Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 249671 times)

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #765 on:** March 11, 2016, 04:14:49 pm »

Quote from: TopHat on March 10, 2016, 02:10:42 pm

"On second thoughts, maybe this is a bad idea. This place seems unnerving, somehow."
Back away from the darkness. Rest in the corner of the room furthest from it.

You don't want to go into the dark and unknown doorway? How terrible. It's almost like you have a sense of self-preservation or something.

Speaking of, you think you'll relax in that corner a little. While keeping both eyes open and no vulnerable parts of your body exposed. The gentleman's method of relaxation. The corner position gives you an admirable view of any potential assailants, and the resulting feeling of balancing on the knife-edge of paranoid safety makes for a peculiarly lightening rest. Savor the safety! It will not last.

Punctuating that last statement perfectly, Mr. Daniels emerges from the doorway, looking none the worse for wear. Perhaps lightly disappointed more than anything if what he says is anything to go by. He gives you an unnervingly unreadable look.

Quote from: Toaster on March 10, 2016, 02:34:02 pm

Hmmm. Wonder if there's a plank to stretch across the river.

Wait out the doctor. Recall how far across the river was at its narrowest.

[The Doctor's Business: 6]

After another rebuke from the guard, the doctor gives up and heads further into the courtyard, taking turns at knocking on each of the seemingly residential house doors (well, except for the house that seems to be missing its door, which she just looks into). One door opens. She goes in, an expression of joy on her face. The door shuts behind her, and does not open in the following minutes.

[Memory of Distance: 5]

You're pretty sure the river was about forty feet wide all around within a five foot margin or so. Definitely possible to swim, although probably a bit too wild to do so safely. Maybe the stout folk could help you in these matters, though counting on someone's help is exactly how you've wasted much of your time thus far.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on March 10, 2016, 02:47:26 pm

Oh by Odin's empty eye socket MURDER IT! Very much INEVITABLY murder it by virtue of being bigger and higher on the food chain! Kick it on ceiling and walls now that it's locked on my feet! Or something!

It is an insect and you are a man, a proud and noble viking! In biological terms it may come from a far more evolutionarily successful phylum, but you don't cotton to that intellectualist shit. You represent the apex of human cultural achievement! It doesn't even know what culture is! From this alone you conclude that your victory should be

INEVITABLE

[Word: 4]

The situation clarifies itself as your free foot moves in a thousand differing kicks - it is smaller than you, blind, though chunky in its own way. Much like a coconut crab in principle and execution, really. The odds are against it, as your many successful attempts over time would indicate. It is smaller, weaker. Spirited in its own slow and wrongheaded fashion, but easily dispatched. A kick to its softer underbelly after you lift it by the mouthparts with your occupied leg causes its digestive system to reel, you discover, dislodging your foot before more significant damage is done to it. This you choose as your first move.

The second is also quite obvious - both feet and all of your lower body strength meet the creature's front, cracking its shell and smashing many of its internal organs, lymph seeping from its broken exoskeleton as it quietly expires from your two unerring strikes.

Quote from: penguinofhonor on March 10, 2016, 03:44:50 pm

Gah. Well, I have the thing! That's pretty great. I suppose next I have to try and push the rubble off myself.

[Stony Imprisonment: 6]

Okay, so you need to get out of this situation. Few options on that, unfortunately. But you figure you ought to try anyway, and put away the arm for a moment to give the rocks a solid push. The rocks, as several tons of rocks tend to do in your experience, fail to budge in the face of your pathetic mortal might.

Oddly, however, this bothers your legs little, and it occurs to you that perhaps you have not so much lost feeling in them as they seem unusually uncrushed. You try to experimentally slide back a little, and find that you're not quite as trapped as you suspected.

What you also find, however, are the legs of a stiff, fungus-infested corpse standing over you, fibrous arms resting on the rubble, keeping it quite resolutely up above your feet. You do not seem to have heard it move, although admittedly your latest acts were more than noisy enough to mask any movement. The physics of the way it's supporting the rubble seem frankly unlikely, but not one to look a gift corpse in the toothless mouth, you slide out anyway and consider your next move, cradling your looted blade-arm close to your chest.

