Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 259071 times)

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #735 on:** March 06, 2016, 04:32:37 pm »

Quote from: Xantalos on March 05, 2016, 07:05:50 pm

"Oh hey. Judging by your nudity and inexplicable confusion, you probably woke up here or somewhere nearby with no idea where the hell you were, right? You're ostensibly from Earth, I assume?"

If there's no answer, I shrug and go into the door. Time to do another deal. If he talks back, I'll obviously be staying and talking.

He seems to indeed be someone quite a bit like you. Unusual. Malleable. No doubt quite uniquely skilled if the way he seems to have tied his own hands securely together is any indication. You observe him as he proceeds to cut his bonds with the aid of a shard of glass lodged into the floor for some unknown, no doubt convoluted purpose.

Quote from: penguinofhonor on March 05, 2016, 09:14:39 pm

I squeeze back into the alcove by the sarcophagus, then try to find a relatively unmoldy place to rest for a bit.

You back up toward the sarcophagus slowly, and resolve to take a short rest until the pain and the bleeding and the unnatural looseness of your mildly eviscerated bits feels like it's not quite as urgent anymore. It helps a lot that you can't see the extent of the damage, you feel.

[A Cursory Examination: 1]

Laying down on top of the sarcophagus lid you feel reasonably safe, which strikes you as a distinctly unreasonable feeling almost immediately. You curl up a little defensively. No traps come to lay claim to your soul, nor does anything else - you do not let this impact your vigilance, naturally.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on March 06, 2016, 05:10:42 am

"Neat mechanism. Clearly work of true master!"

Mayhaps someone is listening and flattery gets somewhere?
Burn this all into my memory so I can recreate the vision later in detail. Then work out INEVITABILITIES of the central circle. Surely it isn't sacrificial platform or anything equally wicked.

...Though I rather should be climbing up instead.

Nobody sees fit to reply to your speech. The words themselves sound wrong in this space, as if violating some sacred rule. A shiver runs through you after you speak them, a tinge of nausea building in your throat. Weak words, clearly. A stronger one is required.

INEVITABLE

[Word: 1]

The word pierces the quiet with its deafening power as you explore a dozen iterations, rendering a solution plain - the concentric rings turn, and from a particular turning an elevation is achieved. A staircase can be made up to an apex in the middle of the room, where you take a moment to climb up and stand. For want of a view or anything within reach, however, it seems to be useless for any practical purpose. The sheer waste of effort that took you up here is enough to make you yawn in apathy.

Quote from: TopHat on March 06, 2016, 08:47:15 am

"Correct on all counts, though that ostensibly is worrying. Where are we, then, if not Earth? And how do you know that's what's happened?"
Cut hand bindings whilst talking. That piece of glass is still wedged in the floor, right?

Indeed it is, and it proves quite useful indeed in freeing yourself of your bonds while Mr. Daniels gives you a startlingly nonchalant explanation of the apparently supernatural events behind your strange awakening as well as a brief introduction to what may or may not be a bevy of superhuman abilities at your disposal.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Xantalos · « **Reply #736 on:** March 06, 2016, 04:41:19 pm »

"Anyhow, I'm gonna go make a deal with a devil. Wait here, I'll help you out once I'm done."

Oh Mr Well, I have a deal to make with you...

penguinofhonor · « **Reply #737 on:** March 06, 2016, 05:18:51 pm »

You know, now that I think about it, I feel like someone told me sleeping on a coffin was bad luck. I reach around to check for a better spot in the alcove, scoot over to it if I find one, and continue to rest either way.

Toaster · « **Reply #738 on:** March 06, 2016, 07:50:44 pm »

"Oh yes, I insist, I do enjoy a good story. The one of the King in Green sounds delightful. Really."

Story > Surgery

AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #739 on:** March 07, 2016, 01:54:48 am »

Quote from: Xantalos on March 06, 2016, 04:41:19 pm

"Anyhow, I'm gonna go make a deal with a devil. Wait here, I'll help you out once I'm done."

