You can't not be on a boat!
Mar. 22nd, 2009 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday night, we played some Shadake. An offhand comment plus luck die derailed the entire session, Lazar told us afterwards.
The party wasn't sure whether or not they were fugitives, so instead of renting a hotel room for the estimated 3 days that they'd be out of it regenerating from the dragon's-blood wafers, they decided to squat in one of the borderland farms that was abandoned because it was no longer inside Nubium's realm.
They all piled into a tool shed, which they used alchemy on to make look old and worn and abandoned, and ate the wafers. They had fevered, fragmented dreams of waking up and sleeping and fighting and eating, and then finally came to their senses... on cold stone slabs, in a laboratory.
Most of their equipment (but not their money) was in a cabinet in the room, but no one else in the building seemed to be awake. Somehow, they were awake even though it was night, which shouldn't be possible.
Cane: "Maybe we're not on Morpheus anymore? Are we on a boat?"
GM: "Well, you might be on a boat..." *rolls dice* "Yep!"
It wasn't an airship, though -- it was an ordinary water-borne boat, floating in a nameless ocean in the deadlands, owned by an eccentric doctor who liked buying corpses and dissecting them. Apparently, from his notes, when he'd bought the party they'd been dead, with their throats cut.
So the party tied up everyone on the ship while they were sleeping, and waited for them to wake up. Then talked about whether or not they should kill everyone, or leave some alive to question so that they could track down whoever'd stolen their money and killed them. Some of them were willing to talk without any torture or anything -- protesting their innocence mostly. The doctor's work wasn't *technically* illegal, but it was frowned on, which was why they did it out in the deadlands. They didn't know anything about who'd brought in their bodies, since they weren't the ones who'd bought them and it was always no questions asked.
So the party began to suspect that tying them up hadn't really been necessary, but once they'd *done* it, well...
Cane: "I guess what it comes down to is, are you Realists?"
They got really quiet, and the doctor fainted. Cane took that as a yes. When Kyngeah's tarot reading suggested taking a risk for the sake of righteousness, he cut them free from their bonds. Enough of them kept their heads to rescue the ones who immediately jumped overboard before they drowned or were eaten by screeching eels.
Cane's theory was that they'd been found by Itsaboy, who'd slit their throats and sold them on to other realists to get them away from the city. "After all, he's the one who made the regeneration wafers, so he had to know we'd survive. And he could have given us pink fizzy potion to let us wake up once we recovered."
The sailors didn't think that was very likely -- probably, they'd just been found and killed in their sleep. They'd been asleep more than a week, after all -- nothing like the one to three days they'd expected. But they did know Itsaboy, and apparently this wasn't the first time he'd gone into hiding. They *were* realists, and could try to find him and get additional orders for the party by checking his usual hideouts. In the meantime, did the party want to go back to the city?
Um...
They decided to risk it, for the sake of getting some news about what was going on, agreeing to meet with the doctor's crew in the dreamtime, in the room of slabs on their ship. The public news was pretty minimal -- another Realist Circle had been found and dispersed, and Mr. Stravinsky's company placed under new management. But the company was profitable -- lots of orders for the steam engines had come in, even some from several nations that had been subjected to Cane's driving.
Since they were broke, they decided to go visit the company to see if they could beg for an advance on the project. To their surprise, the lead engineer told them that each of them had $1.58 million as their share of the profits so far. They wanted to invest it all back into the steam engine project, right?
They asked about other options, and were told that there was some thought to either reverse-engineering or simply constructing a ship around the etheric vane they'd brought back, although that project would need more money than all their shares put together. They could try to convince the new boss to fund it, but they should probably get their story straight about where they were from before talking to him -- he was fair, but honest, and they were only present on Morpheus as the result of forbidden magic. Being honest with him would NOT work out well.
