Confusing Muddle
Jun. 12th, 2004 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a session of the sort-of-Shadake Stargate-themed game. We played at Murdock's house instead of Lazar's, because we could and because Murdock wanted to cook with his own utensils. I got there last, so I got the worst seat, the one that couldn't see the television or the map.
We pretty much continued from last time, then suddenly cut it off and restored from save.
So, after escaping (perhaps) from the lizard alien hospital/base thing, Theta team found themselves confronted by what looked like Nimune, but gave them the same headaches as the lizards had -- so they decided it was a trap, and instead of laying down their arms, fought back!
These enemies were a lot stronger than the lizards, but they managed to defeat them, and revive Nuki, who'd been scorched to a crisp -- good thing they'd found a 'revive' crystal in the fountains! But the nimune they'd killed didn't turn back into lizards when they died -- instead, they immolated like the transformed weasels had, leaving behind more crystals. So Theta team still wasn't sure if they were back on their own base, or in a base invaded by the lizards, or somewhere else entirely, having screwed up dialing the portal.
To try to find out, they headed to the control room, and Kyrae hacked into the system. Theta team's last mission had been four days ago, according to the computer, and their next one was scheduled for tomorrow. Oh, and the base was being rotated out of alignment to trap them on the bottom level. And all the security cameras were out.
Deciding that they needed to get more information to find out if they were really home or not, Kyrae jammed the rotation using the decoy elevators, and summoned the real elevator, which they took up.
At the top, all the bulkheads were closed, but they were right outside medical, which seemed like a good place to head to find things out. First, they had to fight some -- oh, no, wait, they'd set all their 'first' and 'all' gems to non-lethally incapacitate (freeze, paralyze, encase, sleep, and scare away) any enemies before they could move.
Stepping into medical showed a *lot* of wounded Nimune, lined up in rows and rows along all the walls, almost filling the room. The sheer volume of them there caused *hideously* horrible headaches, which drove Croran and Nuki insane -- they picked up machine guns and started executing all the wounded! JT and Carmine saw that when the *wounded* died, they didn't immolate or turn back into lizards -- they were really Nimune! Which drove them out of THEIR minds, although in a more 'catatonic' and less 'batshit psychopath' way.
That left Kyrae to try to get Croran and Nuki under control. He managed to scare off Nuki, but Croran transformed into a giant red bear and slashed viciously, almost killing Kyrae, then fled into the operating room where he started killing doctors.
When everyone except Croran came to their senses, they decided to stay far away from medical -- they'd just go insane if they set foot in there instead. JT suggested that, since the metal walls of the base seemed to block the pain from being near people, they should get tinfoil helmets to block out the sensation. The cafeteria was on the far side of the base, though, so they headed for Nuki's room instead.
Nuki's room was just as he'd left it, and even the last entry in his journal was the last one he remembered writing. There were some alien knee-pads he'd been examining that they could use as tinfoil helmets, too.
"Okay, let's think about this logically. If this is really our base, we just killed a bunch of people and are royally screwed OR we've been thoroughly invaded by lizards and are royally screwed. So let's assume this is someone else's base -- WE don't immolate when we get knocked out, after all -- and try to find our way back to our real base."
So, it was back down to the lowest level, where they again tried to dial the color from the charts, and stepped through the portal...
...only to end up in a primitive world, near some sort of native religious ceremony. "Oh boy."
Then they woke up. Within a few seconds, the dream was forgotten, except for a feeling of nonspecific unease. They went about their business during the day -- Carmine and JT working on (or in JT's case, trying to catch) various experiments, Nuki researching in the library, and Kyrae being the AV geek setting up for a big presentation.
Croran had been removed from their team, since he was a danger to himself and others, and (more importantly) to alien artifacts, which he liked to use a 'smash first, research the answer to questions later' attitude with. They weren't especially sad to see him go.
The presentation was long and boring, but the upshot of it was that the 'Kalians' -- as the weasels were called, after the language they spoke, which was known on the Nimune's world as the language of the cult of Kali -- didn't really have any technology of their own, except for some ability to travel through the ring gates, which let them steal technology from all over, including the 'reality manipulation' tech (aka 'magic crystals').
In addition, some of the stolen tech they'd managed to steal back from them was from the powerful, rich nation to the north on the Nimune's own world -- the 'Americans' to their 'Mexicans'. Since the teams sent out from their base hadn't had much trouble defeating the Kalians, the worry was that the Americans were working with them, somehow. They were instructed to avoid contact with the Americans, and insist that they had no authority to make any decisions with regards to them.
