Mind-Warping
Oct. 8th, 2005 01:58 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... and Ravnica was released. I was too impatient not to stop at the little card shop near their house to pick up some cards, which I opened during dinner and parts of the game that focused on other people.
Mostly, though, we played Shadake. We rescued Balthazaar, who told us *not* to start making mind control, because it was a really stupid thing to do. We also failed to solve a murder and failed to get into the tower.
The first item on the agenda was to rescue Balthazaar. His students considered a straight-up rescue attempt, but it seemed way too risky. It'd be safer if they could have, say, a massive fog cloud to block the centaur's vision, so that they could fly in without being shot down...
As it turned out, Chochang actually knew some magitech, or something close enough to be compatible with Perrel's, and they cooperated on making some smoke paint. Wayne made a bunch of little 'spinners' which would fly around randomly (the random part wasn't by-design), and then Perrel used mundane alchemy to layer smoke paint and lamp oil to get timed detonations of magic smoke, for maximum dispersal.
Meanwhile, Jardin made a Very Sharp Axe for Perrel to use to slice through the poles holding up Balthazaar's cage -- the plan was to set off the smoke spinners at the edge of town, fly in under cover of 'fog', slice the cage loose from its bindings, and fly off with the whole cage on the back of a manta.
That all only took Perrel and Wayne (Wayne to release the spinners and carry Perrel off, since they guessed the manta would be loaded with just the cage), but the rebels still sharing their docking bay helped them come up with a 'diversion' -- Jardin and Chochang would blow through a wall of the library and steal some books, pulling the guards away from the cage, just in case.
It didn't go quite as planned -- Chochang nearly blew herself up with the bomb (she was probably saved by the weaversilk she wore as armor), and Wayne nearly got eaten by a guard-plant, but managed to yank himself free, although he dislocated his shoulder in the process. Jardin was able to wake Chochang quickly, though, and they escaped under cover of smoke with a few dozen books, and Perrel, after cutting down the cage, took out the plant with his Very Sharp Axe, saving Wayne from having to continue to run away.
So it went mostly as planned. The fog did cover their escape, and they got back to the ship without further excitement. There, after Balthazaar had recovered a bit, they talked to him about the rest of their plans.
When not drunk on centaur wine, he was a lot less happy about the whole 'mind control' idea. "Do you have any way to protect yourself?" "Of course! I was going to work on that before actually starting the real project." "But you already built the weapon, without building the defense." "Well... it's just a prototype. It doesn't work very well." At any rate, they decided that they'd done enough for both sides to 'make contact' and that they didn't want to be around when the situation blew up, let alone be smack in the middle of it lighting the fuse.
In fact, they were going to leave as soon as they explored the tower and set a relay. Except that they wanted to see if they could figure out the strange mutilation first.
Perrel screwed up the first attempt at restoring speech, but he did restore the man's hearing, and they played 20 questions. It turned out he'd heard the woman's voice who'd done it to him, but hadn't clearly seen who it was. They eliminated anyone in their crew (including Roshan and Chochang), or in the camp... eventually, when he did get speech, it came out that whoever it was had probably been using magic, to get into the dock and to stun the victim so that she could torture him. There wasn't much they could do about that, except leave soon.
But they really did want to visit the tower. First, they set up the relay ("That way, if we have to run away, we won't have to stop and set up a relay first."), then they tried to find a way in.
They found *many* ways in... unfortunately, none of them worked. The windows wouldn't break, and neither would the trapdoor even when Wayne dropped several thousand-pound rocks on it. Digging under the tower revealed a turtle-like dome supporting it... and blocking any further digging. Eventually, they tried pleading at the door, which told them that the mage wasn't in right now, and to come back later. They wheedled at it for a bit, and eventually managed to trigger the script that gave a riddle to solve if they wanted to be taken as students. "Study the last of the race if you wish the keys to achieve further knowledge."
They decided that 'last of the race' probably meant 'turtle' "Like in the old story." It didn't seem likely that apprentices were supposed to excavate the gardens around the tower, though. But searching the area, Jardin came across a bunch of spiderwebs (made of weaversilk, the native giant spiders of this island), and in the middle was a cocooned statue of what looked like a turtle with a tower on its back, although it was hard to tell through the cocoon. That had to be where to look.
last session | next session
Fist Ravnica deck idea: Bramble Elemental + Fist of Ironwood + Doubling Season + Warp World + Flame-Kin Zealot. Tokens count as permanents, you see... so if you get a bunch of tokens out you have a decent shot at drawing at least one of each in the world-warping; one of each means attacking for 23. }:P
The red cards and green cards seem made for each other, and with all the red-white and white-green multilands, you can support a three color red/white/green deck in less than 30 cards, so that you can fill up the rest with generically overpowered Boros and Selesnya cards.
