Looting the Library
Oct. 29th, 2005 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSince there was no Conifur this week, we had Lazar's Shadake game instead. Java was absent, at work and/or getting drunk or something, but we were distracted enough by the new City of Heroes patch which Lazar and Murdock were playing around with while we waited for the pizza to come (Snowwy and I were looking at Neopets). After an hour or so, Sandy stomped out and growled at Lazar about why he hadn't called to bitch them out... so he did so, and although they claimed that the delivery was on schedule and that they'd told him it'd be an hour and a half until it would come (yeah, right), it arrived five minutes later, kind of cold as if it had been sitting on a shelf for an hour, forgotten until we called.
But we did eventually get around to playing.
No one was really sure how long they'd spent in the training room at the base of the tower... Balthazaar's lessons were kind of timeless hypnotized states, and they'd had a big one. And then, after figuring out that the books were, in fact, safe to open, they discovered that 'safe from bursting into flames' did not mean that it was a good idea to try to read them. Especially the magical ones that Perrel homed in on, as they were the only ones he could read... they spent quite a while hypnotized absorbing useless information about how to cast spells. Useless because none of them had any capacity to draw or store mana, except through magitech, which the knowledge wasn't directly applicable to.
Getting to the special book in the center proved both relatively easy and relatively pointless -- the turtle now had a model of the room on it, and removing the lock on the model of the case allowed the case to be opened. Inside was yet another book on how mages might use magic. Yay!
Balthazaar estimated they'd spent less than a week on this, and while the books weren't directly useful to them, they were still a vast treasure for Jirae. He ordered Wayne to make a bag of holding to stuff all the books into, while Jardin started searching for a way out. Or perhaps he was just prying up the flagstones in the floor for the hell of it? At any rate, he found another room below the one they were in long before Wayne finished his bag.
The next level down looked kind of like the top of a tower -- it was a ballroom with fifty windows looking out on assorted vistas -- some were recognizably parts of the island, while others were unrecognizable or, say, underwater. Wayne tossed one of his spiky balls at a window to see if they could be broken (or, say, travelled through), and found to his surprise that yes, they could be broken, and yes, you could leave through them, but no, you couldn't come back. Damn it! That ball was expensive! Although not really that expensive compared to the money they'd made on the island.
At any rate, while Perrel stayed behind to assist (and more importantly, supervise) Wayne in the continued work on a bag of holding, Chochang, Jardin, and Balthazaar explored the rest of the tower basement, and found the living quarters and libarary of the mage who'd lived here. There were hundreds of bottles in one room, labeled with magical symbols, and strange cellophane-like semitransparent clothing, seemingly made out of treated cotton. The really valuable stuff, though -- that is, the books -- were behind an odd sort of misty force field, as were other areas of the tower.
Eventually, the bag for the books upstairs was finished, and Wayne picked through the bottles looking for something that would take down the force field. Jardin suggested 'antimagic', so he took out a bottle labaled with the symbol for the 'Denying Force' and opened it to look inside. POOF! Instant cloud of force field gas! Obviously, not exactly what they'd been looking for... but here was a bottle with the opposite symbol...
That turned out to work -- the 'Affirming Force' was a silvery liquid that liked to spread itself evenly over surfaces, and things coated in it were able to pass through the force field. The first couple experiments were a bit clumsy, but a coated pillowcase and glove let them get a few books out, with some difficulty. So of course they then had to build a 'bunny suit' covered in the stuff for Balthazaar to wear, so that he could walk through the field and take out *all* the books -- they were too valuable to leave behind.
While this was going on, Chochang spent her time sightseeing out the windows, and spotted a large fleet of gigantic ships sailing by underneath the island, heading the same direction they planned to. This was worrying, but not worth losing a treasure horde of advanced (if, technically, useless) knowledge -- so they cracked the whip, and forced Wayne to spend almost a full day making more bags of holding to carry everything out, while Balthazaar used his bunny-suit to explore the closed off areas. Which were basically empty.
They decided to leave through a window which led to a different docking bay than the one they'd left their ship in, as there was no window to *their* docking bay. It had some old magical airships in it, one of which was still partially functional -- it could be made to hover, at least, or crash into the ceiling, if you were clumsy. And it was small enough to take with them.
So Wayne was sent to fetch the ship, and sail it around the island to pick them all up. Staying below the surface level of the island and flying around the perimeter kept him out of trouble, and the mob of vlindar that had gathered in the week they'd been trapped in the tower were peaceful enough. Since there wasn't anywhere close to enough room on the ship to fit all of them, they (Wayne, Ruby, Klazko, Roshan, and Hodges) held an auction to sell tickets for the thirty or so they could carry to the next town only... unfortunately, slaves weren't especially wealthy, but they did at least make enough to buy provisions for the extra passengers for the month or so they guessed it would take.
Then they loaded everyone up, floated over to the other docking bay to pick up Chochang, Balthazaar, Perrel, and Jardin, and prepared to leave this horrible island behind for good! Or at least for a while.
last session | next session
Murdock had burned the 'majorpatch' file for me, and the fears about a broken patch proved not to be the case, at least in the united states. So I was able to actually get all patched and everything by 2am... then spent the next two hours running alllll around the city with Cinnamon looking for Warburg, which wasn't on the city map. It turns out that all the PvP areas were off the *yellow* (newbie) train line, and not the green line which I searched first. Warburg in particular is in King's Row, in case anyone else has trouble finding it. You can get to the rooftop helipad by clicking on the building's doors.
