Shopping on the Enemy Homeworld. AGAIN
Aug. 30th, 2009 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday night we played Shadake. The Brushfire was nearly eaten by rats.
The rats infesting the derelict ships had all swarmed onto the Brushfire during the fight with the ghosts and the subsequent looting. Cane had an old, easy recipe for 'X-friend cake' where X was an animal that you had a sample of, which attracted all animals of that type, so they decided to try to get rid of the rats using a pied-piper routine. They lured the rats onto a plank, then tossed the plank overboard.
Unfortunately, (a) this didn't get rid of all the rats on the first try, and (b) some of the rats could fly. Many of the rats (5% or so?) were mutated by the long exposure to the 'sleeping' lord of corruption, and had extra abilities or limbs or were totally unrecognizable. The scariest one was a 'maw' rat that devoured other rats nearby, gaining rapidly in size -- but they tossed it overboard and it was never seen again. The most problematic rat was one that looked like a gecko, because it ate power crystals.
They discovered this at the worst possible time. Kyngeah was teaching Cane how to fly the ship (so that she would no longer be their *only* surviving pilot) when they ran into a changestorm. Cane wanted to charge straight at the thing so that he could hit it with his sword, but the captain talked him out of that since the storms had the tendency to break ships by ruining their vanes. So instead he tried to back out, and... one of the vanes suddenly stopped working.
Then another one. Nico went to investigate, and found the gecko-rat eating the second power crystal. Trying to kill it didn't work for very long (10 seconds to regenerate from 'dead' to 'fully healed'), but it worked for long enough to throw it overboard while it was still unconscious.
But they were in bad shape now, with only three vanes working. Takara directed the cannons to shatter the changestorm-seed, at least. That ended the storm, but it shot out spikes aimed right for the ship, and most of them hit! One hit the bridge, missing everyone inside at least, and another suddenly transformed into a ball of wings, which started floating around the ship curiously.
The ball of wings gave the ship's crew 357 tries to guess its name, which could be yes or no questions instead. No one really cared that much -- about half a dozen questions were asked, the last one being 'is your name common?' 'Yes!' From then on Kyngeah started calling the thing 'common'.
But anyway, bad shape, too few crystals to fly at top speed. There were two moons nearby, according to the wizards doing navigation, but no one knew which they were. One was surrounded by a continual storm. "We can probably find LOTS of wrecks around there." They decided to offload their current cargo first, so they set sail for the other one with three vanes.
The moon was covered in smog, which made it hard to make out much on the ground, but it didn't have a navy surrounding it or anything, and it did have industry and interlunar trade. Eventually they got close enough to see that many of the moon's inhabitants were feriphal -- this was Paladine. 50 years ago, they'd been an enemy of the empire...
The party didn't trust that, so they found an isolated part of the moon to dump their elven prisoners, and then flew to the opposite side to find a city to trade with. They looked at the news for news about the war, and the papers were all talking about the heroic victories their fleet had won against Ree, and how soon the empire would be spreading Ecna's word to Jaxom, the currently neutral home of the drakivolki. Obviously, the empire had no intention of ever letting their mercenaries go!
Oh, and they were on yet another enemy homeworld, so all the people from Ree had to drink their remaining transformation potions and turn into Anidutu if they wanted shore leave.
At least Takara was able to get a decent rate for their loot, considering the hurry they were in. 350 teeth! Enough to run the ship for 8 months! Except that Paladine didn't sell energy crystals -- instead, they sold clockwork magitech generators that served the same purpose 'forever', but were much much more expensive. Still, even after hiring a crew (from among the malcontents who weren't all that happy that Paladine was part of the empire now) (including another mage, since the existing mages had been complaining about having to take so many shifts as navigator) they almost had enough money to repair the ship with clockwork and run it for 6 months. But not quite. So they'd probably have to go treasure-hunting again.
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The rats infesting the derelict ships had all swarmed onto the Brushfire during the fight with the ghosts and the subsequent looting. Cane had an old, easy recipe for 'X-friend cake' where X was an animal that you had a sample of, which attracted all animals of that type, so they decided to try to get rid of the rats using a pied-piper routine. They lured the rats onto a plank, then tossed the plank overboard.
Unfortunately, (a) this didn't get rid of all the rats on the first try, and (b) some of the rats could fly. Many of the rats (5% or so?) were mutated by the long exposure to the 'sleeping' lord of corruption, and had extra abilities or limbs or were totally unrecognizable. The scariest one was a 'maw' rat that devoured other rats nearby, gaining rapidly in size -- but they tossed it overboard and it was never seen again. The most problematic rat was one that looked like a gecko, because it ate power crystals.
They discovered this at the worst possible time. Kyngeah was teaching Cane how to fly the ship (so that she would no longer be their *only* surviving pilot) when they ran into a changestorm. Cane wanted to charge straight at the thing so that he could hit it with his sword, but the captain talked him out of that since the storms had the tendency to break ships by ruining their vanes. So instead he tried to back out, and... one of the vanes suddenly stopped working.
Then another one. Nico went to investigate, and found the gecko-rat eating the second power crystal. Trying to kill it didn't work for very long (10 seconds to regenerate from 'dead' to 'fully healed'), but it worked for long enough to throw it overboard while it was still unconscious.
But they were in bad shape now, with only three vanes working. Takara directed the cannons to shatter the changestorm-seed, at least. That ended the storm, but it shot out spikes aimed right for the ship, and most of them hit! One hit the bridge, missing everyone inside at least, and another suddenly transformed into a ball of wings, which started floating around the ship curiously.
The ball of wings gave the ship's crew 357 tries to guess its name, which could be yes or no questions instead. No one really cared that much -- about half a dozen questions were asked, the last one being 'is your name common?' 'Yes!' From then on Kyngeah started calling the thing 'common'.
But anyway, bad shape, too few crystals to fly at top speed. There were two moons nearby, according to the wizards doing navigation, but no one knew which they were. One was surrounded by a continual storm. "We can probably find LOTS of wrecks around there." They decided to offload their current cargo first, so they set sail for the other one with three vanes.
The moon was covered in smog, which made it hard to make out much on the ground, but it didn't have a navy surrounding it or anything, and it did have industry and interlunar trade. Eventually they got close enough to see that many of the moon's inhabitants were feriphal -- this was Paladine. 50 years ago, they'd been an enemy of the empire...
The party didn't trust that, so they found an isolated part of the moon to dump their elven prisoners, and then flew to the opposite side to find a city to trade with. They looked at the news for news about the war, and the papers were all talking about the heroic victories their fleet had won against Ree, and how soon the empire would be spreading Ecna's word to Jaxom, the currently neutral home of the drakivolki. Obviously, the empire had no intention of ever letting their mercenaries go!
Oh, and they were on yet another enemy homeworld, so all the people from Ree had to drink their remaining transformation potions and turn into Anidutu if they wanted shore leave.
At least Takara was able to get a decent rate for their loot, considering the hurry they were in. 350 teeth! Enough to run the ship for 8 months! Except that Paladine didn't sell energy crystals -- instead, they sold clockwork magitech generators that served the same purpose 'forever', but were much much more expensive. Still, even after hiring a crew (from among the malcontents who weren't all that happy that Paladine was part of the empire now) (including another mage, since the existing mages had been complaining about having to take so many shifts as navigator) they almost had enough money to repair the ship with clockwork and run it for 6 months. But not quite. So they'd probably have to go treasure-hunting again.
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