The wages of self-defense
Nov. 23rd, 2002 02:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight was Lazar's friday game. A dragon was slain, and its parent fled from, with only a few cubic feet of gold (and a prisoner) for spoils. Then much shopping ensued.
Any hope of negotiating with the dragon was shattered, as it immediately attacked the party, having read their intentions (namely, looting its lair) from their minds. It opened with a pleasant snowfall, although it was probably supposed to be a deadly blast of cold, then (apparently) devoured Zelder, although in actuality it had only forced him to phase out and stunned him with its mind.
The rest of the party replied with an assortment of attacks. Neokani-Ur opened up with a chain gun firing anti-magic bullets. This wounded the dragon, leading it to slam her against a wall with a vicious swipe of its claws, making her drop the gun (although thanks to her stone-skins she wasn't hurt). She took cover among the dragon's horde, and got to work renovating a weapon she found laying there.
Nazir decided to summon his van, then (along with Neokani) was stunned for a while by the dragon's mental blast.
Cal attacked with his katana... it penetrated the dragon's magical defenses, and sliced through its claws, and opened huge bleeding gashes in the dragon's sides and face, but the dragon was large and the katana was small... and its taser effect was useless against the dragon, but quite effective against the phased-out Zelder. The dragon's *claws* were also very large, and nearly tore Cal in two, and he was forced to back off and toss monowire shuriken at its eyes instead.
Marten opened up with his caster... only to find the shells rebounded right at him. He managed to dodge most of the blasts (aside from a sticky rope which tied his caster to himself... so that's what that shell did!) and took aim with his pistol... thinking (from observing Neokani and Cal) that mundane weapons wouldn't be affected. It was also rebounded. So he lunged to attack it with his enchanted cybernetic legs... which rebounded, knocking him on his butt. Finally, he leapt at the dragon with his totally mundane, unenchanted dagger... and the dragon's jaws closed over him, sticking in his armor but grievously wounding him.
Marten was saved from certain consumption by Neokani's reappearance, wielding a flamethrower. By toasting the ground under the dragon, it wasn't able to reflect the attack, and as it opened its mouth to scream in pain, Marten dropped free... and tossed in the bottle of morphine he'd been carrying around in his pocket for a while, and then tried to run away.
The dragon didn't like getting 200 times the recommended dose of morphine, even if was 10 times tougher than a human, and screamed out for help! Nazir was overcome by the psychic force, and leapt on Cal, flowing around him like some sort of crystalline amoeba (and then getting paralyzed by Cal's katana-taser). The dragon collapsed to the ground, eyes slowly closing...
...and with a roar of thunder and a rush of distorted air, was spitted like a pig by Zelder's telekinesis, and died.
The dragon eggs were too large to carry off, unfortunately (each was about 10 feet across), but Marten (after quaffing a healing potion to stop himself from bleeding to death) started shoveling gold into his briefcase of holding, while Cal rescued the shaman they'd come to the dragon's lair after, and Neokani rigged the flame thrower to explode. Suddenly, a mental presence made itself known with the force of a falling mountain, as the Momma dragon approached, called by its now dead adolescent child.
So the party piled into Nazir's van, and with the shaman quite literally in tow (as getting him within 10 feet of the van would have been a Very Bad Thing, as he was a grrlock and negated magic within that radius) squeaked out of the cave just as Momma came in for a landing, and fled for their lives. The demon-kid appeared around the mountain to distract the mother dragon, and they managed to escape.
The flight back to Skypass was uneventful for everyone but Zelder, who'd pumped himself up on Draxin to deliver that killing blow and began hallucinating halfway back. As he was the one towing the shaman behind them, the shaman arrived somewhat the worse for wear... but still alive, and easily fixed. Plus he was already drugged into insensibility, so it's not like he'd know who to blame.
In Skypass, the shaman was delivered... the flitter problem sort of solved itself -- Nathaniel, as urged by the party earlier, let Vorshath borrow his flitter-armband, and for some ungodly reason a wild flitter decided it liked Call and started hanging around him. Which made two. So the party received their payment (total elapsed time on estimated month-long job: 22 hours), and Marten converted the 6.4 cubic feet of gold he'd looted into enough local currency to buy a small town. Or, as it turned out, a lot of magical knick-knacks.
Like a set of magical underwear that lets you run 120 mph... but no slower. And offers no protection against running into people and trees. Or a hovering sombrero, for when a normal hat just isn't stupid-looking enough. Or a swiss-army pet, able to be transformed into a nearly endless variety of small, useless animals. Or a necklace of feathers that lets you feel all the sensations felt by anyone within a mile radius (ow ow ow ow ow). Or... well, lots of other stuff. The party bought several of everything, and still had most of the money left.
