Haaaang on a minute. I think I'm going to cast a spell.
08 a8 sabb, and I don't care about taming it. I just want to point it at the things on the side of me that I haven't just thruster-salt-combo'd at.
The result of this will be animate, right?
As you spin around to face them, their fingers pull the trigger. You see the shields split open, each swinging out in four pieces leaving faint shimmers in their wake. You see what lies behind them, the gaping lamprey mouths that they hide. And then, you focus on the words in your mind, you focus until they are all there is, until all else is naught.
[COMP: 6/5] Spell, 08 18 sabb
[COMP: 4] Synchronization
[SDEF vs. UTAR: AUTOFAILURE] Clockwork Automaton fires upon Bear
[MDEF vs. UTAR: 2 vs. 1] Clockwork Automaton fires upon Ennis
[MDEF vs. LTAR: 3 vs. 0] Black Vulture magics at Ennis
[MDEF vs. LTAR: 4 vs. 3] Clockwork Automaton slashes at Ennis
[MDEF vs. LTAR: 3 vs. 7] Sanguine Automaton slashes at Ennis
A titanic bear of lead, larger than even your frame crashes into existence to your left, a beam of octarine crashes through its head, and its now-headless corpse continues sailing to your left. Welp, at least you learned that in a frame everything is scaled to fit... and that you should be more careful about attempting to catapult leaden bears at your enemies.
The other constructs move to attack you.
The other cannon fires off several bolts of glowing dust but you pull off a dodge as the space just occupied a few moments ago erupts with electrical discharge. You continue your dodge as the scythe wielder flings itself at you with gutso, and though it manages to get close you manage to swat it away, but as you do the larger monster moves to attack. Its attack is far more savage, like a beast rather than a machine. Its katana sings out as it dodges around your attempts to withdraw to create some room. The blade dances across the surface of your frame, slice into the plates with the power of what appears to be pure weeaboo bullshit. The damage doesn't cripple but several plates have been loosened and you've got some minor damage from where it nicked some of the electronics and hydraulics.
James Heign:
"Hopefully whatever did that was the thing I killed earlier. If it's not... well, that's what you have me for."
Riding continues.
"Yeah that would be nice" They seem very unsure with your reassurances.
The group moves forward looking down each aisle with tense anticipation of attack. As you approach the back of the warehouse you hear a sound like someone crashing a car into a wall repeatedly. As soon as the front soldier crosses into the corridor, you see something, something that the others cannot see - a ghostly beam of ripples flicks to target him straight in the head.
Time slows, the soldier moves to a defensive stance then there is a noise from down the corridor. A scratching metallic noise and then, nothingness.
Everything, just seems to turn,
off.
You see nothing. You hear nothing. Smell nothing, taste nothing, feel nothing. Not even your own thoughts. For that split second, everything is gone.
And then, the world explodes with light and sound. It's like standing right next to a howitzer as it fire. In fact, that is
exactly what it's like. Because there is a sawn-off howitzer there, right in front of you, the smoking barrel mere inches from where the man's head was.
Its head is a sphere of star-filled night, its body is humanoid, though concealed by long white robes, and it floats in a side-on stance, holding the weapon one-handed with metallic tendrils that look awfully like human spines. It lingers for less than a second, and then, it is gone.
Smeared against the wall, his armor and shield having done naught, is its victim.
"Fuck.""Hey, Malebranche, you wouldn't happen to have any ulterior motives lying around, would you? Because I need something to do and... I dunno, you're magic? Gimme a mission, or something."
Regardless of Malebranche's answer, I'll find Captain Manley and retrieve my reward. After I get it, go back to my 'garage' and practice some magic while I wait for my comrade to return with a gun. Cast 11 4a and gzdz.
options:
flr4 - ais creating a demons, also anomalous units, also alcubierre drive malfunction
flr3 - major spacial distortion and dragon
fl2 - source of missile frames
flr1 - 100s of unidentified units causing havoc
flr0 - is weird nao
Captain Manley is relatively easy to find with the stream of strange gear going in and out at a mostly constant rate. You register with your swipe card at the receptionist who is setup with several sheaves of paper and a briefcase laptop. She taps at the computer for a moment. Then another, after a few minutes she speaks up.
"Search and retrieval?""Yes..." you sigh, having already waited for nearly 20 minutes what with the line and the computer being as fast as continental drift.
"Okay got it... Item 225-B is assigned as mission reward. Wait here while I go get that." The receptionist gets up and enters the large dun colored tent, emerging with a strange object.
It is a roughly kite shaped object made of multiple pieces of dark glossy metal around glowing green internal parts. The 'front' consists of one large central panel and two smaller side parts that possibly... flip out?
