Ghost ship!
Nov. 24th, 2007 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we had a session of the Golden Compass themed shadake game. Also, fish! Not trout allegrette, though. It was nicely spiced salmon (it came pre-spiced) and some fries covered in a mound of garlic salt. Murdock really likes his garlic salt. So did I, after drowning them in vinegar.
While Wren was technically willing to be bait, he expressed some dissatisfaction with the speed with which their new weapons had allowed them to kill the first specter. Yes, the problem was seeing them in time, but 'who's to blame' was secondary to 'will I be eaten'. They decided to let Taegan finish his specter-detector first, and just keep watch for specters heading for the ship, which they could maybe shoot or fly and slashie.
When the ship came in, it did look awfully deserted, but the passengers disembarked without incident -- three inquisitioners and four soldiers guarding them. They asked for the bears, and were directed to the pair that were staying at the trading post. Caihong snuck up to spy on them, and heard them demanding the bears make anti-specter weapons for them, like they'd heard they'd made for other people in the past.
B: "We made them for the Order of the Shattered Blade. Have them kill your specters for you."
I: "We don't really trust them, and besides they've disappeared."
This went on long enough to get boring, and one of the soldiers heard Caihong as he tried to retreat, and chased him around the town until Eric and Jana distracted him with a barrage of snowballs. He headed back telling the inquisition that it was just a bunch of stupid kids playing.
Anyway, eventually Taegan finished the specter detector, which was like a non-magnifying telescope that would beep when a specter would be visible in the eyepiece if specters were visible. Basically, he took the geiger-counter-like detector Lord Asriel had had and extended the range by narrowing the field of view. It detected specters... and portals... and as it turned out, also their anti-specter weapons.
As a precaution, they scanned the ship with it... and got not one, but *three* beeps. There were, in fact, specters on the ship, that must have snuck out to it under the water, or something. Regardless, this was clearly a job for the Order, so they walked up the gangplank onto the ship's deck.
The ship still looked deserted. There were four doors (two hatches in the deck, and a door to the bridge and one to the engine room) all of which were marked 'do not enter: authorized personnel only!'. Taegan barred the doors shut except for the bridge, which Caihong opened, found deserted, and headed inside to bar a hatch in the floor...
...only to find his feet magically stuck to the floor. He'd broken the rule against entering the bridge without authorization, and was now cursed not to be able to decide to walk anywhere. And then the pixie leaped out of the shadows to sting him.
He did get stung, but Jana followed him inside, and while her feet got stuck to the floor, her sword had enough reach to swat the pixie off him. It scrambled down through the hatch, and Eric used carefully tuned spirit damage to dispel the curse on both of them, letting them leave the bridge. It would take a long time for Caihong to cure his own poison, but he was able to temporarily relieve the effects before they paralyzed him.
About that time, they heard the gangplank splash into the water -- and saw that the boat was moving rapidly back, away from shore. Swimming was obviously not an option in these frigid waters, so they headed next to the engine room. First, Eric affixed the specter-detector to the side of his pistol as a gigantically oversized sight, and scanned the engine room for specters -- and got a beep! He fired at it until the detector stopped beeping. "I think I killed it. Or possibly drove someone insane. We'd better check."
So they went in, and found the engineer slumped over his console -- but he wasn't where Eric had fired at, and in fact looked like he'd been eaten by the specter Eric had just destroyed. The controls wouldn't work, though -- the engine seemed to be controlling itself, as if if was possessed! They decided to sabotage the engine so that it would stop taking them farther and farther away from shore, although first they were going to check out and disable the rune-circle Eric spotted in a back corner of the lower level of the engine room.
The circle also beeped when the detector was pointed at it, so Eric shot at it with spirit damage again and again, until there was a pop and the smell of ozone. But the detector still beeped -- apparently, the dust itself also registered the same as portals, specters, and anti-specter weapons. A careful scan revealed that only the dust was left in that area, no sign of a specter.
Since his spirit shots weren't stopped by walls, and the detector wasn't either, Eric decided to just kill the other specters from here. He aimed carefully, and fired until it stopped beeping...
"Um... you were firing at the wrong time," Taegan said, "You need to fire when it beeps."
Eric: "Well, I'll scan it again... see? No beeps."
