More Tree Nonsense
Jun. 27th, 2009 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we played a little Shadake, in between bullshitting about video games and movies and stuff.
The first order of business for the party, once the ghost was gone and the sick people were awake, was visiting the shaman to get their souls healed. Obviously, Nico needed to go too, but there was some worry that the damage the shaman had seen wasn't just because they were resurrected -- they had stabbed everyone with a ghost-slaying knife, after all...
So they needed to bring a control. Cane wanted to bring Xerxes and Teatime, but obviously they wouldn't make good control subjects since their souls had also been screwed with, so they brought their bunny shaman, too.
Of course, still none of them spoke the Bearcats' language, not even Nico who knew lots more langauges than anyone else. They tried more pictograms, but it was still useless, so the shaman pulled them all onto the astral plane where they could communicate -- healing the party's souls would take all day, but none of the others were hurt spiritually. Although both Xerxes and 'Teatime' were attached to their bodies strangely, and the shaman couldn't pull them out without destroying the binding.
So, healing their souls. Mostly, this restored flashes of memory from their previous lives, before the end of the world. Nico had been a spy for Ankh Morpork, Cane a samurai in the service of Adamant Dominion (one of the big bad guys from the previous campaign), Kyngeah an occasional avatar of the One True God Abraxis (Cho from the previous campaign had basically been the meme that created Abraxis), and Takara a free-spirited infiltration specialist working for no one in particular. All of them had been cooperating on the Vaal problem (Vaal being the other big bad guy from the previous campaign -- the one the party had been unwittingly working for the whole time) when suddenly, with no warning, the world ended, and all of them were killed.
Cane and Nico didn't have armor because they'd died in safe surroundings. Takara's stuffed kitty, which she'd gone to such trouble to rescue from the phoenixes, was actually Nico's bedtime teddy-bear. O.o
They also remembered their old names, but Lazar didn't want to come up with them, so I guess we get to make up new ones if we decide we want to switch 'back'.
Oh, and Cane's soul was hurt worse than the others because of the damage suffered at Imbrium's hooves, when she forced him to live through subjective months of constant sex as an ironic punishment for hitting on her. Or whatever.
Afterwards, the bearcat shaman offered to heal Xerxes' body so that he wouldn't have to rely on the animating spell and hopefully would be able to use magic again, but that would take days, so they headed back to the ship. Which was under attack. By trees.
They asked their bunny shaman was what going on, but he had no idea -- the trees weren't *angry*, and weren't going out of their way to hurt people, but they seemed intent on dismantling the ship, which would kill all of them eventually, by exposure. Or force them to go find a cave or something. His magic wasn't sufficient to turn them away, so the rest of the surviving crew was trying to beat back the trees with hand weapons, with little success.
Cane couldn't think of a plan to turn back the trees without setting the ship on fire too, so he asked Takara to fire the remaining cannon at them. She refused, since they were on the *planet of trees* and pissing off the natives seemed like a worse bet than braving the weather. So, frustrated, and still in drakivolki form, he flew up to the mountain peak to complain to the management.
The lord of the mountain gave him the runaround for an hour, before eventually explaining that it was a test for the shaman, so that he'd learn that he couldn't save everyone -- eventually, either the trees or the people in the boat would have to die.
Meanwhile, everyone else tried to think of something useful to do. Nico didn't have any ideas, and all Kyngeah could do was heal the people who were getting increasingly badly injured by the trees' flailing. Takara tried to fire *both* cannons at the trees, but the second cannon was, as she'd suspected, broken too badly to fire safely, and the cannon crew she'd tricked into firing it were blown to bits, along with one off the trees.
Takara: "Well, at least we got the tree, too."
GM: "You *do* know there's more trees than you have crew, right?"
The other cannon didn't last long -- she blew up a bunch of trees with it, but eventually they realized what was attacking them, and picked it up and tossed it down the mountain. She tried throwing a lightning grenade, but while it did *some* damage (and set one of the trees on fire) it wasn't enough.
So she turned to her last resort, the two remaining magic arrows. The first one was BlackFire -- magical anti-fire that un-burned things. In particular, it un-burned water back into oxygen and hydrogen. The moutain was covered in snow. Cane saw the resulting conflagration from the peak. The bunny shaman managed to put it out before it actually ignited the entire freaking moon, though.
The last arrow was wood to stone (or probably 'whatever you hit' to stone), with a chain effect for like materials touching the original target -- so most of the trees as well as the entire remainder of the boat were turned into stone.
Cane: "What kind of stone?"
Kyngeah: "Petrified wood. Duh."
That was basically the end of the battle -- the bunny shaman was able to repel the few remaining trees, and enough of the boat was left to provide some shelter.
Then some survivors from the crash started wandering in -- not everyone who'd been dumped off the boat when it inverted had died, apparently.
Me: "The heck?"
GM: "Well, they landed on soft snow, right? At least 8 feet of it. Even at terminal velocity that'd be enough to cushion their fall, right?"
Murdock: "20-30 feet of snow, more likely, if it's a normal mountain."
Me: "I've seen mythbusters simulate people falling at terminal velocity. They *splatter*."
Keith: "Plus they might not have hit straight on, the mountain's tilted."
GM: "Well, I was thinking their might be enough snow. I'm not sure how to calculate it though."
Me: "Let's see... it takes what, 300 feet of falling to reach terminal velocity? So if there's 30 feet of snow and it decelerates them to 0 in exactly 30 feet of falling through snow, that's 10G deceleration. That's the *best* case."
Murdock: "10G is survivable."
GM: "Plus a bunch of them are burmecians, who can super-jump."
Then we started discussing whether they could have survived a week in the snowy mountains with no gear or food...