Oh Mr Well, I have a deal to make with you...

((Ghostly meta voice whispers into your ears: "Please don't! It doesn't fullfill its end of the deal!"))

Alcohol cures apathy. Alcohol is solution. Literally and figuratively.
Climb up the ladders to highest reachable panel and crawl into space behind.

TopHat · « **Reply #740 on:** March 07, 2016, 04:05:59 pm »

"You do realise what you just said, don't you? Stoatmen, magic, dealing with devils? Why should you expect me to believe you?"

Examine state of injuries RE bleeding. This is getting weirder by the second.

Xantalos · « **Reply #741 on:** March 07, 2016, 07:10:13 pm »

"Like I said, give me a minute. Just gotta get this one thing done, then I'll help you get out of here and show you the whole shebang."

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #742 on:** March 07, 2016, 08:14:02 pm »

Quote from: Xantalos on March 06, 2016, 04:41:19 pm

"Anyhow, I'm gonna go make a deal with a devil. Wait here, I'll help you out once I'm done."

Oh Mr Well, I have a deal to make with you...

You let Mr. Wilde stew in his boiling incredulity as you step over to the well, the darkness welcoming you with its ravening silence and oppressive omnipresence as all exits fade from sight almost immediately. You have something for it, and it is prepared to give something in return. That you do this expediently is desirable.

State a question. State a desire. Speak plainly and receive the same.

Quote from: penguinofhonor on March 06, 2016, 05:18:51 pm

You know, now that I think about it, I feel like someone told me sleeping on a coffin was bad luck. I reach around to check for a better spot in the alcove, scoot over to it if I find one, and continue to rest either way.

[Superior Spots: 3]

Well, you could squeeze behind the sarcophagus. There's a little room. A tight fit, sure. But very definitely untrapped! And the confinement does you good, you believe. Keeps the organs all in one place better than just plopping yourself down anywhere would. You really needed a good setting of the organs in retrospect.

Granted, it's still a bit dusty. And cold. And unpleasant. And maybe just a little moldy. But it keeps your organs in place. How many other forms of shelter you've had could make that claim?

Quote from: Toaster on March 06, 2016, 07:50:44 pm

"Oh yes, I insist, I do enjoy a good story. The one of the King in Green sounds delightful. Really."

Story > Surgery

You look at the good doctor, who seems to have been tapping her knife against your throat with a thoughtful expression, having almost interpreted your momentary silence as implicit consent. You step back and clear your throat, reiterating that yes, quite, you'd like one of those stories. Not surgery, no. Really! She tilts her head for a moment, wondering if perhaps there is some way she could rationalize this as likely infestation by brain parasites requiring immediate medical intervention. It does not quite cross the edge of plausibility, it seems, for she lowers the knife and sighs at your emphatic pleas for story time.

Very well, she says. The King In Green, was it? Straight at the beginning - a very good place to start. There's a reason it's the beginning, after all.

But yes, she gesticulates with the knife in a sweeping motion. The King In Green. Probably powerful. Debatably mystical. Possibly human. Almost definitely not actually dressed in green, traditionalist depictions notwithstanding. Poorly attested to by historical sources, though nevertheless almost undeniably present in records from El - the smidgen of doubt is there largely because the records are from El, and though their wondrous citizenry probably have no reason to particularly embellish the abilities of a non-hostile king, they have been known to lie in rare occasions on sheer principle. And really, enough spinning of potential motivations can justify anything as she's sure you must agree.

