The battle of random-port-city-number-one
Mar. 11th, 2006 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothHad a session of Lazar's game last night. There was a bit more divination, a bit of action, and another explosion, ending up with everyone shipwrecked on a beach.
After setting up their transmission, the party scoured the Source of All Knowledge for materials. All they found worth taking with them was some high-quality cabling, that they were pretty sure was more valuable than steel, pound for pound.
So they took their mage-seeking compass and headed after the army, to retrieve Jeff, as Jardin's scrying machine had shown Jeff being loaded onto one of their ships. As a bit of divination had shown them not actually being executed or thrown in prison for their crimes if they went back to stand trial, they tried to come up with a way to assault the ships without breaking any more of Jirae's essentially pacifistic laws.
P: "We should make a field that nullifies their device that nullifies our inconspicuous field."
W: "No, what we need is some sort of wild weasel to disable their anti-inconspicuous device."
J: "You mean, a little weasel-shaped automaton that would run around on their ship, smashing any magitech it found?"
W: "Exactly! A whole swarm of them! And maybe you could make them self-replicating... no, wait, that would be a bad idea."
R: "Didn't you say that building weapons was against the law?"
W: "Well, they're not really weapons if they don't attack people."
R: "He's good at rationalizing things, isn't he?"
But, to their surprise, they quickly passed the army, with the compass still pointing east -- apparently, Jardin's machine scried into the future sometimes without *telling* you. Maybe Balthazaar and Chochang (the machine had shown them working together) still had Jeff?
Roshan/Ka'sa's inconspicuousness charm was still hiding their flying cart, so they parked it in an alleyway and, using the two remaining extra-inconspicuous devices that they'd built in the city of soul-stealing robots, they followed the compass into an inn.
Unfortunately, Jeff was nowhere to be seen. Their first thought was that perhaps Balthazaar, too, had made his group inconspicuous. But no, the compass was quite clearly pointing at a dwarf sitting at a table with two Hildralgo. Their second thought was that Balthazaar had made a scry-fooling beacon to draw off pursuit, which led them to this random dwarf (or something he was carrying) instead of the mage.
Before they could decide what to do about that, an advanced party of the army arrived in town. Specifically, in the inn, following a compass. Outside, they heard the voice of the enemy magitechnician who they knew had an anti-inconspicuousness device on his person.
Apparently, the male Hildrago recognized the voice as well, as he pulled out Balthazaar's distinctive 3-barreled pistol and shot one of the soldiers. Realizing what was up, the party nabbed the dwarf (Jeff in disguise) (after making him inconspicuous) and ran back to their flying cart while Balthazaar and Chochang fought the soldiers... or would have, if they hadn't barreled headlong into the magitechnician.
They assaulted him with their various weapons, but he was a better dodger than they were attackers. Perrel and 'Roshan' managed to hit him, but mostly hurt themselves as his reflective damage shield bounced the damage back to them as well. Then he took out a lizard in a bottle and blasted them all with a cloud of poison gas.
Jardin managed to hold his breath, and quickly ran out of range of the enemy's anti-inconspicuousness device, to buy some time. Wayne was only a little poisoned, and while groggy was alert enough to dig the antivenom potions Perrel had made out of his pack and feed them to everyone, only dropped a few. They'd seen the enemy heading for their cart (which he'd be able to see just fine; also, it was inconspicuous in the 'looks like a normal cart' sense, not the 'totally unimportant and should be ignored' sense the high-powered devices they were using did), so they circled around behind it, airlifted Jardin atop it (everyone else was riding him), and had Wayne order it into the air.
Poison gas puffed from the seams of the cart's weave as the now-trapped enemy used his weapon on Rudy and Klazko. "Okay, how do we stop him without killing ourselves?" "Your sister has that crossbow... she was probably just poisoned, but if someone can distract him while I go in and get it..."
But she wasn't poisoned, she was just invisible, and hiding on top of the cart with them. Hearing their suggestion, she put it into practice, firing her crossbow and wrapping the enemy up tightly. They all went inside, unpoisoned thier crew, and had Jardin whack the enemy over the head a few times with Perrel's squeaky stun-axe until both of them fell unconscious. Then Wayne tied him up real good, using magitech to enhance the bindings.
"I dropped my knife," Ka'sa/Roshan mentioned, "I need to get it. It's *important*." So they gave her one of their two remaining inconspicuousness devices and sent her to go get it, hovering in midair hidden by the darkness and a gathering storm. NOT inconspicuous, since they couldn't find the device that they knew their prisoner had that was nullifying that sort of effect.
They went about various tasks for about an hour (Wayne was identifying the items they did find on the guy, for instance) before realizing that Roshan/Ka'sa had been gone far, far too long. Wayne made a 'detect inconspicuous things' eyepatch, and spotted the device they'd sent with her, lying seemingly unattended in the middle of the street. It had to be a trap.
