Fun with Fungus
May. 22nd, 2004 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night Lazar ran another session of the Stargate-themed Shadake game. After returning from the world of weasels and bugs infested by LLCs, we managed to infest the rest of the base, and get sent on what looked like a much simpler and easier mission, where we lost another jeep.
Theta team was quarantined for almost the whole two weeks, as no one was able to figure out what (if anything) was wrong with them, and the requested occultist was not available in that short of a time frame -- or maybe they didn't want to ask in an outsider. They were joined by a member of Sigma team, who'd run into what had to be an LLC on another world entirely, although he'd been the only one of HIS team infected. Croran was a tall, beefy Nimune, with dull, ugly feathers, and after listening to his ideas of 'fun pranks' for a week, Theta team was pretty sure they had a handle on why he was still a Corporal.
After being cooped up for all that time, the items they'd brought back from the weasel and bug world were given back to them, to see if they could do anything with them, since the facility's other researchers had given up in frustration. In particular, they wanted one of the team to try on the weasels' yarn armor, which had been 'repaired' and pieced back together, to see if they could make it *do* anything, since it seemed to have more to it than just decoration, after a bit of study -- there were crystals embedded in the knots at each junction, and 'conductive polymers' of some sort running along certain threads.
Nuki volunteered to be the guinea pig. He was put inside an airtight bulletproof plastic box, inside a charged faraday cage, just in case. He put on the yarn, concentrated on making it 'do things', and triggered a wave of energy which blasted through all the precautions as though they weren't there, and spread through the base. But that wasn't the bad part.
The bad part was that as the wave passed, the LLCs were driven out of Theta team (and Croran), and MORE LLCs emerged from their equipment -- hundreds of the paint-smear-like critters in total, swarming around the room briefly before zipping off through the walls. While Carmine and JT tried to rescue Nuki (who looked unconscious), Croran picked up a green crystal and threw it at a green LLC that had lingered behind just a bit too long. The crystal went right through it, but the LLC re-attached itself to his body.
Nuki was fine, so the rest of the team decided to follow Croran's example and hunt down the LLCs before they got too far. This was, of course, a futile task, made more futile when they realized that only ONE LLC would re-bond with each of them, for the most part. JT got a blue one, Nuki a black, Kyrae a red, and Carmine -- who'd always seemed more attractive to the mysterious critters -- got two, a yellow and a white. The rest got away.
At this point, Nuki told the group that he was able to see runes on the gems embedded in the yarn armor, that said things like 'cast blue' and 'block green'. After he pointed that out, the others were able to see the runes too -- at least, the runes of their colors -- although they needed Nuki to translate them for them. A little experimentation revealed that the runes had 'connections' that the conductive yarn had been attached too, and that connecting them in simple patterns ('cast green' + 'encase' was the one Croran tried) had seemingly magical effects (he was turned to stone for a minute or two).
Nuki theorized that the disastrous result of activating the armor was because the scientists had 'fixed' the armor by linking everything to everything else, building a massive, nonsensical 'spell' -- the armor was *supposed* to have a bunch of distinct spells doing various things that could be more easily activated than by using the loose stones.
They also experimented with the crystals that had been left by the magical squirrels, and discovered that they could either be used to 'improve' the rune-crystals, adding extra connections, or fed to the LLC inside them, which probably did *something*, although they weren't sure what.
While they were messing around with that, it was announced over the intercom that Theta and Sigma teams were no longer under quarantine. Instead, the entire BASE was under quarantine, as the LLCs had infested hundreds of people on the base. There was also a meeting in the auditorium to discuss this development, that everyone affected was required to attend.
The meeting was useless, though -- everyone was panicked and confused, and many of them were randomly giving off bursts of various energy. Theta team was the only one with the rune-stones that could be used to *control* these outbursts, and they weren't about to give them up, not even to the researchers who wanted to 'study' them. The only thing that was decided at the meeting was that they needed to find a world that *wasn't* a war-zone, or otherwise dangerous, with more of these LLCs and preferably more of the technology to control them. Theta team suggested returning to the weasel and bug world to loot a few more corpses from the battlefields, but that was ruled too dangerous -- and it was hard to argue, since they'd all been almost killed.
The next two days, Theta team spent playing around with the rune-crystals and their LLCs and discovering their limits. They could only use about two to four 'spells' a day (they weren't sure if it was really magic, or just sufficiently advanced technology, but it sure *seemed* like magic), and most of them ended up being weak attack spells, comparable in power to firing a gun at someone. Of course, as they'd discovered -- and other teams had verified -- guns didn't work after being taken through the portal, so it might come in handy.
Croran was officially added to Theta team, as he seemed to have the same strange control over his LLCs (they *still* hadn't shown the rune crystals to anyone) and they wanted each team to have at least five members. He didn't *exactly* fit in -- he liked to do silly, destructive things, like create fog in the ventilation system, flooding the base. They were stuck with him, though. At least they all outranked him!
