terrycloth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terrycloth) wrote2005-02-19 01:16 pm
terrycloth) wrote2005-02-19 01:16 pm
Cold Depths of Hell
We had a session of the GURPS Neverwhereish game, although this time it was inspired more by The Neutronium Alchemist. The least occult of the party was given the job of handling the delicate death-totems, with disastrous results.
John's demon had offered to take possession of the totems, but needed them to be removed from both the null magic zone and the ley-line crossing in which the null magic zone had been created. Kitten theorized that taking them out of the null magic zone one at a time would be safe, as while the ley line would activate them, a single totem by itself was unlikely to do any real harm if it took 100 of them to generate the full field.
So, Don built a conveyer belt (or, well, a loop of rope on pulleys) running from the crossing at the core of the city up to the formerly-inhabited levels where the staircase ended, which was well clear of the crossing. Kitten was stationed at the top to remove the totems as they arrived, Don in the middle to work out any bugs in the system, and John was given the task of standing in the no-mana zone and clipping each totem to the rope.
As he picked up the third totem, he noticed that it was damaged -- it had a hole in it. Apparently, he didn't remember Kitten's earlier theories about what would happen if the totems were smashed while in the no magic zone, because he clipped it to the rope with a message saying 'this one is broken', and it was hauled back up into the magical field.
Where it of course immediately exploded, as its structure had been breached. John was instantly blinded, but otherwise unhurt in the zone of no magic, while Don and Kitten had time to see the wall of fire coming right at them and try (unsuccesfully) to hide before it hit, and they blacked out. John, for his own part, soon joined them, staggering around blindly until he left the no magic zone and was cast into a furnace, where rivers of 'mud' drizzled over his body and started oozing up his leg. When he awoke, his foot was encased in solid rock -- the temperature charm had saved him from the heat, at least...
All of them woke up trapped in a massive pile of rubble that was once the entire city, with their Chaperone charms broken, indicating that they had just been saved from certain death. Kitten cast 'walk through earth' and travelled to the surface of the pile, where he saw a shattered cabin and some slanting trees that he remembered from the pine forest on the surface... but he wasn't in a crater, or even a sinkhole -- everything was dark, in every direction. He sent a light spell up to see if they were buried underground, and a mile distant it glinted off something a few times before flickering and vanishing.
He also cast magic sight, and saw that the space here was full of shredded bits of ley line and null-magic, drifting about like confetti. He could, for the most part, still use his magic, but it would be dangerous to try any spell that took longer than a second, because if a bit of null-magic drifted through him in the middle of it it'd be ruined, potentially with catastrophic results. There was also a chance that any ongoing spell would be dispelled by the same effect.
An hour or so later, while Kitten was still resting from the strain of walking through earth, John and Don finally joined him, having come out the hard way -- Don modified his laser-gun into a heat-ray and used his engineering skill to melt only the rocks which wouldn't bring the whole pile down on them. Kitten spotted their light and rejoined them.
While they talked about what to do, they heard the sound of wings, and then a black creature, normally invisible against the black sky as it was completely unreflective, passed in front of a tree, and they pulled out their weapons in case it was dangerous. It swooped right at them, and John shot several holes in it with his pistol, which Don promptly healed with his heat ray. Oops!
Kitten had the bigger oops, though, wild-surging and accidentally projecting his mind into the creature while trying to throw a bit of rock at it. He managed to escape from his friends who were trying to kill him, and flew around in black-thing form for a while, sifting through the memories and skills the spell gave him access to. The main thing he learned was that they weren't in a hole in the ground -- they were in hell, where the souls of the dead (at least, dead squirrels) came to be eaten by the black light-and-heat-sucking bird-things, who'd just recently seen the pile of rubble appear 'in the center'.
When the spell lapsed, he informed the others of his findings, and Don suggested they climb off the pile and set off across the floor of the space they were in. Kitten sent some lights down over the edge of the pile, revealing that there really wasn't any floor to set off across... they'd have to fly to get anywhere.
After some brainstorming about what kind of conveyance they could build, Don tried to pull a flying machine out of his pocket, and mostly suceeded -- he got the gondola of a hot air balloon. Recognizing its purpose, he set off into the pile of rubble to find some cloth to use to build an envelope, and eventually found the laundry. Most of the cloth was fairly old, but there was enough silk still in decent shape that he thought he'd be able to fix the balloon... and a cat. He brought the cat out too.
