Sightseeing vs. Dragons
Dec. 21st, 2002 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight was Lazar's Friday cyberpunk game. We designed and built a very, very big gun, went sightseeing on the moon, helped a dragon, discovered we were working for the person responsible for the whole mess but didn't dare change sides, and were then attacked by everyone.
"How big should I make the barrel on this rail gun you wanted me to build?", NKN-Ur asked. Vorshath insisted it had to be truly huge, so she settled on 1 meter. The final design fired slugs which weighed about 40,000 pounds at a speed of 72 miles per second, doing approximately 10,000 times as much damage as an ordinary gun... but it would take a full-sized fusion power-plant to power it. Marten suggested making the power-plant weightless and towing it behind the ship, but instead NKN settled on huge batteries. So the massive battleship of death would only get 12 shots, assuming that the ship survived being accelerated backwards at 1 mile/second when it fired.
Of course, the ship was useless if the party didn't know where Atlantis was. Since Atlantis moved around a lot, the best way to locate it was to go up to the moon (the Red moon was habitable, and had a portal leading to it from a sort-of-nearby city) and look up from orbit.
Things were bad on the moon -- everything was destroyed. While Nazir gathered data on the location of Atlantis, Marten entered the ruins of Chashimi's home and tried to locate the illiski illusionist. Eventually, he found a pile of goo which his 'finder' indicated was what was left of the poor man. Marten took a sample and headed outside, where (according to the viewscreen) the dragon Jen, alive again, and in dragon form, was fighting someone.
Marten took some pot-shots at the planeswalker Jen was fighting, but missed. In retribution, the planeswalker cast 'Living Lands', animating all the buildings on the moon as giant golems. They weren't really a threat, but they were certainly a distraction. Marten played around with them a little before remembering he had a set of drak wings and could fly. By that time it was all over.
Nazir had gotten lucky evading the golems, and after sprouting wings and flying up into the air got enough time to cast a portal summoning the planeswalker's real body to the moon against his will, whereupon the golem-summoning bastard was immediately eaten by Jen.
Marten watched Jen rampage against the golems, which were still alive and fighting her, and ended the spell by knocking one of the golems unconscious with his spirit-fist -- killing the spirit of the spell and disenchanting it. Since Jen was still crazy, he decided to try to calm her down by touching her with his magic crystal that made him feel good.
Attempting to touch an angry dragon is not a good idea. Marten snuck up on her with his drug, genetics, and magic-boosted agility and his camoflague cloak, and thought he was successfull at doing so, but as he leapt at her to do the touch she whirled and ate him. Luckily, the crystal touched her tongue, and she froze, not chewing up or swallowing the foolish weasel.
After a bit of negotiations, Marten let Jen keep the crystal, and apologized for getting her killed earlier. Jen told him that she knew it wasn't his fault, and had already dealt with the people responsible, and that as payment for the crystal (which healed sanity -- something that an insane dragon desperately needed) she wouldn't kill him the next time they met.
"And here I thought we were on your side," Marten said, confused. The dragon took it as an amusing quip and let him and Nazir leave uneaten.
So after a stop in Amaranth to verify that Nathaniel did indeed seem to be gone, it was back to Skypass to confront Vorshath. Marten questioned the golem, who'd hired the party to destroy the source of magic, and discovered several things.
Firstly, that Vorshath and ALYS (the sentient search engine on earth) were the same person -- a schizoid.
Secondly, that they had arranged for the assassinations of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people that had started the whole campaign, as an experiment to try to speed the merger of the worlds.
Thirdly, that the source of magic they were going to go destroy was what was holding the worlds apart, and destroying it would merge them.
Fourthly, that 'Prime' matter -- the stuff 'impervious to technology' -- was the only 'real' matter, and that after the merger everything and everyone would be 'Prime'.
Fifth, that almost everyone would be hurt by the merger -- the corporations would lose lots of money in the ensuing chaos, and the dragons and wizards would lose most of their powers. The Murrikai would be relatively unaffected, as they were evil, soul-devouring disembodied spirits from another dimension, and so they were the ones funding the mission for Vorshath.
Sixth, that if the source of magic wasn't destroyed soon, allowing Earth and Ur to merge, both would break down into nothingness and be destroyed.
And, seventh, that seventeen years before, Vorshath had set a massive spell in motion to merge the worlds -- and the stress of it continuously failing to work because of the wedge driven between the worlds by the source of magic was what would tear the worlds apart if they weren't re-merged soon. Even turning off the merger spell wouldn't save them, although it would buy a year or so.
Vorshath offered to merge Marten ahead of time as an experiment, but was convinced to try it on a hummingbird instead. The bird became 'Prime', but could still breath the normal air and eat normal food. The process of merging a creature was extremely lengthy and difficult, and instead of doing Marten Vorshath decided to try to swap NKNs, so that NKN-earth, the mage, could participate in the mission instead of the tinkerer whose work was already done. Instead, he (apparently) nullified her entirely -- she vanished.
But there was no choice but to proceed. The massive two-thousand ton battleship was folded up and put in Nazir's pocket, and the party piled into the van to ride out for Atlantis.
Then Vorshath was dissolved into goo, and Marten was kidnapped and put in a bottle, in nonphysical form, with all his stuff. Including the bottle of Chashimi's remains. Some of Marten's equipment didn't take kindly to being bottled, including the bottle of Chashimi's remains. Chashimi's spirit awoke, confused by the strange nature of the afterlife... and then the draxin Marten hadn't been able to get rid of decided that it was a magic drug and didn't *care* if it didn't have a physical form to be consumed, and did weird things to Marten and Chashimi. One of which allowed Marten to work his caster and blow a hole in the bottle from the inside.
