Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 185800 times)

RAM · « **Reply #1875 on:** April 21, 2018, 07:06:03 pm »

We gave that sword an honorable death in battle! Umm, somewhere along the line...

omada · « **Reply #1876 on:** April 21, 2018, 07:50:42 pm »

Hmmm... i tought everyone that knew that we stole the sword died to the slaneeshi

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1877 on:** April 22, 2018, 04:18:06 pm »

You decide to spend the day doing some more relaxing work. Of course, just laying around is pointless when you already had a solid night's sleep and some downtime alread, so you decide to spend your time doing a few useful things. For one, you made breakfast for everybody. Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey is one of the most welcomed things you've done in recent history, and Meandra's father was quite glad for it, considering he usually doesn't have the time to make anything before going to his work. He sure is busy when he isn't getting mercenaries to clear out a gang. Meandra, meanwhile, is hard at work in the gardens, which are rapidly turning from "simple" to "dangerous". You've never entered a place where the walls can only be described as "silently alive". The plants move, and you have the impression there might be an odd smell, guessing from how the heat just wafts in and you hear Yunikki cough down the hall. You're a little glad you don't have a sense of smell anymore, and finding Meandra wasn't difficult if you follow your nose. You find her enchanting a plant you recognize as orc fauna, a fairly dangerous plant that devours animals by sedating them with its sweet-smelling sap and then engulfs it with its roots. When she turns to you she just raises her hand and then puts her finger to her lips. "Stay there and don't talk". Considering what she's working with, you can understand why. You've seen whole packs of roughhides dead at the hands of that little weed, though you weren't exactly sad to see those things go. Good thing the plant doesn't need much energy to absorb those things, considering they're pretty much completely useless as a meal.
After a bit more magic you don't quite understand (not your field), she finally, slowly, backs off and talks to you.
Hey, what's up?
Nothing much, just wanted to ask you something.
Shoot. Uh, let's get out of the garden, first, this place is choking the life out of me. The smell...
I figured you'd be used to it, especially considering you MADE this place.
It was harder than I thought to convince these plants to follow the same season... The sunstone does everything our normal sun does, and we have an irrigation system, but there's no seasons underground. Not in this level and certainly not when we're so close to the desert. So now I'm enchanting their damned body chemistry to bloom and breed without affecting what comes out. Not the easiest thing to do.
Damn. That's rough. I can't even imagine, necromancy isn't quite that precise. Not that much skill involved in just keeping something alive, once they're up they're up, you know?
Well, at least I like doing it. Now, what was your question?
What was that internet thing you were using to help Sucy talk to Snip?
Oh, that? It's not extremely useful, you can find a couple of things, sure, but apart from basic communication there isn't much. Basically just the world's fastest mailing system. Which is good, sure, but nothing we can use. My dad uses it for the office work, I guess.
Can't I talk to some kind of curse master or mage through that thing?
If you knew one, and they happened to have one of the most expensive pieces of relatively worthless tech available, I suppose so? It's better to just go to them directly, I figure.
...So, no. Right. Well, worth a shot.
I hear it's much more powerful a layer down, though. Hell, the only reason we even have it past the tech barriers is because it was deemed too useful and they couldn't stop a splinter group of shadowrunners from bringing it here... So they just throttle the system. Still, the people that pulled it off got rich enough to move down two layers, pretty much unheard of.
Right. Well, I'll be in my room. I'm going to start looking into curses, or the removal of them, at least.

