Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 185853 times)

omada · « **Reply #1620 on:** March 03, 2018, 12:30:27 am »

"feel no true corruption"

a) oh god she is corrupted by something that we can't see right now

b) she has some knowledge that she might give to us

c) just a drider power because of a particular event

co-operate, maybe don't tell outright who are or where are our friends, if they dislike just state the obvious: We don't know who we are dealing with and won't give easily location to nobody they might hurt, exactly like they would, or should do if something bigger would ask the localization of this place to any one of them.

Devastator · « **Reply #1621 on:** March 03, 2018, 12:34:16 am »

Cooperation is ok, but no details about our friends, other than we have them. We don't sell people out.

birdy51 · « **Reply #1622 on:** March 03, 2018, 10:04:26 am »

Be cooperative, but proud. We have done a lot for our comparatively short life, and at the end of the day, we should deserve the right to brag just a little bit.

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1623 on:** March 03, 2018, 07:01:32 pm »

Sydney.
Just "Sydney? She gives a small chuckle, which reverbs through the room because of her immense size. Some of the goblins start moving a little more frantically.
Her full name is Sydney Aestinus, topsider. Has been here for only a few days, has worked with two other shadowrunners to disrupt our operations in the city. The drider next to you says in a rapid response as she puts her hands behind her back. She has the sternest expression you've ever seen. You look at her with minor confusion at what just happened. You shrug, in addition.
Now, now. Miro. What did I tell you about cutting into verbal sparring? You know I get lonely these days...
I do not trust her, Arch-queen. She has taken her lost arm in stride, and came without a fight despite earlier signs of being a dangerous combatant. She might be plotting something.
So you came to her after surgery, in war gear. Come now, Miro, you've always been paranoid.
Prudence is needed in all things.
I don't suppose I could just leave if you're going to have a family spat? I kind of have better places to be, starting with "literally anywhere that isn't here."
You catch a backhand for that. Which isn't to say you got hit in the face, you literally caught her wrist with your good arm. You keep clear eye contact as the tension flew from 0 to 100 in an instant, your face saying what your mouth doesn't need to.
A squint, an even face, and your head tilted back. Despite being a head shorter, you are actively looking down on her for that. You force the hand down with little issue. She may be well-armed, but she doesn't have the years of melee combat experience. You are stronger than her.
Ohh, yes. That's a good feeling.

Hm. I believe miss Aestinus is correct, dearest granddaughter of mine. We needn't waste her time overmuch. Let us get to the point.
She yanks her hand out of your grasp, though it's clear it's only because you let her. You have an almost maniacal smile, one that shows your teeth. Vampirism is quite nice for that aspect, if anything. She looks shaken.
A-anyway. You have disturbed our attempt at weakening the local economy through extortion from an overequipped gang. We had not accounted for you or the shadowrunners you ran with. We felt Kai and Snip were of no concern, they lacked the muscle. You were an unknown, and we also didn't expect you would use the Ronin.
I'm an interesting gal, aren't I?
Be aware of your position, whelp. Her voice loses any sort of compassion. The reality of such a giant looming over you crashes over you. You aren't intimidated, however.
D-due to... She glances in your direction. She's not used to being intimidated by someone else, that's clear. You're exerting pressure on her she can't handle.
Because you couldn't possibly know, we elected to disregard it. T-the money lost does not matter t-to the collective. You did n-nothing important.
Did I now? Why have you brought me before a queen, then?
Shut up! I-I mean silence, y-you...
Child. This is unacceptable. The arch-queen is glaring daggers at her granddaughter, who looking more and more terrified. Her breathing is quick, and short. Her legs are bundled up.
It seems my shadow has spoilt you, child. You cannot handle a single-armed drider standing next to you because of a confident gaze and a flicker of teeth!? She spits the words with a venomous aspect you hadn't expected from her.
B-but I... S-she unnatural! This corruption, it's... It's influencing me!
Does it now? That's a first.
Leave. I will handle this on my own. Marok! Escort Mira out of here, bring her to the education room.
Mira's face goes pale entirely. You see the twinkling of tears in her eyes. You are loving every second of this. You can't help but carry a soft, sadistic smile on your face as she is ushered out of the room by a goblin with an odd ear piercing of a gear. The doors close with a certain sense of finality.

