The Sinister Design Forums

[This isn't a new thread, but just a renaming of the old game -- but don't stop reading! I modified the original first post so it explains better what this is about now.]

Hi! I decided that I would devote a certain amount of time to running a forum game, based on old text adventure games. Basically, you type commands into the game, and I come up with content in-game to match the command. You can make any decision in-game with the character, so long as it's a good one :D. In all seriousness, I'd like to go at least one story run with a good character, and maybe then I'll be willing to let you guys make him evil.Other forumers can just start their own or ask about hosting this thread for a bit, if they think they can do a good job, but for the most part I'd really like to keep the story-telling to myself, so I can establish the universe and its magical laws, and you guys can see if you like them or want to change them in your own stories if you choose to do something like this. I recommend examining things and exploring all possibilities as much as possible, and not just doing the stuff you're expected to do. Do the unexpected, use stuff with other random stuff, and generally have a cool adventure.

Right about now, you're probably wondering: how does this work? Well, here goes:

You are sitting in your room doing homework, and suddenly a portal opens on your walk-in closet's door. You may use an item, take it, examine it, or use one item with another.

(http://i.imgur.com/7wvPc.png)

Use the homework with the portal.

Great!

The homework flies into the portal, and you can hear it hit a wall on the other side. You can also hear someone ask whether someone's coming to rescue them.

Now, you just have your closed door and the portal. You may want to use the portal to retrieve your homework, but maybe it's not really a priority.

(http://i.imgur.com/tOlak.png)

Open the door

And look into the portal.

At first, the door resists, but you continue pulling. The door finally opens, and you find that the portal is also present on the opposite side of the door. However, it looks different somehow, as if it led to different place than did the portal on the other side.

Then, you decide to look in both portals. The first one, at a glance, appears to lead you into a dingy prison cell with a simple cot in the corner. It rather smells, and you decide to duck back out when you see a guard coming. The second portal opens up into a small, clean room with two seats and an array of controls in front of them, with an aerial view of a large city at night; it is the cabin of an airship.

(http://i.imgur.com/1aoND.png)

(In the cell) Ask the guard where you are.

You go back into the first portal, and ask the guard, who is walking away, where you are. The guard seems to be heavily inebriated, for he replies, "Go to hell! I don't love you anyway!". In the cell, there is a cot, a barred window, a lock on the cell door, and a hard stone floor.

Say to the guard: But I love you! Won't you give me a second chance and tell me where the hell I AM?!

Examine the cot.

I think that a normal text adventure engine would throw out Steelfist's input.

The cot, upon further examination, is composed of a bedbug-infested mattress of straw and a steel bed frame, with some sharp-looking springs that rattle loosely.

Examine the springs

You take the springs out of the bed, looking at them closely. They are also made from steel, but have a coating of rust on them. They come to points on either end, and look like they could hurt someone, as long as you did so stealthfully and it killed them quickly -- otherwise, they'd retaliate with whatever weapon they had.

In addition to their capacity for inflicting harm, they also seem like they could, in a pinch and in the right hands, pick a lock.

(Note: actions are in bold italics, but must be used appropriately or at least within reason)

Kill the guard

And, in case he didn't had time to call for help, pick the lock.

Quote from: Duckling on January 14, 2012, 10:30:33 PM
I think that a normal text adventure engine would throw out Steelfist's input.

You'd be surprised how far you can stretch the diologue in these things. But, no matter.

Examine the bed frame and check underneath to make sure there isn't something, say, left behind by a previous resident.

Bugfartboy: the guard has already left. He is not within reach.

Ertxiem: you fed the spring into the lock, and quickly realize that whoever makes the locks in these jails is an idiot -- they only have one tumbler. With a deft flick of the wrist, you send the tumbler into place and turn the spring in the lock. The cell door is now unlocked, but not open. There still might be more guards, less drunk than the one you encountered. The portal is still open behind you, but it is not visible unless specifically looked for, being transparent and not refracting light much.

Also, the guards do not know you as a prisoner. If you were to leave the cell, you could claim that you were simply visiting.

SteelFist: You look under the bed frame for any useful packages, but instead find only a series of tally marks running the entire length of the frame along one bar, which get fainter and fainter in one direction until they disappear completely.

Look Around

Dig through the insides of the mattress; there might be something in there.

And I wonder how the prisoner actually made those tally marks; it's unlikely to be a fingernail, or something (as that would be difficult on steel). Maybe a spring.