Kitten, of course, immediately took to the cat, talking with it and feeding it and such, while Don built the envelope and John stood guard against the occasional black-bird attack. Once the balloon was finally finished, and filled with air thanks to yet another spell (that wild surged, blowing wind *everywhere*, but still managed to get some into the balloon), the thought occured to them that the heat from the balloon would be like a beacon to the black-birds, who'd swarm and devour it... or something. So, as they turned on the burner and rose into the air, Kitten sent out a series of fire elementals as decoys, hotter and brighter than the balloon, and thus more attractive as a food source.
Still, the balloon was nearly coated in black-birds by the time they got to the top of the open space, and even with the burner at full blast they were having trouble maintaining altitude, either from loss of heat or extra weight. The glittering things that Kitten had seen with his light spell were metallic-ish girders forming a grid or web, extending into the distance as far as their light would show... although after a few feet it was solid no-magic.
There was some discussion of climbing into the web of girders to explore, but Kitten decided instead to shape out a bit of the structure to drop samples of it down to the rubble pile below, and wild-surged again, disintegrating an entire segment of the web, which creaked and groaned and shifted to relieve the new stresses. Don found the balloon's propeller and managed to get them out of the danger zone in time, but the balloon was already sinking from the black-birds glommed onto it, and they had to return to the ground, where they shut off the burner and were attacked by a hundred or more of the black-birds.
Kitten distracted many of them with fire elementals, but not nearly enough, and Don's wrench (with its built in ZPM making it an irresistable stunner) proved even less suitable for fighting them than his heat ray, as electricity made them *multiply*. John popped his speed, though, and was able to actually kill one before it could escape, scaring the rest away. And freeing the souls inside it.
Of course, they were the souls of squirrels and other small animals. While they waited for Don to wake up (all his fatigue had been sucked out of him by the swarming blackbirds) the cat started playing with one of the squirrel souls, while Kitten bound the rest as tiny fetishes, giving him access to all the squirrels' powers... just kidding. He bound them as power sources, allowing him to draw on their fatigue. Their one fatigue each. Maybe he was just bored.
"I don't see how we're going to get out of here," Kitten said, eventually.
"Oh, that's easy, just jump!" the cat replied.
"What would happen then?" The cat didn't reply. "Have you been here before?"
"That's an odd question," said the cat.
After giving it a bit of thought, Kitten decided that he could probably astrally project to his home plane, using his understanding of gate magic. Plane shifting for real would be much harder, and take five seconds to cast, besides...
He arrived in the 'equivalent location' on his home plane, which was in the middle of a crater. From the surrounding terrain, he recognized it as where the Necromatic College of the University of Athens was supposed to stand, and presumably had stood until just a few hours ago.
Mages, human and Rat, were swarming the crater searching for survivors and clues, and several of them saw him and tried to bind him, but their feeble rituals bounced off his curse-mirror, and he won the contest of wills one tried to use to bind him without ritual. Eventually, they noticed that he was trying to talk. "Open your mind to me..." one of the rats ordered him, and Kitten decided to comply. The rat read his memories of the last week, and told him that while he could not open a gate to where Kitten was, there were people who might be able to, but they'd need time to talk it over and work out what to do. So Kitten ended his projection, promising to come back to hear what they'd decided, and hopefully be rescued.
When he informed the others of the events on his homeworld, the cat was annoyed. "If you really want to leave, you should just jump," it said. The party was adamant about not wanting to fall to their deaths. "Fine, if you're going to leave, could you at least take me with you? It's boring here without anyone to play with."
Don was pretty sure that this 'cat' was really the head demon of all the demon-black-birds from this place that Kitten kept calling hell, but as a request for aid from a cat, Kitten was doubly bound to obey. It turned out that they'd need to get out under their own power, though, as the acolyte left in the crater to talk to Kitten on his return informed him that opening up a gate for them to walk through would be a VERY BAD IDEA, as records of the place indicated it was full of light-eating demons who'd overrun the world if let out into a place with a proper sun. Plane-shift should be safe, if you were careful, but none of the wizards was willing to plane-shift into hell to retrieve Kitten and his friends.
Still, Kitten had been plane-shifted before, so he could somewhat visualize the spell... and John was a mana enhancer, or seemed like he might be able to be a mana-enhancer, if only he could get the ability to actually work. Kitten knew *he* was lucky, and if *he* had the power he'd be able to get it to work...
So, he possessed John's body and used his luck to activate the mana enhancer, allowing him to cast the lengthy plane-shift-other spell to send Don back without interference from no-mana confetti. Unfortunately, he wild-surged again, and sent a bunch of random extra targets... including John, himself, and the cat.