Quote from: Xantalos on March 11, 2016, 02:27:04 am

((That well is a sassy motherfucker))

"Oh, so the template is my body, and the substrate is whatever material it's made up of?

Frailty is a function of doubt, you say.
...
Oh. I think I understand. My thanks, well. I'd ask more but I want to keep my connections right now until I'm certain I can get what I need. I'll be going now."

Exit deal! See if Mr. Wilde is still there.

"Well, that was an odd one. But I suppose you can't expect much more when dealing with things like that."

The best answers are the ones that seed good questions. Another insight freely shared. Thank you. Come again.

You exit the well's domain and find Mr. Wilde curled up in a corner, looking at you with a suspicious eye. Very good form on covering his ass as he tries to camp out and recover his failing health. Doesn't seem to have followed you into the well, unless somehow the well was just far more efficient with him than it seems to feel like being with you (not beyond the realm of possibility, since no doubt all the good customer service goes to the naive and inexperienced ones).

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Xantalos · « **Reply #766 on:** March 11, 2016, 04:24:43 pm »

"Did you make a deal with the well? Just curious to see if you got pseudo-ripped off like I did. Either way, let's get us out of here, shall we? There's a chain over this way."

If Mr. Wilde agrees, help him up the chain and out of the well.

Toaster · « **Reply #767 on:** March 11, 2016, 04:33:25 pm »

Disappear before being cornered by the doctor again. Head up to the walls to see if there's any place that a bridge-analog could be built. What are those stout fellows up to anyway?

penguinofhonor · « **Reply #768 on:** March 11, 2016, 06:29:15 pm »

"Uh... thanks." I run out of the tombs. Hopefully I tripped all the traps on the way in.

TopHat · « **Reply #769 on:** March 12, 2016, 01:17:35 pm »

"The... Well? Do you mean the darkness beyond the threshold? What is it like? What do you mean, ripped off? Though I suppose we had best leave this place. After you, naturally."

Questions, questions, questions. Then follow Mr. Daniels up the chain and out of here.

AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #770 on:** March 12, 2016, 02:37:19 pm »

Ugh, that was unpleasant. I think I want to go back into wooden labyrinth. Or since the word seems to be working now, follow the INEVITABLE path to outside.

Xantalos · « **Reply #771 on:** March 12, 2016, 04:57:42 pm »

"Yeah, the darkness. Spoke to you, didn't it? 'Bring warmth. Speak plainly and receive the same.' It's basically this extradimensional entity thing that feeds off of the connections living things forge between each other. For instance, you and I talking? That's a connection, we know each other to an extent, we can interact and stuff. You can trade those in to the well for favors, though far as I know you can't get connections back after you give them and it's a random selection, so be careful.

Also if you do decide to make a deal with it, be extremely specific. That thing is more literal-minded than anything I've ever talked with, so if you have any ambiguity in your words it'll use that as an excuse to say 'sorry you had to clarify you only get half the deal now'."

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #772 on:** March 12, 2016, 05:11:47 pm »

Quote from: Xantalos on March 11, 2016, 04:24:43 pm

"Did you make a deal with the well? Just curious to see if you got pseudo-ripped off like I did. Either way, let's get us out of here, shall we? There's a chain over this way."

If Mr. Wilde agrees, help him up the chain and out of the well.

You whistle contently as you grab onto the chain and effortlessly climb topside. It takes a moment for Mr. Wilde to make significant progress, so you expedite matters by grabbing his hand and, using the nearby stone pillar the chain is attached to, whip him right out of the pit and over on the ground, where he flops a moment before getting up and looking at you in confusion, then at the surrounding area.

Quote from: Toaster on March 11, 2016, 04:33:25 pm

Disappear before being cornered by the doctor again. Head up to the walls to see if there's any place that a bridge-analog could be built. What are those stout fellows up to anyway?