Your first few experiments weren't that useful. Trying to get something necromancy-related to stick to something that was never alive to begin with just isn't practical, to say the least. It just washes off like water, for all intents and purposes. Fortunately, you have a catty companion who is more than willing to hunt some vermin outside. As it turns out, that part was key.
Once you made a pin out of bone, you actually managed to store a spell inside of it. A little deathbolt, that goes off on the first thing that was near. In this case, that was you. It's similar to an electric shock, having your soul ricochet back into your body so hard it hurts. A shock mixed with a punch to the lungs. Nothing that'll stop you, of course, you're made of sterner stuff. With that in mind, however...
After you wipe off your mouth, you can now come to the conclusion of two things. One: Death's Embrace still has things to teach you. Two: you can actually make a pin that resurrects corpses, as long as its in there. Technically, the process is closer to creating a golem. The magic works the same way, is what you mean. Of course, the size of needle is relative to the corpse. A mouse needs no more than a thumbtack, but if you look at the energies required for a human-sized target, you'd need about pretty massive spike, about the length of an arm and twice as thick. Making THAT out of bone is going to be a doosy. Also, one more thing: Needled undead are a lot more random than the average undead, and could even end up attacking you if you don't perform at least a little control. It's your magic, nothing too difficult. Kind of on the level of manual breathing, the second you stop thinking about it, you're in trouble. But the advantage is that they don't cost mana to keep going.
Interesting.
That same pin principle can be used to apply curses, if you learned anything at the orc towers. But you don't have any spells that cause a debuff or transformation of the sort! And you can't be SURE until you tried it. Not to mention, Hal would have mentioned a spike, perhaps you're not even going in the right direction!

You decide to leave the whole thing and rest. This is mentally very exhausting, to say the least, even if it was surprisingly easy on the mana. If you want an undead army, this would be the way to do it. You know, if you found a way to always think about something and never slept. The only you can do that is through some extremely dangerous experiments, and there are quite a few (literally) braindead students that tried it. There's one in every year.
Turning into a lich is not something you feel ready or able for. You'd probably kill yourself in the attempt!
You'll need to continue your research, or find some books on the matter.
Later in the day, Kai left a message, stating that he's been looking into the matter of the driders. Most people don't know anything about them, or at least don't want to say they know anything. He suspects he can pull enough strings to get a little information on them, though.
You can only hope he doesn't end up dead.

Well, you've spent half a day quite efficiently... Anything else you'd like to try?

Go out and talk to people
Whether it be for information or for making some friends (maybe the Ronin would prefer an explanation?).

Set up a mercenary service.
Mixing it up with cooking would probably be an interesting idea, sure. Some people might even like the idea of literally eating their local pest.

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omada · « **Reply #1878 on:** April 22, 2018, 08:52:45 pm »

Hmm, this way we can store magic in bone arrow tips??? Imagine our friend hal throwing deathbolts in deatharrows hehehe

Set up mercenary service?

Egan_BW · « **Reply #1879 on:** April 22, 2018, 11:34:21 pm »

Cook!

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1880 on:** April 23, 2018, 04:29:57 pm »

No update today, have to slap together a powerpoint for my work because the usual program is made by monkeys.
I really don't have the time to get something together, and this may be a theme for the rest of the week. I hope to keep the updates going, but it may not always be possible.

omada · « **Reply #1881 on:** April 23, 2018, 07:29:53 pm »

damn tech

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1882 on:** April 24, 2018, 04:30:55 pm »

Hey, is this the extermination place? A small woman, probably an exceptionally spindly dwarf, says at the front door.
Yes. That was quick, I gotta say, I only put out the ad two hours ago.
Yes. Most exterminators don't last. I'm taking you before you give up. She has a very haughty tone to her voice, and she talks a bit nasally too. An odd figure, in general. Not helped by her dress being made up of what looks like stylized cubes.
Walk with me, darling, I'll direct you to my abode. I'll explain the problem along the way.
...Alright.
Behind me, darling, not next to me. People would get the wrong idea.
The wrong idea? What idea?
They would say you are my newest model, and I have neither the patience nor fabric to work with your corpus, my little Charlotte.
It's "Sydney".
It's a reference to a children's book, darling, don't harsh my muse. T'is a fickle bitch with a very short attention span. Speaking of, have you any sisters? Smaller ones, of course. I think I might manage something if I had more fabric for you. Better payment than I planned, but alas, t'won't be more than money.
She talks fruity, to say the least. You decide to let her keep talking, you're fairly certain she'd prefer that, anyway. She walks at a decent pace for somebody so short. Her hair, put in a smart pixie cut, bobs along with her hefty steps, her heels stomping on the pavement. After a short but brisk walk, you arrive at a massive building. One of those skyscraper things...
You've never been inside one of these before. Hell, you haven't even been that close to them before, most of what you needed in the city was outside the business district.