After two days, they were given another mission. On what looked like a dead world, with flat, gray ground and leafless trees, was a 'crash site' of what appeared to be an alien space ship. According to the remote viewer, the ship had some active systems, that seemed to show pictures of LLCs, on occasion. They were to go to the ship, retrieve any data they could from its systems, figure out anything they could about how it worked, and bring back a sample of its hull, along with any 'portable technology' or weapons.
Since they couldn't be sure of coming in anywhere near the ship, and since the ground looked flat and good for driving, they decided to take another jeep, loading it up with mechanical equipment, extra food and water, and a cutting torch to use on the ship's hull. They weren't issued any firearms this time, as they'd be useless.
So they all got in the jeep, drove it through the portal, and splashed through the thin coating of fungus that passed for a surface on that world, into the water below. Luckily for them, their jeep floated. At least as long as no one opened the door.
The nearest tree was too far away to even tie the jeep down. While Nuki flew up to scout and see if he could spot the crash site, JT flew over to see how stable the trees were, and if they were alive. They seemed to be alive, and stable, although they weren't necessarily *plants* as they didn't seem to do photosynthesis. The fungus coating the surface was strong enough to walk on, as long as you weren't near an existing break (it hadn't been strong enough near the jeep), but walking on it was probably a bad idea as it was only *barely* strong enough.
Nuki reported that they were about two and a half miles from the crash site -- unbeleivably close! Maybe they could actually make it, flying from tree to tree and resting when they got tired. The last mile around their target had no trees, though -- and that would be a long flight for most of them (everyone except Nuki, actually -- Nuki was a 'pygmy', with much larger wings, proportionally).
Just as they set off, a giant sea serpent-like creature surfaced, dragging their jeep down into the water. After it passed, the fungus on the surface seemed to be repaired and unbroken, with no sign that they'd ever been there. It was a good thing they summoned the portals to them, instead of having to find their way back to some specific location!
JT suggested they try to fly a mile without landing on the way to the edge of the clearing, so that they'd know if they'd be able to make the flight, or if they'd need to come up with a boat, or try walking, or something. No one had any problem with the dry run, although it was tiring. But when it came time to actually fly across the mile of empty, open space, JT -- who was in back -- got a nasty wing cramp, and had to hurriedly land in the middle of the open fungus to rest his wing. The others continued on without him, not being able to hear him while flying over the rush of the wind on their ear-feathers. He was able to land without breaking the surface, though, and started crawling carefully, and very *lightly* across the wide expanse, not wanting to risk taking off from the fragile surface, and hoping that he could be quiet enough not to attract any giant sea monsters.
So the others arrived without him. As soon as they landed, he contacted them on the radio and explained the situation. Kyrae sent Nuki and Croran inside to scout out the ship, while he and Carmine waited for JT to arrive. Nuki and Croran headed right for the control room [I think; I was in the bathroom] where, amidst massive destruction and devastation -- it looked like the whole room had been ripped apart savagely by something with really big claws -- they saw a looped recording on the viewscreen.
The recording showed weasels, the same species as from the world in their last mission, apparently acting as the crew of the ship. These weasels weren't wearing yarn -- they were wearing cloth garments covering most of their fur [normal human clothing, really, which is nothing at all like what the feathery Nimune wear]. The weasels were panicking, shouting in terror, as what looked like LLCs swarmed through the ship and merged with them -- but unlike Theta's experience with the LLCs, these immediately seemed to take over the weasels' bodies and cause massive mental and physical changes. One in particular grew huge claws and started ripping up the controls, and other crewmembers. Which explained the destruction.
Outside, JT finally arrived at the ship, and with Kyrae's help (dropping a rope) was able to climb up to the hatch. Since Nuki and Croran weren't back yet, they tried getting a sample of the hull. It seemed to be made of soft plastic, but wasn't affected by their knives, or even by thermite charges, and of course the cutting torch had sunk with the jeep. JT tried 'magic acid' on it (one of his rune-crystals had been labeled acid) and it seemed to have some effect, although it would take a lot of work to weaken around an area enough so that it could be removed -- days of effort, probably. Carmine had a rune called 'energy dagger', though, and was able to chip off a bit with it. That would work as a sample.