So they left their prisoner tied up on a rooftop (and planted a cryptic message on one of the soldiers that they hoped would let them find him -- they weren't intending to kill him, after all), and started using divination to figure out what had happened to Ka'sa. The oracle potion told them that to rescue her, they should get on a pirate ship named the Promethea and sail in between the ships of an armada until they reached a blue-sailed vessel. Jardin's scrying machine showed what had actually happened -- the general of the army had picked up Ka'sa's knife and been possessed by him, dispossessing Roshan. Her now-soulless body fell unconscious on a rooftop, and the general had he taken into custody.
"Apparently, Ka'sa doesn't need rescuing." They had their cart fly eastwards over the ocean, and started talking to the kid (after throwing together a device to let him speak their language, since all their old devices along those lines were missing, again).
After a couple hours, they looked outside and noticed that they were still hovering over the city. Talking to his fast-flight item, Wayne was able to determine that it was deathly afraid of water. "It feels too squishy underneath me..."
As a stopgap measure, they had it fly north along the coastline, since they'd seen another, larger port city up that way, that they could maybe find an ordinary ship to use to get across the ocean. While they were flying, Perrel's dragon found them, and after *almost* destroying the cart (Wayne told it to stay just out of reach, but pace the dragon so that they could talk) got into a long conversation with Jeff about magic. Wayne listened in, trying to pick up some hints, while helping Jardin build an inconspicuous robotic flying weasel that would act as a very strong scrying-decoy to keep anyone from scrying on Jeff. Since otherwise the damned compass the army and/or Balthazaar had would just lead them right to him again.
About the time they finsihed the weasel, the cart suddenly jerked to a stop as it realized it'd run out of land... and the dragon hit it, and as they'd feared, it exploded much like the last one had, showering the beach with splinters of dead floatvine and levicus. They'd been flying pretty low, so while Wayne and Jardin and Klazko had the wind knocked out of them, and Rudy was badly injured by grabbing onto the dragon to avoid falling, no one was actually killed in the crash...
But they had to watch most of their supplies drift off over the ocean, in the weightless levicus cage they'd made for them to keep them from weighting down the cart too much. Much faster than Wayne could fly. The danger room was dented and bent, but more or less intact, and they were able to gather enough levicus shards that they could probably make it float to move it around. They had a few bits of supplies and items that had been in it, at least... although most of those were jostled around and smashed, including Jardin's forge.
Luckily, they were right next to a small port town, where a ship named the Promethea sat at dock...
last week | next week
After setting up their transmission, the party scoured the Source of All Knowledge for materials. All they found worth taking with them was some high-quality cabling, that they were pretty sure was more valuable than steel, pound for pound.
So they took their mage-seeking compass and headed after the army, to retrieve Jeff, as Jardin's scrying machine had shown Jeff being loaded onto one of their ships. As a bit of divination had shown them not actually being executed or thrown in prison for their crimes if they went back to stand trial, they tried to come up with a way to assault the ships without breaking any more of Jirae's essentially pacifistic laws.
P: "We should make a field that nullifies their device that nullifies our inconspicuous field."
W: "No, what we need is some sort of wild weasel to disable their anti-inconspicuous device."
J: "You mean, a little weasel-shaped automaton that would run around on their ship, smashing any magitech it found?"
W: "Exactly! A whole swarm of them! And maybe you could make them self-replicating... no, wait, that would be a bad idea."
R: "Didn't you say that building weapons was against the law?"
W: "Well, they're not really weapons if they don't attack people."
R: "He's good at rationalizing things, isn't he?"
But, to their surprise, they quickly passed the army, with the compass still pointing east -- apparently, Jardin's machine scried into the future sometimes without *telling* you. Maybe Balthazaar and Chochang (the machine had shown them working together) still had Jeff?
Roshan/Ka'sa's inconspicuousness charm was still hiding their flying cart, so they parked it in an alleyway and, using the two remaining extra-inconspicuous devices that they'd built in the city of soul-stealing robots, they followed the compass into an inn.
Unfortunately, Jeff was nowhere to be seen. Their first thought was that perhaps Balthazaar, too, had made his group inconspicuous. But no, the compass was quite clearly pointing at a dwarf sitting at a table with two Hildralgo. Their second thought was that Balthazaar had made a scry-fooling beacon to draw off pursuit, which led them to this random dwarf (or something he was carrying) instead of the mage.
Before they could decide what to do about that, an advanced party of the army arrived in town. Specifically, in the inn, following a compass. Outside, they heard the voice of the enemy magitechnician who they knew had an anti-inconspicuousness device on his person.
Apparently, the male Hildrago recognized the voice as well, as he pulled out Balthazaar's distinctive 3-barreled pistol and shot one of the soldiers. Realizing what was up, the party nabbed the dwarf (Jeff in disguise) (after making him inconspicuous) and ran back to their flying cart while Balthazaar and Chochang fought the soldiers... or would have, if they hadn't barreled headlong into the magitechnician.
