Taking down the cart is just not an option, and the mines... They must be preparing to take down Jack, right? Please, let just one thing be even tentatively advantageous... You take a nervous breath in and out, and decide what you must do. The walls are bloody high, but you need to get the people away from the gates. The trick here would be...
Bringing in Jack!
These firebombs are hardly enough to set anything on fire, though it would have gotten to the powder. But you don't need an inferno, you need smoke, something to lure that monster in the market to come here! You can trap these damn lizards in their own killzone... You'll have to deal with the broken bridge seperately, but there's nothing you can do to stop it at this point. You accept that. Just need to get things done!
You do your best to sneak over to the wall, leaving behind a pot of oil with the cloth already burning. Your spark is getting some immeadiate work in, though it takes a few tries for the spark to catch the oil. The simple terracotta pots will burst when the fire reaches the main oil reservoir, small as it is, so you leave behind a little trail of timebombs. The smoke, however, is larger than you had hoped at first. Some lizards are noticing it, so you do your best to hurry up. You reach the wall, just a small street away. You dump your remaining bottle of oil, but the drop made the wick go out! Damn it all! You try to light it up with a few more sparks, but then you hear a hefty thump, with a jingle of armor, from right behind you.
You turn around as soon as you're able, and only barely manage to dodge a thrown spear by doing so!
The Lizard Leader is staring you down, already having a second throwing spear at the ready. It's cold, orange eyes regard you like prey, the pupils seemingly pulsing. You're locked in a short stalemate, sizing eachother up as you do so. It tilts its head as it looks at your stump of an arm, before its tongue lolls out and it takes a step forward. Then the spear flies!
You were careful in your looking, however, and dodge it with a quick twist of your torso. You use your new sword to catch its following attack, it's switched to using a scimitar now! The crossguard protects you from the slash, and its muzzle comes close enough for you to smell its rancid breath. You attempt to punch him away, muscle memory causing you to forget your lack of an arm. The pause is enough for the creature to snap at you, before kicking you in the gut with a clawed foot. The claw is blocked by your armor, and while it certainly hurt, you had your lungs empty.
It had expected to have made some distance, and you capitalize on that mistake with a quick slash of the blade across its middle, where there was little armor. The scales protect it from having its guts spilled, but the wound is still deep. It roars again, and makes a massive jump towards you, attacking you with an inhuman fury! But anger is easier to counter than skill, and you use your arm to force it down with a solid whack. The jump was too quick for your sword, too close in too short a time, so it was little more than an elbow to its gut, but it was enough. Using your weight and stable stance, you overwhelm the creature, and sting it in its leg. Your stinger goes through, and the egg follows!
The lizard begins to scream as the wound instantly begins to pulse and throb, and in no time at all, several small spiders burst from the leg! Sadly, it proves little more than a flesh wound, though it is bleeding severely. The spiders quickly scurry away, too small and young to be of use, but your own pack begins to attack now that distance is made. The breedlings sting it a few times more, but it throws them off as it begins to retreat. They cannot pierce the creature's scales! Brainpower, however, can. Having walked around, it attacks the lizard from behind! A magic blast, followed by frenzied bites, finally cause the lizard to retreat entirely, screeching something all the while! Looking behind you, however, you see that the pots have managed to set one house ablaze, despite their small payload! A bonus, then...
You begin to crawl up the wall, your children being quick to follow or join you on your back. The wall is large, and is only taller around the gate, but you need to hurry! They might accelerate their plans, now...
Then, you feel a dull pain in your shoulder, that quickly blossoms in intensity as you keep going. You twist your shoulder at it, and feel the crossbow bolt grind against flesh and bone. Turning back, you see several more bolts flying, some more accurate than others. You feel more stinging sensations as they strike at your spider torso, barely piercing the thicker armor there. The bolt in your shoulder is not deep either, but there was not much distance to the bone there. You feel several more bolts strike around you and you pick up the pace. You feel another one stick to your back, once again saved by the advanced armor and natural armor combining. They aren't using powerful crossbows, likely the light variants. Heavy crossbows would have gone through you in an instant. When you reach the top of the wall, you feel a final, far more piercing sting. Turning around, you see the four bolts lodged in your human back, most being little more than flesh wounds thanks to your armor, but...
most is the key word, here. The last onestruck deep in your back, just right of your spine. The pain is... You hardly feel it. But you hardly feel anything else, either. You begin your descent, vaguely seeing several Blighted Beak people close to the gate, flanked by drider guards.