There are two large handles on the underside. Perhaps it is some sort of battering ram or shield?
[COMP: 3/2] Spell, 11 41
[TRAN: 7/2] Synchronization
[COMP: 3/2] Spell, gzdl
You summon a goat sculpted of colored glass that seems and flow and pulsate with the brilliant red heart within. You can see, distorted by the reflections and refraction of its body, its vibrant organs and bodily systems. Its body flows almost liquid-like it turns to face you, almost expectantly, as if awaiting orders.
Your fingertips get the feeling of pins and needles.
Quick magic experiment: 0d & 24, 8 COMP for both.
"Anyone in here or around, Red?"
[COMP: 10/6] Spell, 0d
[COMP: 8/1] Spell, 24
With your first spell, you summon the image of a strange serpentine creature with the wings and head of a bird and the legs of a lizard. With your second, you get the image of a generic container.
"Well then as you have requested, I will look around for you. There are five people inside, two rather handsome fellows with big muscles... mmm I must say I like the beefy ones. They are Good at CQC and Normal in all other areas. Two are slightly smaller, a man and woman both with good depth perception so Good snipers and Normal elsewhere. Good, but you're better" She pauses for a moment before continuing peering through the wall at something you cannot see.
"Well hello sailor, the last one has very high Transcendence, now isn't that enticing? He is also breathing in welder fumes they're obviously doing some metal work in there."Their positions highlight in your sight, they're all clustered together in the middle of the warehouse.
Mentally brace myself, and prepare my body for combat. Ready my pistol and cross the rune-line
If anything should attack me, activate my LUCK trade-craft, cast "44 ixc" and open fire with my pistol (or just use the pistol with full LTAR if I'd have to split it across the magic and pistol attacks) If the area/corridor is even slightly large enough use MDEF, only use SDEF if I have no hope to dodge.
You cross the rune line and are not instantly murder-raped by a dozen demons from the 16th layer of hell so go you! The rune line is different on this side while it was transparent on the outside inside it is mirrored and unyielding... maybe need to hold back on the celebration.
-snip-
You awaken from a troubled sleep, your apartment is dark and you hear a faint thud from the main room. You live alone and don't have any pets that could to that, so you investigate. On your coffee table is a silver box with a slightly cracked seam. Figuring that a bomb would be a bit overkill and strange considering the ornate nature of the box, you open it. Inside is an odd black tablet which spins with ancient command line style code, at which point it asks for a network connection. You just skip, seems to be online anyway. It stops and the screen cracks as it suddenly shocks you violently sending you unconscious.
You wake up and feel strange words and concepts swimming in your brain. Also you are quite vividly hallucinating, with thousands of complex mathematical calculations spinning around the room. They concern everything from the predictable pattern of dimples in the paint on your walls to the exact formula that describes the shape of the couch.
Then the world shifts. Your consciousness leaves your body and all its senses, but you can still "see" in some way. Make no mistake, this is not vision, this is not sight, but there lacks a word to describe it, and thus, "sight" must suffice.
You see everything around you. You see in incredible detail. But you cannot see even the flimsiest of details.
You see the building blocks of matter themselves, the electrons, the quarks. You see the fundamental forces. You see everything but you see nothing. For in seeing each and every building block, it becomes hard to see what they make. It is easy to see the quarks, but the hadrons? Those are trickier. Trickier still are the nuclei, and then the atoms. Molecules? Those are beyond your grasp.
Your vision lifts upwards and zooms out, everything the same meaningless mess, until... you see something else. Something that should not be there. You see something made not from quarks or leptons, but something else entirely. Something the models never predicted, something unlike anything else, some other form of matter, if it could even be called that. A roiling storm of it, no larger than a small car.
Your vision rises again, and now, once again you see more oddities in motion, you see what appear to be beams streaking through what you can only presume to be the air, some are formed of something like mundane matter but tinged with laws of reality unlike your own, others are again completely alien.
The world shifts again and you find yourself floating in a dark, featureless void, the only source of light come from the five matches before you, each held by a robed skeleton. Their jaws open, and the flames blow out.
You are now back in front of your coffee table and no longer tripping balls. The box is gone, but on the other side of the table is something resembling those
monolithic advertising kiosks. From it comes a voice, heavily accented, the words and syllables emphasized oddly.
"hello INFIDEL. i am SALESMAN. i am here to help. what do you want to know?""It might be the obvious move, but getting rid of those cables might weaken this thing."
Head on upstairs and use the enhancement syringe. Use my necrotic sword that Hawk gave me to try and cut as many cables as I can, with 1 UTAR allocated to each cable. If my enhancement syringe happens to give me the ability to jump high enough to reach the generator, jump and attack it with my plasma sword in that special attack mode thingy. If things go to shit and I get wounded in a way that significantly affects my ability to kill or not get killed, use the transformation syringe. Dodge attacks targeting me, preferably in a way that they damage the generator, cables, or monoliths if they miss.