Truth is in short supply about the King In Green. He presumably comes from the north. He comes and he goes. The natural laws of the north do not prevent such a thing even when frankly implausible. Each coming heralds a different age in Benzerwald. There have been five thus far according to modern historiography - the Primeval was the first, which ended when the King In Green carved out a kingdom in the foothills of the Corner of the World. Quite literally if you believe the words of El - their records indicate some sort of incredible cataclysm occurring in the area. A flood perhaps, or an upheaval of the earth. Likely a dose of outright impossibility was involved - this is quite uncomfortably close to the Corner in absolute terms, you must understand. Speculation varies, but the common idea is that the works of the King In Green, who apparently went to all the neighboring kingdoms to announce his conquest of the untaken land. The events are shockingly poorly documented, she admits, given that they occurred roughly two hundred years ago. And that's quite a liberal estimate. It probably does not help that a lot about the King In Green is very much inexplicable. Even the green has an unclear source.

Next, the good doctor says, her face flushed as long-forgotten excitement stirs within her, is the Imaginary period. This is another of those periods that conventional historiography has some trouble with - a common issue with a lot of history around here, but especially pronounced in this case. The trouble with the Imaginary period, as the name may imply, is that it appears to be entirely made up. Scholarly analysis would point to the King In Green once again as the likely cause. The Imaginary period is in fact one of the common proofs for his existence, as nobody appears to have any better ideas on how six thousand years of history under a glorious unbroken dynasty of legendary kings and queens could have been completely missed by the neighboring nations. It is possible that the King In Green just deleted everyone else's history from the period, as some revisionist ideas state (in the interest of fairness, they believe). This is largely discounted as wishful thinking by more serious scholars. Only the tail end of the Imaginary period - the shadow of the King looming over a royal house simultaneously born and dying, as the legends have it - seems to have any basis in actual happenings, and the ending of the period coincides with the disappearance of the King In Green - she won't bore you with the dozens of hypotheses here, and will just say that not needing to obey the laws of physics does wonders for a historian's imagination.

In any case, this is not quite so relevant to the King himself. He is presumed to still exist, if probably not reign. He has not been sighted as of late - or perhaps he has, and nobody knew him for what he was. His presence has largely diminished in this Ordered final period. A healthy thing for record keeping, she cannot stress enough. Trying to place and date much of the Glorious or Interregnum periods can get rather nightmarish, to say nothing of the Imaginary period, which can become wildly inconsistent in its descriptions within even one source. Then again, she smiles, if such is the price one must pay for prosperity, however short-lived, she wouldn't mind a little complication in return for not being murdered by invaders.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on March 07, 2016, 01:54:48 am

Alcohol cures apathy. Alcohol is solution. Literally and figuratively.
Climb up the ladders to highest reachable panel and crawl into space behind.

You feel free to just bugger off from this weird place and try to get into a high crawlspace that hopefully leads to a higher place. To this end you build up your courage with another grapefruit. Feels a little like a drop in an ocean. Does snap you out of the desire to stand about and consider nothingness quite nicely, though. So off you go, to new and strange shafts!

[Labyrinths of Anglefork: 1]

The crawlspace you choose, however, leads at an upward incline for only about 20 feet before terminating in a sharp downward shaft, which is somewhat displeasing. You try backing up, and find that behind you there now appears to be a similar, but narrower downward vertical shaft, the appearance of which seems to have entirely slipped your hearing.

Quote from: TopHat on March 07, 2016, 04:05:59 pm

"You do realise what you just said, don't you? Stoatmen, magic, dealing with devils? Why should you expect me to believe you?"

Examine state of injuries RE bleeding. This is getting weirder by the second.

Mr. Daniels doesn't appear to care much about your objections, opting to dive straight into a black section of the wall in blatant disregard for the warning to be staying in away. As a silence falls upon the room you take a look at your poor bleeding hands.

[Insights Into Injury: 6]

You know, for something that had been bleeding for a good while before you tied it up you don't really see much blood on the floor. Glass, yes. Gold, yes. Blood, though? None of it seems to have made it onto the ground. Not a single, solitary drop.

You look at your hands. The blood-soaked burlap tied around each of them demonstratively drips on the floor, as if noticing your momentary concern. You wonder a moment if it would be strictly productive to doubt the honesty of your limbs, nominally under your control as they seem to be.