(I'm wondering about the second portal we saw in the beginning... Perhaps it would be a good idea to take a look at it... But for now, lets us be sure of an escape route in case it's necessary.)

Look at portal

SteelFist: I'm not trying to be obstructionist, but digging through the mattress isn't one of the options.

Ertxiem: You examine the portal back to your bedroom more closely. You can just make out the outlines of your bed through the mostly opaque layer of portal disguised as wall, and the slight shimmer of the quantum tunneling. You reach a hand through the portal, just to be sure of your escape route, and find that you may still easily traverse the portal.

(It is at this point that I'd like to bring up one thing -- you can die in this game. You'll be restarted to one page previously, or if not appropriate, right before the fatal decision.

(Combat is optional, and can be skipped to get to the end result, or actively engaged in by popular vote. Active combat takes longer, but you get to participate in the fight, and decide the exact strategy followed, not to mention that you generally have better odds at winning. Still, if it's a pushover fight, like a knight attacking a peon goblin, you can skip it and be fine)

Go back through the portal and check through the other portal in your closet.

You pass through the portal in the cell, walk around to the other side of your closet door, and enter that portal as well. Now, you are in the cabin of the same airship you were in before, but you notice that the nose is tipped downwards more, and your altitude is less. The city lights seem closer than they were before. In front of you is the dashboard, which contains all the ship's controls, while behind you to either side is a plain metal bridge door. To your left is a red alarm bell, and on your right, a PA system mike. Facing the dashboard is the pilot's chair. From the bridge doors, you hear clicks, scratches, and pounding. The doors are secure, but the noises are still disconcerting.

Look at the bridge door and the dashboard.
(Perhaps there is a monitor where we can check what's on the other side of the bridge door before trying to open it.)

The bridge doors are quite noisy, with all the clicking and pounding, but do not shake. To open, they slide upwards, but right now they are firmly locked. Directly next to either of them is a door release panel. There are no obvious details that you've missed, and the doors are simple enough.

On the dashboard is a variety of controls and displays, including an altimeter, a spedometer, a helpful graphical command interface, which could give guidance on running the ship (the captain seems to be absent) or access to live or prerecorded security footage on the airship in a variety of locations. There is a joystick in the centre of the dashboard, and some pedals below it.

Use graphical command interface.

A variety of options lies in front of you on a touch-screen: recieve guidance on how to run the ship, alter environmental settings, play music, or review live or prerecorded security footage.

The ground is getting closer.

Receive guidance

A calm, feminine voice says, "The in-ship guidance system uses your unique circumstances to generate relevant guidance for you. In this instance, due to your rapid loss of altitude, the information presented is on how to increase elevation.

Step one: pull the joystick towards you to increase the attitude of the aircraft.

Step two: if the aircraft does not start to increase its altitude immediately, release ballast to lighten the aircraft using the relevant controls. For more information, seek guidance on releasing ballast.

The altitude of the ship is currently at 3600 feet. Ground level is 2000 feet." The voice stops.

Play music

You are given a selection of genres of music, including jazz, classical, swing, classic rock, and Star Wars.

Play classical music

The interface selects Beethoven's Seventh Symphony at random.

A reminder pops up on the interface: "Altitude: 2800 feet. Ground level: 2000 feet. Crash imminent." There's a little triangular warning sign on the screen. The clicking and pounding has gotten louder, and the doors are rattling a little.

Walk back through portal.

Listen to the music.

You walk back into your bedroom to listen to your music, and the pounding has gotten much louder. The doors are creaking. Another reminder shows up: "Altitude: 2300 feet. Ground level: 2000 feet. Prepare for impact."

Wait for impact.

After an agonizing moment of silence, a crash comes from the portal. Metal flies into your room, crushing your shelves. The hydrogen in the balloon above the aircraft's cockpit ignites, and a fireball comes roaring out of the portal, engulfing you and your room, and proceeding to burn down your house. You have died. You could have had such a lovely adventure, too. If only you could try again.

LETHAL ENCOUNTER -- REBOOT ADVENTURE... LOADING FROM 17:01 GMT-5... EXTRACTING FILES...

*****

A calm, feminine voice says, "The in-ship guidance system uses your unique circumstances to generate relevant guidance for you. In this instance, due to your rapid loss of altitude, the information presented is on how to increase elevation.