"I shall see if the sphere can be damaged, then."
Enhancement syringe go! Caladlebolg + 12 ixc on the glowy sphere. Be ready to dodge.
The wind howls, the air freezes and the dozens of weapons, become hundreds. Mercifully, the PUPPET remains alone, spared from the duplication.
Berius: You use the syringe and feel heat suffuse your body, you soon begin to smoke and burn producing significant amounts of light and a pillar of black soot. The burning doesn't seem to harm you and causes the snow beneath your feet to melt making you quite obvious in the winter hellhole you now occupy. The hundreds of weapons around you seem to shift towards you menacingly, as if possessed by great animosity.
Hawk: You dose yourself and feel your head ache and vision swim as the drug takes effect. You feel far more competent and the weight and heft of your necrotic weaponry seems to feel far more natural to you, as you look around you can see dozens of small weakpoints in the arena of concrete you now occupy.
The PUPPET in the corner gets up, holes and rents in its armor patched with hardened ice. From its thrusters streams a storm of lightning and cloud forming a black billowing cloak lit by brilliant blue flashes.
The PUPPET reaches down as it begins to charge, sweeping its hands across the array of weapons, gathering swords of ice in its grasp as it moves towards you both. The dexterity and grace it shows is amazing, you know they can do this from their specs but seeing one achieve their limits is simply terrifying. It takes its bundle of swords and throws them out in front of itself reaching forward as if to catch them but missing completely... until you see it isn't a miss at all - they had frozen together in the air, and a single frame-sized hilt had extended backwards, right into its hand. It takes this new weapon, a massive blade five meters in length and holds it in a low guard behind it as it begins boosting towards you. The ice on its thrusters constantly melting and reforming to keep them barely under yellow hot. It screeches towards you pushing the absolute limits of every safety margin in pursuit of its only purpose - murder.
Hawk begins aiming upwards preparing his signature attack while Berius turns and starts sprinting towards the nearest monolith to climb to the vulnerable looking wires. Unfortunately 10 m/s sprinting is not in the same league as the PUPPET which as it reaches the pair is going at nigh 400 m/s. The PUPPET swings its blade upwards as it slows to engage, the blade leaving a tracery of purple-red darkness as a massive explosion of similar color goes off around the PUPPET.
[MDEF vs. UTAR: 6 vs. 10] Primordial Lord slashes at Whitmore
[MDEF vs. UTAR: 7 vs. 10] Primordial Lord slashes at O'Greenahan
[COMP: 6] Whitmore's Spell
UTAR vs. SDEF: 6 vs. 17] Whitmore fires upon the Core.
[MDEF vs. UTAR: 7 vs. 15] Primordial Lord fires upon O'Greenahan
[MDEF vs. LTAR: 14 vs. -1] Primordial Lord thrusts at Whitmore
The blast of energy hits both of you and where it touches you, it suddenly feels extremely cold for a brief instant and then, nothingness, as the limb freezes away into nothingness. Hawk is struck in his left leg leaving him with nothing below the knee, Berius is slightly luckier managing to only loose an oily arm halfway down the forearm which begins to regenerate very slowly.
You both begin a counter attack. Hawk uses the momentum of the blast to power an arcing swing of Caladlebolg towards the big glowing weakpoint, his spell having fizzled.
The corrosive wave from Caladlebolg roils towards the target exactly on center and the guns all around the arena shift and open fire disgorging an avalanche of metallic ice in a convergence of fury around the shot, which despite significant resistance, gets a significant way through; seems high penetration attacks would be advisable against this thing. The weapons shift back into an attack position.
This is definitely going to suck.
Berius: A single shot rings out from a rifle beneath you, it impacts, sending you spinning through the air. You feel an odd wet sensation on your cheek, you reach up and have a single final thought:
I have more head than this right?YOU DIEDHawk: A single shot goes off and your partner goes down, head missing a significant amount of the right side. O'Greenahan falls down from his perch disappearing out of view behind the drifts of snow. The swords and blades all begin to point towards you and alternately in a flurry of shanking and shivving try to turn you into a shish-kebab. You are quickly turned into a pin cushion and briefly have an internal debate of if it was the 89th stab or the 88th stab that did it in the end.
YOU ALSO DIEDAs the two of you float in an endless void, Jus speaks.
Good intelligence gathering back there, unfortunate that it got you before you could get any further.
It seems to be highly defensive and derives its attacks from theft of gear.
Penetrative attacks in concert are likely the best way to penetrate its defenses.