They arrived in the crater on a moonless night, so none of them saw the eighteen black-birds that had also been brought with them scatter into the darkness.
last week | next week
John's demon had offered to take possession of the totems, but needed them to be removed from both the null magic zone and the ley-line crossing in which the null magic zone had been created. Kitten theorized that taking them out of the null magic zone one at a time would be safe, as while the ley line would activate them, a single totem by itself was unlikely to do any real harm if it took 100 of them to generate the full field.
So, Don built a conveyer belt (or, well, a loop of rope on pulleys) running from the crossing at the core of the city up to the formerly-inhabited levels where the staircase ended, which was well clear of the crossing. Kitten was stationed at the top to remove the totems as they arrived, Don in the middle to work out any bugs in the system, and John was given the task of standing in the no-mana zone and clipping each totem to the rope.
As he picked up the third totem, he noticed that it was damaged -- it had a hole in it. Apparently, he didn't remember Kitten's earlier theories about what would happen if the totems were smashed while in the no magic zone, because he clipped it to the rope with a message saying 'this one is broken', and it was hauled back up into the magical field.
Where it of course immediately exploded, as its structure had been breached. John was instantly blinded, but otherwise unhurt in the zone of no magic, while Don and Kitten had time to see the wall of fire coming right at them and try (unsuccesfully) to hide before it hit, and they blacked out. John, for his own part, soon joined them, staggering around blindly until he left the no magic zone and was cast into a furnace, where rivers of 'mud' drizzled over his body and started oozing up his leg. When he awoke, his foot was encased in solid rock -- the temperature charm had saved him from the heat, at least...
All of them woke up trapped in a massive pile of rubble that was once the entire city, with their Chaperone charms broken, indicating that they had just been saved from certain death. Kitten cast 'walk through earth' and travelled to the surface of the pile, where he saw a shattered cabin and some slanting trees that he remembered from the pine forest on the surface... but he wasn't in a crater, or even a sinkhole -- everything was dark, in every direction. He sent a light spell up to see if they were buried underground, and a mile distant it glinted off something a few times before flickering and vanishing.
He also cast magic sight, and saw that the space here was full of shredded bits of ley line and null-magic, drifting about like confetti. He could, for the most part, still use his magic, but it would be dangerous to try any spell that took longer than a second, because if a bit of null-magic drifted through him in the middle of it it'd be ruined, potentially with catastrophic results. There was also a chance that any ongoing spell would be dispelled by the same effect.
An hour or so later, while Kitten was still resting from the strain of walking through earth, John and Don finally joined him, having come out the hard way -- Don modified his laser-gun into a heat-ray and used his engineering skill to melt only the rocks which wouldn't bring the whole pile down on them. Kitten spotted their light and rejoined them.
While they talked about what to do, they heard the sound of wings, and then a black creature, normally invisible against the black sky as it was completely unreflective, passed in front of a tree, and they pulled out their weapons in case it was dangerous. It swooped right at them, and John shot several holes in it with his pistol, which Don promptly healed with his heat ray. Oops!
Kitten had the bigger oops, though, wild-surging and accidentally projecting his mind into the creature while trying to throw a bit of rock at it. He managed to escape from his friends who were trying to kill him, and flew around in black-thing form for a while, sifting through the memories and skills the spell gave him access to. The main thing he learned was that they weren't in a hole in the ground -- they were in hell, where the souls of the dead (at least, dead squirrels) came to be eaten by the black light-and-heat-sucking bird-things, who'd just recently seen the pile of rubble appear 'in the center'.
When the spell lapsed, he informed the others of his findings, and Don suggested they climb off the pile and set off across the floor of the space they were in. Kitten sent some lights down over the edge of the pile, revealing that there really wasn't any floor to set off across... they'd have to fly to get anywhere.
After some brainstorming about what kind of conveyance they could build, Don tried to pull a flying machine out of his pocket, and mostly suceeded -- he got the gondola of a hot air balloon. Recognizing its purpose, he set off into the pile of rubble to find some cloth to use to build an envelope, and eventually found the laundry. Most of the cloth was fairly old, but there was enough silk still in decent shape that he thought he'd be able to fix the balloon... and a cat. He brought the cat out too.
Kitten, of course, immediately took to the cat, talking with it and feeding it and such, while Don built the envelope and John stood guard against the occasional black-bird attack. Once the balloon was finally finished, and filled with air thanks to yet another spell (that wild surged, blowing wind *everywhere*, but still managed to get some into the balloon), the thought occured to them that the heat from the balloon would be like a beacon to the black-birds, who'd swarm and devour it... or something. So, as they turned on the burner and rose into the air, Kitten sent out a series of fire elementals as decoys, hotter and brighter than the balloon, and thus more attractive as a food source.