Here we are, darling. Let me open the door for you.
She taps a seemingly normal brick in the wall with a quick rap of the knuckles, and it turns over to show some kind of black thing. You don't know what you'd describe it as, an antenna with fuzz at the top? She speaks a password in it, "Modern Idana". Then the door clicks, and slowly opens. The woman pushes it in the rest of the way, and then leads you inside. The building is beautiful, a statue is in middle of the entrance, although everything is still a work in progress, you notice. Everywhere there are signs of construction, and the statue itself is obviously intended to be a fountain, once it finishes. The woman guides you through the building, which you note has a lot of indoor glass. Hell, you see a whole cubicle where everything is made of glass, with a mirror in the back. You hope nobody has to work in that location, it confuses you just looking at it. After a bit of wandering,the small woman shows you a staircase leading down into a dark basement.
Right darling, to be honest with you seeing this building should be payment enough for what I am about to ask of you, but I know better than to anger my employees. Down there you will find a collection of pigmoles. Ugly things invaded my construction site, and are holding up the work for my basement. I want them gone, and I want to EAT those little pigs. Preferably in front of their immediate family. Their very presence is an insult! An insult that I hope you will make right. Now, off you go! There are at least three. Be thorough. Ah, before I forget, here's a flashlight. It's on the house, it was taken from the dead construction worker...

The basement is, indeed, not finished. There's no real lighting down here, either, so you're quite glad you get one of these flashlights. You'd be in trouble.
Alright. If you need a proper battlecry, just cry out my name, darling, it'll give some much-needed pizzazz. It's D-VA! Stripe after the D and no "I". Copyrighted. Technically you'd have to pay me to use it as a battle cry, so be grateful!
You head down into the basement, a little confused at the ramblings of the odd little woman.
Well, this is happening.
The basement has little more than an earthern floor, and a smattering of tools are strewn about. It looks like the workers left in a real hurry, which makes sense if there was a death. Your flashlight is decently powerful, but it leaves you with tunnel vision and with only one arm available. Considering the claw, you hold it with your right (normal) hand.
How do you go about this?

Lead them to one room.
Make a lot of noise and try to scare those animals into a room. Once they're corralled, they should be easy enough to pick off.

Just look around and act fast.
You'll just wander about. Things should work out... Maybe you should use your revolver?

Sneaky as you can.
Sure, you're big, but that doesn't mean you have to make a lot of noise. Without the flashlight, you should be able to sneak up on something, if you can deal with the darkness.

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Egan_BW · « **Reply #1883 on:** April 24, 2018, 05:12:54 pm »

Plan? We don't need no stinkin' plan!
Just go find the things and crush them under the magnificence of the CLAW.

omada · « **Reply #1884 on:** April 24, 2018, 07:03:57 pm »

When we see the first we will discover if he can kill us easily or if it is faster than us

then we will know if we can choose the first or the last option

~~SOUL SIGHT and ACTFAST~~

*after seeing RAM post*

Soul sight and sneak

RAM · « **Reply #1885 on:** April 24, 2018, 07:29:49 pm »

It is a blind assumption of course, but neither pigs nor moles are known for climbing ability, nor being much of a threat at range. Likely we can just climb up a wall if they come for us and stabthem at our leisure. If they run away then it isn't much of a fight, and we can try to grab or at least bind them with thrown webbing... Or babies on safety lines? Furious combat is fun and all, and if Alexia were here we would be all over that, but for a simple extermination, safe and thorough is the theme...

Moles ARE however known for digging, so the walls may contain surprises... Soul sight is our friend. And let's see if this dwarven torch can hold souls like a proper lantern can...

