Plague Game
Feb. 14th, 2004 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night was the Friday Shadake game. Everyone was sick with the cold Shadarack had brought us the week before, including Shadarack.
"You're *still* sick?"
"Yeah... I've got a really good immune system, but I've only been getting six hours of sleep because of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles..."
Riiight. At any rate, most of us were getting over it, and just had a slight cough left over, which would sometimes hit the same room all at the same time, leading Sandy to call us the 'plauge ward'.
For dinner, we had Taco Del Mar, except for Murdock, who insisted that 'everything they make has beans -- even the meat has beans in it!' That didn't *seem* like the case, but who knows. So he went off and bought his own dinner.
The teeth turned out to be a stone formation surrounding a Martian city, or what looked like a martian city. The buildings were all pyramids, covered in combinations of circuit diagrams and hieroglyphics, and the streets were patrolled by assorted martian robots -- spiders, fly-eyes, and massive tripods -- with tricolored periscopes projecting spotlights over the streets, scanning for intruders, presumably.
The party started exploring the outer ring of pyramids, which was outside the robot patrol patterns. Most of the pyramids were dark and inactive, but a few had 'keystones' at the top which seemed to power them up. The party at first made sure to remove the keystone so as not to cause noise and light when opening the doors, but after realizing that the robots didn't seem to care what the pyramids did, went around putting the keystone they had into each pyramid in turn to see what the things inside did.
And that varied. The first floor of each pyramid was a spherical chamber with six twisty passages leading to four ground-floor doors, a waste disposal tube below, and the more specialized rooms above. When active, the sphere usually had a hologram of some sort 'guarding' it, and possibly a force field.
The next room up generally contained 'tables' and 'beds' and 'chairs' and 'silverware', although one pyramid had a strange console with buttons there. The upper room had the interesting things -- magic crystals, bubbling cauldrons with martian skeletons inside, besymbolled gears, and the like.
(blue pyramid): party never activated this one, contained racks of crystals and a glass sphere, along with 'tables' and 'chairs'.
Green pyramid: 'beds' and a console that controlled gears in the room above and did various other things.
Yellow pyramid: guardian with a force field; explored when inactive, top had consoles and a large metal tank, middle had prison cells with decaying skeletons
Pink pyramid: Bubbling cauldrons with martian skeletons. Center had 'tables' and 'chairs'. Putting 'silverware' in slot in 'chair' shot a laser across the room seemingly at random
So they spent quite a while gathering some loot and experimenting with the pyramids, before deciding to go further in to explore one of the larger pyramids. It was inside the range of the small, predictable patrols, but outside the search area of the giant scary tripods.
So Jackie decided to dart in first. After a bit of a scare, he managed to open the door, lighting the big pyramid up cyan. Inside were ranks and ranks of spider robots, 'alive' and lit up but not moving. A button in the ceiling caused one of the robots to be lifted up through the ceiling into the room above.
Hesperius didn't want to leave Jackie alone -- opening the pyramid had attracted the attention of the nearby patrols, even though they were out of apparent scanning range, and they were guarding the entrance Jackie had gone in through -- so he darted for the side door, and although he found it quickly and got inside, he was spotted by both a small spider patrol and a tripod.
The tripod in particular shot a large-area cone of blue-gray energy at the door Hesperius went through, toasting the spider patrol that was also folloing him, then started searching around outside for any other intruders, threatening to find Adam and Shadarack, who retreated behind one of the pyramids in the outer ring, huddling in its shadow as the spotlight swept back and forth.
Meanwhile, in the spider factory, Hesperius and Jackie accidentally woke up the resting spiders (by touching one), and fled to the second story by pushing the button to have a spider lifted up.
The second floor had a variety of smaller robots, the spider-bots' attendants: fly eyes, flying guns, and other less obvious allies. Jackie bottled a few, then tried to find the way up to the top level of the pyramid, but it was blocked by a force field.
Outside, hearing a 'weeb weeb weeb' noice approaching, Shadarack had taken refuge in a dark pyramid, but Adam was scared of the black, inactive designs (he'd refused to go inside inactive pyramids the whole time because he barely fit; this was the first time he'd even tried to make himself) and decided to hide behind the tooth instead (yes, over the dark, black chasm -- he was afraid of things colored black, not of the dark). So he ended up fighting the flying heat-gun minirobots on his own, handily dispatching them, although he took a few burns.