[Observations of the Noble Stoat: 6]

A trip to the battlements proves less than informative, the sun having set and the environs being a little dark. Granted, the moonlight does help a tad in that you can see what look like mildly glowing embers of a once-proud bridge off in one part of the river. Supports still jutting out of the water and everything, even. Seems like a good place to start if bridge building is your thing.

That established, you subject a group of stout fellows in strict formation some two hundred feet away from the walls to your discerning eye. Their silhouettes in the dark are quite difficult to make out, and you do need to lean a little out between the parapets. Hm. Something with their hands, you think. Kind of difficult to see with how their bodies twist in unnatural-looking ways. They've got something in their hands, yes. And they're pointing these things at you, you think. How odd.

[Thirty Bolts, Just To Be Safe: 5 vs. 6]

A light rain of crossbow bolts showers the wall around you shortly afterwards, none really getting very close to hitting you, but nevertheless being slightly concerning as they clank off the battlements and down into the courtyard, no doubt making quite a ruckus as the shafts roll down this one fellow's roof. A door opens shortly afterwards, a dishevelled youth looking in glee at the sudden wealth of wood and metal in his backyard before running to gather as much as possible before the next volley comes in - somewhere along 10 make it back inside along with him, an admirable performance considering the semi-darkness.

Quote from: penguinofhonor on March 11, 2016, 06:29:15 pm

"Uh... thanks." I run out of the tombs. Hopefully I tripped all the traps on the way in.

[Feet of the Unwary: 6]

You sprint down the corridor that led you to this tomb, running right into your dead companion as its palm squarely meets your face and the rest of you slams into its body, which once again fails to budge an inch (unlike a couple of your teeth upon impact). You ponder for a moment what that was for as you try to move around the creature, and discover that its other hand appears to be pointing at the ground. Curious, you carefully check it...

... a pressure plate. Still unpressed. You think you must have missed it in your first walk through here. You navigate around it with a sigh, and proceed along the rest of the hallway, which is blissfully free of interruption. You can't quite say the same thing about the crossroads room, however, as the priestess immediately takes note of your arrival. Must be that creaky bit of metal you're carrying. Quite noisy, really.

What is this, she asks. Did you survive? What have you brought here? The last question carries a hint of uncomprehending alarm.

Quote from: TopHat on March 12, 2016, 01:17:35 pm

"The... Well? Do you mean the darkness beyond the threshold? What is it like? What do you mean, ripped off? Though I suppose we had best leave this place. After you, naturally."

Questions, questions, questions. Then follow Mr. Daniels up the chain and out of here.

[Adventurer's Fitness: 3]

It's a bit of a climb to get up the chain, and you're not in quite as good a shape as you'd like to be for it, not to mention the fact that your hands are pretty cut up and kind of hurt throughout. Fortunately, just as you are about to falter in the final stretch, Mr. Daniels helpfully holds on to a nearby stone pillar and offers you a hand - you take it and he disturbingly easily whips you out of the shaft and onto the ground, where you lay a moment in confusion before getting up and making sure you didn't just dislocate a shoulder or something (hearteningly, this does not appear to be the case).

The sight that greets you is quite unusual. Around you is the courtyard of a medieval castle, complete with tense-looking guards wearing period-appropriate mail and keeping their hands on their weapons. There's quite a few buildings about, some built in quite an unusual style (including a chapel with holes in the walls, a ramshackle assemblage of stolen building materials, a circle of stones and quite a few dilapidated wooden buildings, plus an out-of-place cob tower in one corner and a stately stone keep with remarkably small windows dominating one side of the yard). The smell of desperation and confusion is on the air. Awkwardly, it seems like nudity isn't really the choice of dress around here as far as you can tell. Seems to just be Mr. Daniels' thing. Maybe you ought to address this somehow. Fortunately, this being nighttime, the guards don't seem overly bothered by your appearance regardless.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on March 12, 2016, 02:37:19 pm

Ugh, that was unpleasant. I think I want to go back into wooden labyrinth. Or since the word seems to be working now, follow the INEVITABLE path to outside.