The PUPPET will be a problem but once destroyed it will be difficult for the entity to replace - it was unable to form replicas of it
unlike the other weapons.
We now know how the anomaly operates, what lies within, and how it fights.
With more firepower and soldiers, it shall fall soon enough.
You two did good.
And then, the world comes rushing back.
-snip-
You awaken in a small dark room that smells of detergent and is seemly filled with brooms and mops. You also are lacking your clothing now only wearing underwear which is slightly problematic, you also smell what seems to be steak.
+9 EXT points
+9 INT points
[+] Valuable Intel
[+] Effective Methods
[+] Good Teamwork
-snip-
Your name, is Edward Whitmore. Or, the Ladlemonger. Or, whatever you're calling yourself these days.
A few seconds ago, you were being shanked to death by a giant fractal ice sword. Your current employers don't know that. In fact, as far as they know, you've been with the Arcadian Coalition all your life - that's what they call themselves by the way, figures, 'Dead Hand' wouldn't look too good on the tourism brochures, not that they
have tourism brochures mind you, or really tourists who don't come from one of their constituent kingdoms. The one you come from is, a thing. Maybe it's Sirius, maybe it's Fomalhaut, maybe it's somewhere else, that's, for the higher ups to file away, you? You've got a job to do.
Right now you are standing in an alleyway, looking like the world's most terrifying mugger, en route to bailing out some NEE and SL forces who have found themselves pinned down.
You are clad in heavy plate adorned arcane runes and urban camo, the two blending into one another so well you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. Mounted to over right shoulder is a small circular unit that points forwards, the fire support module. You send a preloaded firing request. A mage reads it and fires it through a one way portal, and that little circle over your right shoulder just so happens to be the exit. In the old days, in the days of the Black Moon War it was done differently, you just had a line to your own personal mage, tell them what you want, and they'd give you exactly what you'll need, not just what the preloaded request says you need.
But after that war, things, changed. Couldn't keep it like that anymore. Or rather, some people, couldn't keep it in their pants. And those were the better ones, the worse ones, well, they tended to do things involving stupid bets and margarita dragons. Long story short, the old system ended with a round of not-quite-dishonorable-but-still-less-than-riveting discharges, out with the old, in with, something akin to ringing tech support, except somehow even more impersonal and almost all the calls just ask for murder.
In your case, you only have one request loaded, and that, is to make it rain a dust that burns everything with plasma. For everything indoors, you've been given a combat shotgun sleekly constructed with a glossy finish. Inscribed on the side in golden calligraphic text is the name
Monarch Incorporated. It can hold 9 shells at a time, you have 18 extra shells and have been instructed to breathe deeply as if meditating when using it. Apparently that empowers it.
Lastly, your helmet comes inbuilt with a voice changer, makes everything come out cold and inhuman. Helps keep up appearances, keep everyone afraid, as afraid as some of the Witch Knights themselves.
See, there is a general consensus among the front-liners, and that is that they are fucked. Completely, and utterly fucked. The New Earth Empire slew unimaginable horrors birthed by man's fall from godhood. The System League, from the very brink of ruin rebuilt what they had once lost and learned how to harness what others would take others centuries to. And Vestige? Amidst all their corporate weapons and systems they have,
something, something neither Arcadia nor the Consortium can even begin to understand, made through dark pacts or so the rumors say.
While all this was going on, what were the Arcadians doing? They were farming.
They are fucked. You are fucked. Everyone is fucked.
Also, giant robots. All the other people have giant robots. No, you don't get one. Because giant robots are not be practical. Then why do they get giant robots? Because witchcraft. Because
something, and the Arcadians don't know what, is letting everyone else tell the laws of physics and really just all common sense and decency, to go suck it.
And fighting giant robots is already bad enough, but having to fight giant robots powered by witchcraft? That, that's a whole new level of awful.
Yes, Arcadian infantry have the means to fight them on even footing. You know what would be better than that? Giant fucking robots. Because in a fight between some guy and a giant robot, somebody's gonna be the bitch and it sure as hell ain't gonna be robot. If they land a good hit, you're dead, magic or no magic.
That's what they think at least. You? You were NEE. You also have action hero powers and happen to be very good at dodging things. So you're going into this with a hell of a lot more confidence. The fact that the aforementioned armor frames are on your side this time are also a nice bonus.
Your radio crackles to life.
What's that? Uhuh-uhuh. Okay. No you understand. Yeah, got it.
So, turns out the frames that are meant to be helping have gone haywire and are now flying around, murdering people with witchcraft.
+14 EXT points
+14 INT points
[+] Valuable Intel
[+] Effective Methods
[+] Good Teamwork
[+] Aided an Ally
Author
Topic: Perplexicon - Down the Foxhole - Raining Mecha (Read 177293 times)