Nuki and Croran rejoined the others and told them what they'd found, and Theta team decided to move into the ship to explore it further.
last week | next week
Croran was our new player, Dan. He seems nice enough, and has the sort of power-gamer-y attitude that you probably need to fit in with our group: he wanted to make his character deaf to get extra karma points, at first, since he figured he'd be able to rig a text-to-speech-to-text device to automatically translate things spoken near him and minimize the impact. Lazar said no -- basically, if he was deaf, he wouldn't be on the team in the first place. So instead he's addicted to performance enhancing drugs. }:P
Theta team was quarantined for almost the whole two weeks, as no one was able to figure out what (if anything) was wrong with them, and the requested occultist was not available in that short of a time frame -- or maybe they didn't want to ask in an outsider. They were joined by a member of Sigma team, who'd run into what had to be an LLC on another world entirely, although he'd been the only one of HIS team infected. Croran was a tall, beefy Nimune, with dull, ugly feathers, and after listening to his ideas of 'fun pranks' for a week, Theta team was pretty sure they had a handle on why he was still a Corporal.
After being cooped up for all that time, the items they'd brought back from the weasel and bug world were given back to them, to see if they could do anything with them, since the facility's other researchers had given up in frustration. In particular, they wanted one of the team to try on the weasels' yarn armor, which had been 'repaired' and pieced back together, to see if they could make it *do* anything, since it seemed to have more to it than just decoration, after a bit of study -- there were crystals embedded in the knots at each junction, and 'conductive polymers' of some sort running along certain threads.
Nuki volunteered to be the guinea pig. He was put inside an airtight bulletproof plastic box, inside a charged faraday cage, just in case. He put on the yarn, concentrated on making it 'do things', and triggered a wave of energy which blasted through all the precautions as though they weren't there, and spread through the base. But that wasn't the bad part.
The bad part was that as the wave passed, the LLCs were driven out of Theta team (and Croran), and MORE LLCs emerged from their equipment -- hundreds of the paint-smear-like critters in total, swarming around the room briefly before zipping off through the walls. While Carmine and JT tried to rescue Nuki (who looked unconscious), Croran picked up a green crystal and threw it at a green LLC that had lingered behind just a bit too long. The crystal went right through it, but the LLC re-attached itself to his body.
Nuki was fine, so the rest of the team decided to follow Croran's example and hunt down the LLCs before they got too far. This was, of course, a futile task, made more futile when they realized that only ONE LLC would re-bond with each of them, for the most part. JT got a blue one, Nuki a black, Kyrae a red, and Carmine -- who'd always seemed more attractive to the mysterious critters -- got two, a yellow and a white. The rest got away.
At this point, Nuki told the group that he was able to see runes on the gems embedded in the yarn armor, that said things like 'cast blue' and 'block green'. After he pointed that out, the others were able to see the runes too -- at least, the runes of their colors -- although they needed Nuki to translate them for them. A little experimentation revealed that the runes had 'connections' that the conductive yarn had been attached too, and that connecting them in simple patterns ('cast green' + 'encase' was the one Croran tried) had seemingly magical effects (he was turned to stone for a minute or two).
Nuki theorized that the disastrous result of activating the armor was because the scientists had 'fixed' the armor by linking everything to everything else, building a massive, nonsensical 'spell' -- the armor was *supposed* to have a bunch of distinct spells doing various things that could be more easily activated than by using the loose stones.
They also experimented with the crystals that had been left by the magical squirrels, and discovered that they could either be used to 'improve' the rune-crystals, adding extra connections, or fed to the LLC inside them, which probably did *something*, although they weren't sure what.
While they were messing around with that, it was announced over the intercom that Theta and Sigma teams were no longer under quarantine. Instead, the entire BASE was under quarantine, as the LLCs had infested hundreds of people on the base. There was also a meeting in the auditorium to discuss this development, that everyone affected was required to attend.
The meeting was useless, though -- everyone was panicked and confused, and many of them were randomly giving off bursts of various energy. Theta team was the only one with the rune-stones that could be used to *control* these outbursts, and they weren't about to give them up, not even to the researchers who wanted to 'study' them. The only thing that was decided at the meeting was that they needed to find a world that *wasn't* a war-zone, or otherwise dangerous, with more of these LLCs and preferably more of the technology to control them. Theta team suggested returning to the weasel and bug world to loot a few more corpses from the battlefields, but that was ruled too dangerous -- and it was hard to argue, since they'd all been almost killed.
The next two days, Theta team spent playing around with the rune-crystals and their LLCs and discovering their limits. They could only use about two to four 'spells' a day (they weren't sure if it was really magic, or just sufficiently advanced technology, but it sure *seemed* like magic), and most of them ended up being weak attack spells, comparable in power to firing a gun at someone. Of course, as they'd discovered -- and other teams had verified -- guns didn't work after being taken through the portal, so it might come in handy.
Croran was officially added to Theta team, as he seemed to have the same strange control over his LLCs (they *still* hadn't shown the rune crystals to anyone) and they wanted each team to have at least five members. He didn't *exactly* fit in -- he liked to do silly, destructive things, like create fog in the ventilation system, flooding the base. They were stuck with him, though. At least they all outranked him!