Anyway, they had survivors. Yay! >:)
last session | next session
The first order of business for the party, once the ghost was gone and the sick people were awake, was visiting the shaman to get their souls healed. Obviously, Nico needed to go too, but there was some worry that the damage the shaman had seen wasn't just because they were resurrected -- they had stabbed everyone with a ghost-slaying knife, after all...
So they needed to bring a control. Cane wanted to bring Xerxes and Teatime, but obviously they wouldn't make good control subjects since their souls had also been screwed with, so they brought their bunny shaman, too.
Of course, still none of them spoke the Bearcats' language, not even Nico who knew lots more langauges than anyone else. They tried more pictograms, but it was still useless, so the shaman pulled them all onto the astral plane where they could communicate -- healing the party's souls would take all day, but none of the others were hurt spiritually. Although both Xerxes and 'Teatime' were attached to their bodies strangely, and the shaman couldn't pull them out without destroying the binding.
So, healing their souls. Mostly, this restored flashes of memory from their previous lives, before the end of the world. Nico had been a spy for Ankh Morpork, Cane a samurai in the service of Adamant Dominion (one of the big bad guys from the previous campaign), Kyngeah an occasional avatar of the One True God Abraxis (Cho from the previous campaign had basically been the meme that created Abraxis), and Takara a free-spirited infiltration specialist working for no one in particular. All of them had been cooperating on the Vaal problem (Vaal being the other big bad guy from the previous campaign -- the one the party had been unwittingly working for the whole time) when suddenly, with no warning, the world ended, and all of them were killed.
Cane and Nico didn't have armor because they'd died in safe surroundings. Takara's stuffed kitty, which she'd gone to such trouble to rescue from the phoenixes, was actually Nico's bedtime teddy-bear. O.o
They also remembered their old names, but Lazar didn't want to come up with them, so I guess we get to make up new ones if we decide we want to switch 'back'.
Oh, and Cane's soul was hurt worse than the others because of the damage suffered at Imbrium's hooves, when she forced him to live through subjective months of constant sex as an ironic punishment for hitting on her. Or whatever.
Afterwards, the bearcat shaman offered to heal Xerxes' body so that he wouldn't have to rely on the animating spell and hopefully would be able to use magic again, but that would take days, so they headed back to the ship. Which was under attack. By trees.
They asked their bunny shaman was what going on, but he had no idea -- the trees weren't *angry*, and weren't going out of their way to hurt people, but they seemed intent on dismantling the ship, which would kill all of them eventually, by exposure. Or force them to go find a cave or something. His magic wasn't sufficient to turn them away, so the rest of the surviving crew was trying to beat back the trees with hand weapons, with little success.
Cane couldn't think of a plan to turn back the trees without setting the ship on fire too, so he asked Takara to fire the remaining cannon at them. She refused, since they were on the *planet of trees* and pissing off the natives seemed like a worse bet than braving the weather. So, frustrated, and still in drakivolki form, he flew up to the mountain peak to complain to the management.
The lord of the mountain gave him the runaround for an hour, before eventually explaining that it was a test for the shaman, so that he'd learn that he couldn't save everyone -- eventually, either the trees or the people in the boat would have to die.
Meanwhile, everyone else tried to think of something useful to do. Nico didn't have any ideas, and all Kyngeah could do was heal the people who were getting increasingly badly injured by the trees' flailing. Takara tried to fire *both* cannons at the trees, but the second cannon was, as she'd suspected, broken too badly to fire safely, and the cannon crew she'd tricked into firing it were blown to bits, along with one off the trees.
Takara: "Well, at least we got the tree, too."
GM: "You *do* know there's more trees than you have crew, right?"
The other cannon didn't last long -- she blew up a bunch of trees with it, but eventually they realized what was attacking them, and picked it up and tossed it down the mountain. She tried throwing a lightning grenade, but while it did *some* damage (and set one of the trees on fire) it wasn't enough.
So she turned to her last resort, the two remaining magic arrows. The first one was BlackFire -- magical anti-fire that un-burned things. In particular, it un-burned water back into oxygen and hydrogen. The moutain was covered in snow. Cane saw the resulting conflagration from the peak. The bunny shaman managed to put it out before it actually ignited the entire freaking moon, though.
The last arrow was wood to stone (or probably 'whatever you hit' to stone), with a chain effect for like materials touching the original target -- so most of the trees as well as the entire remainder of the boat were turned into stone.
Cane: "What kind of stone?"
Kyngeah: "Petrified wood. Duh."
That was basically the end of the battle -- the bunny shaman was able to repel the few remaining trees, and enough of the boat was left to provide some shelter.
Then some survivors from the crash started wandering in -- not everyone who'd been dumped off the boat when it inverted had died, apparently.
Me: "The heck?"
GM: "Well, they landed on soft snow, right? At least 8 feet of it. Even at terminal velocity that'd be enough to cushion their fall, right?"
Murdock: "20-30 feet of snow, more likely, if it's a normal mountain."
Me: "I've seen mythbusters simulate people falling at terminal velocity. They *splatter*."
Keith: "Plus they might not have hit straight on, the mountain's tilted."
GM: "Well, I was thinking their might be enough snow. I'm not sure how to calculate it though."
Me: "Let's see... it takes what, 300 feet of falling to reach terminal velocity? So if there's 30 feet of snow and it decelerates them to 0 in exactly 30 feet of falling through snow, that's 10G deceleration. That's the *best* case."
Murdock: "10G is survivable."
GM: "Plus a bunch of them are burmecians, who can super-jump."
Then we started discussing whether they could have survived a week in the snowy mountains with no gear or food...
Anyway, they had survivors. Yay! >:)
last session | next session
