In the service of the... genies?
Oct. 10th, 2009 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday night we played some Shadake. We attempted to unravel a mystery, and discovered OH MY FUCKING GOD BEDBUGS. I mean Grid. Not bedbugs. Grid.
The party loaded up a cargo of silk -- they could buy it wholesale on Midas, and it seemed like a relatively valuable commodity that they should be able to sell anywhere, but wasn't as OMG expensive as spices -- and headed for the first city on the list of drakivolki cities they'd been told to warn before rendezvousing with Midas' fleet at Jaxom.
The city was strange -- a floating island of earth, about 20 feet thick, with a city in the middle and a ring of docks and stuff around the outer edge, with farmland in the middle. Most of the carpet traffic was internal, and they were able to sail up and dock without being challenged. The harbormaster was waiting for them on the dock, to tell them the local rules, which were kind of nickel-and-dime-you-to-death but not actually onerous as long as you had enough nickels and dimes.
There was a strange calliope at the dock they'd landed at, with stylized versions of mythical creatures to ride on the merry-go-round part -- unicorns, nightmares, swimmies, lots of things you wouldn't actually want to ride in real life. The whole city had a kind of carnival atmosphere, so most of the crew was set loose on shore leave.
The remainder set up a market stall on the street nearby to sell some of their silk, manned by Kyngeah while Cane sought an audience with the guildmaster of the city to pass on the genies' warning, and Nico and Takara searched the city for knowledge and merchants willing to buy in bulk respectively.
What Nico found was a murder victim abandoned in an alleyway -- he'd bled out after having his arm removed. Being a concerned, conscientious citizen, Nico tried to find a cop to report the problem to -- and found first a street kid who looted the body, and then a private security person who was surprised Nico hadn't looted the body himself. The 'cop' was able to identify that the missing arm had been a clockwork arm imported from Paladine. Dun dun DUUUN!
Meanwhile, Cane was having a long wait for an audience, since a bunch of locals were complaining about a wave of mysterious thefts, and threatening to replace the Guildmaster if he didn't fix matters. But eventually, he was next in line, and told the story of the Empire and Enca and the imminent attack on Jaxom.
Guildmaster: "So you're here to offer your services in our defense?"
Cane: "No... we're here to warn you of the danger so that you can prepare, and to ask what you can contribute to the defense of your way of life against the Empire."
Guildmaster: "Well, we're really *busy* right now with this wave of mysterious thefts. Perhaps if someone were to solve that problem we'd be able to devote more thought to external matters."
Cane: "Fine, I'll talk to some specialists on my crew, and see if they have an insights."
Cane got back to the ship and (eventually) got the basic information about the thefts that Nico had already discovered. Kyngeah also did a tarot reading on the matter -- which said that what the party 'should' do next was make a bad situation worse, and the end result would be profit. For somebody. Not especially encouraging.
So, Cane asked their Shaman to take precautions against their own clockwork (the very expensive clockwork powering their vanes) getting up and walking away (the shaman encased them completely so that they'd have to burrow their way out at least) and then, in the interest of making a bad situation worse, had a chat with Three Gears about the Grid.
Three Gears insisted (after extending some antennae and listening) that there were no Grid in the city. At least, no *Enca* Grid. They might be 'disconnected' Grid, who "talked, but did not communicate". Cane tried to bring the bug along with him to search for these disconnected Grid, but Three Gears barely got off the dock before getting into a loud, subsonic argument with the calliope, and after paying the attendant to shut down the thing didn't work, Cane walked off and left them to it.
Meanwhile, Nico was tracking down other people with clockwork prosthetics, to see if they'd been murdered too. The 'cop' came along with him, since Nico wasn't going to loot the bodies which meant that he'd get to. They found one person dead with two missing prosthetic legs, and then the next person alive, with a prosthetic tail still attached -- his tail hadn't tried to get up and walk away, something had tried to burrow up through the floor and take it, but he'd shot it before it could finish burrowing and it had run away. He hadn't dug up the floor to try to see what it was that he'd shot, because digging in the city was highly illegal.
So Nico used a crystal ball to search the network of tunnels he discovered under the attempted point of intrusion, and got horribly horribly lost in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. But eventually found a nest of Grid, swarming and building... something. He brought his viewpoint up to try to get a bead on where exactly under the city the nest was, and saw... Cane, talking to a bunch of warehouse workers.
In the warehouse, Cane was listening to them describe their security and why it was impossible for the 8000 cubic feet of materials they'd had inside to vanish mysteriously in the night without setting off any alarms. Not only could no living thing or magic pass through the walls or ceiling, but the boxes themselves would set off an alarm if they were removed through any of the doors. So, yes, there was a tunnel, near where the goods had disappeared.
