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Author Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written  (Read 240670 times)

NAV

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #90 on: November 29, 2015, 10:37:40 am »

Hold open a sack, and when the rats attack me try to catch them with the sack.
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Harry Baldman

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #91 on: November 29, 2015, 06:33:54 pm »

"Okay. running not an option. Shit. Well, they summoned us, magic exists. Is the brick magic?

Go find some secluded space and say the word on the brick. Maybe wave the brick at something too.

You shuffle carefully off into the nearby tower and take a look at the brick. There's probably a reason it has that word written on it. And since it was in the wizard basement full of wizards who wizarded you into existence, you'd assume the reason is magic.

Water, you read. Nothing quite happens. You read it louder, and things continue failing to happen, most disappointingly. You wave the brick around, and accidentally point it a nearby guard who appears to be chewing on a tiny rodent femur in one corner of the tower. He raises an eyebrow and asks if there's an issue - you politely answer "water", but then quickly correct yourself, explaining that you meant to say "no".

I search the closet for something that fits.

Your nakedness comes to a long-awaited end as you snatch up one of the looser dresses available, finding that it fits you pretty well, and actually looks quite nice, too, though it is quite obviously more of a downtime garment, judging by the relatively muted colors and lack of ornamentation. You regard yourself in the nearby mirror and, you have to admit, you do look rather okay now. To complete the look, you put on a proper-looking headdress as well. There - now you've practically gone native. All you need is a posh British accent and you'll be fit for a period piece.

Stepping out of the closet, you see that the guard is still completely asleep. The queen has begun to snore lightly.

Gods tend to be busy so Thor probably didn't have time to help or didn't even hear me.

"And it aint even warm here, you liar." Leif remarks after the crazy guy.

Do some warm ups, just enough to keep blood flowing. Hope my eyes will become accustomed to the darkness. Ponder who I pissed off to warrant me being kidnapped by crazy cosplayers.

A better question, really, would be who you didn't piss off. For all you know, all of your acquaintances got together and arranged for someone to grab you off the... well, you don't really remember where you got grabbed from. It seems like the sort of thoughtful thing they'd do for you. You try to do some warmups as you ponder who you'll be taking revenge on for this, only for your side to violently protest during an ill-chosen movement with a sudden spike of pain and blood. You clutch your side and staunch the bleeding slightly once again, wincing in mild discomfort.

Meanwhile, behind you the retching reaches a culmination, and you hear the weird guy spill his lack of lunch in the corner. Great. Now it's going to smell like vomit in here, too. You look toward the dark, and you start to make out the silhouette of the weird guy, who appears to be pointing their arm at you, palm up and open, offering you a small, round object, glistening with stomach acid. It appears to be... some kind of gemstone?

"Take this," says the crazy guy, rising slowly up from his seated position. "Take this to my relatives... they are outside."

Hold open a sack, and when the rats attack me try to catch them with the sack.

You hold up a mostly emptied sack, not sure if this is going to work. The mass of rats approaches closer. You open the sack and it doesn't stop. You stare at it in confusion - it does not appear to know what you are doing. All it seems to know is rage and murder, and you'd guess it wants to inflict both upon you, tactics be damned. You stare at it gormlessly as it rears up and dives forth. You open the sack wide and lift its opening up, flinching in advance in case this doesn't work...

... and the whole thing just leaps into the bag, just like that, a singular uninterrupted flow of rats sliding across the rough burlap into safe captivity. For a moment it seems confused - so are you, truthfully, but you make a better use of your time and tie up the sack immediately. This proves to be a wise move, as the sack begins to thrash incredibly violently moments afterwards. You smack it a few times with the club for good measure, which makes it calm down. Bloody strange rats.

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NAV

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #92 on: November 29, 2015, 06:48:58 pm »

"Alright I got your rats. Coming up!"

Tie the sack'o'rats to the bottom of the chain. Then climb out outta the hole. Then pull the chain up after.
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Highmax…dead, flesh torn from him, though his skill with the sword was unmatched…military…Nearly destroyed .. Rhunorah... dead... Mastahcheese returns...dead. Gaul...alive, still locked in combat. NAV...Alive, drinking booze....
The face on the toaster does not look like one of mercy.

Dermonster

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #93 on: November 29, 2015, 07:44:45 pm »

Well I don't really know what to do now. How the hell am I supposed to kill 600 guys who have swords and shit?

Harry you made it too freeform.
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"Y'know, my favorite thing about being a hero is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in the way - Black Mage.
"The bulk of [Derm]'s atrocities seem to stem from him doing things that [Magic] doesn't actually do." - TvTropes
"Dammit Derm!" - You, if I'm doing it right.
Moved to SufficientVelocity / Spacebattles.

