Adobe DEATH shop
Jul. 24th, 2004 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had another session of Lazar's stargate-themed shadake game. Our superiors let us choose a world to go to, and we went to it, and found a new alien race. Whether or not we earn their eternal enmity is yet to be determined.
After their short vacation, during which they mostly stayed on base working on various projects (except for Nuki, who was being interrogated), and sold off a couple rare syntax crystals that they didn't think they'd need immediately for more delicious base crystals, Theta team was summoned to a briefing and told that they were going to be allowed to choose the next color gate to go through.
After joking around about going to '6,6,6' (nearly black == very dangerous) or '12,34,56' (a dark gray) they settled on 'perfect gray' aka '0,0,127'. "We want to see if it'll just send us back here." It did not.
Instead, the spy drone reported, it went to the inside of an adobe hut -- a very LARGE adobe hut, with a ceiling fifty feet up in the air. The drone didn't return, although it was still sending back a signal -- it was stuck, or something. "A giant grabbed it?" JT suggested. "I think it's caught in a spiderweb," Nuki offered.
Nuki was correct, and when they popped through to retrieve it, a giant spider attacked them while they were still sick from interdimensional travel. Fortunately, it didn't seem all THAT dangerous, but once they recovered enough to fight back, they found it basically impervious to physical attacks. But of course they ALL tried physical attacks just to verify that, as Nuki -- who had the best magical attack stats, and a transformation that would boost them further -- didn't have any magical attacks to use, having put his elements in 'attack' chains to save mana.
But eventually, after Nuki took a couple turns to rebuild his chains, and various stat-changing effects were cast on the critter with varying degrees of success (it was weakened and burned, but not blinded or 'stopped'), a cascade of elemental effects poured down on it until it died -- and immolated in a shower of green crystals.
Green wasn't a color that any of the party had (it'd been Croran's color) but they were still useful for boosting the levels of their spell crystals, so they mostly got used for that. JT saw how ineffective Kyrae's level 3 summon had been (it hit for 0, then got counterattacked for 123 points and killed) but decided to put a lot of his crystals into a level *4* summon with a level 2 boost, to see if that would make it any more useful. Other people did other things [that I don't really know about, since we don't generally read off syntax chains to each other], including Carmine who put 'first cast daylight and darkness' into a chain, so that white (healing) and black (Nuki's) spells would cost less to cast. Assuming that daylight and darkness were compatible.
Finally, they set out exploring the adobe world. There were giant insects caught in the spider's web, which had assorted biological modifications to let them exist at such a huge size without dying under their own weight and lack of surface area. There was no furniture or anything in the room at all. Looking out a window, there were both normal sized and roc-sized birds flying around outside, over what looked like an endless city of overlapping cubical adobe huts, and a corral of pony-sized puppies at the side of a street -- but no sign of anything intelligent that could have built or lived in these giant houses.
But, wandering around up ledges and under doors, they started coming across signs their size written in Hopi (which Nuki could read). They followed the directions to a 'closet' (instead of heading to 'falcon's way') and found it totally looted by some sort of intelligent insect creatures before them, judging by the tracks. They did find another exit from the closet, though, heading for the 'library'. That sounded promising.
The way to the library was fairly long. On the way they passed a dead giant rat, with magical spears embedded in its carcass, and the corpse of an insect that looked just like the ghosts from the previous world, only material. In its pouches they found what could *almost* be base crystals, but were clear, along with octahedral colored glass beads -- money? Next, they passed along a hidden bridge far above a marketplace of similar insects, that didn't speak Hopi, and weren't using glass beads as currency or anything. They discussed going down and approaching and/or stealing from them, but decided to try to find a smaller and more manageable gathering to make first contact with.
Then they got to the library. There was no one there when they arrived, and it was totally dark, although unlit torches lined the walls. Giant-sized bookshelves filled the humongous room, on each shelf a more normal-sized bookshelf, filled with normal-sized books. Nuki, of course, immediately started reading them. They were all fictional or biographical stories, all set in the adobe hut world -- as if this city went on forever, and it looked like the purpose of the library was to copy them all onto new versions as the books decayed, translating them into Hopi as they went. Although whoever was doing the copying didn't seem to be keeping up with the generay decay.
JT found a magic pen, that when powered with a clear crystal (so THAT's what they're for) wrote whatever you thought in Hopi, automatically. Nuki was rather amused at his stream of consciousness 'what the hell, it's writing in Hopi? I wonder what it's writing... etc.' JT of course took it as a sample, replacing it with a ballpoint pen so that whoever used that station wouldn't be without a writing utensil. A fair trade, right?
Then they fled to an out-of-the-way shelf and waited for the copyists to return, as the lack of dust on the writing tables suggested that the library was still in use.
Twelve hours later, dozens of white and gold-robed monks filed into the room, chanting gregorian chants (in Hopi). Out each of the entrances came three buglike critters -- a guard, an acolyte, and a monk. The biggest, most gold-encrusted monk of them all went to the desk from which JT had stolen the pen, and calmly and politely asked his acolyte where his magic pen had gone, then got another pen from someone else. The acolyte was the one to find the ballpoint pen, but couldn't figure out how to use it (he didn't think of taking off the cap) and dropped it in his pocket, while his master was off getting pen and ink.
Theta team decided that that reaction to the theft was promising, and that first contact might not end in violence this time, even if this was the same species as the 'ghosts' (as they appeared to be). Still, they wanted to talk to a small group first, just in case, and so as not to cause a general panic. So when after four hours the monks finished their chanting and headed home, they flew down and tailed the last group out.
Unfortunately, since the exit had a door which was clumsy to open (and thus hard to open quiety), they'd had to give them a head start, and didn't manage to catch up with them before the bugs made it home. Since it was the lowest ranking bug who'd left last, though, 'home' was a small, poor neighborhood, and might still be an acceptable place to make contact, since there weren't all THAT many people around.
last session | next session
After their short vacation, during which they mostly stayed on base working on various projects (except for Nuki, who was being interrogated), and sold off a couple rare syntax crystals that they didn't think they'd need immediately for more delicious base crystals, Theta team was summoned to a briefing and told that they were going to be allowed to choose the next color gate to go through.
After joking around about going to '6,6,6' (nearly black == very dangerous) or '12,34,56' (a dark gray) they settled on 'perfect gray' aka '0,0,127'. "We want to see if it'll just send us back here." It did not.
Instead, the spy drone reported, it went to the inside of an adobe hut -- a very LARGE adobe hut, with a ceiling fifty feet up in the air. The drone didn't return, although it was still sending back a signal -- it was stuck, or something. "A giant grabbed it?" JT suggested. "I think it's caught in a spiderweb," Nuki offered.
Nuki was correct, and when they popped through to retrieve it, a giant spider attacked them while they were still sick from interdimensional travel. Fortunately, it didn't seem all THAT dangerous, but once they recovered enough to fight back, they found it basically impervious to physical attacks. But of course they ALL tried physical attacks just to verify that, as Nuki -- who had the best magical attack stats, and a transformation that would boost them further -- didn't have any magical attacks to use, having put his elements in 'attack' chains to save mana.
But eventually, after Nuki took a couple turns to rebuild his chains, and various stat-changing effects were cast on the critter with varying degrees of success (it was weakened and burned, but not blinded or 'stopped'), a cascade of elemental effects poured down on it until it died -- and immolated in a shower of green crystals.
Green wasn't a color that any of the party had (it'd been Croran's color) but they were still useful for boosting the levels of their spell crystals, so they mostly got used for that. JT saw how ineffective Kyrae's level 3 summon had been (it hit for 0, then got counterattacked for 123 points and killed) but decided to put a lot of his crystals into a level *4* summon with a level 2 boost, to see if that would make it any more useful. Other people did other things [that I don't really know about, since we don't generally read off syntax chains to each other], including Carmine who put 'first cast daylight and darkness' into a chain, so that white (healing) and black (Nuki's) spells would cost less to cast. Assuming that daylight and darkness were compatible.
Finally, they set out exploring the adobe world. There were giant insects caught in the spider's web, which had assorted biological modifications to let them exist at such a huge size without dying under their own weight and lack of surface area. There was no furniture or anything in the room at all. Looking out a window, there were both normal sized and roc-sized birds flying around outside, over what looked like an endless city of overlapping cubical adobe huts, and a corral of pony-sized puppies at the side of a street -- but no sign of anything intelligent that could have built or lived in these giant houses.
But, wandering around up ledges and under doors, they started coming across signs their size written in Hopi (which Nuki could read). They followed the directions to a 'closet' (instead of heading to 'falcon's way') and found it totally looted by some sort of intelligent insect creatures before them, judging by the tracks. They did find another exit from the closet, though, heading for the 'library'. That sounded promising.
The way to the library was fairly long. On the way they passed a dead giant rat, with magical spears embedded in its carcass, and the corpse of an insect that looked just like the ghosts from the previous world, only material. In its pouches they found what could *almost* be base crystals, but were clear, along with octahedral colored glass beads -- money? Next, they passed along a hidden bridge far above a marketplace of similar insects, that didn't speak Hopi, and weren't using glass beads as currency or anything. They discussed going down and approaching and/or stealing from them, but decided to try to find a smaller and more manageable gathering to make first contact with.
Then they got to the library. There was no one there when they arrived, and it was totally dark, although unlit torches lined the walls. Giant-sized bookshelves filled the humongous room, on each shelf a more normal-sized bookshelf, filled with normal-sized books. Nuki, of course, immediately started reading them. They were all fictional or biographical stories, all set in the adobe hut world -- as if this city went on forever, and it looked like the purpose of the library was to copy them all onto new versions as the books decayed, translating them into Hopi as they went. Although whoever was doing the copying didn't seem to be keeping up with the generay decay.
JT found a magic pen, that when powered with a clear crystal (so THAT's what they're for) wrote whatever you thought in Hopi, automatically. Nuki was rather amused at his stream of consciousness 'what the hell, it's writing in Hopi? I wonder what it's writing... etc.' JT of course took it as a sample, replacing it with a ballpoint pen so that whoever used that station wouldn't be without a writing utensil. A fair trade, right?
Then they fled to an out-of-the-way shelf and waited for the copyists to return, as the lack of dust on the writing tables suggested that the library was still in use.
Twelve hours later, dozens of white and gold-robed monks filed into the room, chanting gregorian chants (in Hopi). Out each of the entrances came three buglike critters -- a guard, an acolyte, and a monk. The biggest, most gold-encrusted monk of them all went to the desk from which JT had stolen the pen, and calmly and politely asked his acolyte where his magic pen had gone, then got another pen from someone else. The acolyte was the one to find the ballpoint pen, but couldn't figure out how to use it (he didn't think of taking off the cap) and dropped it in his pocket, while his master was off getting pen and ink.
Theta team decided that that reaction to the theft was promising, and that first contact might not end in violence this time, even if this was the same species as the 'ghosts' (as they appeared to be). Still, they wanted to talk to a small group first, just in case, and so as not to cause a general panic. So when after four hours the monks finished their chanting and headed home, they flew down and tailed the last group out.
Unfortunately, since the exit had a door which was clumsy to open (and thus hard to open quiety), they'd had to give them a head start, and didn't manage to catch up with them before the bugs made it home. Since it was the lowest ranking bug who'd left last, though, 'home' was a small, poor neighborhood, and might still be an acceptable place to make contact, since there weren't all THAT many people around.
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