THEY'RE BLOWING THE GATE! GET BACK, GET BACK! You shout, waving your arms as you desperately try to remain clinged to the wall. You feel woozy, but you're going to make it. People are starting to run, you might have-
What is happening?
Where is...
Everything hurts. Breathing, moving, even your missing arm hurts... Like it's still there. What is...
Here! I found the drider! Well, get her moving! That thing is getting closer by the fucking second!All at once, you feel your pain both subsiding and growing more intense.
Sorry friend, not an osteomancer. You'll have to bear it!You feel your flesh shift, morph and
push against the bone, causing intense pain that you can't even express other than tearing up. At some point, it stops being a prickle, or a sharp pain. It's a constant, screaming feeling of helpless agony. Hard to describe, harder to deal with. But just as quickly as it happened, things begin to mend. You greedily take in breaths, only now onticing that you couldn't, before.
Where... What?You feel a warm hand touch your head, and all at once the clouds in our skull seem to disappear.
The gate, it went off as you were climbing! You must have... You fell more than thirty feet, how are you alive!?
In a minute more you wouldn't have been. Damn... I can't take out those bolts for now, can you move?Is Jack here?If you mean that bone thing, yes. That's why we're packing the hell up! That thing's too dangerous, so we're... We're going to nuke the city. Listen... Have you seen a boy? He's an osteomancer, they won't believe my link to him, but maybe you have proof. Are there survivors other than you!?The woman is crying. You only now notice what she looks like. Tall, regal, with runny make-up. She's wearing a very fancy white embroidered robe, with quite a few magical gemstones on her person. Is this the master Leoric had? Seems unlikely...
Do you mean Leoric? Yes. I've got a whole damned gaggle of survivors, and there's a smith in town too.Thank gods! Look... You're still injured, but you won't bleed out. Get to the rest of the camp. I need to hurry back and stop the nuke. They can't do it with people remaining!With the lady out of the way, you see that the gate's destruction was messy. Parts of the wall broke off, most likely explaining how you fell. How durable are you?
Questions for later. You head to the camp, despite looking like a veritable pincushion. You get many looks, and two people run up to you to help fix your injuries. It's temping, but...
You need to get to the people deciding the nuke. You have friends in that city, you need to make sure they don't do anything. At any cost.That lady is going to be a help. It might not be needed.Get medical help first.You need to get these bolts out. The rest can wait for a moment. You'll do this before anything else, but you'll still do something afterwards.Get to the gate defenders!Jack is coming. They need all the damn help they can get!OtherBasic Stats
Level: 14
Health: 30/80
Poison stings: 0/1
Restraint 2/3
Mana: 40/45
Items and equipment
Items:
Gun schematics.
410 gold coins
Magic Cookbook.
Book On Far Eastern Royalty
Equipment:
Enhanced Sword
Bag of randomized bone charms (3 more throws remain)
10 Bolas
Sling (40 "bullets") (4 improvised firebombs)
D-VA armor
Skills and spells
Magic:
Summon Tome: You can take out your piece of the Tome of Eternal Darkness from seemingly nowhere. Others cannot see the book unless you want them to, and it's still headache-inducing to do so.
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell. Allows creation of free zombies.
Cantrip
Spark: Allows you to set something on fire, provided it is flammable to start with.
Skills:
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Incredible experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer
Just a bit more real: Gives a bonus to toughness and strength
Spiders
Lieutenant Brainpower (Really large spider. Can use magic and is really smart for a spider) (slightly injured)
4
(they came out of the lizard. Who knows where or what they are?)
3 Breedlings (White spider, slightly larger than average. Their stings spawn spiderites) (two are dying, they are in your hair)
2 spiderites (small, weaker spider that is still highly loyal to you. Expendable and toxic.)
Author
Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 189603 times)