They assaulted him with their various weapons, but he was a better dodger than they were attackers. Perrel and 'Roshan' managed to hit him, but mostly hurt themselves as his reflective damage shield bounced the damage back to them as well. Then he took out a lizard in a bottle and blasted them all with a cloud of poison gas.
Jardin managed to hold his breath, and quickly ran out of range of the enemy's anti-inconspicuousness device, to buy some time. Wayne was only a little poisoned, and while groggy was alert enough to dig the antivenom potions Perrel had made out of his pack and feed them to everyone, only dropped a few. They'd seen the enemy heading for their cart (which he'd be able to see just fine; also, it was inconspicuous in the 'looks like a normal cart' sense, not the 'totally unimportant and should be ignored' sense the high-powered devices they were using did), so they circled around behind it, airlifted Jardin atop it (everyone else was riding him), and had Wayne order it into the air.
Poison gas puffed from the seams of the cart's weave as the now-trapped enemy used his weapon on Rudy and Klazko. "Okay, how do we stop him without killing ourselves?" "Your sister has that crossbow... she was probably just poisoned, but if someone can distract him while I go in and get it..."
But she wasn't poisoned, she was just invisible, and hiding on top of the cart with them. Hearing their suggestion, she put it into practice, firing her crossbow and wrapping the enemy up tightly. They all went inside, unpoisoned thier crew, and had Jardin whack the enemy over the head a few times with Perrel's squeaky stun-axe until both of them fell unconscious. Then Wayne tied him up real good, using magitech to enhance the bindings.
"I dropped my knife," Ka'sa/Roshan mentioned, "I need to get it. It's *important*." So they gave her one of their two remaining inconspicuousness devices and sent her to go get it, hovering in midair hidden by the darkness and a gathering storm. NOT inconspicuous, since they couldn't find the device that they knew their prisoner had that was nullifying that sort of effect.
They went about various tasks for about an hour (Wayne was identifying the items they did find on the guy, for instance) before realizing that Roshan/Ka'sa had been gone far, far too long. Wayne made a 'detect inconspicuous things' eyepatch, and spotted the device they'd sent with her, lying seemingly unattended in the middle of the street. It had to be a trap.
So they left their prisoner tied up on a rooftop (and planted a cryptic message on one of the soldiers that they hoped would let them find him -- they weren't intending to kill him, after all), and started using divination to figure out what had happened to Ka'sa. The oracle potion told them that to rescue her, they should get on a pirate ship named the Promethea and sail in between the ships of an armada until they reached a blue-sailed vessel. Jardin's scrying machine showed what had actually happened -- the general of the army had picked up Ka'sa's knife and been possessed by him, dispossessing Roshan. Her now-soulless body fell unconscious on a rooftop, and the general had he taken into custody.
"Apparently, Ka'sa doesn't need rescuing." They had their cart fly eastwards over the ocean, and started talking to the kid (after throwing together a device to let him speak their language, since all their old devices along those lines were missing, again).
After a couple hours, they looked outside and noticed that they were still hovering over the city. Talking to his fast-flight item, Wayne was able to determine that it was deathly afraid of water. "It feels too squishy underneath me..."
As a stopgap measure, they had it fly north along the coastline, since they'd seen another, larger port city up that way, that they could maybe find an ordinary ship to use to get across the ocean. While they were flying, Perrel's dragon found them, and after *almost* destroying the cart (Wayne told it to stay just out of reach, but pace the dragon so that they could talk) got into a long conversation with Jeff about magic. Wayne listened in, trying to pick up some hints, while helping Jardin build an inconspicuous robotic flying weasel that would act as a very strong scrying-decoy to keep anyone from scrying on Jeff. Since otherwise the damned compass the army and/or Balthazaar had would just lead them right to him again.
About the time they finsihed the weasel, the cart suddenly jerked to a stop as it realized it'd run out of land... and the dragon hit it, and as they'd feared, it exploded much like the last one had, showering the beach with splinters of dead floatvine and levicus. They'd been flying pretty low, so while Wayne and Jardin and Klazko had the wind knocked out of them, and Rudy was badly injured by grabbing onto the dragon to avoid falling, no one was actually killed in the crash...
But they had to watch most of their supplies drift off over the ocean, in the weightless levicus cage they'd made for them to keep them from weighting down the cart too much. Much faster than Wayne could fly. The danger room was dented and bent, but more or less intact, and they were able to gather enough levicus shards that they could probably make it float to move it around. They had a few bits of supplies and items that had been in it, at least... although most of those were jostled around and smashed, including Jardin's forge.
Luckily, they were right next to a small port town, where a ship named the Promethea sat at dock...
last week | next week