Afterwards, they were taken to a psychologist, who discovered that although they all had different interests and such, their greatest fear was, for some reason, being captured and expiremented on or invaded by a superior, high tech alien race. He told them that he was going to attach sensors to them to track their mental state, because a theory was that mental state had some impact on the world you ended up being sent to when a gate was opened -- this theory was invented to explain why Theta team in particular kept getting sent to interesting and valuable worlds, while most of the other teams ended up in boring deserts.
The next world they were being sent to was a 'dark world' (a world with a dark-colored portal, in this case forest green), which superstitious people thought was 'bad luck'. Theta team scoffed at such a notion. During the briefing, it was revealed that they were the first team not to back out from going to such a 'dark world'. It was too late to suddenly find superstition, though.
The portal opened high over a large pseudo-medieval city -- pseudo because it was far too clean for the apparent level of technology. As they came through, a bat-winged wolfish creature flew up behind them, and demanded to know their business. Since he was speaking 'Russian', Nuki was easily able to translate, and soon had the apparent guard agreeing to take them to his leader, the 'Priest'.
On the way there, though, they were ambushed by a pair of small spiky electric rodents, which zapped and kidnapped their guide, and told them (in Esperanto) that whatever they thought they wer doing, they didn't want to have anything to do with the priests. Then ran off.
So the team was sort of confused, at this point. There did seem to be an awful lot of temples about... and no other large important buildings, unless one or more of them was actually government offices of some sort. JT recommended they head for the suburbs and deal with a more manageable subset of this world, instead of wandering around what was apparently a dangerous, crime-ridden city.
While walking, they noticed there were at least nine different species who seemed to be citizens of the city. They accidentally bought a translator, that only spoke 'frog'. They tried to use their PDAs, but they weren't working properly -- it was like there was something interfering with their workings. This affected the return-device, as well.
Carmine immediately suggested that since they were stuck there for a while, apparently, they should try to find some way to get currency. "Well, we have all these weapons. Why don't we become muggers?" "That does seem to be the way they do business here." A more serious suggestion was that Carmine use her heal crystal to offer medical services -- she slashed open her own arm to test if it would work, before anyone could stop her. Fortunately, it did work.
But given the amount of 'reality manipulation' being done in the city, JT suggested that maybe things would start working outside the city, and there was no need to panic just yet. Sure enough, after leaving the city for the more wildernessy areas, the PDAs and return-device started working again. But their memory was wiped, so there was no actual link back to their base. They *were* stuck.
last week | next week
We pretty much continued from last time, then suddenly cut it off and restored from save.
So, after escaping (perhaps) from the lizard alien hospital/base thing, Theta team found themselves confronted by what looked like Nimune, but gave them the same headaches as the lizards had -- so they decided it was a trap, and instead of laying down their arms, fought back!
These enemies were a lot stronger than the lizards, but they managed to defeat them, and revive Nuki, who'd been scorched to a crisp -- good thing they'd found a 'revive' crystal in the fountains! But the nimune they'd killed didn't turn back into lizards when they died -- instead, they immolated like the transformed weasels had, leaving behind more crystals. So Theta team still wasn't sure if they were back on their own base, or in a base invaded by the lizards, or somewhere else entirely, having screwed up dialing the portal.
To try to find out, they headed to the control room, and Kyrae hacked into the system. Theta team's last mission had been four days ago, according to the computer, and their next one was scheduled for tomorrow. Oh, and the base was being rotated out of alignment to trap them on the bottom level. And all the security cameras were out.
Deciding that they needed to get more information to find out if they were really home or not, Kyrae jammed the rotation using the decoy elevators, and summoned the real elevator, which they took up.
At the top, all the bulkheads were closed, but they were right outside medical, which seemed like a good place to head to find things out. First, they had to fight some -- oh, no, wait, they'd set all their 'first' and 'all' gems to non-lethally incapacitate (freeze, paralyze, encase, sleep, and scare away) any enemies before they could move.
Stepping into medical showed a *lot* of wounded Nimune, lined up in rows and rows along all the walls, almost filling the room. The sheer volume of them there caused *hideously* horrible headaches, which drove Croran and Nuki insane -- they picked up machine guns and started executing all the wounded! JT and Carmine saw that when the *wounded* died, they didn't immolate or turn back into lizards -- they were really Nimune! Which drove them out of THEIR minds, although in a more 'catatonic' and less 'batshit psychopath' way.
That left Kyrae to try to get Croran and Nuki under control. He managed to scare off Nuki, but Croran transformed into a giant red bear and slashed viciously, almost killing Kyrae, then fled into the operating room where he started killing doctors.
