Silly Rabbit...
Dec. 11th, 2004 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a session of Lazar's GURPS Neverwhere game. We followed the white rabbit to a monster's lair, and came up with a fiendish plan to take it alive. And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling Kits!
The villagers didn't seem too put off by the loss of their mine, and invited the party to join them in a dance to honor Feryn (their guardian spirit, who'd collapsed the mine). Charlie demurred, not wanting to attract Feryn's attention again. John and Don were healed slightly by the ritual, however... but were still very very hurt.
The next morning, after spending the night in a vacant hut (the village had a lot of them, since about a sixth of them had gone missing, presumably taken by the Ferals), John approached Charlie and Don with an opportunity -- his friend, a small rabbit, which both of them had met previously, knew where a Feral had buried itself during the day. The rabbit wanted them to come and destroy or chase away the monster before it accidentally or intentionally harmed the rabbit's family, who lived a few yards away.
Charlie wanted to take the Feral alive -- he had these nifty new 'steal strength' and 'steal wisdom' spells, and no suitable targets to test the 'permanent transfer' mode on. So together they concocted a complicated plan to put the Feral back to sleep after they dug it up, so that they could trap it. This involved summoning a spirit to negate their smell on command so that their wounds wouldn't drive it into a frenzy, building a lean-to to keep the sun off the creature once they dug it up, retrieving a spring-loaded man-trap from the barrier surrounding Athens, and a lot of time playing around with poisonous snakes and such doing the ritual itself.
But finally, they were ready, or so they thought -- Charlie gave the sleep charm to John (the best thrower, and far too hurt to get close to the Feral safely anyway), Don hid and trained his laser shotgun on the patch of ground where the Feral was sleeping just in case, and Charlie started digging him up.
It didn't take long -- one scoop of the shovel, in fact, was enough to awaken the creature, which sat up, ripped the shovel out of Charlie's hands, threw it at him as he ran away, then ran to cower under the lean-to and start digging back into the ground, at which point John finally got around to activating his own speed, and tossed the charm at the Feral.
For some reason, *John* fell asleep. Had Charlie screwed up the ritual? Don went to wake John back up, and got the Feral's attention -- it leaped at him, slashing with its claws several times, but luckily only hitting once before John (who had been awakened) attacked it as well. John, grabbed by the Feral and used as a shield, slashed at it, then (when that had little effect) pulled out an ice-pistol and fired that at the creature. But the beam was deflected!
Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie (and Don) spotted a white furry hand from atop the cliff, casting the spell that deflected the beam -- someone was interfering! Charlie put a big poof of smoke at the top of the cliff to block the creature's line of sight, and John iced the Feral -- for a second, anyway -- then tore down the lean to to let the sun shine fully on the creature.
Before it could be consumed by the sunlight, a cloud of darkness descended on the area -- the meddling Kit had used another of his standard spells. Blinded, the party staggered around in the dark, while the Feral (who could see just fine) started going after Charlie, who quickly pulled out a random magical dagger to parry with. And blinked away.
Charlie couldn't see the Feral attacking him, but he was able to spot three more ghostly spirit Feral called by the Kit to aid in the attack -- he initiated spirit combat with one of them, and prevailed, sending it attacking the second, then was forced to parry another attack from the Feral. As he parried, a massive energy drain hit him, and he would have mana-burned himself unconscious if he didn't still have the fetish supplying him with energy. Then he had to dodge. Then John got lucky and/or skillful, and hit the corporeal feral with a regular ordinary pistol bullet (he'd given up on the ice gun) and knocked it out.
Don, meanwhile, had tried to pull out 'something to destroy the Feral', and pulled out a crystal Sun to go with his crystal Moon. Unfortunately, it didn't work in the darkness. Fortunately, the Kit tried to teleport away the incapacitated Feral (shouting, "No, we aren't ready yet!") not realizing that it was much, much larger and heavier than when he'd last seen it -- and mana burned himself unconscious. That dropped the darkness, revealing a massive stone roper (a treelike creature with twelve long tentacles) rooted to the ground directly over the bunnies' burrow. Apparently, Charlie's dagger transformed attackers into larger, more dangerous enemies... permanently, judging by the amount of energy it drained. Oops!
