formerly known as armoire on impact with one of the rope walls), hurling
Queen Kekerezzar towards Fluxxstone (while saved by the angels in time, they did not reach her in time to prevent a plethora of burn wounds from the explosion, along with a concussion from being hit in the head with a bust), and leaving the now un-engined hive to crumble down towards the surface...
Krarkkus: #555555, a gray
Laputa: Purple
Castle Arrip: Cyan
Castle Zipworld: #7F0000, dark red
Dr. Coggington: Purple, yellow trim
The Fluxxstone: #0f6e63, greenish
The Hand of God: #81CE5B, light green
Heaven's Acropolis: #FFCC00, yellow
The Devastator Airship: Red
Kolima: #40824C, earthy green
Hive Cruiser Aeros Beta: #FF7F50, coral
Author
Topic: Skies of Alzeran [7] - *THOOMP* (Read 17430 times)