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penguinofhonor · « **Reply #743 on:** March 07, 2016, 09:31:56 pm »

It is very important to keep the ol' organs together. I continue resting.

Xantalos · « **Reply #744 on:** March 08, 2016, 12:18:19 am »

"Right, let's get this done. My desire is for my physical body to be impervious to damage. My question is 'what is the easiest way for me to extract the sun-themed stained glass window from the chapel without breaking it and transport it to the blacksmith's shack, taking into account my capabilities?'"

Let's make this deal quick, I got windows to loot!

Toaster · « **Reply #745 on:** March 08, 2016, 12:29:17 am »

((wat))

Okay, so we have a new winner for lunacy here. "Fascinating! What of the minder lords? What can you tell me of them, if you don't mind?"

Miss opportunity for pun when dealing with crazy person.

AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #746 on:** March 08, 2016, 01:54:15 am »

Transforming labyrinth? I seem to recall an old movie which featured same, and it involved aliens and predators... What a predicament.

Let's... descend the one in front and try to not land on my head. Pray no facehuggers are found within.

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #747 on:** March 08, 2016, 03:16:31 pm »

Quote from: penguinofhonor on March 07, 2016, 09:31:56 pm

It is very important to keep the ol' organs together. I continue resting.

To be enclosed in a womb of welcoming stone, being nursed by the umbilical vein of Time itself, preparing for the inevitable painful emergence into a wide world full of perils unseen and unimagined.

Why, it is just as disgusting as you imagined.

Quote from: Xantalos on March 08, 2016, 12:18:19 am

"Right, let's get this done. My desire is for my physical body to be impervious to damage. My question is 'what is the easiest way for me to extract the sun-themed stained glass window from the chapel without breaking it and transport it to the blacksmith's shack, taking into account my capabilities?'"

Let's make this deal quick, I got windows to loot!

Your fulfillment: what do you mean by 'physical body'?

Your answer: obtain the help of Leif Erikson when he returns from his exploration of the areas beneath the castle. His word is most likely among those of any of the other vessels to permit simpler extraction. Transportation can then be performed by hand on account of uncoupled strength - Mr. Erikson may be enlisted to help on this as well. Until Mr. Erikson returns, seek alternative methods of fulfilling your objective.

Your price: a connection now belongs to the well.

Quote from: Toaster on March 08, 2016, 12:29:17 am

((wat))

Okay, so we have a new winner for lunacy here. "Fascinating! What of the minder lords? What can you tell me of them, if you don't mind?"

Miss opportunity for pun when dealing with crazy person.

The minder lords, ah! Her favorite subject. A murky enough period of history that academic examinations are healthily contentious, but not quite to the point of the direct works of the King In Green. The minder lords emerged in the thirty year Interregnum, as mentioned, when the nation fell to pieces right at the end of the Glorious period, which is estimated to have lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of two to six months, depending on exact criteria employed to delineate the periods. She prefers to use the well-known date of the infamous First Minister's Report On The Absence Of Kings, which is June 21, 197 S.D., though she holds it as such mostly due to tradition. The report, you see, while having withstood the test of time in a way most bureaucratic documents tend not to, is thought to have been of vastly overstated importance in the collapse of the Glorious kingdom in the face of its apparently Imaginary roots, to say nothing of its Imaginary leadership.

But the minder lords, yes! The orthodox view holds that as the abilities of minding were perfected among the populace of Benzerwald, particularly those in close proximity to the Corner of the World and also those born in the great towers of the King In Green, their role as arbiters and organizers of society became quite apparent to them. Minding proved to be an excellent tool of governance and communication, and with its help the kingdom that had wasted no time in completely falling apart as its contradictory facts collided in a cataclysmic failure of all manner of human conduct was reforged in a mere thirty years, attaining the Ordered shape that is even now giving way to Splintered disharmony - her own invention, this term, after the splintering of the blood underlying the current events.

