You... aren't supposed to be there. Uh. I guess I should probably get what I need and leave. Quickly. I move around the body, find the sword trap, and grab it with my left hand where the blade meets the mechanisms. Then I create an explosive cyst with my right hand, throw it at the ceiling where the trap connects, and run with it when it detaches.
You weave around the inconveniently positioned corpse and go grab the blade trap by the handle-like bit where the spring-loaded arm it's mounted on nearly ends. Your solution is as brilliant as it is obvious - explosives are the universal tool. What problem can't they solve?
[Controlled Demolition: 6]
You grow what at the moment seems like a reasonable cyst in your other hand and hurl it right into the gear-filled opening of the trap. It flies deep inside, which you suppose is very good, as it occurs to you that standing next to an explosion that has been known to pulverize piles of bricks is an unhealthy choice.
Granted, as an explosion rings out through the room and the ceiling starts to shake, you suppose that you're not particularly clear of danger regardless.
[The Sky Falls: 2]
You pull with all of your might and manage to remove the mechanical arm as well as its blade from its now-blasted mechanism, and along with it comes a whole lot of cracked and broken ceiling. As much as several tons of it, in fact! Fortunately, you're not
entirely buried and crushed by it, having the good sense to try and scramble backward as you pull the arm along. Only mostly so. A bit stressful on the pelvis, you find, to say nothing of the legs (you've lost feeling in those, which you suppose is for the best, as you don't look forward to their eventual feedback).
Chitters? CHITTERS!?
Panic! Sober up in cold water! Do dolphin tailslap to stun it/them! Kick it! Don't breathe water! Panic!
[Sobering Fear: 6]
Oh god you are going to die here in this hole you could deal so much better with this if you were drunk why did you sober up! You tense up and grow turgid with sudden self-knowledge! Violent action ensues!
[A Cornered Rat: 3 vs. 5]
You try to kick at the advancing insectoid menace and succeed admirably at lodging your foot straight in its mandibles. Locking its forelegs around your ankle it begins to chew, mouthparts rhythmically constricting around your foot as bones are displaced and start to be thoroughly flensed by digestive juices. It feels much less pleasant than it sounds.
"Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?"
Call into the dark. Then pour out the contents of a random bowl into the void before sending the bowl after it. Observe results.
Your words feel muted as they fall into the dark, the sound going in, but failing to escape again. Grabbing a pot full of condensed and filthy basement moisture, you bestow a proper libation upon the strangely animate nothingness beyond.
[Glorious Experimentation: 2]
Your empiricism is sadly impeded by the fact it's entirely too dark to see inside the doorway. Nevertheless you sense an anticipation welling up inside your head as you continue to stare into it - not yours, distressingly.
The well awaits you beyond the threshold. Step inside. Bring warmth. Receive gifts. Speak plainly and receive the same.
Jack twitches.
"See, this is what's known as poisoning your customer base. If you hadn't gone and decreased my deal I probably would've come back in the future at some point. Now I won't, and I'll be warning people like me against using you. But I get a question instead of a fulfillment, fine.
The substrate may be impervious to damage, but when I was hit by a shard of falling glass I was cut open, and I suspect if I punched through a wall of stone with my uncoupled strength I would break my arm. How may I reinforce my body so things like this don't happen?"
Adult version of a pouty toddler not getting their way activate!
You and Mr. Erikson would get along famously. This insight shared freely.
As for reinforcement: consider wearing armor (see armor materials, defensive technology, conventional wisdom). It seems like this would help avoid most forms of harm to an adequate degree. The technology involved should be familiar to you. Aside from that, consider this: harm stems from the template, not from the substrate. Perfect invulnerability will always be beyond your reach (see template replacement, interests of fairness, fostering of creativity). Frailty, however, is a function of doubt.
Probably should just wait here a moment.
Lurk quietly. Contemplate what needs to be done for escaping this loony bin.
[Ruminations On Escape: 2]
You're not entirely sure what would qualify as an escape. Being back in Albany, of course, but so far you get the impression that to achieve this a number of intermediate steps will be required, each more violently unknown than the last. A good candidate for the next thing to do would be to get past the so-called stout men safely, and they're apparently quite loony. Though the people who told you this were also quite loony, so perhaps you shouldn't put too much stock in their testimony.