Step one: pull the joystick towards you to increase the attitude of the aircraft.

Step two: if the aircraft does not start to increase its altitude immediately, release ballast to lighten the aircraft using the relevant controls. For more information, seek guidance on releasing ballast.

The altitude of the ship is currently at 3600 feet. Ground level is 2000 feet." The voice stops.

Play music

No.

Say yes

Absolutely not.

Argue with self

You know, I'm going to ask Ert to delete these posts, since they're not contributing to the game.

But they are. I was going to ask for Star Wars this time, then run into the other portal.

First of all, I don't want you to do that, and second of all, shrapnel and residual explosion stuff would fly through the portal in a bit, not directly killing you, but attracting a passing guard's attention and generally leading you to getting speared in the abdomen. Follow the plot a bit, please.

(I'll just ignore bugfartboy's suggestions instead of deleting them.)
(My post below is as if it was after reply #28 (http://sinisterdesign.net/forum/index.php?topic=1059.msg41055#msg41055))

PULL the joystick!!! Quickly!
If that's not enough, seek guidance on releasing ballast.

(I would also like to take a look at the security footage. But avoiding the imminent crash may be wiser!)

The airship groans slowly, tilting its nose upwards. You feel the floor shift beneath you, and behind the bridge doors, things fall backwards down the corridors of the cabin. Looking out the front window, you see the ground falling away from you, and the altimeter's counter is slowly increasing. It looks like you won't need to jettison the ballast at the moment.

Suddenly, an alarm bell sounds: the controls have been utilised by an unauthorised pilot! The bridge doors fly open, and you see that the three animated skeletons that have been scratching at the doors can now enter the cockpit of the aircraft. The one on the right side (the side with the portal), starts to run towards you, arms outstretched. You think you can make it to the portal if you go now, and the odds don't look good for you with just a metal spring that you took from the prison bed.

(And now, I'd like to explain why I was a bit frustrated before. I have a limited view of the story ahead, and it's a branching storyline that can be explored freely, but the destruction of the hero's bedroom and house is not an option that I have planned. It also makes victory unfeasible; the door would be burnt down, and the portals would close. The hero could never return. That and, I don't want to shut down entirely one half of the storyline)

Throw the metal spring at the skeleton nearest the portal and
run for the portal.
In the bedroom pick up for a baseball bat or something like that, if its available (the hero should know).

(I'm thinking about either locking the bedroom door and exploring the rest of the house to get something to defend the hero or locking the door to prevent the skeletons going through the rest of the house and running through the 2nd portal searching for help, through the unlocked cell door.)

The metal spring flies at the skeleton approaching the door, catching in its eye socket and disrupting it for a moment, giving you extra time to make a break for the portal. The skeleton eventually dislodges the spring, but by the time it does, you have disappeared. Then, you shut and lock your bedroom door, preventing skeleton invasion. Then, in thinking about somehow defending yourself, you think of the ceremonial sword in your father's study, and the aluminium baseball bat in the basket of sports equipment downstairs. Your mother is downstairs, filing papers for her job, but your father is working late at the university. However, you are not allowed in your father's study at all.

Retrieve the baseball bat.

You quietly go downstairs, trying to evade notice (imagine the explaining you'd have to do if your mother found out about the portals), and reach into the basket to retrieve the bat. However, the bat makes a significant amount of noise as you pull it out, and your mother calls you over to her downstairs office. You have no choice but to walk over to her, leaving the bat behind on the floor, and she demands an explanation for the noise. What do you tell your mother?

I tell her that I was picking up the bat to put it in my backpack because tomorrow afternoon I will go play with some friends. I politely ask her permission and say the things the way she likes to smooth her.

She decides that you're probably up to no good (and she's right), but that she doesn't really care enough to pursue it right now. You leave her office, take the bat, and go upstairs with it, back to your room. You do not hear any noise coming from the closet.

Go into and examine the bedroom.

You are already in your bedroom. It has not changed since you were last in it.

Look at both portals.
(It seems that the skeletons haven't detected the portal... yet. If it seems that the skeletons aren't about to go to the bedroom, then it may be interesting to go through the 2nd portal, hiding the baseball bat first in case we need it later. The ceremonial sword seems useful against the skeletons, but I would like to take a look at what's in the 2nd portal before risking to pick it up.)

By the second, you mean the one leading to the airship and the skeletons, right? Or do you mean the one leading to the prison cell?