She still has my gun.
Marok, the goblin servant, will be taking her weaponry. Considering it isn't hers, you'll be able to get it a little later.
Right... What happens now?
You continue talking. We have you on record because you are a drider. Who are your friends?
Kai and Snip, shadowrunners. One is a hacker and the other a medium-ranged fighter.
Don't be coy, miss Aestinus.
What? You asked for my friends, did you not?
Fine. What is your connection to the Malindra household? We know you came from there.
They were my employers. They're the ones that put me in contact with my Mr. Johnson.
Who was your Mr. Johnson?
Male and wellspoken. If you didn't know already, they're not meant to be easily identified, miss.
She grumbles as she rubs her eyes with one hand, still leaning on her staff. You're annoying her, that's clear.
I shouldn't do this myself... Fine. Tell me, what has corrupted you, here and there. Explain your marks.
I was part of a bandit group for a short while, to make sure they wouldn't sack my town completely. I was marked a lieutenant because of my fighting ability, and because he felt I represented something important to the coming ritual. After a raid that I... don't remember, he activated it. He turned his thousands-strong bandit army into eldritch horrors, the lieutenants got the worst of it. As driders are resistant to chaos magic, I got off with a mark that deems me as a sacrifice. Because a friend helped me, one who came to infiltrate the camp with the intention of stopping that same ritual. The other bit of corruption was due to complications with the crimson curse.
The crimson curse, of all things? How are you...
An alchemist figured out that with the right kind of salt you can purge the disease. But anything that isn't a drider or bigger is going to die from that. Kept some of the troubles, though. Blood addiction. Then I met a more "normal" vampire. He proceeded to partially corrupt me because he had the hots for me. He's dead now.
That's the whole thing, anything else?

Hm. Where did you lose the eye?
Crimson curse debacle.
...What are your plans for the arm?
Grafting on a new one.
What if I could offer you something quite useful in exchange for a job?
What kind of job would that be?
You are far too valuable to our collective to be killed, but those other shadowrunners must be killed for their interference. Kill Kai and Snip, then return here. You will perform another duty, one you will be happy to perform. I promise the lap of luxury, as one should expect of your power and age.
Do young people get privileges here, then?
Well, with your abilities, you must be at about 100 years, no? Such adventures and hardships do not come easy.
I'm not even out of my twenties.
The queen blinks twice in surprise. It's an oddly humanizing sight for such a massive creature.
Well... I suppose that's even better. Plenty fertile, no?
...ARE YOU GOING TO BREED ME!? you feel a cold feeling of dread and disgust at the thought of it. Getting bred like an animal?! What kind of insult is this!?
Of course I am. You are powerful, dominant, intelligent, and have some magical ability. I suspect you don't even know that last part. You will create fine grandchildren for me.
For you, huh? right... What would I even get out of this, huh? Is my reward for assassinating colleages the permission to be of use to you!? By stealing away CHILDREN!?
I don't much care for your tone.
Fuck you, you old crone. Even IF I agreed to your disgusting breeding program, I would NEVER give my children off to you, or ANYONE.
Your spiderlings have remained in your hair for the moment, but you getting steamed has brought them out. They screech at the massive figure, front legs raised.

Hah! Good to see some backbone in this room once more! THIS is how a drider should be. Fine, I shall give you a high-class arm if you perform this assassination contract for me, and more benefits if you desire. I'll leave you some time to think it over. Get comfortable, would you?
She taps her staff on the ground, and a purple ball suddenly envelops you. The world goes fuzzy for a moment, and then you're in a fancy little room, not dissimilar to your quarters in the vampire's castle. You immediately test the door, but to your surprise, it opens without a problem. More and more driders pass by, many of them looking at your with interest and the occasional bit of worry over your arm.
Whatever.

Try to find the way out
Hell if you're staying here! You'll just get out of here right now.

Stay put for a bit.
You could use a rest. And there are a few supplies in the room that might even help your healing process a little.

Socialize
You need to know more about this place. Who knows, may be a revolt isn't far off. Wouldn't that be fun?

Cause mayhem
Screw all these people. Time to start causing public disturbances. What can they do to stop you, they're all just nobles that don't look like they've done a single day's work in their life! (apart from some exceptions, who look like they regularly fight people for fun.)

Try to find a doctor.
Might as well get some more professional help.

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RAM · « **Reply #1624 on:** March 03, 2018, 08:20:35 pm »

Oh my...

There might be some potential to use them against the people manufacturing our sisters, but even that much seems like a long-shot.

Killing runners that you worked with is a good way to lose that avenue of employment. This reeks of dependency, and they seem to want us to permanently join them... Not to mention that they don't seem to be the best employer if our escort's fate is anything to go by.