Actually, come to think of it, hasn't everything even remotely useful you've been told thus far come from the mouth of someone who is at least slightly insane? And thus perhaps not quite as remotely useful as you thought? You don't think you're among friends here is the point. Or professionals, for that matter. Maybe their help is more likely to harm you than going at it alone.
Speaking of, the doctor seems to be asking the guard to follow her. The guard seems disinclined to do so. The doctor seems to not particularly care for such objections.
Leif Erikson, Miner
- A Word: INEVITABLE
- Wounds: 2
- Reappropriated, Clean Skirt
- 1 gp
- Anglefork Castle: A Free Man
- The Box: ?
- Tower of the Mind: a Lack of Patience
- Induced Inebriation: Bone-Chilling Fear
- Induced Lucidity: the Burning Church
- The Prison Stone
- Elongated Affairs: A Noble Task
- Elongated Affairs: The Numbers of the Stoat
- Compatibility: Minding
- Tricks of the Mind: Cormick's Condescending Riddle
- Tricks of the Mind: Perceptual Rebuke
- Tricks of the Mind: Erikson's Inexplicable Grapefruit
- Party in the Courtyard: Celebration in Earnest
- Never In: Swallowed By The Pit
- Gods of the Underground: Did You Just What
- Labyrinths of Anglefork: The Underground Brook
- The Voracious Dark: Two Deals Made
- The Voracious Dark: The Promised Sixth
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Naked
- Wounds: 1
- Spelunker's Sorrows: Half-Buried
- An Arm And A Blade (blunted, bloodstained)
- A Word: HUNGER
- A Word: CHAOS
- A Weapon: Explosive Cysts
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
- Origins: Witness to Dissolution
- Tower of the Mind: There's Something To Remember
- The New Queen: And Something To Forget
- The Queen's Guard: Bringer of Doom
- Touch of Flame: the Secrets of Flammability
- Inscribed Brick ('Water')
- The Voracious Dark: Two Connections Given
- Body Count: 1
- Never In: the Obvious Candidates
- Labyrinths of Anglefork: Tomb of the Valiant Knights
- The Impromptu Prophecy: the Sensible Solution
- Sweet Little Children: Thankfulness
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Voluntarily Naked
- Traces of Mischief: A Bisected Left Kidney
- Uncoupled: Strength
- Wooden Door (held)
- The Majordomo: ?
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: the Sword of Destiny
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Something Priceless?
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: An Unspeakable Garment
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: A Profane Megalith
- Tower of the Mind: Endless Well of Mystery
- Induced Lucidity: A Garden Well-Tended
- Doomstones: ?
- A Place In History: Emergent Abomination
- Anglefork Castle: the Great Serpent
- 2 rats, crushed
- 1 rat, strangled
- 1 rat, live
- Touch of Flame: the Second Degree
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday ± 2 Days
- The Impromptu Prophecy: There's A Mountain Higher Than We Knew
- The Voracious Dark: Three Connections Given
- The Good Doctor: A Recommendation
- Body Count: 2
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- A Word: ABSENCE
- Anglefork Castle: From Another Time, Another Land
- Gross Incandescence: Partly Illuminated
- Tight Leather Pants (worn, wet)
- Incredibly Tight Blue Dress (worn, mutilated, mildly provocative)
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Saturday, July 24th, 409 S.D.
- The Majordomo: A Fresh-Faced Lunatic
- The Good Doctor: Put Into A Certain Mood
- The Queen's Guard: Okayed by the Queen
- The New Queen: Within the Margin of Sanity
- Tower of the Mind: the Quest for Signage
- Body Count: 1
- Army of the New State: 455 Stout Strangers
Oscar Wilde, Chemistry Teacher
- Naked
- Wounds: 2
- Burlap Foot Wrappings (worn)
- Burlap Hand Wrappings (worn)
- Blue Shards of a Probable Bottle
- Blue Glass Shiv
- A Wealth of Burlap Ribbons
- The Voracious Dark: the Threshold