Cane described the Grid to the warehouse owner as he remembered them from the incident on the repair platform, long ago -- how they'd scavenged pieces of everything, including the crew of a hapless drakivolki ship, and built themselves a hodgepodge ship with dozens of vanes.
Owner: "Oh, like this one?"
Cane: "... yeah, exactly like that one."
Owner: "I salvaged it, it was abandoned on the docks without any crew. Looked like it would have to have been crewed by Feriphal, though. And the wierdest thing was that there wasn't any power source for all those vanes..."
Cane: "Ah. Well, then I have good news for you. It's not your fault that your entire city is going to be destroyed by the Grid."
Anyway, once the party rejoined and compared notes, the situation looked dire. Just the thefts that Cane had heard of included a dozen warehouses like that one, and if the grid were using all those materials to build more of themselves, that meant *hundreds of thousands* of the little bugs, in tunnels so tiny that only feriphal, of which the city had only a few, could fit inside to try to take the fight to the.
Plan A: Sell the species transformation recipe to local alchemists, the price including some doses of feriphal transformation potion and mercenaries to drink them and fight in the tunnels. Lead a massive army into the tunnels to fight the Grid in their own territory. Problem: The Grid would probably win, especially if there were really 100,000 of them.
Plan B: Fumigate the city with some sort of... acid mist spell or ritual, to fill the tunnels and dissolve the bugs in their nests. Problem A: Wouldn't that just drive the Grid to the surface? Well, then they could be fought in the open, and maybe beaten. Problem B: Filling a city-sized network of tunnels with acid mist was probably beyond the capacity of the city's alchemists. It was certainly beyond Cane!
Plan C: Locate the nests with clairboyance. Fly under the city. Blast open the ground from below, then shoot cannon and magic lasers at the Grid to destroy them en-masse. Problem: That might very well destroy the city, since no one knew why the 20-foot thick layer of dirt had been stable so far, which was why digging was illegal.
Cane: "I say we dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Otherwise, it's going to be a bug hunt."
Plan D: "Hey, dudes, can't you try talking to them, instead of fighting?" This was suggested by a surfer-dude guru who they'd rescued from a changestorm just before docking, who'd been spending the time repairing his magic wings. This plan wasn't entirely stupid... after all, Three Gears had explicitly said that they weren't connected to Enca. And that they could talk. On the other hand, these scavenger Grid were known for savagely attacking and recycling anyone they came across, not for negotiating in good (or any other) faith. On the other other hand, because of this reputation, people usually shot at them *first*...
last session | next session
The party loaded up a cargo of silk -- they could buy it wholesale on Midas, and it seemed like a relatively valuable commodity that they should be able to sell anywhere, but wasn't as OMG expensive as spices -- and headed for the first city on the list of drakivolki cities they'd been told to warn before rendezvousing with Midas' fleet at Jaxom.
The city was strange -- a floating island of earth, about 20 feet thick, with a city in the middle and a ring of docks and stuff around the outer edge, with farmland in the middle. Most of the carpet traffic was internal, and they were able to sail up and dock without being challenged. The harbormaster was waiting for them on the dock, to tell them the local rules, which were kind of nickel-and-dime-you-to-death but not actually onerous as long as you had enough nickels and dimes.
There was a strange calliope at the dock they'd landed at, with stylized versions of mythical creatures to ride on the merry-go-round part -- unicorns, nightmares, swimmies, lots of things you wouldn't actually want to ride in real life. The whole city had a kind of carnival atmosphere, so most of the crew was set loose on shore leave.
The remainder set up a market stall on the street nearby to sell some of their silk, manned by Kyngeah while Cane sought an audience with the guildmaster of the city to pass on the genies' warning, and Nico and Takara searched the city for knowledge and merchants willing to buy in bulk respectively.
What Nico found was a murder victim abandoned in an alleyway -- he'd bled out after having his arm removed. Being a concerned, conscientious citizen, Nico tried to find a cop to report the problem to -- and found first a street kid who looted the body, and then a private security person who was surprised Nico hadn't looted the body himself. The 'cop' was able to identify that the missing arm had been a clockwork arm imported from Paladine. Dun dun DUUUN!
Meanwhile, Cane was having a long wait for an audience, since a bunch of locals were complaining about a wave of mysterious thefts, and threatening to replace the Guildmaster if he didn't fix matters. But eventually, he was next in line, and told the story of the Empire and Enca and the imminent attack on Jaxom.
Guildmaster: "So you're here to offer your services in our defense?"
Cane: "No... we're here to warn you of the danger so that you can prepare, and to ask what you can contribute to the defense of your way of life against the Empire."
Guildmaster: "Well, we're really *busy* right now with this wave of mysterious thefts. Perhaps if someone were to solve that problem we'd be able to devote more thought to external matters."