Ruludos

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #94 on: November 29, 2015, 09:19:37 pm »

((Just a cute little ptw.))
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penguinofhonor

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #95 on: November 29, 2015, 10:44:35 pm »

"Thanks," I whisper, and leave the room.

It seems like there's something bigger than kidnapping going on here - I should probably figure out what the queen was talking about. I search the castle for anything pertaining to stoats or minders.
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AoshimaMichio

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #96 on: November 30, 2015, 12:47:50 am »

"Yeah... sure... Maybe tomorrow when they finally see fit to release me." Leif says with mild disgust creeping onto his face.

Don't go any closer to the guy, rather wait him coming closer. If he does and keeps offering the stone, then pick it very carefully (to minimize contact with stomach acid) and wipe it clean on the skirt. Give it a cursory examination and put it in some wedge of the skirt where the coin is. Then shake the door and yell for guards.


Well I don't really know what to do now. How the hell am I supposed to kill 600 guys who have swords and shit?

Harry you made it too freeform.
((You could tell them we are not demons and minders killed each other. And one them might actually still be alive.))
« Last Edit: November 30, 2015, 04:42:15 am by AoshimaMichio »
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Harry Baldman

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #97 on: November 30, 2015, 08:25:50 am »

Well I don't really know what to do now. How the hell am I supposed to kill 600 guys who have swords and shit?

Harry you made it too freeform.

Bit of a pickle, yes.

But then there is still much in Anglefork that you haven't seen yet.
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Dermonster

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #98 on: November 30, 2015, 11:01:39 am »

Right. Go to the chapel and see if they have a spare robe or something lying around. Maybe an actual bag with which to hold my riches.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2015, 11:11:49 am by Dermonster »
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I can do anything I want, as long as I accept the consequences.
"Y'know, my favorite thing about being a hero is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in the way - Black Mage.
"The bulk of [Derm]'s atrocities seem to stem from him doing things that [Magic] doesn't actually do." - TvTropes
"Dammit Derm!" - You, if I'm doing it right.
Moved to SufficientVelocity / Spacebattles.

Harry Baldman

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #99 on: November 30, 2015, 07:56:48 pm »

"Alright I got your rats. Coming up!"

Tie the sack'o'rats to the bottom of the chain. Then climb out outta the hole. Then pull the chain up after.

The chain, unfortunately, is still about as high up as you recall. This all but excludes the immediate possibility of you attaching anything to it - well, not in any reliable sense, anyway. You could try to pull off something ridiculous and try a mid-air connection, but this seems a bit too unlikely to even properly consider.

However, you are pleased to note that now that you're endowed with some proper desperation, you can reach the chain just fine if you use the bag of rats as a jumping-off point. The rats don't seem pleased about you trying this, but you don't exactly hold their opinion in high esteem.

"Thanks," I whisper, and leave the room.

It seems like there's something bigger than kidnapping going on here - I should probably figure out what the queen was talking about. I search the castle for anything pertaining to stoats or minders.

You head out of the hallway and over to the foyer, supposing that rooting through the other rooms in there is probably not worth the effort. As you wander down the steps, you find yourself looking up. The ceiling is painted, and quite unusually so at that. Organic curves and grooves arranged into the shape of grayish sulci and gyri, split in half longitudinally - a map of the surface of the cerebral cortex, and a rather elaborate one at that.

You slow your descent to examine it in a little more detail, and notice something stranger still - the shape of it isn't rendered in mere paint, but rather in differing densities of miniscule writing in a script that seems unfamiliar at first glance. It is only as you stop halfway down the stairs in distraction that it starts to become legible... vaguely. The letters are tiny enough, the words unfamiliar enough to complicate the task, presenting an overall impression of linguistic pointillism. Masterfully done, to be sure. The mere examination of it makes your eyes tingle ever so slightly.

"Yeah... sure... Maybe tomorrow when they finally see fit to release me." Leif says with mild disgust creeping onto his face.

Don't go any closer to the guy, rather wait him coming closer. If he does and keeps offering the stone, then pick it very carefully (to minimize contact with stomach acid) and wipe it clean on the skirt. Give it a cursory examination and put it in some wedge of the skirt where the coin is. Then shake the door and yell for guards.

You choose not to snatch up the gemstone immediately - the crazy guy unsteadily keeps offering it to you. "Take it," he says, and begins to rise from his position. "I need you to take this, take this away - I need to be free for the next part," he says, starting to approach. Unsure of what he's talking about, you humor him and delicately take the stone in two fingers, wiping it on your skirt. You'd rather not get any digestive fluids on your fingers - that's how you catch weird diseases, you know.

The gemstone is red and asymmetrically oval, about the size of your fingertip, with a small black core from which many almost invisible filaments seem to erupt, a small and seemingly almost organic structure frozen in precious stone. It draws the eye rather well, you find, and once you look up, you see that the crazy guy appears to have fully recovered from his vomiting, and now appears to be pacing back and forth.