Once there, I ran a couple missions, not running into any PvP problems since it was the middle of the night, and got a temp power of (of all things) phase shift. The zone itself isn't really that interseting (it's yet another city zone), but the missions had new tilesets and enemies in them. Arachnos drones are *annoying*.
But we did eventually get around to playing.
No one was really sure how long they'd spent in the training room at the base of the tower... Balthazaar's lessons were kind of timeless hypnotized states, and they'd had a big one. And then, after figuring out that the books were, in fact, safe to open, they discovered that 'safe from bursting into flames' did not mean that it was a good idea to try to read them. Especially the magical ones that Perrel homed in on, as they were the only ones he could read... they spent quite a while hypnotized absorbing useless information about how to cast spells. Useless because none of them had any capacity to draw or store mana, except through magitech, which the knowledge wasn't directly applicable to.
Getting to the special book in the center proved both relatively easy and relatively pointless -- the turtle now had a model of the room on it, and removing the lock on the model of the case allowed the case to be opened. Inside was yet another book on how mages might use magic. Yay!
Balthazaar estimated they'd spent less than a week on this, and while the books weren't directly useful to them, they were still a vast treasure for Jirae. He ordered Wayne to make a bag of holding to stuff all the books into, while Jardin started searching for a way out. Or perhaps he was just prying up the flagstones in the floor for the hell of it? At any rate, he found another room below the one they were in long before Wayne finished his bag.
The next level down looked kind of like the top of a tower -- it was a ballroom with fifty windows looking out on assorted vistas -- some were recognizably parts of the island, while others were unrecognizable or, say, underwater. Wayne tossed one of his spiky balls at a window to see if they could be broken (or, say, travelled through), and found to his surprise that yes, they could be broken, and yes, you could leave through them, but no, you couldn't come back. Damn it! That ball was expensive! Although not really that expensive compared to the money they'd made on the island.
At any rate, while Perrel stayed behind to assist (and more importantly, supervise) Wayne in the continued work on a bag of holding, Chochang, Jardin, and Balthazaar explored the rest of the tower basement, and found the living quarters and libarary of the mage who'd lived here. There were hundreds of bottles in one room, labeled with magical symbols, and strange cellophane-like semitransparent clothing, seemingly made out of treated cotton. The really valuable stuff, though -- that is, the books -- were behind an odd sort of misty force field, as were other areas of the tower.
Eventually, the bag for the books upstairs was finished, and Wayne picked through the bottles looking for something that would take down the force field. Jardin suggested 'antimagic', so he took out a bottle labaled with the symbol for the 'Denying Force' and opened it to look inside. POOF! Instant cloud of force field gas! Obviously, not exactly what they'd been looking for... but here was a bottle with the opposite symbol...
That turned out to work -- the 'Affirming Force' was a silvery liquid that liked to spread itself evenly over surfaces, and things coated in it were able to pass through the force field. The first couple experiments were a bit clumsy, but a coated pillowcase and glove let them get a few books out, with some difficulty. So of course they then had to build a 'bunny suit' covered in the stuff for Balthazaar to wear, so that he could walk through the field and take out *all* the books -- they were too valuable to leave behind.
While this was going on, Chochang spent her time sightseeing out the windows, and spotted a large fleet of gigantic ships sailing by underneath the island, heading the same direction they planned to. This was worrying, but not worth losing a treasure horde of advanced (if, technically, useless) knowledge -- so they cracked the whip, and forced Wayne to spend almost a full day making more bags of holding to carry everything out, while Balthazaar used his bunny-suit to explore the closed off areas. Which were basically empty.
They decided to leave through a window which led to a different docking bay than the one they'd left their ship in, as there was no window to *their* docking bay. It had some old magical airships in it, one of which was still partially functional -- it could be made to hover, at least, or crash into the ceiling, if you were clumsy. And it was small enough to take with them.
So Wayne was sent to fetch the ship, and sail it around the island to pick them all up. Staying below the surface level of the island and flying around the perimeter kept him out of trouble, and the mob of vlindar that had gathered in the week they'd been trapped in the tower were peaceful enough. Since there wasn't anywhere close to enough room on the ship to fit all of them, they (Wayne, Ruby, Klazko, Roshan, and Hodges) held an auction to sell tickets for the thirty or so they could carry to the next town only... unfortunately, slaves weren't especially wealthy, but they did at least make enough to buy provisions for the extra passengers for the month or so they guessed it would take.
Then they loaded everyone up, floated over to the other docking bay to pick up Chochang, Balthazaar, Perrel, and Jardin, and prepared to leave this horrible island behind for good! Or at least for a while.
last session | next session
Murdock had burned the 'majorpatch' file for me, and the fears about a broken patch proved not to be the case, at least in the united states. So I was able to actually get all patched and everything by 2am... then spent the next two hours running alllll around the city with Cinnamon looking for Warburg, which wasn't on the city map. It turns out that all the PvP areas were off the *yellow* (newbie) train line, and not the green line which I searched first. Warburg in particular is in King's Row, in case anyone else has trouble finding it. You can get to the rooftop helipad by clicking on the building's doors.
Once there, I ran a couple missions, not running into any PvP problems since it was the middle of the night, and got a temp power of (of all things) phase shift. The zone itself isn't really that interseting (it's yet another city zone), but the missions had new tilesets and enemies in them. Arachnos drones are *annoying*.