The interesting thing, she says as she paces to one corner of the room, her knife pointing unerringly toward your eyes throughout, is that the Interregnum is surprisingly anonymous. The minder lords existed, of course - many are mentioned in a great deal of independent sources, including explorers from El, the famed Elizabethan account and assuredly many others, all part of a great exploratory rush into Benzerwald immediately after its strange and sudden incorporation into the realm. They do not appear to have had any names that anyone is aware of, however. Several hypotheses exist here - the most boring one being, of course, that the 'minder lords' were just the King In Green, which is really the sort of non-answer one has come to expect from less-than-serious scholars. It's not impossible, of course, but neither does it particularly explain anything. Indeed, you could say it defies explanation entirely and quite shamelessly, just like the scholars advancing such ideas. More likely, she believes, the minder lords were just careful to obfuscate themselves from the folk they were instructing to resume the shape of a kingdom, presumably so that they were not confused with kings in their own right, which would be quite detrimental to the concept of unification they were ostensibly striving for. Or perhaps they were somehow acting as the mortal executors of the will of the King In Green, and the situation required that they keep themselves as unknown as possible.

Of course, she smiles, they did not entirely succeed. Some minder lords are known by countenance, and some of these are even known by name. Great Dipri, for instance, who is said to have ruled the ancient tower of what is now Anglefork, possibly one of the more influential ones of her time, and personal adviser to the first king of the Ordered period. Ooh, but she's getting ahead of herself, she says. Her mind looks to be in full flight as she glides from one end of the closet to the other, grinning wildly at you.

Yes! The goal of the Interregnum was unification! And this was achieved as minders joined the minds of the common folk and let them see each other as parts of the formerly Imaginary kingdom, now made real through concerted effort! It was not a complete effort, mind you. The unintegrated remnants still wander the far northern hills, forming clans of the Worm, the Stork, the Dragon, the Snark and more still. But it is safe to say that they got most of the folk of Benzerwald into, well, Benzerwald. Complete with a king deemed to best fit the gestalt impressions left from the still-fresh Imaginary period. The stock was well-chosen by Dipri and her multitudinous associates, for the next century and a half and change is quite rightly known as the Ordered period and the appointment a work of the King In Green itself. Aside from the splintering of the blood business, of course, but that may have also been the work of the King In Green. Scholarly analysis has been quite limited after the genocide of most of the actual scholars.

She pauses a moment to look wistfully into the distance and also to giddily take a breath as oxygen deprivation starts to properly get to her.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on March 08, 2016, 01:54:15 am

Transforming labyrinth? I seem to recall an old movie which featured same, and it involved aliens and predators... What a predicament.

Let's... descend the one in front and try to not land on my head. Pray no facehuggers are found within.

[Labyrinths of Anglefork: 4]

The cramped downward shaft is small enough that landing on your head, while not strictly preventable, is unlikely enough to break your neck by sheer virtue of the smallness of the passage preventing any sort of downward fall. You inch along downward until you feel a noticeable cold and damp rising toward you, the shaft ending atop a small bubbling underground brook. Putting out your hands, you feel the wood structure end and seemingly natural stone begin.

Granted, it still seems to be a shaft in all respects. It's just that this one at least is horizontal rather than unfavorably vertical and also not covered in suspiciously well-polished wood.

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AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #748 on:** March 08, 2016, 03:39:51 pm »

Yay for my second bath, cold as it may be! And yay for profound lack of facehuggers and other arachnids!

Let's wriggle to upstream. Most likely cleanest water is in that direction. Maybe also an exit.

TopHat · « **Reply #749 on:** March 08, 2016, 04:19:50 pm »

Odd. Very odd.
Follow Mr. Daniels through the exit.
((I wonder...))

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Author Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 259071 times)

Harry Baldman

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

penguinofhonor

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Toaster

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

AoshimaMichio

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

TopHat

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Harry Baldman

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

penguinofhonor

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Toaster

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

AoshimaMichio

Re: Our Salvation: Returning Dark

Harry Baldman

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

AoshimaMichio

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

TopHat

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement