Xenophobia is for Insects
Jul. 31st, 2004 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothAnother session of Lazar's Stargate-Shadake game last night, finishing up the strange adobe-hut world.
Deciding that it was finally time to make contact, Nuki hopped up out of the well to announce himself to the alien bugs. There was a surprising lack of outcry... because all of them just so happened to be facing the wrong way to see him, and so no one noticed he was there. He spotted the robed monk they'd been following going into a small tent, and hopped back down into the hole to ask if maybe they could go invisible.
So they went invisible, and invisibly invaded the tent without alerting anyone, not even the monk, who was engrossed preparing to read a book he'd smuggled out of the library. JT fluttered his wings to make a breeze, and they whispered to each other about how to make contact, then Nuki -- still invisible -- started talking to him in his own language.
After some initial terror, he accused the Nimune of being 'old ones', the 'gods who trade'. They disavowed that notion quickly, not wanting to have to try to live up to whatever prophecies or powers such gods were supposed to have. JT punched Nuki to make him visible, too, when it looked like the priest (Salda?) was liable to take them for spirits.
So they had a little chat. Eventually, the priest revealed that he could use the same magic that let him translate any language to speak to the nimune in their language, which made things easier, since things didn't have to go through Nuki.
They told him they were there to trade, for knowledge of magic and enchantment especially, and asked him who to go talk to. Salda seemed leery about approaching the other monks, since they'd banished him to the lowest-status post, only allowed to work on mere *maps*, just for inquiring about the war two generations ago (they did math at this point, and it worked out to 10-12 years) -- all the older 'Teek' (as he called his poeple) knew about it, but no one would talk about it. The merchants, though -- they'd want to trade. And he could find a merchant for them to talk to. The nimune eagerly agreed, although Kyrae was suspicious enough to insist they go along (invisibly) to keep an eye on him and make sure he wasn't just summoning the guards.
But he played them straight, and they left their PDA with trade-good descriptions with the merchant to show to all the other merchants so that they could put together some sort of offer.
On the way back, JT (who'd now cast NINE invisibilities, since people kept breaking them and asking to get them recast) discovered that the little clear crystals the Teek used to power their magical devices could be absorbed to recharge their symbian's spell points. And Salda brought up that he'd seen pictures of the 'old gods who trade' in books; would the Nimune like to come see them?
Indeed they would. The 'golden lizards' and 'green lizards' who'd previously found the world were recognizable as the same species as the grey and tan lizards, but apparently were two DIFFERENT factions of this apparently overly contentious group. There was a (bad) picture of a Nimune, but Salda informed them that that wasn't one of the trading gods, instead it was a solitary trader who'd tried to teach the Teek (and everyone else).
"Er, was he named 'Gency'?"
"Well, this *could* be a corrupted version of that. You said you travelled to other worlds based on colors, the colors that this Gency came from and left for are recorded here. If you had a language that had words for all the millions of millions of millions of colors you say you need to distinguish between, I could possibly translate them accurately."
"How about binary?"
They had the computer 'speak' binary to them using the laptop's built-in modem, and it worked -- Salda was able to write out the colors as a series of 1s and 0s in floating-point format, which hopefully would be accurate enough to get to the right world. They knew there was *some* leeway.
Salda mentioned that there were plenty of other colors he could translate, would that be of any value to them? "Ah, then I have something to *trade*," he said, as they confirmed that, and asked to accompany them to other worlds.
He was warned that they really couldn't sneak him past the defenses they'd put in. ("Couldn't you make me invisible?" "We put in security measures against invisible creatures, because of the ghosts.") he'd be locked up in quarantine for a while if he went back with them, but they could certainly let him talk to his superiors, and unless they thought he was hostile then at worst they'd send him back home. Not seeing any future for himself in his current position, he agreed to that.
They had most of the day to waste before getting an answer from the merchants, so they busied themselves in various activities -- Carmine robbed from the 'unfriendly' marketplace, Nuki translated the books about the war, and JT and Kyrae went to look at the giant puppies, which turned out to be war mounts being trained and raised by viking bugs of the same species as the Teek. The puppies were attacked by a giant bird while they were there, but they managed to stay out of the fight, and slunk away with a giant feather as a prize.
The merchants had, indeed, built up quite a shopping list by the time they got back, and they arranged to take the list back to their base to get it approved, and for the diplomatic teams to follow up on. And left a radio so that they could (a) warn and (b) find the merchants when they came back.
Back at the base, Salda was quarantined as per standard operating procedures, but during the debriefing they were asked if they thought he would make a good hire. The consensus was that he was kind of weaselly, but didn't seem too treacherous to work with, so they'd be okay with it. And his talents could come in handy for the mission in general, even if the color-translation turned out not to work, when they got around to testing it. The main worry was that he wouldn't know how to handle himself on a dangerous mission, especially without a symbion.
last week
Afterwards, Lazar said he wanted to wrap up the game sometime soon, because it 'had too much combat in it'. Exercise for the reader: count the combats in the last two sessions. }:P
It sounds like Sandy might have talked him out of it, though -- mentioning the 'neat things' they'd planned to do to us.
This morning I went to the comic shop to get the weekly comics, and MY GOD there were a lot in this week. Yikes. I forgot to turn in the monthly order form, though -- it's not a disaster, since I have like two weeks before it's due, but gah.