You wish it was that easy, really. That you could just say your escape was

INEVITABLE

[Word: 1]

and you would not just get a depressing view of yourself a hundred years later, still in darkness, still alone, still hounded by dumb invertebrates unaware of how hopelessly outclassed they are. At that point you will hardly even resemble what you used to be, your hands having grown claws, your head erupting feelers from now-vestigial eyes, your brain adapting to a fundamentally different mode of perceiving the world. At this point you will have given up on finding a conventional way out and try to dig the stone - little will you suspect the true reason of your failure. But at that point your meeting with it will be an inevitability of its own, drawn into its inexorable grasp as you will be-

-okay, you think that's enough of that. You poke the feelers back into your face and try to focus on the task ahead. Maybe banking on predestination isn't the way forward, since predestination seems to feel like being a dick right now. Like using a compass in the South Pole, you swear.

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Xantalos · « **Reply #773 on:** March 12, 2016, 05:19:16 pm »

"Right, d'you want me to show you anything? I've got a reasonable grasp of how this place is laid out, I'm pretty sure. I gotta wait for this one guy who's apparently exploring some passages underground, so I'll be waiting around for a while."

Idly follow Mr. Wilde around.

penguinofhonor · « **Reply #774 on:** March 12, 2016, 06:44:19 pm »

"A blade, but we can talk about that in a second. Would you happen to know about any zombies that might be down here? Eerily friendly ones? Really moldy?" I listen for any movements in the hallway behind me.

Toaster · « **Reply #775 on:** March 12, 2016, 07:54:00 pm »

With such brazen display of a lack of safety protocols, Thomas realizes he's not getting out that way. Frustrated, he reaches for a discarded bolt and finds a safer, more inward vantage point.

Grab a bolt if there's one easy to get. In any case, find a nice safe place to sit and observe the happenings in the courtyard. What is going on down there? Why can't a way out be found? What will be said to Mr. Munderly?

AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #776 on:** March 13, 2016, 04:14:56 am »

Ugh, time to take the destiny into my own hands. It seems to get rather messy when left for... other things.

Backtrace back to the wooden shaft, sneak up and down to the another shaft, assuming it is still there.
And get drunk again.

TopHat · « **Reply #777 on:** March 13, 2016, 07:39:09 am »

"Do you know of anywhere we might find some clothes? On another note, who are you waiting for, and why do you need their help? Are they from Earthlike us?"
Go anywhere Mr. Daniels recommends, otherwise begin systematically knocking on doors and asking as to where I might purchase some.

Xantalos · « **Reply #778 on:** March 13, 2016, 02:21:55 pm »

"Oh right, clothes. You'll have to rob someone if you want that, they're kinda at a premium because the castle's been under seige for months. Yeah, the guy I'm waiting for is probably from Earth. There were a bunch of us summoned by the local wizards - they call them minders - here. We may or may not be demonic entities or something made out of rats. Anyway, I need this guy's help because see that chapel there? I need to get that sun-themed stained glass window out of the frame in one piece, and he apparently has a word that'll help with that."

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #779 on:** March 13, 2016, 03:08:01 pm »

Quote from: Xantalos on March 12, 2016, 05:19:16 pm

"Right, d'you want me to show you anything? I've got a reasonable grasp of how this place is laid out, I'm pretty sure. I gotta wait for this one guy who's apparently exploring some passages underground, so I'll be waiting around for a while."

Idly follow Mr. Wilde around.

He knocks on the keep door and gets a guard to direct him to a place where he can get some clothes. You consider relating the hilarious anecdote of how you robbed an old man of his vestments for a vaguely-stated fetch quest, but hold off for now. Gotta keep the good material for the right time.

Quote from: penguinofhonor on March 12, 2016, 06:44:19 pm

"A blade, but we can talk about that in a second. Would you happen to know about any zombies that might be down here? Eerily friendly ones? Really moldy?" I listen for any movements in the hallway behind me.