One assumes that they are not quite foolish enough to leave us the run of the place with no observation at all. That sphere seemed like proper magic, so we can't assume that observation devices will have a material manifestation on our side.

Can we look through our familiars' eyes?

Y'know, let's go find some of the people who fight for fun. We could probably use practise against driders if things go bad.

Egan_BW · « **Reply #1625 on:** March 03, 2018, 08:34:05 pm »

Hmm. Should we murder our friends for sweet loot? What do you say, shoulder devil?
Hells yeah! It's loot, dude.
Okay, how about shoulder angel?
Nope. That would mean we get screwed out of the opportunity to do some more sweet shadowrunning, which would get us more money, which would get us EVEN MORE LOOT!

...So yeah, screw the big lady. We're big and independent and stuff.

RAM · « **Reply #1626 on:** March 03, 2018, 09:25:06 pm »

Oh, yeah, and this gives off a "webs within webs" vibe, so any prosthetics we get from here are probably bugged and trapped. No doubt they are otherwise excellent though. If ever we want to sell our entire self for luxury amidst constant backstabbing this is probably a most excellent venue.

Egan_BW · « **Reply #1627 on:** March 03, 2018, 09:27:31 pm »

Yeah, till queenie gets tired of us and has us killed.

omada · « **Reply #1628 on:** March 03, 2018, 11:37:54 pm »

Other than that, even with shadowrunners killing people she fought together or even got something resembling friendship wouldn't be something that Sydney would normally do, looks, she cares even for the bandits unless they are doing their banditry or aiming at innocent.

And look, killing our ex-coworkers would be of no use to the old crone, she is of a secret organization, killing people that are a stone in their shoes only work when they are a big stone.

Small stones only make sense of getting rid like that to inflict fear in it's enemies as a warning, but NOBODY will get a warning, we never heard about an spider organization other than what those hanzo talked about, who will get the message of the killing? She thinks they are small problem and their only success was because of our interference. WHY kill them and offer a small chance of making them more public?

Or this organization is well know and people are too scared to ask us if we were part of it (come on, it's a drider) and our friend's father was stupid for not knowing nor talking about it

Or this organization shines in the background as a web weaver making themselves unknown to the people so they can control everything.

if it's the second case the only excuse for this assassination is by revenge, taken by stupid emotions of anger because she didn't counted our interference as something that could mess with their plans because they were arrogant

There is something off, maybe she want to weaken us or buy time, maybe just testing us.

We can remote control our familiars and if i remember correctly we selected zombies this time to raise as familiars because of the eyes.

Maybe we could explain our situation to someone and wait for some "local's expert ideas", can we put together every gang and split drider blood everywhere?

Anyway, we need to know what to do right now I vote for finding something that could help our healing in the room and go for socialize, so we can get some info, be almost sincere, say that we are looking around to see if stay here and far from adventures would be a good price for murdering friends, and that we still haven't found any reason to stay, brag about our spoils and pose as a badass among the courtiers as how we fooled a vampire and waged war against it, or cause a bit of fear saying how our mark attracts elderitch beings time from time and narrate the horrors (not about the camp because it will freak us out, just the pigs and our last party from the tower)

make some arm wrestling with those people who fight others for fun whatever, the focus is gaining info about the local SOMEHOW

maybe... even read the book and see if we can do something that will make our mark shine to the elderitch for some hours, use this fucking curse in our favor for once, attract an elderitch being and run for our lives while it is wreaking havoc among the driders

RAM · « **Reply #1629 on:** March 03, 2018, 11:58:33 pm »

Huh, wish we had the cookbook. It didn't seem to register drider as edible, but that was just us, and we are the cookbook's owner, but with all these driders of all these kinds around... well, if we meet someone with a food obsession and no morals, it might be possible to sow a little dissent...

The necromancy book is likely worth a look, perhaps it knows something of elder driders? Or can we raise an army of shed carapaces from some dumping ground somewhere?

We could try looking in on our escort...

Devastator · « **Reply #1630 on:** March 04, 2018, 12:15:20 am »

Lets socialize until we find a way out or someone tries to stop us. If she wanted us to work for her, all that had to happen was for someone to approach us, set up a meeting on neutral ground, and we then negotate a deal. Shanghaiing us and giving us the big speech means it's for some other purpose. I say we socialize some and find an escape route that doesn't require us to murder more than one person, and then leave.