Ooooh ooh, we should also try shining the torch at the roof, even attaching it to your head with some silk or something. It will reflect and disperse against almost any surface. It will be darker but might still be bright enough to see by once our eyes adjust and would avoid the tunnel vision.

Finally, when it turns out that there are lots of them, and they are hostile, like they just had dozens of babies and they are born predatory, remember to use life-draining clouds. Or... We are not particularly injured right now, perhaps we could experiment with different clouds? Something more focused upon damage or debilitation? Like... maybe combine it with Deathbolt to make a spectral cloud that makes it difficult for souls to connect in the area? It would, in theory, be very debilitating, possibly even lethal, against things that have small souls...

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1886 on:** April 25, 2018, 03:41:15 pm »

I warned you that this was going to be a theme for the week, right?
Well, I can't update today, either. For the same reason as last time, even.

Liquefied Spleens · « **Reply #1887 on:** April 27, 2018, 05:48:29 pm »

Sweet donkey FUCK am I glad this week is over.
I hope to be back to regular updates from now on. Formal apology for not updating, yadda yadda, let's just get BACK to it.

You decide that the quiet way might be the way to go about it. Chasing through the dark in an enemies' known territory is just not a sound strategy, all things considered. So, doing your best as to not tap anything too hard with your many legs, you go through the basement. You try doing something clever with that flashlight you got, and attach it to your head with some on-the-fly webbing. The beam points straight up, and indeed, the whole room lights up a little tiny bit. But it gives an important issue, a two-fold issue, even.
First of all, while the area around you is lit up, that area is actually disappointingly small. The roof isn't quite straight, so anytime you walk under a hole you deprive yourself of the light, and you will never get used to the dark enough to see beyond that golden area of about two-three meters.
The second issue, which should really be obvious, is that you are now not just a seven foot tall spider monster, but you're also giving off light. Stealth has, predictably, turned from "somewhat difficult" to outright bloody impossible, unless these things are literally completely blind. Even extremely bad vision is likely to catch a change in lighting.
So, you decide to leave the light off, for now. The basement is completely dark, mind. Light from the entrance shines through, and with a little time you can see shapes well enough. If you go deeper, of course, where things turn black as pitch, you will be using that flashlight.
Probably in a normal way.

The first room is fortunately clear, and it leads to two other rooms. No doors, but there is a frame ready, and even hinges. Just no actual door. You go through, with a little effort. They're not quite wide enough for you, but it just takes a little more squishing. Your kids crawl around your body, apparently being fans of the dark. You suspect they might have better night vision than you, but that won't matter in just a little bit. Closing your bottom eyes, you look ahead with soul-sight. Sure enough, you see a target in the next room. You see some other souls in the distance, but you can't quite gauge exactly how far they all are. They blend together a little bit. The downsides of soulsight, you suppose. The smell is easy enough to follow, though, and you poke your head through the doorframe. You see a vague shape, that you indentify as a backside. You hear the shape loudly scarfing something down, sounding like a pig's grunts. You can't quite identify what it's eating, but it does mean the creature is distracted. You flex your claw a little, before looking at the future corpse. Moving as fast as you can, you reach around to where you'd expect a head to be. You find a specific roll of fat, at least, and put as much gripping power into as you can. Your claw slashes through it like a hot knife through butter, though you needed the leverage from your other arm to properly scythe through it. Before the creature could even make a sound, it falls down. As you're still holding your claw under the head, the massive weight of the body tears the head off.
You really have a strong arm, don't you? you didn't even mean to tear it off, but you didn't even budge, somehow?
Well, that's not entirely true. Your lower arm didn't budge, yes, but you kind of hurt your shoulder doing it. Not much, hell, nothing beyond a quick pull, but still. It takes some doing to get used to an arm that's disproportionally strong, even if you got used to the size faster than would be possible.