Mostly, though, we played Shadake. We rescued Balthazaar, who told us *not* to start making mind control, because it was a really stupid thing to do. We also failed to solve a murder and failed to get into the tower.
The first item on the agenda was to rescue Balthazaar. His students considered a straight-up rescue attempt, but it seemed way too risky. It'd be safer if they could have, say, a massive fog cloud to block the centaur's vision, so that they could fly in without being shot down...
As it turned out, Chochang actually knew some magitech, or something close enough to be compatible with Perrel's, and they cooperated on making some smoke paint. Wayne made a bunch of little 'spinners' which would fly around randomly (the random part wasn't by-design), and then Perrel used mundane alchemy to layer smoke paint and lamp oil to get timed detonations of magic smoke, for maximum dispersal.
Meanwhile, Jardin made a Very Sharp Axe for Perrel to use to slice through the poles holding up Balthazaar's cage -- the plan was to set off the smoke spinners at the edge of town, fly in under cover of 'fog', slice the cage loose from its bindings, and fly off with the whole cage on the back of a manta.
That all only took Perrel and Wayne (Wayne to release the spinners and carry Perrel off, since they guessed the manta would be loaded with just the cage), but the rebels still sharing their docking bay helped them come up with a 'diversion' -- Jardin and Chochang would blow through a wall of the library and steal some books, pulling the guards away from the cage, just in case.
It didn't go quite as planned -- Chochang nearly blew herself up with the bomb (she was probably saved by the weaversilk she wore as armor), and Wayne nearly got eaten by a guard-plant, but managed to yank himself free, although he dislocated his shoulder in the process. Jardin was able to wake Chochang quickly, though, and they escaped under cover of smoke with a few dozen books, and Perrel, after cutting down the cage, took out the plant with his Very Sharp Axe, saving Wayne from having to continue to run away.
So it went mostly as planned. The fog did cover their escape, and they got back to the ship without further excitement. There, after Balthazaar had recovered a bit, they talked to him about the rest of their plans.
When not drunk on centaur wine, he was a lot less happy about the whole 'mind control' idea. "Do you have any way to protect yourself?" "Of course! I was going to work on that before actually starting the real project." "But you already built the weapon, without building the defense." "Well... it's just a prototype. It doesn't work very well." At any rate, they decided that they'd done enough for both sides to 'make contact' and that they didn't want to be around when the situation blew up, let alone be smack in the middle of it lighting the fuse.
In fact, they were going to leave as soon as they explored the tower and set a relay. Except that they wanted to see if they could figure out the strange mutilation first.
Perrel screwed up the first attempt at restoring speech, but he did restore the man's hearing, and they played 20 questions. It turned out he'd heard the woman's voice who'd done it to him, but hadn't clearly seen who it was. They eliminated anyone in their crew (including Roshan and Chochang), or in the camp... eventually, when he did get speech, it came out that whoever it was had probably been using magic, to get into the dock and to stun the victim so that she could torture him. There wasn't much they could do about that, except leave soon.
But they really did want to visit the tower. First, they set up the relay ("That way, if we have to run away, we won't have to stop and set up a relay first."), then they tried to find a way in.
They found *many* ways in... unfortunately, none of them worked. The windows wouldn't break, and neither would the trapdoor even when Wayne dropped several thousand-pound rocks on it. Digging under the tower revealed a turtle-like dome supporting it... and blocking any further digging. Eventually, they tried pleading at the door, which told them that the mage wasn't in right now, and to come back later. They wheedled at it for a bit, and eventually managed to trigger the script that gave a riddle to solve if they wanted to be taken as students. "Study the last of the race if you wish the keys to achieve further knowledge."
They decided that 'last of the race' probably meant 'turtle' "Like in the old story." It didn't seem likely that apprentices were supposed to excavate the gardens around the tower, though. But searching the area, Jardin came across a bunch of spiderwebs (made of weaversilk, the native giant spiders of this island), and in the middle was a cocooned statue of what looked like a turtle with a tower on its back, although it was hard to tell through the cocoon. That had to be where to look.
last session | next session
Fist Ravnica deck idea: Bramble Elemental + Fist of Ironwood + Doubling Season + Warp World + Flame-Kin Zealot. Tokens count as permanents, you see... so if you get a bunch of tokens out you have a decent shot at drawing at least one of each in the world-warping; one of each means attacking for 23. }:P
The red cards and green cards seem made for each other, and with all the red-white and white-green multilands, you can support a three color red/white/green deck in less than 30 cards, so that you can fill up the rest with generically overpowered Boros and Selesnya cards.