There was still one enemy left -- the third Feral spirit, which tried to reach into Charlie's chest and stop his heart. Charlie had put up protections against vampirism and health magic before going to dig up the Feral, though, and so he managed to survive the attempt. He ordered George (the air spirit he'd bound to remove their smell) to fight off this last Feral, and the spiritual combatants (the other two Feral spirits were still fighting each other) wandered away, and didn't come back.
The Kit was trapped in the steel spring-trap they'd planned to use on the Feral, hands bound, gagged, and the moon affixed to his bonds to nullify his magic. He wasn't going anywhere. The Feral wasn't going anywhere either -- he was rooted to the ground now -- but they knew he'd wake up sooner or later. John dug up the bunnies' burrow and apologized, and the bunny, while not *happy*, exactly, remarked that it was at least less destruction than humans usually caused.
So Don had to fix that, by using his gadgeteering to make a powerful explosive out of tree sap and moss. They lit the fuse, ran like hell, and blew the roper in half, with the top half being further blown into a million pieces of shrapnel, which rained down on the party. After all that, the former Feral was still alive -- but no longer had any moving parts, so they figured their work was done.
They took the Kit back to Athens for interrogation and prolonged torturous draining. On the road, just outside the city, they found Kicking Bird -- crucified, as a warning to everyone not to get caught invading the Nobles' temple. Charlie didn't mourn for the shaman -- they'd been friends, of a sort, but from what the villagers and Feryn had said, Kicking Bird had been a real jerk.
John described the battle to the House of Birch, who'd hired him to take care of the Feral problem (in the current timeline or whatever you want to call it), and they agreed that he'd probably fulfilled the contract -- he'd destroyed an old, powerful Feral who'd been lurking near the native village, which had suffered enough recent loses to explain the sudden surge in new weak Ferals they'd had to kill, and who had been protected by a mage who he'd captured. They asked him to wait around for a week just in case.
Don spent the week making healing potions -- or, well, having the mechanism that was no longer Enochin make them -- as well as armor for the group, and a mech-suit for himself.
Charlie spent that week slowly draining intelligence and strength from the Kit mage. Even using his shamanic training to visualize the result and guide him through the barely-understood spells, it took thirty seven tries for him to get the first point, but after that it snowballed, as Charlie's magic got more powerful and the Kit's will weakened. By the end of the week, he felt stronger than he ever had, and far smarter than anyone had any right to be [23 IQ].
He also interrogated the Kit, once his will was essentially broken, but while he could still talk. The Kit admitted that he'd been the one creating the Ferals that were sent to Industrial Athens (the party's homeworld), where they were to be used to protect one of the five 'Pinions' holding the dragon under Athens asleep. Two of the other Pinions had already been broken (gee, I wonder by who?), so it was all the more urgent that the remaining ones stand. He gave the name of a man in Athens who was trying to free the dragon, and who'd been using Kicking Bird (and indirectly, Charlie) as pawns, as well as a confusing run down of other magically active cabals, who all hated each other and were fighting each other.
During the week, the owl spirit sent to watch over the child reported that it had found out what was wrong with the kid -- someone had set a tap on its magical power, and was draining it to fuel his spells. Unfortunately, the owl only discovered this when the tap was suddenly over-charged (at about the same time as the battle -- presumably, the Kit's failed teleportation had done it), turning the baby into a vegetable. The ghostly sliver appeared and informed Charlie that the now-mindless baby would be a perfect sacrifice.
Hey, baby and the kit, and he'd have fulfilled his obligation entirely. Would that be a good thing, though?
last week | next week
Lazar said, during the game, that he wanted to run the next Shadake campaign... but that he wanted to play a game before running another one. "So I'll kill you off, and then you can GM!" I agreed, because... well... Charlie is kind of cumbersome, and tends to steal the scene because everything he does is SO FRICKING COMPLICATED. >.< It should be a while (until at least after finals, Lazar said) before he actually does that, though.
