No Profit In This
Jul. 23rd, 2005 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a session of Lazar's Shadake game. No fighting this time, only drama!
So, the next morning, once Perrel could be located again, the airship took off for parts west, with Roshan signed on (so to speak, no actual contract or anything was involved) as an additional crewman. Woman. Cytherian. Thingie. Her first duty was to help Perrel steer the ship, since Wayne was incapacitated, but they expected to be able to use the help doing ordinary things like keeping watch, fighting off giant insects, and weaving enchanted cat's cradles.
For most of a week, nothing much happened. There were a few strange and probably dangerous things that they passed over, Wayne's wing slowly healed (while Perrel talked about working on a magical cure for it, he didn't actually give it to Wayne if in fact he made it in the first place), and Jardin finished the automatic translator so that they could finally read the massive backlog of messages from home without anyone having to do the tedious work of learning morse code and transcribing them.
About 75% of the messages were letters for Wayne, from his girlfried. Wincing, he took them back to his room to read through them, and figure out just how long of a love note he'd have to write back to keep her happy...
The ship, meanwhile, was wandering into a strange land, that looked like dried, cracked mud on a huge scale. Eventually, the tops of the cracked plateaus rose above the level their ship liked to fly at, and they were forced to navigate through the canyons. This wasn't a real problem until during a light rainstorm, the ship began to sink precipitously.
Wayne found himself trapped inside his room, so all he knew was that a giant mushroom was blocking the hallway; the others were able to see them growing all over the outside of the ship and through the canopy -- everywhere the bugs had spread their spores, and a few other places besides. Since the full-grown mushrooms had been the size of houses, and these looked like they'd reach that size inside an hour, and there were *dozens* if not hundreds of them growing on the ship... it was going down fairly fast, although not fast enough to actually kill them.
Which was good, because their initial efforts didn't amount to much. Wayne tried to use everything he had in his room to build a dehumidifier, but it only barely slowed the growth of the 'shrooms. The others started chopping them off the sides of the ship, except for Perrel who hacked a path through the hallway to free Wayne and get his big axe; he succeeded at the first, at least.
The ship had crashed near a village, and the villagers -- giraffelike Luzezango -- all came out to watch, wielding primitive spears and axes. The party mostly ignored them, as they were busy, until to their surprise one of the villagers took a bite of a discarded mushroom and swallowed it. "Hmm, not bad."
"Do you want them? Help us get them off our ship, and you can have all of them!"
It was a deal! The villagers sent their children to quickly strip the mushrooms off the ship and out of the canopy (which still took hours), while the party mostly stood around supervising and making sure they didn't steal anything really large or valuable.
During this time, Perrel noticed Roshan was nowhere to be seen, and went to find her -- sure enough, she'd been trapped in her room just like Wayne, but unlike him hadn't noticed and shouted for help. She'd been too busy crying. Perrel was unable to comfort her, and she flew off.
After the mushrooms were more or less cleared (but enough debris was left that they'd probably come back during the next rain if they didn't do more to clean up the ship) the villagers asked a bunch of questions about Wayne. Apparently, he fit the description of the 'angel' that had promised the villagers two generations ago that one day he would return to carry them all up to the land in the sky...
The party had an airship, it was true, but it wasn't likely that it would be able to reach the Cytherian islands -- those floated 3000 feet up, typically, while the ship cruised at about 1000. Luckily, the villagers were pretty sure they had *found* the land in the sky, and it wasn't a Cytherian island -- it was an airwhale, the *size* of a small island, which had been circling the area for the past few months.
The villagers had been building a stairway, but after two months they'd gotten about 50 feet up and were out of wood -- obviously, it wouldn't work. The airship itself wouldn't work easily either (although it was *possible* to get it to work if they planned it right, since they could make it briefly bounce higher than 1000 feet by tying it down without popping the sacks, like they had during the mushroom attack) but the sky mantas were perfect. Except that there weren't enough of them to do it quickly. Still, the village was relatively small, so it was definately doable.
The villagers were also interested in various things the party could make for them -- metal axes, flying spears... the question was, what could they give to the party? Balthazaar held a meeting so that they could come up with some pretense under which they could help these people -- they weren't *really* out for profit, but it was important that people think they were making a fair trade, to maintain their cover story as merchants if nothing else.
In the end, they brainstormed some things -- the villagers' knowledge of desert living, the wood used for the staircase they'd no longer need, any medicines they had or knew how to make. They agreed to visit the village to survey it more closely, looking for anything else of value and for any sign of what had made the airwhale stick around near them for so long. "Maybe they have a mage, that summoned it."
There was no sign of any of that, though, but as it turned out the village's medicines *were* very useful -- so they'd be getting something out of the trade for real, which was always a plus.
During the feast, Wayne tracked down Roshan to talk to her. She, of course, was upset that he had a girlfriend that he hadn't told her about (because he'd completely forgotten, he convinced himself) and had waited to let her know until she was too far from her home to go back. He told her that he hadn't realized that was why she wanted to come -- she'd seemed genuinely interested in seeing the world and everything. And besides, even if things didn't work out between them, there were other Cytherians in Jirae. And he'd forgotten to tell her about his girlfriend because he didn't like thinking about her... they hadn't *really* been getting along, and he'd gone on this trip in the first place to get some space. "And whatever happens, I do like you, Roshan. Or I wouldn't have asked you to come." Whatever *that* was supposed to mean.
last week | next week
Lazar's moving soon... he had a map to his new apartment, which is further away than this one... although probably not *too* much farther. The main problem is that it's in a little isolated alcove without any obvious access streets -- there was one he pointed out, and two that I think I've driven past on the freeway, but I'm not really sure how to get to any of them.