Either way, you take a quick look into both portals. In the prison cell portal, you see nothing new or of interest; there is still the cot, the homework that you sent into the portal earlier (forgot to mention it before), and the unlocked cell door, which the guards have not discovered yet. You unlock your closet door, open it, and stick your head quickly into the portal leading to the airship. Now you see that the three skeletons have taken up guard positions around the cockpit, one of them standing just about a foot in front of the portal, the other two standing on the opposite side of the room. You're lucky you didn't accidentally hit your head on that skeleton. You quickly duck your head back out before they notice you.

Scout the area outside of the cell, looking for a hiding place. Hey, maybe you could hide inside the mattress? I'm just thinking, if you could lure the skeletons through into the prison, maybe you could get the guard to deal with them, or just leave them there and explore the airship.

(I meant the prison portal, not the cockpit portal. I'll start calling them by their names, that should be easier for everyone! I also think that we should scan carefully the bedroom for another portal, who knows!)

In the cell, pick up the homework (we'll need it... and at some point it may be interesting to read it...).

(Is the baseball bat with the hero or on his bedroom? Exploring outside of the prison cell with a baseball bat may give the wrong idea... And while the hero is on the cell, he should pay attention to noises or movements - maybe it's a guard approaching.)

(I also thought about luring the skeletons into the prison cell, but they don't seem to detect the portal... perhaps the hero will need the ceremonial sword.)

Or the guard's weapon; I'm willing to bet we'd be caught if we tried to get the ceremonial sword. I'd rather kill a guy, thanks.

Lure mother into your bedroom.

Uh . . . let me put this delicately: You could have phrased that less . . . creepily.

You pick up the scattered homework and return it to your bedroom, where you left your baseball bat.

(Steelfist: I know you like to be unconventional, but the mattress isn't a convenient hiding place; the skeletons would see you. Also, I can tell you that it is incredibly difficult and complicated to lure skeletons through two portals, so I'm trying not to let one single person do anything that conflicts with what someone else is doing, if that makes sense. Plus, I don't want the worlds to mingle much. And baseball bats aren't really effective against armed guards)

(Ert: there's only so much I can say in-game, but I can tell you a few things in parentheses. The guards are suspicious and will be hostile if they see you with a weapon. However, one of the skeletons is well-placed for smashing it over the head with a baseball bat through the portal. The skeletons don't have swords, so as long as you can keep them at range, you should be fine)

(Bugfartboy: bad things would happen if your mother discovered the portal.

(I was wondering if the baseball bat would be enough to defeat the skeletons but I feared that even if I was able to defeat one of them I wouldn't have the time to defend myself from the other 2, but I'll try your strategy right after the following command...)

Read homework.

After that, carefully
look to the cockpit portal
If a skeleton is near, then smash it with the baseball bat using all the hero's strength and quickly close the closet doors.

(I also thought about going downstairs to talk with the hero's mother about the father's job - why does he have a ceremonial sword at home?)

You take your English homework, an essay assignment on Lord of the Flies, and read a bit of it:

"...change when the people change their fears from which the society is wrought.
Using characterization, Golding implies that orderly society is born out of fear, comforting the fearful. First, Jack reacts angrily when he finds out that there is no adult presence on the island, fearing being stranded again after his hopes of immediate rescue. This is because Jack fears the prospect of the adults in his life being unable to help him. He asks, "Where is the man with the trumpet?" believing that the authority conveyed by the sound of the conch shell..."

You again take a peek into the portal leading to the cockpit of the airship, and you see that the skeletons are still standing where they were before: standing guard, evenly spaced around the room, one right in front of you -- you almost touch it by mistake.

You turn around and pick up your baseball bat. Then, you open your closet door all the way, raise the baseball bat above your head, and bring it down with a crash on the skeleton's head through the portal. Ancient bone shatters underneath aluminium, and through the portal you can see the outline of the head cave in, tiny splinters of bone flying back through the portal. The collarbone snaps. Then, you take back your bat and slam the door shut, keeping it closed from the other side. The remaining two skeletons, however, have figured out where the portal is, and they run through it (I sense potential for a pun. Skeletons in your closet, anyone?). You hear a lot of clattering behind you as you lean back on the door at first, but then the skeletons start to push on the door.