The villagers didn't seem too put off by the loss of their mine, and invited the party to join them in a dance to honor Feryn (their guardian spirit, who'd collapsed the mine). Charlie demurred, not wanting to attract Feryn's attention again. John and Don were healed slightly by the ritual, however... but were still very very hurt.
The next morning, after spending the night in a vacant hut (the village had a lot of them, since about a sixth of them had gone missing, presumably taken by the Ferals), John approached Charlie and Don with an opportunity -- his friend, a small rabbit, which both of them had met previously, knew where a Feral had buried itself during the day. The rabbit wanted them to come and destroy or chase away the monster before it accidentally or intentionally harmed the rabbit's family, who lived a few yards away.
Charlie wanted to take the Feral alive -- he had these nifty new 'steal strength' and 'steal wisdom' spells, and no suitable targets to test the 'permanent transfer' mode on. So together they concocted a complicated plan to put the Feral back to sleep after they dug it up, so that they could trap it. This involved summoning a spirit to negate their smell on command so that their wounds wouldn't drive it into a frenzy, building a lean-to to keep the sun off the creature once they dug it up, retrieving a spring-loaded man-trap from the barrier surrounding Athens, and a lot of time playing around with poisonous snakes and such doing the ritual itself.
But finally, they were ready, or so they thought -- Charlie gave the sleep charm to John (the best thrower, and far too hurt to get close to the Feral safely anyway), Don hid and trained his laser shotgun on the patch of ground where the Feral was sleeping just in case, and Charlie started digging him up.
It didn't take long -- one scoop of the shovel, in fact, was enough to awaken the creature, which sat up, ripped the shovel out of Charlie's hands, threw it at him as he ran away, then ran to cower under the lean-to and start digging back into the ground, at which point John finally got around to activating his own speed, and tossed the charm at the Feral.
For some reason, *John* fell asleep. Had Charlie screwed up the ritual? Don went to wake John back up, and got the Feral's attention -- it leaped at him, slashing with its claws several times, but luckily only hitting once before John (who had been awakened) attacked it as well. John, grabbed by the Feral and used as a shield, slashed at it, then (when that had little effect) pulled out an ice-pistol and fired that at the creature. But the beam was deflected!
Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie (and Don) spotted a white furry hand from atop the cliff, casting the spell that deflected the beam -- someone was interfering! Charlie put a big poof of smoke at the top of the cliff to block the creature's line of sight, and John iced the Feral -- for a second, anyway -- then tore down the lean to to let the sun shine fully on the creature.
Before it could be consumed by the sunlight, a cloud of darkness descended on the area -- the meddling Kit had used another of his standard spells. Blinded, the party staggered around in the dark, while the Feral (who could see just fine) started going after Charlie, who quickly pulled out a random magical dagger to parry with. And blinked away.
Charlie couldn't see the Feral attacking him, but he was able to spot three more ghostly spirit Feral called by the Kit to aid in the attack -- he initiated spirit combat with one of them, and prevailed, sending it attacking the second, then was forced to parry another attack from the Feral. As he parried, a massive energy drain hit him, and he would have mana-burned himself unconscious if he didn't still have the fetish supplying him with energy. Then he had to dodge. Then John got lucky and/or skillful, and hit the corporeal feral with a regular ordinary pistol bullet (he'd given up on the ice gun) and knocked it out.
Don, meanwhile, had tried to pull out 'something to destroy the Feral', and pulled out a crystal Sun to go with his crystal Moon. Unfortunately, it didn't work in the darkness. Fortunately, the Kit tried to teleport away the incapacitated Feral (shouting, "No, we aren't ready yet!") not realizing that it was much, much larger and heavier than when he'd last seen it -- and mana burned himself unconscious. That dropped the darkness, revealing a massive stone roper (a treelike creature with twelve long tentacles) rooted to the ground directly over the bunnies' burrow. Apparently, Charlie's dagger transformed attackers into larger, more dangerous enemies... permanently, judging by the amount of energy it drained. Oops!