You decide to put the gem away for now, hiding it in a fold of your skirt, and move on with your current plan, which is to make a lot of noise and yell for some guards to approach. Banging on the door with all of your might, you almost manage to drown out your own voice. Almost.

Moments afterward, the figure of what you assume to be the turnkey appears, a ragged, heavily scarred man who happens to be slightly larger than you. On his forehead you see a dagger-made rendering of a third eye. His actual eyes just about keep up with it in the ability to unblinkingly stare at you. He says nothing, probably expecting some complaint or another from you.

Right. Go to the chapel and see if they have a spare robe or something lying around. Maybe an actual bag with which to hold my riches.

You head down to the courtyard and step into the chapel. You find it surprisingly ostentatious, yet very much empty - the inside is perfectly polished stone of gentle beige only broken up by small sections where the wall has been partially stolen, letting in air and light alike. There are but two pews, one with its back missing, arranged irregularly right by the very entrance, and the rest appears to be taken up by a conspicuously bare chamber. Where there once seemed to be side chambers, there are now only empty doorframes that appear to lead directly outside.

The chamber itself does look like the altar area of a church sans the actual altar - it has a semicircular shape, with tall windows of stained glass in the back that nobody appears to have harmed yet despite the generally looted-looking state of the rest of the place. They let in quite a lot of sunshine, filling the center with intermingling color generated by their filtered light. You'd almost say it looks brighter in here than it does outside.

In the middle of it stands a very unkempt priest, facing away from you with his arms wide open, humming meditatively. His robe is covered in shimmering gold sequins that upon closer examination appear to be gold coins polished to complete smoothness. You step progressively closer, but the priest pays you no immediate mind. You politely beg his pardon and ask if he's got a spare robe.

The priest lowers his arms and goes silent. He is not a small man by any means, and the heavy robe makes him look even larger. "Hm?" he intones as he turns around, and you repeat yourself. "A spare robe?" he repeats. "I did, once. Why do you ask, child?"

You look down at yourself. He looks at your sack-tunic. A few moments pass as he attempts to make sense of it.

"Well," he says eventually. "I do begin to see."

Scratching his great expanse of beard, he furrows his brow. "I may be able to help. Though... I must admit I do not recognize you at all. Have you... been in the chapel before?"

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Dermonster

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #100 on: November 30, 2015, 08:16:52 pm »

"I entered existence approximately... fuck, I don't have a clock. Ten minutes ago? Do you even use minutes? Like... one tenth of one 24th of a single day. Sum of it all, no I have not been in this chapel, nor do I know what you worship."
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I can do anything I want, as long as I accept the consequences.
"Y'know, my favorite thing about being a hero is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in the way - Black Mage.
"The bulk of [Derm]'s atrocities seem to stem from him doing things that [Magic] doesn't actually do." - TvTropes
"Dammit Derm!" - You, if I'm doing it right.
Moved to SufficientVelocity / Spacebattles.

AoshimaMichio

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #101 on: December 01, 2015, 01:13:41 am »

"I must complain with my treatment so far. First you people bring us into this excessively primitive castle without so much as explanation why in a pool of rats, then those guys welcoming us kill each other in a small underground room and when I finally ask where I could find a bath and some clothes to cover my nudity, you people straight out attack me and throw me into this cold cell. Norwegian government won't take lightly unjust treatment of it's citizens. So unless you wish to draw ire of my mighty country upon yours and I must remain as a prisoner, then at least I ask you to reallocate me into better prison fitting my status as political prisoner. Quite honestly I would rather be released, but I suppose that option is not available."

If he releases me, then wander around trying to find a bath. If he doesn't and goes away, look for structural weaknesses of the prison cell and door. Otherwise... I suppose more persuasion is in order.
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penguinofhonor

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #102 on: December 01, 2015, 11:30:20 am »

I'll admit I don't know anything about minders, but this room seems to have "minder" written all over it. Or something else, more likely. I look for a way to inspect the ceiling closely - maybe a ladder or some sort of looking glass.
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NAV

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #103 on: December 02, 2015, 12:09:12 am »

Whatever. Toss the bag of rats up to the guy, then use something else as a stepping point. An upside down bathtub, more stacked bricks, sacks of gold, the bodies of those cultists, whatever seems easiest and most convenient. Climb out of this damn pit sometime before 2016 please.
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Highmax…dead, flesh torn from him, though his skill with the sword was unmatched…military…Nearly destroyed .. Rhunorah... dead... Mastahcheese returns...dead. Gaul...alive, still locked in combat. NAV...Alive, drinking booze....
The face on the toaster does not look like one of mercy.