Meanwhile, Nazir and his ridiculously skilled van computer found themselves lost in an endless maze of impervious glass planes. Progress towards Atlantis would be very slow.
last week next week
"How big should I make the barrel on this rail gun you wanted me to build?", NKN-Ur asked. Vorshath insisted it had to be truly huge, so she settled on 1 meter. The final design fired slugs which weighed about 40,000 pounds at a speed of 72 miles per second, doing approximately 10,000 times as much damage as an ordinary gun... but it would take a full-sized fusion power-plant to power it. Marten suggested making the power-plant weightless and towing it behind the ship, but instead NKN settled on huge batteries. So the massive battleship of death would only get 12 shots, assuming that the ship survived being accelerated backwards at 1 mile/second when it fired.
Of course, the ship was useless if the party didn't know where Atlantis was. Since Atlantis moved around a lot, the best way to locate it was to go up to the moon (the Red moon was habitable, and had a portal leading to it from a sort-of-nearby city) and look up from orbit.
Things were bad on the moon -- everything was destroyed. While Nazir gathered data on the location of Atlantis, Marten entered the ruins of Chashimi's home and tried to locate the illiski illusionist. Eventually, he found a pile of goo which his 'finder' indicated was what was left of the poor man. Marten took a sample and headed outside, where (according to the viewscreen) the dragon Jen, alive again, and in dragon form, was fighting someone.
Marten took some pot-shots at the planeswalker Jen was fighting, but missed. In retribution, the planeswalker cast 'Living Lands', animating all the buildings on the moon as giant golems. They weren't really a threat, but they were certainly a distraction. Marten played around with them a little before remembering he had a set of drak wings and could fly. By that time it was all over.
Nazir had gotten lucky evading the golems, and after sprouting wings and flying up into the air got enough time to cast a portal summoning the planeswalker's real body to the moon against his will, whereupon the golem-summoning bastard was immediately eaten by Jen.
Marten watched Jen rampage against the golems, which were still alive and fighting her, and ended the spell by knocking one of the golems unconscious with his spirit-fist -- killing the spirit of the spell and disenchanting it. Since Jen was still crazy, he decided to try to calm her down by touching her with his magic crystal that made him feel good.
Attempting to touch an angry dragon is not a good idea. Marten snuck up on her with his drug, genetics, and magic-boosted agility and his camoflague cloak, and thought he was successfull at doing so, but as he leapt at her to do the touch she whirled and ate him. Luckily, the crystal touched her tongue, and she froze, not chewing up or swallowing the foolish weasel.
After a bit of negotiations, Marten let Jen keep the crystal, and apologized for getting her killed earlier. Jen told him that she knew it wasn't his fault, and had already dealt with the people responsible, and that as payment for the crystal (which healed sanity -- something that an insane dragon desperately needed) she wouldn't kill him the next time they met.
"And here I thought we were on your side," Marten said, confused. The dragon took it as an amusing quip and let him and Nazir leave uneaten.
So after a stop in Amaranth to verify that Nathaniel did indeed seem to be gone, it was back to Skypass to confront Vorshath. Marten questioned the golem, who'd hired the party to destroy the source of magic, and discovered several things.
Firstly, that Vorshath and ALYS (the sentient search engine on earth) were the same person -- a schizoid.
Secondly, that they had arranged for the assassinations of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people that had started the whole campaign, as an experiment to try to speed the merger of the worlds.
Thirdly, that the source of magic they were going to go destroy was what was holding the worlds apart, and destroying it would merge them.
Fourthly, that 'Prime' matter -- the stuff 'impervious to technology' -- was the only 'real' matter, and that after the merger everything and everyone would be 'Prime'.
Fifth, that almost everyone would be hurt by the merger -- the corporations would lose lots of money in the ensuing chaos, and the dragons and wizards would lose most of their powers. The Murrikai would be relatively unaffected, as they were evil, soul-devouring disembodied spirits from another dimension, and so they were the ones funding the mission for Vorshath.
Sixth, that if the source of magic wasn't destroyed soon, allowing Earth and Ur to merge, both would break down into nothingness and be destroyed.
And, seventh, that seventeen years before, Vorshath had set a massive spell in motion to merge the worlds -- and the stress of it continuously failing to work because of the wedge driven between the worlds by the source of magic was what would tear the worlds apart if they weren't re-merged soon. Even turning off the merger spell wouldn't save them, although it would buy a year or so.
Vorshath offered to merge Marten ahead of time as an experiment, but was convinced to try it on a hummingbird instead. The bird became 'Prime', but could still breath the normal air and eat normal food. The process of merging a creature was extremely lengthy and difficult, and instead of doing Marten Vorshath decided to try to swap NKNs, so that NKN-earth, the mage, could participate in the mission instead of the tinkerer whose work was already done. Instead, he (apparently) nullified her entirely -- she vanished.
But there was no choice but to proceed. The massive two-thousand ton battleship was folded up and put in Nazir's pocket, and the party piled into the van to ride out for Atlantis.
Then Vorshath was dissolved into goo, and Marten was kidnapped and put in a bottle, in nonphysical form, with all his stuff. Including the bottle of Chashimi's remains. Some of Marten's equipment didn't take kindly to being bottled, including the bottle of Chashimi's remains. Chashimi's spirit awoke, confused by the strange nature of the afterlife... and then the draxin Marten hadn't been able to get rid of decided that it was a magic drug and didn't *care* if it didn't have a physical form to be consumed, and did weird things to Marten and Chashimi. One of which allowed Marten to work his caster and blow a hole in the bottle from the inside.
Meanwhile, Nazir and his ridiculously skilled van computer found themselves lost in an endless maze of impervious glass planes. Progress towards Atlantis would be very slow.
last week next week