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1631 on:** March 04, 2018, 04:54:25 pm »

Update delayed again
I know it's been happening a lot these days, but after this week things should be back on schedule. Things have been rather busy these last few weeks.

birdy51 · « **Reply #1632 on:** March 04, 2018, 05:05:52 pm »

I would respect the offer, but there isn't any real reason to accept it. Shadowrunners are tools, and retaliating against them for taking a job is petty.

That said, Socialize. Flex those butterfly muscles!

RAM · « **Reply #1633 on:** March 04, 2018, 05:11:07 pm »

I just had a weird urge to tell everyone a different story about what is under the bandages and how we lost the arm.

And, umm, a daily update schedule is kind of heroic. I don't see anyone complaining about a missing update here-or-there. I certainly notice, but it is more of a "well bother, I suppose I have to tolerate a world filled with mere mortals afterall" rather than any form of affront...

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1634 on:** March 05, 2018, 05:16:44 pm »

Socializing just seems like the proper option, considering the strange surroundings you have found yourself in. Fortunately, people seemed quite excited to discover more about the "newest addition" to high society.
They fancy themselves as high society, at least. You resisted the urge to call them lower society, considering the whole dwarven cities thing. you have the distinct feeling they're not quite clever enough to get it, nor have they seen a dwarf in about a century.
The first thing you noticed as you spoke to the tittering ladies that consider themselves the queens of gossip(those people never compare to the servants) is that you are exceptionally young among the driders. Most assume you're about seventy years old, and you let them believe that. Honestly, it's closer than the usual guesses, and you don't want to give more information about yourselves than strictly needed. Of course, you don't hold back any details about how you lost your arm. Sometimes those details aren't the same you told another one. By the time you're done, there are about five different stories floating around with small verbal wars breaking out over which one seems more likely. The winning one is that you lost it during an eldritch attack, which they find the most exciting. They LOVE the eldritch, they find it "delightfully macabre".
You managed to resist giving them a very clear dressing down on how the horrors from beyond the realm of human understanding is in no way EVER to be associated with the word "pleasant". Your reactions are clear, though, giving more rise to the theory that you lost it in eldritch shenanigans.

After a short while, you suddenly see a goblin work his way through the crowd. It's clear he's an expert, dodging and weaving through the legs like an artist. Once he reaches you, he hands you your revolver, but not before wiping off a little blood. Seems like the education rooms are a little violent...
Well, no doubt about it. You're not sticking around. You've never heard of any place that has re-education centres that wasn't simultaneously hilariously evil. Of course, the hilarity kind of wears off when you're smack-dab in the middle of it. Well, still, at least you're popular among the "nobility". Mostly. You're more passing entertainment than an equal, as you're starting to notice. After about an hour, they started getting distracted. The goblin brought a little more talk in here, but that didn't last. They assume you have a job from the arch-queen.
Sometimes referred to as the "crazy old bint".
You try to pry into the arch-queen, and discover that she suffers from occasional bouts of insanity. Cannibalistic bouts of insanity, even. Goblins are just about the only thing she won't assault during that time, which is why there are so many servants of that race here. There are dwarves, of course, but they're closer to slaves than servants. You suspect that runed collar they all wear has something that prevents them from attempting an escape. You've only seen them from a distance, though, they're quick to run when you try to come closer. They don't trust new blood, apparently.

The main thing you managed to deride from these idiots is that they're functionally worthless. They're not trained in anything other than gossip and paperwork, though you suspect they tend to serve as Mr. Johnsons. They seemed to know a little more about Shadowrunners than you'd normally expect out of those types of people. Not to mention, you don't exactly know what a shooter's body looks like. Perhaps they're highly lethal idiots with guns. Regardless of their actual effectiveness, you don't like any of them. Far too smug for your liking, they're in a constant social battle leading to... nothing. Probably.
People don't go near the archqueen in case she gets into one of her moods, except for her direct descendants. Those direct descendants aren't here, and you're not sure if it's purely literal or jsut a way of referring to the big boys up the social ladder.
You don't get any of this.
Still, you haven't seen a single guard as of yet....

Find a way out of here yourself
You don't trust any of these people, and you think they won't follow you if you go off on your own

Explore the place
There's got to be juicy secrets here.

Find somebody to escort you out of here.
If you want to get out of here fast, you're going to need a little help. Maybe one of the goblins can help?

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Author Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 185853 times)

omada

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Devastator

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birdy51

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Liquefied Spleens

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RAM

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Egan_BW

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RAM

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Egan_BW

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omada

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RAM

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Devastator

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Liquefied Spleens

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birdy51

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RAM

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Liquefied Spleens

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