Deciding that it was finally time to make contact, Nuki hopped up out of the well to announce himself to the alien bugs. There was a surprising lack of outcry... because all of them just so happened to be facing the wrong way to see him, and so no one noticed he was there. He spotted the robed monk they'd been following going into a small tent, and hopped back down into the hole to ask if maybe they could go invisible.
So they went invisible, and invisibly invaded the tent without alerting anyone, not even the monk, who was engrossed preparing to read a book he'd smuggled out of the library. JT fluttered his wings to make a breeze, and they whispered to each other about how to make contact, then Nuki -- still invisible -- started talking to him in his own language.
After some initial terror, he accused the Nimune of being 'old ones', the 'gods who trade'. They disavowed that notion quickly, not wanting to have to try to live up to whatever prophecies or powers such gods were supposed to have. JT punched Nuki to make him visible, too, when it looked like the priest (Salda?) was liable to take them for spirits.
So they had a little chat. Eventually, the priest revealed that he could use the same magic that let him translate any language to speak to the nimune in their language, which made things easier, since things didn't have to go through Nuki.
They told him they were there to trade, for knowledge of magic and enchantment especially, and asked him who to go talk to. Salda seemed leery about approaching the other monks, since they'd banished him to the lowest-status post, only allowed to work on mere *maps*, just for inquiring about the war two generations ago (they did math at this point, and it worked out to 10-12 years) -- all the older 'Teek' (as he called his poeple) knew about it, but no one would talk about it. The merchants, though -- they'd want to trade. And he could find a merchant for them to talk to. The nimune eagerly agreed, although Kyrae was suspicious enough to insist they go along (invisibly) to keep an eye on him and make sure he wasn't just summoning the guards.
But he played them straight, and they left their PDA with trade-good descriptions with the merchant to show to all the other merchants so that they could put together some sort of offer.
On the way back, JT (who'd now cast NINE invisibilities, since people kept breaking them and asking to get them recast) discovered that the little clear crystals the Teek used to power their magical devices could be absorbed to recharge their symbian's spell points. And Salda brought up that he'd seen pictures of the 'old gods who trade' in books; would the Nimune like to come see them?
Indeed they would. The 'golden lizards' and 'green lizards' who'd previously found the world were recognizable as the same species as the grey and tan lizards, but apparently were two DIFFERENT factions of this apparently overly contentious group. There was a (bad) picture of a Nimune, but Salda informed them that that wasn't one of the trading gods, instead it was a solitary trader who'd tried to teach the Teek (and everyone else).
"Er, was he named 'Gency'?"
"Well, this *could* be a corrupted version of that. You said you travelled to other worlds based on colors, the colors that this Gency came from and left for are recorded here. If you had a language that had words for all the millions of millions of millions of colors you say you need to distinguish between, I could possibly translate them accurately."
"How about binary?"
They had the computer 'speak' binary to them using the laptop's built-in modem, and it worked -- Salda was able to write out the colors as a series of 1s and 0s in floating-point format, which hopefully would be accurate enough to get to the right world. They knew there was *some* leeway.
Salda mentioned that there were plenty of other colors he could translate, would that be of any value to them? "Ah, then I have something to *trade*," he said, as they confirmed that, and asked to accompany them to other worlds.
He was warned that they really couldn't sneak him past the defenses they'd put in. ("Couldn't you make me invisible?" "We put in security measures against invisible creatures, because of the ghosts.") he'd be locked up in quarantine for a while if he went back with them, but they could certainly let him talk to his superiors, and unless they thought he was hostile then at worst they'd send him back home. Not seeing any future for himself in his current position, he agreed to that.
They had most of the day to waste before getting an answer from the merchants, so they busied themselves in various activities -- Carmine robbed from the 'unfriendly' marketplace, Nuki translated the books about the war, and JT and Kyrae went to look at the giant puppies, which turned out to be war mounts being trained and raised by viking bugs of the same species as the Teek. The puppies were attacked by a giant bird while they were there, but they managed to stay out of the fight, and slunk away with a giant feather as a prize.
The merchants had, indeed, built up quite a shopping list by the time they got back, and they arranged to take the list back to their base to get it approved, and for the diplomatic teams to follow up on. And left a radio so that they could (a) warn and (b) find the merchants when they came back.
Back at the base, Salda was quarantined as per standard operating procedures, but during the debriefing they were asked if they thought he would make a good hire. The consensus was that he was kind of weaselly, but didn't seem too treacherous to work with, so they'd be okay with it. And his talents could come in handy for the mission in general, even if the color-translation turned out not to work, when they got around to testing it. The main worry was that he wouldn't know how to handle himself on a dangerous mission, especially without a symbion.
last week
Afterwards, Lazar said he wanted to wrap up the game sometime soon, because it 'had too much combat in it'. Exercise for the reader: count the combats in the last two sessions. }:P
It sounds like Sandy might have talked him out of it, though -- mentioning the 'neat things' they'd planned to do to us.
This morning I went to the comic shop to get the weekly comics, and MY GOD there were a lot in this week. Yikes. I forgot to turn in the monthly order form, though -- it's not a disaster, since I have like two weeks before it's due, but gah.