Oh well, I'm sure I'll be able to find it eventually.
So, the next morning, once Perrel could be located again, the airship took off for parts west, with Roshan signed on (so to speak, no actual contract or anything was involved) as an additional crewman. Woman. Cytherian. Thingie. Her first duty was to help Perrel steer the ship, since Wayne was incapacitated, but they expected to be able to use the help doing ordinary things like keeping watch, fighting off giant insects, and weaving enchanted cat's cradles.
For most of a week, nothing much happened. There were a few strange and probably dangerous things that they passed over, Wayne's wing slowly healed (while Perrel talked about working on a magical cure for it, he didn't actually give it to Wayne if in fact he made it in the first place), and Jardin finished the automatic translator so that they could finally read the massive backlog of messages from home without anyone having to do the tedious work of learning morse code and transcribing them.
About 75% of the messages were letters for Wayne, from his girlfried. Wincing, he took them back to his room to read through them, and figure out just how long of a love note he'd have to write back to keep her happy...
The ship, meanwhile, was wandering into a strange land, that looked like dried, cracked mud on a huge scale. Eventually, the tops of the cracked plateaus rose above the level their ship liked to fly at, and they were forced to navigate through the canyons. This wasn't a real problem until during a light rainstorm, the ship began to sink precipitously.
Wayne found himself trapped inside his room, so all he knew was that a giant mushroom was blocking the hallway; the others were able to see them growing all over the outside of the ship and through the canopy -- everywhere the bugs had spread their spores, and a few other places besides. Since the full-grown mushrooms had been the size of houses, and these looked like they'd reach that size inside an hour, and there were *dozens* if not hundreds of them growing on the ship... it was going down fairly fast, although not fast enough to actually kill them.
Which was good, because their initial efforts didn't amount to much. Wayne tried to use everything he had in his room to build a dehumidifier, but it only barely slowed the growth of the 'shrooms. The others started chopping them off the sides of the ship, except for Perrel who hacked a path through the hallway to free Wayne and get his big axe; he succeeded at the first, at least.
The ship had crashed near a village, and the villagers -- giraffelike Luzezango -- all came out to watch, wielding primitive spears and axes. The party mostly ignored them, as they were busy, until to their surprise one of the villagers took a bite of a discarded mushroom and swallowed it. "Hmm, not bad."
"Do you want them? Help us get them off our ship, and you can have all of them!"
It was a deal! The villagers sent their children to quickly strip the mushrooms off the ship and out of the canopy (which still took hours), while the party mostly stood around supervising and making sure they didn't steal anything really large or valuable.
During this time, Perrel noticed Roshan was nowhere to be seen, and went to find her -- sure enough, she'd been trapped in her room just like Wayne, but unlike him hadn't noticed and shouted for help. She'd been too busy crying. Perrel was unable to comfort her, and she flew off.
After the mushrooms were more or less cleared (but enough debris was left that they'd probably come back during the next rain if they didn't do more to clean up the ship) the villagers asked a bunch of questions about Wayne. Apparently, he fit the description of the 'angel' that had promised the villagers two generations ago that one day he would return to carry them all up to the land in the sky...
The party had an airship, it was true, but it wasn't likely that it would be able to reach the Cytherian islands -- those floated 3000 feet up, typically, while the ship cruised at about 1000. Luckily, the villagers were pretty sure they had *found* the land in the sky, and it wasn't a Cytherian island -- it was an airwhale, the *size* of a small island, which had been circling the area for the past few months.
The villagers had been building a stairway, but after two months they'd gotten about 50 feet up and were out of wood -- obviously, it wouldn't work. The airship itself wouldn't work easily either (although it was *possible* to get it to work if they planned it right, since they could make it briefly bounce higher than 1000 feet by tying it down without popping the sacks, like they had during the mushroom attack) but the sky mantas were perfect. Except that there weren't enough of them to do it quickly. Still, the village was relatively small, so it was definately doable.
The villagers were also interested in various things the party could make for them -- metal axes, flying spears... the question was, what could they give to the party? Balthazaar held a meeting so that they could come up with some pretense under which they could help these people -- they weren't *really* out for profit, but it was important that people think they were making a fair trade, to maintain their cover story as merchants if nothing else.
In the end, they brainstormed some things -- the villagers' knowledge of desert living, the wood used for the staircase they'd no longer need, any medicines they had or knew how to make. They agreed to visit the village to survey it more closely, looking for anything else of value and for any sign of what had made the airwhale stick around near them for so long. "Maybe they have a mage, that summoned it."
There was no sign of any of that, though, but as it turned out the village's medicines *were* very useful -- so they'd be getting something out of the trade for real, which was always a plus.
During the feast, Wayne tracked down Roshan to talk to her. She, of course, was upset that he had a girlfriend that he hadn't told her about (because he'd completely forgotten, he convinced himself) and had waited to let her know until she was too far from her home to go back. He told her that he hadn't realized that was why she wanted to come -- she'd seemed genuinely interested in seeing the world and everything. And besides, even if things didn't work out between them, there were other Cytherians in Jirae. And he'd forgotten to tell her about his girlfriend because he didn't like thinking about her... they hadn't *really* been getting along, and he'd gone on this trip in the first place to get some space. "And whatever happens, I do like you, Roshan. Or I wouldn't have asked you to come." Whatever *that* was supposed to mean.
last week | next week
Lazar's moving soon... he had a map to his new apartment, which is further away than this one... although probably not *too* much farther. The main problem is that it's in a little isolated alcove without any obvious access streets -- there was one he pointed out, and two that I think I've driven past on the freeway, but I'm not really sure how to get to any of them.
Oh well, I'm sure I'll be able to find it eventually.
