Print

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

[chaotic skies]

"Alright, that sounds good to me. Give me a couple minutes to grab weapons and armor, and I'll be ready to go. And that monster sounds interesting, if dangerous."

[Amperzand]

"Ah, yes. I'd been meaning to give you your gear, since you'll apparently be helping defend the fort."

He shows you to the general armory, and offers you what appears to be a dark-ages equivalent of the Homelander ALICE pack.

"You can carry your axe and the like with this, grab whichever spare bits of armor you like, and let's go."

Before picking out your weapons and armor, you check the contents of the carrier rig. Aside from various empty pouches and weapon lugs, it has a small leather box of dried mushrooms, a simple flask of booze, a small knife, and a stubby pistol of some sort with a variety of multicolored paper cartridges for it. Presumably it shoots flares and the like, though the thick barrel walls suggest that it could fire real rounds as well.

The armory itself has a wide variety of steel and leather armor, many local weapons, and a somewhat sparser selection of firearms.

One of the basement-dwelling engineers appears to have left for parts unknown. Perhaps he will return.

Spoiler: Murdoc (click to show/hide)

"Ah, I seem to have forgotten my marked mortal hero."

"Very well, I shall explain myself. Young Hesh was a demigod, a few centuries old. You may consider him the first, unimportant casualty of a larger war. As for the dramatic effects of his fall, what else did you expect, when the son of a god is slain in anger."

[chaotic skies]

"Okay, I can roll with this. Not sure what this pistol's for, but I'm going to assume someone will tell me ar some point."

I proceed to select a pair of steel armor that fits me, a steel sword, a submachine gun, and a regular pistol. I also grab a decent amount of ammo, and remind my self to grab my pick later.

[Amperzand]

You choose a simple mail hauberk, helm, and gauntlets. Light enough to be comfortable, strong enough to stop blades.

"Oh, the stubber. It's dark as the sixth hell away from our outposts in the caverns, you'll want to have the illuminator flares if we need to fight something."

He pulls a red-and-white cartridge from his own carrier, and points to your own. Half of the sixteen shells are the same, with four each of the other two sorts.

"The other kinds are for killing. Explosives and scattershot, plus the illuminators do splash nicely if you hit something with them."

"Oh, and be careful with that rattler, the things get dirty fast, and tend to blow up when they do."

Spoiler: An approximation of what the stubber looks like (click to show/hide)

[chaotic skies]

"Sounds farely simple. Keep your gun clean, we don't like explosions, flares are for light, bullets are for killing. Don't aim at friendlies, be semi-logical. This is something I can do."

[Amperzand]

"Good. Let's go. Don't think there's anything dangerous between here and the river, but if you want to grab anybody else, now's the time. Anything goes really wrong, and the monster our esteemed magical madmen tamed should come burn it."

He leads you to grab whoever you feel is necessary, then to the head of a stairwell. There appears to be an elevator, but it's boarded up.

[chaotic skies]

"I don't think we need anyone else. I'm just going to be observing for now, and like you said, if anything goes horribly wrong, we have a monster to watch our backs."

<<Sorry if I'm slightly slower to respond than usual, I'm giving myself a crash course in modding so that I can help with this.>>

[Amperzand]

{No problem, this is practically greased lightning by normal standards.}

After perhaps ten minutes and more than four hundred steps, you step out onto a stone platform next to the other end of the elevator shaft, which has clearly been blown up. The light of torches extends perhaps thirty meters in every direction from the great natural pillar you climbed through, revealing fortifications. Some amount of dim bioluminescence gives a general outline of the cavern roof, but the floor is shrouded in darkness.

[chaotic skies]

"I see what you mean, darker than the sixth hell. I can't see anything out there. Although I assume you know where we're going, correct?"

[Amperzand]

"About two kilometers southeast of the Pillar. We'll want lamps."

He shows you a small stone building against the pillar, which appears to hold some basic supplies for cavern exploration. Two lamps, burning cheap rock nut oil, are produced. Then, after a quick foray into a small, metal-walled cellar, some cardboard tubes.

"Dynamite. Never know when it'll come in handy."

As the two of you walk to the ramp leading from the platform to the cavern floor, you hear an odd, metallic grating.

[chaotic skies]

"What was that?"

I look around, alarmed.

[TheBiggerFish]

...Seeing no input from the priest, the magus heads to their other appointment with Murdoc.
"So.  You wanted to talk to me?"

[Amperzand]

Something moves in the darkness behind you with a great rattling and scraping of metal, then slithers toward you rapidly. As you turn again, a great serpentine thing rears up out of the blackness of the cavern floor, bladed wings spreading outwards as the core of it heats rapidly to cherry-red. Then your brain stretches violently.

NEW THING IS UNKNOWN NOT OF THIS PLACE NOT HATED OR UNHATED QUERY

[chaotic skies]

I grasp my head in pain

"AHH..Ow..I'm...friendly...I promise.."
 I say, wincing between words.

"What...are...you..?"

[Amperzand]

You briefly get a distinct feeling of being searched.

UNHATED AND KIN BUT NEWBORN TO THE NOTVOID BE IN PEACE I GREET YOU

The thing subsides, giving you a better view of it, triangular head, glowing eyes, serrated bladefeathers, and all, before it exhales a plume of white annihilation towards the cavern roof, folds its feathers inwards to seal away the heat, and takes off into the darkness with a concussion of impossible wingbeats.

"And that's the resident monster. Welcome to the safest halls short of the Mountainhome."

Given that the dwarf looks rather queasy, you doubt he's quite as calm about the whole thing as he'd like you to believe.

"Shall we depart?"