There are no movements you can hear, which is either very good or really quite awful, depending on the conclusions you'd like to draw.

Zombies, she repeats, taking a moment before getting your meaning. The living dead? You hear her emit a quiet gasp. What did you do? Did you disturb the resting places? It is not for anyone to disturb the resting places! They must remain sacrosanct! You're not really sure what answer you were expecting here as the priestess starts to mutter feverishly. The graves of the ancients, she says. Their graves... and their wisdom, their history!

Yes! No hands must sully these! No hands... unhand her, plunderer! You hear her start to thrash. Do not dare lay a finger on her! Don't... do not... what is that smell? Her voice begins to trail off, resistance weakening. Roses in her mother's garden, the boy from El and his gilded lute, her coming of age...

Quote from: Toaster on March 12, 2016, 07:54:00 pm

With such brazen display of a lack of safety protocols, Thomas realizes he's not getting out that way. Frustrated, he reaches for a discarded bolt and finds a safer, more inward vantage point.

Grab a bolt if there's one easy to get. In any case, find a nice safe place to sit and observe the happenings in the courtyard. What is going on down there? Why can't a way out be found? What will be said to Mr. Munderly?

[Offhanded Fortune: 2]

Unfortunately none of the bolts seem to have remained on the battlements, having elected to either bounce into the moat beneath the wall or down on the courtyard. You duck down behind a parapet to protect yourself from further reprisal.

From this position of safety you take a long look at the courtyard. Seems a bit depopulated presently, although the twin naked shapes of Mr. Wilde and Mr. Daniels standing in front of the keep and conversing with the door guard are somewhat interesting. No movement can be seen from the house the doctor entered, though neither can you hear any commotion. The dishevelled youth appears to have retreated into his cottage entirely. All is quiet in the Anglefork courtyard.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on March 13, 2016, 04:14:56 am

Ugh, time to take the destiny into my own hands. It seems to get rather messy when left for... other things.

Backtrace back to the wooden shaft, sneak up and down to the another shaft, assuming it is still there.
And get drunk again.

Fuck this, you need a drink. A quick shot of inhibition to the brain, that does the trick quite nicely. Ah. You missed being drunk more than you thought possible.

[Labyrinths of Anglefork: 3]

In any case, you retreat back to the place you dropped down from, and try to ascend the wooden shaft before it becomes clear that, unlike for certain walls you've explored before, this one does not appear to have been meant to be climbed up along easily.

Granted, it wouldn't be impossible to proceed upward anyway, though it'd sure be way the hell harder than it was to get down here.

Quote from: TopHat on March 13, 2016, 07:39:09 am

"Do you know of anywhere we might find some clothes? On another note, who are you waiting for, and why do you need their help? Are they from Earthlike us?"
Go anywhere Mr. Daniels recommends, otherwise begin systematically knocking on doors and asking as to where I might purchase some.

[Such A Nice Neighborhood: 5]

Since Mr. Daniels appears to have no suggestions on where to go, you approach the keep and knock on the door. The guard eyes you critically. You can go in, he says. It's not particularly forbidden or anything. Ah, you say. Very good. You had some reservations about this, being naked and all. The guard says not to worry - it is even darker inside for the most part, so you will, if anything, be even better hidden.

That brings you to your question, actually - does the guard know where one might find some clothes around here? While being naked is all very naturalistic and all, you really believe you ought to spare the eyes of innocent folk from having to behold more of you than strictly necessary. A good question, says the guard. You could ask some of the servants in the east wing. He supposes there ought to be some clothes available. May need to dig a little to get them, of course. Or at least convince someone to share.

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Author Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 249671 times)

Harry Baldman

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

Toaster

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

penguinofhonor

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TopHat

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AoshimaMichio

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Xantalos

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Harry Baldman

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Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

penguinofhonor

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Toaster

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

AoshimaMichio

Re: Our Salvation: A History of Disagreement

TopHat

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Xantalos

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Harry Baldman

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