Cane: "Fine, I'll talk to some specialists on my crew, and see if they have an insights."
Cane got back to the ship and (eventually) got the basic information about the thefts that Nico had already discovered. Kyngeah also did a tarot reading on the matter -- which said that what the party 'should' do next was make a bad situation worse, and the end result would be profit. For somebody. Not especially encouraging.
So, Cane asked their Shaman to take precautions against their own clockwork (the very expensive clockwork powering their vanes) getting up and walking away (the shaman encased them completely so that they'd have to burrow their way out at least) and then, in the interest of making a bad situation worse, had a chat with Three Gears about the Grid.
Three Gears insisted (after extending some antennae and listening) that there were no Grid in the city. At least, no *Enca* Grid. They might be 'disconnected' Grid, who "talked, but did not communicate". Cane tried to bring the bug along with him to search for these disconnected Grid, but Three Gears barely got off the dock before getting into a loud, subsonic argument with the calliope, and after paying the attendant to shut down the thing didn't work, Cane walked off and left them to it.
Meanwhile, Nico was tracking down other people with clockwork prosthetics, to see if they'd been murdered too. The 'cop' came along with him, since Nico wasn't going to loot the bodies which meant that he'd get to. They found one person dead with two missing prosthetic legs, and then the next person alive, with a prosthetic tail still attached -- his tail hadn't tried to get up and walk away, something had tried to burrow up through the floor and take it, but he'd shot it before it could finish burrowing and it had run away. He hadn't dug up the floor to try to see what it was that he'd shot, because digging in the city was highly illegal.
So Nico used a crystal ball to search the network of tunnels he discovered under the attempted point of intrusion, and got horribly horribly lost in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. But eventually found a nest of Grid, swarming and building... something. He brought his viewpoint up to try to get a bead on where exactly under the city the nest was, and saw... Cane, talking to a bunch of warehouse workers.
In the warehouse, Cane was listening to them describe their security and why it was impossible for the 8000 cubic feet of materials they'd had inside to vanish mysteriously in the night without setting off any alarms. Not only could no living thing or magic pass through the walls or ceiling, but the boxes themselves would set off an alarm if they were removed through any of the doors. So, yes, there was a tunnel, near where the goods had disappeared.
Cane described the Grid to the warehouse owner as he remembered them from the incident on the repair platform, long ago -- how they'd scavenged pieces of everything, including the crew of a hapless drakivolki ship, and built themselves a hodgepodge ship with dozens of vanes.
Owner: "Oh, like this one?"
Cane: "... yeah, exactly like that one."
Owner: "I salvaged it, it was abandoned on the docks without any crew. Looked like it would have to have been crewed by Feriphal, though. And the wierdest thing was that there wasn't any power source for all those vanes..."
Cane: "Ah. Well, then I have good news for you. It's not your fault that your entire city is going to be destroyed by the Grid."
Anyway, once the party rejoined and compared notes, the situation looked dire. Just the thefts that Cane had heard of included a dozen warehouses like that one, and if the grid were using all those materials to build more of themselves, that meant *hundreds of thousands* of the little bugs, in tunnels so tiny that only feriphal, of which the city had only a few, could fit inside to try to take the fight to the.
Plan A: Sell the species transformation recipe to local alchemists, the price including some doses of feriphal transformation potion and mercenaries to drink them and fight in the tunnels. Lead a massive army into the tunnels to fight the Grid in their own territory. Problem: The Grid would probably win, especially if there were really 100,000 of them.
Plan B: Fumigate the city with some sort of... acid mist spell or ritual, to fill the tunnels and dissolve the bugs in their nests. Problem A: Wouldn't that just drive the Grid to the surface? Well, then they could be fought in the open, and maybe beaten. Problem B: Filling a city-sized network of tunnels with acid mist was probably beyond the capacity of the city's alchemists. It was certainly beyond Cane!
Plan C: Locate the nests with clairboyance. Fly under the city. Blast open the ground from below, then shoot cannon and magic lasers at the Grid to destroy them en-masse. Problem: That might very well destroy the city, since no one knew why the 20-foot thick layer of dirt had been stable so far, which was why digging was illegal.
Cane: "I say we dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Otherwise, it's going to be a bug hunt."
Plan D: "Hey, dudes, can't you try talking to them, instead of fighting?" This was suggested by a surfer-dude guru who they'd rescued from a changestorm just before docking, who'd been spending the time repairing his magic wings. This plan wasn't entirely stupid... after all, Three Gears had explicitly said that they weren't connected to Enca. And that they could talk. On the other hand, these scavenger Grid were known for savagely attacking and recycling anyone they came across, not for negotiating in good (or any other) faith. On the other other hand, because of this reputation, people usually shot at them *first*...
last session | next session