They mentioned that there had been a damaged etheric vane at the crash site, and the engineer thought that it might be helpful to study at least -- and if they had the damaged one to study, then it would make a lot more sense to use the intact one to build a ship. There were also some damaged ones in Crisium's territory that they could try to steal in a raid, but none of the party wanted to go anywhere near Crisium's territory anytime soon -- they'd burned down the frickin' port and not been especially subtle about it, after all.
last session | next session
The party wasn't sure whether or not they were fugitives, so instead of renting a hotel room for the estimated 3 days that they'd be out of it regenerating from the dragon's-blood wafers, they decided to squat in one of the borderland farms that was abandoned because it was no longer inside Nubium's realm.
They all piled into a tool shed, which they used alchemy on to make look old and worn and abandoned, and ate the wafers. They had fevered, fragmented dreams of waking up and sleeping and fighting and eating, and then finally came to their senses... on cold stone slabs, in a laboratory.
Most of their equipment (but not their money) was in a cabinet in the room, but no one else in the building seemed to be awake. Somehow, they were awake even though it was night, which shouldn't be possible.
Cane: "Maybe we're not on Morpheus anymore? Are we on a boat?"
GM: "Well, you might be on a boat..." *rolls dice* "Yep!"
It wasn't an airship, though -- it was an ordinary water-borne boat, floating in a nameless ocean in the deadlands, owned by an eccentric doctor who liked buying corpses and dissecting them. Apparently, from his notes, when he'd bought the party they'd been dead, with their throats cut.
So the party tied up everyone on the ship while they were sleeping, and waited for them to wake up. Then talked about whether or not they should kill everyone, or leave some alive to question so that they could track down whoever'd stolen their money and killed them. Some of them were willing to talk without any torture or anything -- protesting their innocence mostly. The doctor's work wasn't *technically* illegal, but it was frowned on, which was why they did it out in the deadlands. They didn't know anything about who'd brought in their bodies, since they weren't the ones who'd bought them and it was always no questions asked.
So the party began to suspect that tying them up hadn't really been necessary, but once they'd *done* it, well...
Cane: "I guess what it comes down to is, are you Realists?"
They got really quiet, and the doctor fainted. Cane took that as a yes. When Kyngeah's tarot reading suggested taking a risk for the sake of righteousness, he cut them free from their bonds. Enough of them kept their heads to rescue the ones who immediately jumped overboard before they drowned or were eaten by screeching eels.
Cane's theory was that they'd been found by Itsaboy, who'd slit their throats and sold them on to other realists to get them away from the city. "After all, he's the one who made the regeneration wafers, so he had to know we'd survive. And he could have given us pink fizzy potion to let us wake up once we recovered."
The sailors didn't think that was very likely -- probably, they'd just been found and killed in their sleep. They'd been asleep more than a week, after all -- nothing like the one to three days they'd expected. But they did know Itsaboy, and apparently this wasn't the first time he'd gone into hiding. They *were* realists, and could try to find him and get additional orders for the party by checking his usual hideouts. In the meantime, did the party want to go back to the city?
Um...
They decided to risk it, for the sake of getting some news about what was going on, agreeing to meet with the doctor's crew in the dreamtime, in the room of slabs on their ship. The public news was pretty minimal -- another Realist Circle had been found and dispersed, and Mr. Stravinsky's company placed under new management. But the company was profitable -- lots of orders for the steam engines had come in, even some from several nations that had been subjected to Cane's driving.
Since they were broke, they decided to go visit the company to see if they could beg for an advance on the project. To their surprise, the lead engineer told them that each of them had $1.58 million as their share of the profits so far. They wanted to invest it all back into the steam engine project, right?
They asked about other options, and were told that there was some thought to either reverse-engineering or simply constructing a ship around the etheric vane they'd brought back, although that project would need more money than all their shares put together. They could try to convince the new boss to fund it, but they should probably get their story straight about where they were from before talking to him -- he was fair, but honest, and they were only present on Morpheus as the result of forbidden magic. Being honest with him would NOT work out well.
They mentioned that there had been a damaged etheric vane at the crash site, and the engineer thought that it might be helpful to study at least -- and if they had the damaged one to study, then it would make a lot more sense to use the intact one to build a ship. There were also some damaged ones in Crisium's territory that they could try to steal in a raid, but none of the party wanted to go anywhere near Crisium's territory anytime soon -- they'd burned down the frickin' port and not been especially subtle about it, after all.
last session | next session