Taegan: "No, it was beeping in the same places, didn't you hear it? Look, just fire when I tell --"
Seeing that their illusion hadn't worked on everyone, the pixies attacked! This proved to be a very, very bad idea. Jana splattered two outright, Eric shot a hole through the third (and the floor, and the hull, but this was an ordinary boat and not a spaceship, so it was a tiny leak instead of a huge disaster), and Caihong managed to pin the fourth in place (with one of his needles) after it scrambled into his clothing. It was able to sting him, even pinned, but then Eric wrapped it up in the coat and took it prisoner.
The pixie surrendered once it was totally trapped, and told them that according to the rules of war, they had to treat it well and not hurt it and give it food and water and stuff. So they put it in a jar with airholes, and started questioning it.
This worked better than one might have assumed it would, probably because 'Wanda' was only three, and seemed to have a very sketchy idea of the rules of war. She was pretty sure she could only answer their questions if they answered hers in return, and she refused to actually rat out her friends, although she wasn't a good enough liar to fool Eric. They found out from her that the pixies matured very very fast, because their lifespan was short, and so while Wanda was only three, she was an adult and could see the specters. That was why the pixies were in charge of specter-trapping.
She was also under the impression that her people were the ones betrayed and attacked out of the blue, by people from this world hell-bent on closing portals and murdering the people who opened them. She hadn't actually been *alive* then, but it was common knowledge.
Anyway, they tried to talk to the remaining pixies that Wanda said didn't exist and begged them not to kill. They couldn't come to an agreement, though -- the pixies had been ordered to distract any meddlers until 'the business on the mainland was finished', and weren't allowed to surrender. While still talking, one of them tried to set a magical trap for the order, but it failed and he got shot. The other one ran away and hid in the speaking tubes, which Taegan decided to just seal off.
That gave them the run of the ship, and they verified the other two circles were actually empty of specters and dispelled. Then Taegan sabotaged the drive shaft to turn the propeller in the opposite direction so that they'd head back towards short, and they just stood guard against the remaining pixie to keep it from interfering. Soon enough, the ship grounded itself, and they headed back to the village. Wanda was still with them, in the jar -- they wanted to talk to Wren about her, and about what she'd said the Order had done to start the war.
But Wren was gone, tailing the Inquisition, who had finally been stubborn enough to out-stubborn the bears, who agreed to let them go be rejected by the bears' leader, the most stubborn bear of them all. The party suspected that the so-called inquisitioners were really a bunch of seals with some horrible plan in store, so they took off after them with no delay -- they had their daemons pull a sled which Caihong could rest on while curing the poison finally.
last session | next session
While Wren was technically willing to be bait, he expressed some dissatisfaction with the speed with which their new weapons had allowed them to kill the first specter. Yes, the problem was seeing them in time, but 'who's to blame' was secondary to 'will I be eaten'. They decided to let Taegan finish his specter-detector first, and just keep watch for specters heading for the ship, which they could maybe shoot or fly and slashie.
When the ship came in, it did look awfully deserted, but the passengers disembarked without incident -- three inquisitioners and four soldiers guarding them. They asked for the bears, and were directed to the pair that were staying at the trading post. Caihong snuck up to spy on them, and heard them demanding the bears make anti-specter weapons for them, like they'd heard they'd made for other people in the past.
B: "We made them for the Order of the Shattered Blade. Have them kill your specters for you."
I: "We don't really trust them, and besides they've disappeared."
This went on long enough to get boring, and one of the soldiers heard Caihong as he tried to retreat, and chased him around the town until Eric and Jana distracted him with a barrage of snowballs. He headed back telling the inquisition that it was just a bunch of stupid kids playing.
Anyway, eventually Taegan finished the specter detector, which was like a non-magnifying telescope that would beep when a specter would be visible in the eyepiece if specters were visible. Basically, he took the geiger-counter-like detector Lord Asriel had had and extended the range by narrowing the field of view. It detected specters... and portals... and as it turned out, also their anti-specter weapons.
As a precaution, they scanned the ship with it... and got not one, but *three* beeps. There were, in fact, specters on the ship, that must have snuck out to it under the water, or something. Regardless, this was clearly a job for the Order, so they walked up the gangplank onto the ship's deck.
The ship still looked deserted. There were four doors (two hatches in the deck, and a door to the bridge and one to the engine room) all of which were marked 'do not enter: authorized personnel only!'. Taegan barred the doors shut except for the bridge, which Caihong opened, found deserted, and headed inside to bar a hatch in the floor...
...only to find his feet magically stuck to the floor. He'd broken the rule against entering the bridge without authorization, and was now cursed not to be able to decide to walk anywhere. And then the pixie leaped out of the shadows to sting him.