But then, for some ungodly reason, he decided to try to take on the tripod. He could certainly hit it without trouble, but its force field was way too strong for him to penetrate, and its return fire withered away the rock he hid behind, forcing him to use a different tooth for each potshot. On the third shot, he didn't pull back quite quickly enough, and got zapped by the tail-end of a cone -- and even that grazing touch nearly killed him.
On the plus side, this had diverted the tripod's attention way far away from where Shadarack was hiding, so he rejoined him and got healed up, without having to worry about the searchlight finding him.
In the factory, Jackie and Hesperious tried various strategies to destroy the milling spiders below without putting themselves at risk, only to find that the spiders seemed to have powerful force fields, and enough heat rays to quickly down summoned creatures. So instead Hesperius turned them invisible with his illiski-style magic, enhanced by one of the scales Jackie was carrying around, and they flew out, trailing sulfurous smoke.
A few of the spiders in the factory noticed them, but didn't attack. The patrol outside noticed something, but couldn't see them, and neither could the tripod whose legs they flew right past. They rejoined Shadarack and Adam, and told them that it was time to leave now.
But Shadarack and Adam were both convinced that it was a horrible idea to try to leave -- what with all the trilobytes and crap in the way (who knows what was firing those guns at the fire elemental?). And teleporting out probably wasn't safe, since they couldn't get a signal on their magitech internet-capable cell phones, would they 'get a signal' on their teleport, or end up scrambled?
This was, of course, the evil magical field of the caves affecting their minds, but it felt real nonetheless.
previous week next week
People seemed to have a lot of fun exploring the pyramids; less fun running from the robots. Probably because they somehow managed to always try a tactic on a group of robots too strong for it, so it ended up looking like the robots (except for the mini-fly eye types) were invincible, when they were actually *almost* getting hurt...
After the game I had to take everyone home, since Lazar was all tired and woozy. I was a little woozy, but not really tired. When I got home there was a nasty note from the landlord.
"You're *still* sick?"
"Yeah... I've got a really good immune system, but I've only been getting six hours of sleep because of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles..."
Riiight. At any rate, most of us were getting over it, and just had a slight cough left over, which would sometimes hit the same room all at the same time, leading Sandy to call us the 'plauge ward'.
For dinner, we had Taco Del Mar, except for Murdock, who insisted that 'everything they make has beans -- even the meat has beans in it!' That didn't *seem* like the case, but who knows. So he went off and bought his own dinner.
The teeth turned out to be a stone formation surrounding a Martian city, or what looked like a martian city. The buildings were all pyramids, covered in combinations of circuit diagrams and hieroglyphics, and the streets were patrolled by assorted martian robots -- spiders, fly-eyes, and massive tripods -- with tricolored periscopes projecting spotlights over the streets, scanning for intruders, presumably.
The party started exploring the outer ring of pyramids, which was outside the robot patrol patterns. Most of the pyramids were dark and inactive, but a few had 'keystones' at the top which seemed to power them up. The party at first made sure to remove the keystone so as not to cause noise and light when opening the doors, but after realizing that the robots didn't seem to care what the pyramids did, went around putting the keystone they had into each pyramid in turn to see what the things inside did.
And that varied. The first floor of each pyramid was a spherical chamber with six twisty passages leading to four ground-floor doors, a waste disposal tube below, and the more specialized rooms above. When active, the sphere usually had a hologram of some sort 'guarding' it, and possibly a force field.
The next room up generally contained 'tables' and 'beds' and 'chairs' and 'silverware', although one pyramid had a strange console with buttons there. The upper room had the interesting things -- magic crystals, bubbling cauldrons with martian skeletons inside, besymbolled gears, and the like.
(blue pyramid): party never activated this one, contained racks of crystals and a glass sphere, along with 'tables' and 'chairs'.
Green pyramid: 'beds' and a console that controlled gears in the room above and did various other things.