Back to the task at hand: the silent kill SHOULD allow you to kill another one of these things. You try to get a better look at what these things actually look like, and from what you can tell in the dark they're kind of like... really big pigs, with digging claws for hands and star at the tip of their nose. Really just a mix of moles and pigs, like something a school kid might dream up. Nature can be lazy sometimes, I guess. Still, if they have this much girth, and such claws... You don't want to take a hit from one of these, that's for damned sure. Activating soulsight again, you see that there are two creatures in the next room. You can't sneak up on both of them, but perhaps you can surprise one of them. Just as you're about to move to a doorpost to get a better look, you remember what the creature was eating. You can't quite make it out...
Very carefully, you put your flashlight right up to it, so the light won't shine into the next room (which is actually REALLY dark. You might need your flashlight from then on.) You instantly regret it as you blind yourself with the sudden influx of light. After a few blinks, however, you manage to see what the pigmole was eating. It's... an egg?
A fairly long egg shell, with some of the yolk still inside. The shape is really strange to you, and you hold it up a bit to take a closer look. This can't be from the pigs, nor from the construction workers, so...
On a hunch, you open your soulsight again, and look at places OTHER than the room ahead. Might be diggers, and sure enough, after some looking you detect something below you.
Moving FAST!

The earth under you explodes as a large figure pops out of there, hissing in anger as it just... keeps coming! The top of the figure is already in place, but the rest of the massive snake-like body is still coming out. Still affected by the flashlight, you have to use it to even see the thing in front of you!
It's... a woman!? Dressed in thick leather clothing that forms a tough coat, and topped off with a helmet, it's only the surprising hips that even tipped you off. But they have to be wide to account for the seven meters of teal snake-tail coming through!
NO TOUCH EGGS! YOU DIE! She hisses out as she jumps forward, quick as a... well, a snake. Despite it being a rather clumsy shoulder-tackle, the fact that it was backed by 7 meters of pure muscle and a speed you really aren't used to, it knocks the air out of you. You hold your ground, however, with thanks to your spidery undercarriage, and try a bearhug. She struggles hard, and without your claw she would have probably won the power struggle. More out of care of not cutting herself, she can't quite get away.
I didn't TOUCH your god-damned eggs! That was the pig! You force out during the struggle.
LIE! FILTHY LIE FROM DRIDER TRAITOR.
I'm-*Nnf* She manages to escape your grasp with a quick punch to the stomach. You gasp for air as her tail is suddenly wrapping around you. The scales slide across you, giving you a first-hand confirmation that this is pure muscle, one meter wide at most. She can crush you like a damned grape!
Not like this, damn it!

With a bit of struggling, and using your pedipalps to push her away a little (you think you heard a crack, but that's for later), you finally manage to grab your revolver. You're a little clumsy on grabbing it, and you fire a shot that goes wide!
The snake-lady jumps back at the noise, and accidentally puts her face in the beam of the flashlight, which fell on the floor in the initial struggle. Her hair is a shining white, and her eyes red. She screams in pain, surprisingly. Using the moment of distraction, you use your claw to grab her by her thin, less protected throat, and slam her on the ground! With your claw around her neck, but her tail mostly still around you, you realize you're in a bit of an impasse.
Both of you could kill the other now, but the post-mortum twitch might just kill you both, regardless of who does it.

let's TALK, already! Alright!?
Now that there's a "quiet" moment, you can talk to this crazy lamia. Mention what you're going to say to her.

Shoot her in the tail.
That'll convince her not to keep coiling you.

*Squeeze*
You'll survive that tail if it's just thrashing...

Kids?
They'll be able to make her squeal.

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crazyabe · « **Reply #1888 on:** April 27, 2018, 05:56:43 pm »

Talk!

Egan_BW · « **Reply #1889 on:** April 27, 2018, 05:56:52 pm »

This person does not seem to deserve to die. But fuck it, I wanna see what happens~
Sting!

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Author Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 185800 times)

RAM

Re: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure

omada

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Liquefied Spleens

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omada

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Egan_BW

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Liquefied Spleens

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omada

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Liquefied Spleens

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Egan_BW

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omada

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RAM

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Liquefied Spleens

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Liquefied Spleens

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crazyabe

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Egan_BW

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