(Let's be a bit bold. Assuming that the closet door is locked and it will hold a bit.)
Pick up a bed sheet with one hand and hold the bat in the other hand. (Perhaps we should turn the radio on to mask the noise...)

Open the closet door and throw the bed sheet at one skeleton in a way to cover it (let's make a ghost! :P ). Assuming that one skeleton will be temporarily tangled, attack the other skeleton with the bat. Finally, finish the covered skeleton. (The bed will be uncomfortable tonight with all those spiky little bones in the bedsheets. :) )

(And hope that the hero's mother doesn't rush in the bedroom due to all the noise...
She may end up calling us and if she asks what we're doing, we just calmly say "I was just smashing some living skeletons, but it's solved now" as if it was the most natural thing in the world, so that she doesn't believe us... or perhaps that may not be a good idea...)

As you pull a sheet off your bed and hold your baseball bat in another, the lock on the closet rattles violently, but still holds. Then, you twist the lock with your batting hand. The door flies open under the next blow from the skeletons, leaving nothing between you and them. Quickly, you thrust the sheet over one skeleton, freeing your other arm, and you grasp the bat two-handed.

You bat aside a reaching arm from the uncovered skeleton, shattering many of the bones in its right hand and wrist. At this point, you realize that the skeleton you covered can still see you and is unimpaired in its movement, as if the forces that compelled it to move pierced through fabric. It slashes at you in a sweeping motion from its left, and gives you a hefty bruise on the right side of your rib cage. You scramble backwards onto your large bed and counterstrike with a thrust of the arm to the covered skeleton's chest; you crack several of its vertebrae. Finally, in hasty retreat, you roll back and to your right, ending up standing next to your bedside table. The door is directly in front of you, closed and only about six feet away, while the two skeletons are now at your left (across the bed) and at about 10 o'clock (mostly to your left, a little bit forward).

You think that you could probably make a dash for it and fend off the weakened, covered skeleton as you opened the door, which could serve as a strategic bottleneck, or stick and fight, now that you have a good stance and the skeletons can surprise you no further.

(The bat seems effective against the skeletons.
I wonder if there is anything useful in the bedside table or if it's in a position that we can push it with a foot blocking one skeleton...)

Take a quick look at the bedside table

(I'll assume there isn't anything very useful, so I'll go for)

Stick and fight. (The hero should try to move in a way that one skeleton or the furniture blocks the other skeleton, while keeping his movement options as wide as possible. Ideally, having access to the door and/or the cockpit portal allows an escape route in case we need it.)

You take a quick look at the bedside table, seeing only a broken lamp that you haven't gotten around to replacing, a pile of textbooks (which might do some damage if you threw one at a skeleton; they're quite heavy), and your alarm clock.

By this time, the skeleton across the bed has crossed it and is making a lunge at you. Instinctively, you make a viscious, two-handed swing to your right with the bat, splitting neck vertebrae into several pieces and putting a heavy crack in the jaw. More importantly, crucial vertebrae having been shattered, the head of the skeleton falls off from its shoulders, bouncing once on the bed and landing on the floor. However, the skeleton seems only staggered; it flails to recover its balance as at tilts dangerously to the right.

The other skeleton is now coming directly towards you, having rounded the corner of your bed and now blocking the path to your door. With one off-balanced skeleton directly in front of you and to your left and the other closing in from your right, you seem cornered. Maybe you could take advantage of the imbalance of the skeleton to your left to push past it and over the bed.

(The key I'm using is that theoretically usable items are in bold, reccomended or otherwise useful actions are in bold italics, and important variables or states of objects are occasionally in plain italics if they're worth noticing.

(Also, I've decided that once I've let one player start a given coherent action sequence, like fighting skeletons, I won't let another player interrupt them too much unless they have similar ideas but want to take a different path with it.

(EX: Ert decides he wants to sneak along behind a guard in order to see the other parts of the prison complex. He does so for a while, occasionally examining the cells, but Bugfartboy decides that he would rather open the jail cells, an action which would accidentally blow the cover of the main character. I won't let Bugfartboy do that, even if it would lead to an interesting combat sequence or an interesting death. That's not the way Ert was intending to go. However, if Steelfist comes along and decides that, at the end of the row of cells, when the guard is opening the door to other areas, he wants to stealthfully kill the guard with a knife to the heart or kidneys, that's fine. The guard is slightly more dead than planned, but the action sequence is otherwise unchanged.