When everyone except Croran came to their senses, they decided to stay far away from medical -- they'd just go insane if they set foot in there instead. JT suggested that, since the metal walls of the base seemed to block the pain from being near people, they should get tinfoil helmets to block out the sensation. The cafeteria was on the far side of the base, though, so they headed for Nuki's room instead.
Nuki's room was just as he'd left it, and even the last entry in his journal was the last one he remembered writing. There were some alien knee-pads he'd been examining that they could use as tinfoil helmets, too.
"Okay, let's think about this logically. If this is really our base, we just killed a bunch of people and are royally screwed OR we've been thoroughly invaded by lizards and are royally screwed. So let's assume this is someone else's base -- WE don't immolate when we get knocked out, after all -- and try to find our way back to our real base."
So, it was back down to the lowest level, where they again tried to dial the color from the charts, and stepped through the portal...
...only to end up in a primitive world, near some sort of native religious ceremony. "Oh boy."
Then they woke up. Within a few seconds, the dream was forgotten, except for a feeling of nonspecific unease. They went about their business during the day -- Carmine and JT working on (or in JT's case, trying to catch) various experiments, Nuki researching in the library, and Kyrae being the AV geek setting up for a big presentation.
Croran had been removed from their team, since he was a danger to himself and others, and (more importantly) to alien artifacts, which he liked to use a 'smash first, research the answer to questions later' attitude with. They weren't especially sad to see him go.
The presentation was long and boring, but the upshot of it was that the 'Kalians' -- as the weasels were called, after the language they spoke, which was known on the Nimune's world as the language of the cult of Kali -- didn't really have any technology of their own, except for some ability to travel through the ring gates, which let them steal technology from all over, including the 'reality manipulation' tech (aka 'magic crystals').
In addition, some of the stolen tech they'd managed to steal back from them was from the powerful, rich nation to the north on the Nimune's own world -- the 'Americans' to their 'Mexicans'. Since the teams sent out from their base hadn't had much trouble defeating the Kalians, the worry was that the Americans were working with them, somehow. They were instructed to avoid contact with the Americans, and insist that they had no authority to make any decisions with regards to them.
Afterwards, they were taken to a psychologist, who discovered that although they all had different interests and such, their greatest fear was, for some reason, being captured and expiremented on or invaded by a superior, high tech alien race. He told them that he was going to attach sensors to them to track their mental state, because a theory was that mental state had some impact on the world you ended up being sent to when a gate was opened -- this theory was invented to explain why Theta team in particular kept getting sent to interesting and valuable worlds, while most of the other teams ended up in boring deserts.
The next world they were being sent to was a 'dark world' (a world with a dark-colored portal, in this case forest green), which superstitious people thought was 'bad luck'. Theta team scoffed at such a notion. During the briefing, it was revealed that they were the first team not to back out from going to such a 'dark world'. It was too late to suddenly find superstition, though.
The portal opened high over a large pseudo-medieval city -- pseudo because it was far too clean for the apparent level of technology. As they came through, a bat-winged wolfish creature flew up behind them, and demanded to know their business. Since he was speaking 'Russian', Nuki was easily able to translate, and soon had the apparent guard agreeing to take them to his leader, the 'Priest'.
On the way there, though, they were ambushed by a pair of small spiky electric rodents, which zapped and kidnapped their guide, and told them (in Esperanto) that whatever they thought they wer doing, they didn't want to have anything to do with the priests. Then ran off.
So the team was sort of confused, at this point. There did seem to be an awful lot of temples about... and no other large important buildings, unless one or more of them was actually government offices of some sort. JT recommended they head for the suburbs and deal with a more manageable subset of this world, instead of wandering around what was apparently a dangerous, crime-ridden city.
While walking, they noticed there were at least nine different species who seemed to be citizens of the city. They accidentally bought a translator, that only spoke 'frog'. They tried to use their PDAs, but they weren't working properly -- it was like there was something interfering with their workings. This affected the return-device, as well.
Carmine immediately suggested that since they were stuck there for a while, apparently, they should try to find some way to get currency. "Well, we have all these weapons. Why don't we become muggers?" "That does seem to be the way they do business here." A more serious suggestion was that Carmine use her heal crystal to offer medical services -- she slashed open her own arm to test if it would work, before anyone could stop her. Fortunately, it did work.
But given the amount of 'reality manipulation' being done in the city, JT suggested that maybe things would start working outside the city, and there was no need to panic just yet. Sure enough, after leaving the city for the more wildernessy areas, the PDAs and return-device started working again. But their memory was wiped, so there was no actual link back to their base. They *were* stuck.
last week | next week