After two days, they were given another mission. On what looked like a dead world, with flat, gray ground and leafless trees, was a 'crash site' of what appeared to be an alien space ship. According to the remote viewer, the ship had some active systems, that seemed to show pictures of LLCs, on occasion. They were to go to the ship, retrieve any data they could from its systems, figure out anything they could about how it worked, and bring back a sample of its hull, along with any 'portable technology' or weapons.
Since they couldn't be sure of coming in anywhere near the ship, and since the ground looked flat and good for driving, they decided to take another jeep, loading it up with mechanical equipment, extra food and water, and a cutting torch to use on the ship's hull. They weren't issued any firearms this time, as they'd be useless.
So they all got in the jeep, drove it through the portal, and splashed through the thin coating of fungus that passed for a surface on that world, into the water below. Luckily for them, their jeep floated. At least as long as no one opened the door.
The nearest tree was too far away to even tie the jeep down. While Nuki flew up to scout and see if he could spot the crash site, JT flew over to see how stable the trees were, and if they were alive. They seemed to be alive, and stable, although they weren't necessarily *plants* as they didn't seem to do photosynthesis. The fungus coating the surface was strong enough to walk on, as long as you weren't near an existing break (it hadn't been strong enough near the jeep), but walking on it was probably a bad idea as it was only *barely* strong enough.
Nuki reported that they were about two and a half miles from the crash site -- unbeleivably close! Maybe they could actually make it, flying from tree to tree and resting when they got tired. The last mile around their target had no trees, though -- and that would be a long flight for most of them (everyone except Nuki, actually -- Nuki was a 'pygmy', with much larger wings, proportionally).
Just as they set off, a giant sea serpent-like creature surfaced, dragging their jeep down into the water. After it passed, the fungus on the surface seemed to be repaired and unbroken, with no sign that they'd ever been there. It was a good thing they summoned the portals to them, instead of having to find their way back to some specific location!
JT suggested they try to fly a mile without landing on the way to the edge of the clearing, so that they'd know if they'd be able to make the flight, or if they'd need to come up with a boat, or try walking, or something. No one had any problem with the dry run, although it was tiring. But when it came time to actually fly across the mile of empty, open space, JT -- who was in back -- got a nasty wing cramp, and had to hurriedly land in the middle of the open fungus to rest his wing. The others continued on without him, not being able to hear him while flying over the rush of the wind on their ear-feathers. He was able to land without breaking the surface, though, and started crawling carefully, and very *lightly* across the wide expanse, not wanting to risk taking off from the fragile surface, and hoping that he could be quiet enough not to attract any giant sea monsters.
So the others arrived without him. As soon as they landed, he contacted them on the radio and explained the situation. Kyrae sent Nuki and Croran inside to scout out the ship, while he and Carmine waited for JT to arrive. Nuki and Croran headed right for the control room [I think; I was in the bathroom] where, amidst massive destruction and devastation -- it looked like the whole room had been ripped apart savagely by something with really big claws -- they saw a looped recording on the viewscreen.
The recording showed weasels, the same species as from the world in their last mission, apparently acting as the crew of the ship. These weasels weren't wearing yarn -- they were wearing cloth garments covering most of their fur [normal human clothing, really, which is nothing at all like what the feathery Nimune wear]. The weasels were panicking, shouting in terror, as what looked like LLCs swarmed through the ship and merged with them -- but unlike Theta's experience with the LLCs, these immediately seemed to take over the weasels' bodies and cause massive mental and physical changes. One in particular grew huge claws and started ripping up the controls, and other crewmembers. Which explained the destruction.
Outside, JT finally arrived at the ship, and with Kyrae's help (dropping a rope) was able to climb up to the hatch. Since Nuki and Croran weren't back yet, they tried getting a sample of the hull. It seemed to be made of soft plastic, but wasn't affected by their knives, or even by thermite charges, and of course the cutting torch had sunk with the jeep. JT tried 'magic acid' on it (one of his rune-crystals had been labeled acid) and it seemed to have some effect, although it would take a lot of work to weaken around an area enough so that it could be removed -- days of effort, probably. Carmine had a rune called 'energy dagger', though, and was able to chip off a bit with it. That would work as a sample.
Nuki and Croran rejoined the others and told them what they'd found, and Theta team decided to move into the ship to explore it further.
last week | next week
Croran was our new player, Dan. He seems nice enough, and has the sort of power-gamer-y attitude that you probably need to fit in with our group: he wanted to make his character deaf to get extra karma points, at first, since he figured he'd be able to rig a text-to-speech-to-text device to automatically translate things spoken near him and minimize the impact. Lazar said no -- basically, if he was deaf, he wouldn't be on the team in the first place. So instead he's addicted to performance enhancing drugs. }:P