After shopping, and resting, the party was approached -- independantly, but apparently all of them were approached -- for a run on Boeing to shut down Marten's supplier once and for all, before they started a war between the worlds with humans on the losing end. Everyone seemed really enthusiastic about the job, except for Marten, who kind of liked getting neat toys handed to him by the crazy old professor... ah, well.
last week next week
Any hope of negotiating with the dragon was shattered, as it immediately attacked the party, having read their intentions (namely, looting its lair) from their minds. It opened with a pleasant snowfall, although it was probably supposed to be a deadly blast of cold, then (apparently) devoured Zelder, although in actuality it had only forced him to phase out and stunned him with its mind.
The rest of the party replied with an assortment of attacks. Neokani-Ur opened up with a chain gun firing anti-magic bullets. This wounded the dragon, leading it to slam her against a wall with a vicious swipe of its claws, making her drop the gun (although thanks to her stone-skins she wasn't hurt). She took cover among the dragon's horde, and got to work renovating a weapon she found laying there.
Nazir decided to summon his van, then (along with Neokani) was stunned for a while by the dragon's mental blast.
Cal attacked with his katana... it penetrated the dragon's magical defenses, and sliced through its claws, and opened huge bleeding gashes in the dragon's sides and face, but the dragon was large and the katana was small... and its taser effect was useless against the dragon, but quite effective against the phased-out Zelder. The dragon's *claws* were also very large, and nearly tore Cal in two, and he was forced to back off and toss monowire shuriken at its eyes instead.
Marten opened up with his caster... only to find the shells rebounded right at him. He managed to dodge most of the blasts (aside from a sticky rope which tied his caster to himself... so that's what that shell did!) and took aim with his pistol... thinking (from observing Neokani and Cal) that mundane weapons wouldn't be affected. It was also rebounded. So he lunged to attack it with his enchanted cybernetic legs... which rebounded, knocking him on his butt. Finally, he leapt at the dragon with his totally mundane, unenchanted dagger... and the dragon's jaws closed over him, sticking in his armor but grievously wounding him.
Marten was saved from certain consumption by Neokani's reappearance, wielding a flamethrower. By toasting the ground under the dragon, it wasn't able to reflect the attack, and as it opened its mouth to scream in pain, Marten dropped free... and tossed in the bottle of morphine he'd been carrying around in his pocket for a while, and then tried to run away.
The dragon didn't like getting 200 times the recommended dose of morphine, even if was 10 times tougher than a human, and screamed out for help! Nazir was overcome by the psychic force, and leapt on Cal, flowing around him like some sort of crystalline amoeba (and then getting paralyzed by Cal's katana-taser). The dragon collapsed to the ground, eyes slowly closing...
...and with a roar of thunder and a rush of distorted air, was spitted like a pig by Zelder's telekinesis, and died.
The dragon eggs were too large to carry off, unfortunately (each was about 10 feet across), but Marten (after quaffing a healing potion to stop himself from bleeding to death) started shoveling gold into his briefcase of holding, while Cal rescued the shaman they'd come to the dragon's lair after, and Neokani rigged the flame thrower to explode. Suddenly, a mental presence made itself known with the force of a falling mountain, as the Momma dragon approached, called by its now dead adolescent child.
So the party piled into Nazir's van, and with the shaman quite literally in tow (as getting him within 10 feet of the van would have been a Very Bad Thing, as he was a grrlock and negated magic within that radius) squeaked out of the cave just as Momma came in for a landing, and fled for their lives. The demon-kid appeared around the mountain to distract the mother dragon, and they managed to escape.
The flight back to Skypass was uneventful for everyone but Zelder, who'd pumped himself up on Draxin to deliver that killing blow and began hallucinating halfway back. As he was the one towing the shaman behind them, the shaman arrived somewhat the worse for wear... but still alive, and easily fixed. Plus he was already drugged into insensibility, so it's not like he'd know who to blame.
In Skypass, the shaman was delivered... the flitter problem sort of solved itself -- Nathaniel, as urged by the party earlier, let Vorshath borrow his flitter-armband, and for some ungodly reason a wild flitter decided it liked Call and started hanging around him. Which made two. So the party received their payment (total elapsed time on estimated month-long job: 22 hours), and Marten converted the 6.4 cubic feet of gold he'd looted into enough local currency to buy a small town. Or, as it turned out, a lot of magical knick-knacks.
Like a set of magical underwear that lets you run 120 mph... but no slower. And offers no protection against running into people and trees. Or a hovering sombrero, for when a normal hat just isn't stupid-looking enough. Or a swiss-army pet, able to be transformed into a nearly endless variety of small, useless animals. Or a necklace of feathers that lets you feel all the sensations felt by anyone within a mile radius (ow ow ow ow ow). Or... well, lots of other stuff. The party bought several of everything, and still had most of the money left.
After shopping, and resting, the party was approached -- independantly, but apparently all of them were approached -- for a run on Boeing to shut down Marten's supplier once and for all, before they started a war between the worlds with humans on the losing end. Everyone seemed really enthusiastic about the job, except for Marten, who kind of liked getting neat toys handed to him by the crazy old professor... ah, well.
last week next week