Still, the balloon was nearly coated in black-birds by the time they got to the top of the open space, and even with the burner at full blast they were having trouble maintaining altitude, either from loss of heat or extra weight. The glittering things that Kitten had seen with his light spell were metallic-ish girders forming a grid or web, extending into the distance as far as their light would show... although after a few feet it was solid no-magic.
There was some discussion of climbing into the web of girders to explore, but Kitten decided instead to shape out a bit of the structure to drop samples of it down to the rubble pile below, and wild-surged again, disintegrating an entire segment of the web, which creaked and groaned and shifted to relieve the new stresses. Don found the balloon's propeller and managed to get them out of the danger zone in time, but the balloon was already sinking from the black-birds glommed onto it, and they had to return to the ground, where they shut off the burner and were attacked by a hundred or more of the black-birds.
Kitten distracted many of them with fire elementals, but not nearly enough, and Don's wrench (with its built in ZPM making it an irresistable stunner) proved even less suitable for fighting them than his heat ray, as electricity made them *multiply*. John popped his speed, though, and was able to actually kill one before it could escape, scaring the rest away. And freeing the souls inside it.
Of course, they were the souls of squirrels and other small animals. While they waited for Don to wake up (all his fatigue had been sucked out of him by the swarming blackbirds) the cat started playing with one of the squirrel souls, while Kitten bound the rest as tiny fetishes, giving him access to all the squirrels' powers... just kidding. He bound them as power sources, allowing him to draw on their fatigue. Their one fatigue each. Maybe he was just bored.
"I don't see how we're going to get out of here," Kitten said, eventually.
"Oh, that's easy, just jump!" the cat replied.
"What would happen then?" The cat didn't reply. "Have you been here before?"
"That's an odd question," said the cat.
After giving it a bit of thought, Kitten decided that he could probably astrally project to his home plane, using his understanding of gate magic. Plane shifting for real would be much harder, and take five seconds to cast, besides...
He arrived in the 'equivalent location' on his home plane, which was in the middle of a crater. From the surrounding terrain, he recognized it as where the Necromatic College of the University of Athens was supposed to stand, and presumably had stood until just a few hours ago.
Mages, human and Rat, were swarming the crater searching for survivors and clues, and several of them saw him and tried to bind him, but their feeble rituals bounced off his curse-mirror, and he won the contest of wills one tried to use to bind him without ritual. Eventually, they noticed that he was trying to talk. "Open your mind to me..." one of the rats ordered him, and Kitten decided to comply. The rat read his memories of the last week, and told him that while he could not open a gate to where Kitten was, there were people who might be able to, but they'd need time to talk it over and work out what to do. So Kitten ended his projection, promising to come back to hear what they'd decided, and hopefully be rescued.
When he informed the others of the events on his homeworld, the cat was annoyed. "If you really want to leave, you should just jump," it said. The party was adamant about not wanting to fall to their deaths. "Fine, if you're going to leave, could you at least take me with you? It's boring here without anyone to play with."
Don was pretty sure that this 'cat' was really the head demon of all the demon-black-birds from this place that Kitten kept calling hell, but as a request for aid from a cat, Kitten was doubly bound to obey. It turned out that they'd need to get out under their own power, though, as the acolyte left in the crater to talk to Kitten on his return informed him that opening up a gate for them to walk through would be a VERY BAD IDEA, as records of the place indicated it was full of light-eating demons who'd overrun the world if let out into a place with a proper sun. Plane-shift should be safe, if you were careful, but none of the wizards was willing to plane-shift into hell to retrieve Kitten and his friends.
Still, Kitten had been plane-shifted before, so he could somewhat visualize the spell... and John was a mana enhancer, or seemed like he might be able to be a mana-enhancer, if only he could get the ability to actually work. Kitten knew *he* was lucky, and if *he* had the power he'd be able to get it to work...
So, he possessed John's body and used his luck to activate the mana enhancer, allowing him to cast the lengthy plane-shift-other spell to send Don back without interference from no-mana confetti. Unfortunately, he wild-surged again, and sent a bunch of random extra targets... including John, himself, and the cat.
They arrived in the crater on a moonless night, so none of them saw the eighteen black-birds that had also been brought with them scatter into the darkness.
last week | next week