He did get stung, but Jana followed him inside, and while her feet got stuck to the floor, her sword had enough reach to swat the pixie off him. It scrambled down through the hatch, and Eric used carefully tuned spirit damage to dispel the curse on both of them, letting them leave the bridge. It would take a long time for Caihong to cure his own poison, but he was able to temporarily relieve the effects before they paralyzed him.
About that time, they heard the gangplank splash into the water -- and saw that the boat was moving rapidly back, away from shore. Swimming was obviously not an option in these frigid waters, so they headed next to the engine room. First, Eric affixed the specter-detector to the side of his pistol as a gigantically oversized sight, and scanned the engine room for specters -- and got a beep! He fired at it until the detector stopped beeping. "I think I killed it. Or possibly drove someone insane. We'd better check."
So they went in, and found the engineer slumped over his console -- but he wasn't where Eric had fired at, and in fact looked like he'd been eaten by the specter Eric had just destroyed. The controls wouldn't work, though -- the engine seemed to be controlling itself, as if if was possessed! They decided to sabotage the engine so that it would stop taking them farther and farther away from shore, although first they were going to check out and disable the rune-circle Eric spotted in a back corner of the lower level of the engine room.
The circle also beeped when the detector was pointed at it, so Eric shot at it with spirit damage again and again, until there was a pop and the smell of ozone. But the detector still beeped -- apparently, the dust itself also registered the same as portals, specters, and anti-specter weapons. A careful scan revealed that only the dust was left in that area, no sign of a specter.
Since his spirit shots weren't stopped by walls, and the detector wasn't either, Eric decided to just kill the other specters from here. He aimed carefully, and fired until it stopped beeping...
"Um... you were firing at the wrong time," Taegan said, "You need to fire when it beeps."
Eric: "Well, I'll scan it again... see? No beeps."
Taegan: "No, it was beeping in the same places, didn't you hear it? Look, just fire when I tell --"
Seeing that their illusion hadn't worked on everyone, the pixies attacked! This proved to be a very, very bad idea. Jana splattered two outright, Eric shot a hole through the third (and the floor, and the hull, but this was an ordinary boat and not a spaceship, so it was a tiny leak instead of a huge disaster), and Caihong managed to pin the fourth in place (with one of his needles) after it scrambled into his clothing. It was able to sting him, even pinned, but then Eric wrapped it up in the coat and took it prisoner.
The pixie surrendered once it was totally trapped, and told them that according to the rules of war, they had to treat it well and not hurt it and give it food and water and stuff. So they put it in a jar with airholes, and started questioning it.
This worked better than one might have assumed it would, probably because 'Wanda' was only three, and seemed to have a very sketchy idea of the rules of war. She was pretty sure she could only answer their questions if they answered hers in return, and she refused to actually rat out her friends, although she wasn't a good enough liar to fool Eric. They found out from her that the pixies matured very very fast, because their lifespan was short, and so while Wanda was only three, she was an adult and could see the specters. That was why the pixies were in charge of specter-trapping.
She was also under the impression that her people were the ones betrayed and attacked out of the blue, by people from this world hell-bent on closing portals and murdering the people who opened them. She hadn't actually been *alive* then, but it was common knowledge.
Anyway, they tried to talk to the remaining pixies that Wanda said didn't exist and begged them not to kill. They couldn't come to an agreement, though -- the pixies had been ordered to distract any meddlers until 'the business on the mainland was finished', and weren't allowed to surrender. While still talking, one of them tried to set a magical trap for the order, but it failed and he got shot. The other one ran away and hid in the speaking tubes, which Taegan decided to just seal off.
That gave them the run of the ship, and they verified the other two circles were actually empty of specters and dispelled. Then Taegan sabotaged the drive shaft to turn the propeller in the opposite direction so that they'd head back towards short, and they just stood guard against the remaining pixie to keep it from interfering. Soon enough, the ship grounded itself, and they headed back to the village. Wanda was still with them, in the jar -- they wanted to talk to Wren about her, and about what she'd said the Order had done to start the war.
But Wren was gone, tailing the Inquisition, who had finally been stubborn enough to out-stubborn the bears, who agreed to let them go be rejected by the bears' leader, the most stubborn bear of them all. The party suspected that the so-called inquisitioners were really a bunch of seals with some horrible plan in store, so they took off after them with no delay -- they had their daemons pull a sled which Caihong could rest on while curing the poison finally.
last session | next session