Harry Baldman

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Re: Our Salvation: Culture Shock
« Reply #104 on: December 02, 2015, 09:45:56 am »

"I entered existence approximately... fuck, I don't have a clock. Ten minutes ago? Do you even use minutes? Like... one tenth of one 24th of a single day. Sum of it all, no I have not been in this chapel, nor do I know what you worship."

As you explain, the priest's eyes glimmer, and an elated look crosses his face.

"Why, child," he begins in a different, rehearsed tone of voice, "this is the house of the Sun and Moon. The bringer of celestial warmth and the watcher in the night. It is by the movements of the twin proximal gods that we exist on this earth, and by their regularity that we change."

He places one hand on your shoulder and ushers you deeper into the chamber, into the colored light of the window glare.

"It is in trying times when the Moon wanes and the day grows short, when the conflux of misfortunes great and small spells doom for all we have ever known, in these times," he continues a little less confidently, "yes, in these times we must keep the proximal gods in our minds. For does not the solstice come and troubles reverse? Does not the Moon wax again? We must endure and persevere," he says, glancing at a missing patch of wall through which you see the haphazard structure that the shrouded man called the monument, "and keep the Sun and Moon foremost in our minds."

He grins even wider.

"You are the fruit of the minders' work, child, are you not? I saw them descend into the well yesterday with many of our rats. Most of our rats," he continues. You look up at the stained glass windows. The glare hurts your eyes slightly. "And now here you are. An auspicious appearance, no?"

He examines you carefully, looking at your bag with some distaste.

"This garb will be insufficient, child. To inspire these miserable wretches, one needs more than strange manners. My wife has another robe. And the queen has a mirror. We must work fast. Time is short, and lunacy is rampant. You obtain the robe, and I shall get the mirror. We can make so much of this, child," he says with an air of great urgency. "She nests in her false grave that she built in her heretical fit," he nods toward the monument, which is still visible through the hole in the wall. "When we obtain our parts, let us meet back here. A half-hour, no more. Do we have an agreement?"

"I must complain with my treatment so far. First you people bring us into this excessively primitive castle without so much as explanation why in a pool of rats, then those guys welcoming us kill each other in a small underground room and when I finally ask where I could find a bath and some clothes to cover my nudity, you people straight out attack me and throw me into this cold cell. Norwegian government won't take lightly unjust treatment of it's citizens. So unless you wish to draw ire of my mighty country upon yours and I must remain as a prisoner, then at least I ask you to reallocate me into better prison fitting my status as political prisoner. Quite honestly I would rather be released, but I suppose that option is not available."

If he releases me, then wander around trying to find a bath. If he doesn't and goes away, look for structural weaknesses of the prison cell and door. Otherwise... I suppose more persuasion is in order.

The turnkey listens for a few more moments after you get to the end of your piece, possibly hoping for an addendum. Once it becomes clear that you don't really have much more to say than that, he merely blinks "no". Then he steps away from the door in no particular hurry. Smug and incommunicable - a real credit to his profession.

That said, you start to look around the dungeon cell. There's got to be some structural weakness you could chip away at for up to twenty years with a tiny rock hammer to fashion an escape tunnel. Simply no other option. And indeed there are. Quite a few, in fact. Most notably one in the back wall of the cell, which is somewhat cracked. The crazy guy appears to be chipping away at it with some odd metallic instrument even now, and quite furiously so at that.

The door, meanwhile... well, it is a wooden door. Braced or not, it's made of wood. So if you can just get something to open a way through that, you'd also be in pretty good shape.

I'll admit I don't know anything about minders, but this room seems to have "minder" written all over it. Or something else, more likely. I look for a way to inspect the ceiling closely - maybe a ladder or some sort of looking glass.

There should be a ladder around here somewhere, you reason - but none are present that you can see. You look in the nearby hallways, the upper floor, and even outside. No ladders in sight. Or looking glasses either, for that matter. You suppose the ceiling's not really meant for close examination, either. The optical illusions it creates may very well be the entire point.

Not that you still don't want to know what's written on there, of course.

Whatever. Toss the bag of rats up to the guy, then use something else as a stepping point. An upside down bathtub, more stacked bricks, sacks of gold, the bodies of those cultists, whatever seems easiest and most convenient. Climb out of this damn pit sometime before 2016 please.

You toss the bag of rats right up there, straight into the silhouette with perfect aim. It disappears from sight, presumably a little taken aback. Tired of this nonsense, you upturn one of the tubs and jump off it onto the chain, propelling yourself up it by the amazing power of impossible annoyance.

Once you're out, you find yourself in a dusty castle courtyard, buildings all about. Nobody really paying you much attention.

Oh, and also a highly obscured man on the ground, all covered in rags and hair. He looks like he's being engulfed by your thrown sack, which appears to be squeaking a vicious cry of war. He's trying to shriek, but the rats are covering him a bit too tightly.

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