Yellow pyramid: guardian with a force field; explored when inactive, top had consoles and a large metal tank, middle had prison cells with decaying skeletons
Pink pyramid: Bubbling cauldrons with martian skeletons. Center had 'tables' and 'chairs'. Putting 'silverware' in slot in 'chair' shot a laser across the room seemingly at random
So they spent quite a while gathering some loot and experimenting with the pyramids, before deciding to go further in to explore one of the larger pyramids. It was inside the range of the small, predictable patrols, but outside the search area of the giant scary tripods.
So Jackie decided to dart in first. After a bit of a scare, he managed to open the door, lighting the big pyramid up cyan. Inside were ranks and ranks of spider robots, 'alive' and lit up but not moving. A button in the ceiling caused one of the robots to be lifted up through the ceiling into the room above.
Hesperius didn't want to leave Jackie alone -- opening the pyramid had attracted the attention of the nearby patrols, even though they were out of apparent scanning range, and they were guarding the entrance Jackie had gone in through -- so he darted for the side door, and although he found it quickly and got inside, he was spotted by both a small spider patrol and a tripod.
The tripod in particular shot a large-area cone of blue-gray energy at the door Hesperius went through, toasting the spider patrol that was also folloing him, then started searching around outside for any other intruders, threatening to find Adam and Shadarack, who retreated behind one of the pyramids in the outer ring, huddling in its shadow as the spotlight swept back and forth.
Meanwhile, in the spider factory, Hesperius and Jackie accidentally woke up the resting spiders (by touching one), and fled to the second story by pushing the button to have a spider lifted up.
The second floor had a variety of smaller robots, the spider-bots' attendants: fly eyes, flying guns, and other less obvious allies. Jackie bottled a few, then tried to find the way up to the top level of the pyramid, but it was blocked by a force field.
Outside, hearing a 'weeb weeb weeb' noice approaching, Shadarack had taken refuge in a dark pyramid, but Adam was scared of the black, inactive designs (he'd refused to go inside inactive pyramids the whole time because he barely fit; this was the first time he'd even tried to make himself) and decided to hide behind the tooth instead (yes, over the dark, black chasm -- he was afraid of things colored black, not of the dark). So he ended up fighting the flying heat-gun minirobots on his own, handily dispatching them, although he took a few burns.
But then, for some ungodly reason, he decided to try to take on the tripod. He could certainly hit it without trouble, but its force field was way too strong for him to penetrate, and its return fire withered away the rock he hid behind, forcing him to use a different tooth for each potshot. On the third shot, he didn't pull back quite quickly enough, and got zapped by the tail-end of a cone -- and even that grazing touch nearly killed him.
On the plus side, this had diverted the tripod's attention way far away from where Shadarack was hiding, so he rejoined him and got healed up, without having to worry about the searchlight finding him.
In the factory, Jackie and Hesperious tried various strategies to destroy the milling spiders below without putting themselves at risk, only to find that the spiders seemed to have powerful force fields, and enough heat rays to quickly down summoned creatures. So instead Hesperius turned them invisible with his illiski-style magic, enhanced by one of the scales Jackie was carrying around, and they flew out, trailing sulfurous smoke.
A few of the spiders in the factory noticed them, but didn't attack. The patrol outside noticed something, but couldn't see them, and neither could the tripod whose legs they flew right past. They rejoined Shadarack and Adam, and told them that it was time to leave now.
But Shadarack and Adam were both convinced that it was a horrible idea to try to leave -- what with all the trilobytes and crap in the way (who knows what was firing those guns at the fire elemental?). And teleporting out probably wasn't safe, since they couldn't get a signal on their magitech internet-capable cell phones, would they 'get a signal' on their teleport, or end up scrambled?
This was, of course, the evil magical field of the caves affecting their minds, but it felt real nonetheless.
previous week next week
People seemed to have a lot of fun exploring the pyramids; less fun running from the robots. Probably because they somehow managed to always try a tactic on a group of robots too strong for it, so it ended up looking like the robots (except for the mini-fly eye types) were invincible, when they were actually *almost* getting hurt...
After the game I had to take everyone home, since Lazar was all tired and woozy. I was a little woozy, but not really tired. When I got home there was a nasty note from the landlord.