There was still one enemy left -- the third Feral spirit, which tried to reach into Charlie's chest and stop his heart. Charlie had put up protections against vampirism and health magic before going to dig up the Feral, though, and so he managed to survive the attempt. He ordered George (the air spirit he'd bound to remove their smell) to fight off this last Feral, and the spiritual combatants (the other two Feral spirits were still fighting each other) wandered away, and didn't come back.
The Kit was trapped in the steel spring-trap they'd planned to use on the Feral, hands bound, gagged, and the moon affixed to his bonds to nullify his magic. He wasn't going anywhere. The Feral wasn't going anywhere either -- he was rooted to the ground now -- but they knew he'd wake up sooner or later. John dug up the bunnies' burrow and apologized, and the bunny, while not *happy*, exactly, remarked that it was at least less destruction than humans usually caused.
So Don had to fix that, by using his gadgeteering to make a powerful explosive out of tree sap and moss. They lit the fuse, ran like hell, and blew the roper in half, with the top half being further blown into a million pieces of shrapnel, which rained down on the party. After all that, the former Feral was still alive -- but no longer had any moving parts, so they figured their work was done.
They took the Kit back to Athens for interrogation and prolonged torturous draining. On the road, just outside the city, they found Kicking Bird -- crucified, as a warning to everyone not to get caught invading the Nobles' temple. Charlie didn't mourn for the shaman -- they'd been friends, of a sort, but from what the villagers and Feryn had said, Kicking Bird had been a real jerk.
John described the battle to the House of Birch, who'd hired him to take care of the Feral problem (in the current timeline or whatever you want to call it), and they agreed that he'd probably fulfilled the contract -- he'd destroyed an old, powerful Feral who'd been lurking near the native village, which had suffered enough recent loses to explain the sudden surge in new weak Ferals they'd had to kill, and who had been protected by a mage who he'd captured. They asked him to wait around for a week just in case.
Don spent the week making healing potions -- or, well, having the mechanism that was no longer Enochin make them -- as well as armor for the group, and a mech-suit for himself.
Charlie spent that week slowly draining intelligence and strength from the Kit mage. Even using his shamanic training to visualize the result and guide him through the barely-understood spells, it took thirty seven tries for him to get the first point, but after that it snowballed, as Charlie's magic got more powerful and the Kit's will weakened. By the end of the week, he felt stronger than he ever had, and far smarter than anyone had any right to be [23 IQ].
He also interrogated the Kit, once his will was essentially broken, but while he could still talk. The Kit admitted that he'd been the one creating the Ferals that were sent to Industrial Athens (the party's homeworld), where they were to be used to protect one of the five 'Pinions' holding the dragon under Athens asleep. Two of the other Pinions had already been broken (gee, I wonder by who?), so it was all the more urgent that the remaining ones stand. He gave the name of a man in Athens who was trying to free the dragon, and who'd been using Kicking Bird (and indirectly, Charlie) as pawns, as well as a confusing run down of other magically active cabals, who all hated each other and were fighting each other.
During the week, the owl spirit sent to watch over the child reported that it had found out what was wrong with the kid -- someone had set a tap on its magical power, and was draining it to fuel his spells. Unfortunately, the owl only discovered this when the tap was suddenly over-charged (at about the same time as the battle -- presumably, the Kit's failed teleportation had done it), turning the baby into a vegetable. The ghostly sliver appeared and informed Charlie that the now-mindless baby would be a perfect sacrifice.
Hey, baby and the kit, and he'd have fulfilled his obligation entirely. Would that be a good thing, though?
last week | next week
Lazar said, during the game, that he wanted to run the next Shadake campaign... but that he wanted to play a game before running another one. "So I'll kill you off, and then you can GM!" I agreed, because... well... Charlie is kind of cumbersome, and tends to steal the scene because everything he does is SO FRICKING COMPLICATED. >.< It should be a while (until at least after finals, Lazar said) before he actually does that, though.