(Oh, and I know I'm starting pairs of parentheses and not finishing them, but if you're got multiple paragraphs in a row in parentheses, just like in quotation marks, you leave off the closing parenthesis on all but the last one.)

Throw the pile of textbooks at the skeleton to your right to temporarily fend it off, push the skeleton on the left over the bed then kill the skeleton to your right with the bat. Then proceed to smash the skull of the downed skeleton. If the mother comes to ask what's going on, claim that you were tidying your textbooks away and dropped them.

Assuming this is successful, move the bones back into the cockpit to get them out of your room.

You turn to your left and attempt to pick up the pile of textbooks, but it is too heavy for you to lift, especially with one hand. Unsuccessful, you shoulder your way through the recovered skeleton on your left, just as the one on the right lunges for you. You manage to get across the bed, but at the cost of two parallel scrapes on your back where the skeleton you just pushed past grabbed at you, and one single similar wound on your calf from the one closer to the door. This causes your landing on the left side of the bed to be a bit clumsy -- you fall to the floor -- and it takes you a couple of seconds to get back up.

When you come up above the bed again, you see that one skelly is crawling across the bed towards you, while the other is going around the bed again. You're losing some blood, and if the battle goes on for much longer, your mother will certainly notice. You bring the bat above your head again and down for a finishing stroke on the skeleton on the bed. The skull recieves a hefty dent, and its owner ceases to move. Now you have one skeleton (with fractured back vertebrae from when you threw the cloth on it and whacked it; it has since removed the sheet) bearing towards you again.

Smash the damned skeleton, then sweep the bones under the bed. If there is a first aid kit say, in the bathroom, obtain it and treat your injuries. Make sure to avoid encountering the mother while getting it, as the injuries would be difficult to explain.

Either way, re-enter the airship portal, then look around (if there is no first aid kit in the house, keep an eye out for one).

(Just to add that since the hero is currently at his home, he should know where the first aid kit is without the need to look for it. Before going into the portal, it may or may not be a good idea to go to the kitchen and eat/drink something to get some strength back but there is the risk of our mother finding us and asking what happened. And on the airship there may be more skeletons, so be sure to take the bat. Eventually at some point we may need to clean the bones under the bed, but I see absolutely no rush in doing it - I'm a real pig! :D .)

(@SteelFist Duckling did exactly what you asked: you said to throw the entire pile of textbooks, throwing only one textbook would be wiser and it was hinted.)

(Silly me, I forgot that the head of one of the skeletons was on the floor, and thus could not be smashed. No matter. Either way, the smash to its spine while it crawled across the bed towards you would have incapacitated it.

(Since everyone seems to want the combat to be over, I'll just finish it up)

One of the skeletons being defeated, you turn to the other one, which is once again coming straight at you. You wait for it to reach out to grab you, and then bring down your bat on its arms, which both snap in two under the blow. Quickly, you follow your first hit with a second, and manage to knock the skeleton's head off of its shoulders. The skull flies into a tall bookcase, cracking and falling to the floor. The skeleton has not moved, as each blow gives the animation magic a large amount of static feedback. Finally, you make a second thrust with the bat to the skeleton's midsection, and the bones in its back give way completely; the skeleton is now in two parts. Both skeletons have been defeated.

You make your way to the upstairs bathroom and from under the sink take the first aid kit, and you put bandages on your hand and legs of the appropriate size. Then, you head downstairs to take some bananas and pears from the fruit bowl and a protein bar from the cupboard up to your bedroom. Your mother's home office is in a different room, so she doesn't see your wounds. (The only reason she stopped you before is that you were taking a baseball bat up to your room -- rather strange. However, boys (I'm further deciding that this character is a boy -- I rather like boys when they're not being jerks or sleazeballs, present company excepted -- and he's staying a boy unless someone has an objection) eat a lot when they're growing, so she doesn't question it.)

You peel and eat a couple of bananas once you're back in your room, which generally makes you feel better, pick up your baseball bat, and venture back into the portal.

Once there, you notice a few things. First, that the ship is once again pointed dangerously downward again, losing the altitude it gained when you first pulled the joystick back; second, that the open bridge doors both lead into a first-class dining compartment; and third, you notice the bed spring that got stuck in the eye socket of one of the skeletons on the floor.

(Though fight! I'm a bit worried that the skeletons may become animated again, even with the shattered bones... but we have to take care of that later. For now...)

Briefly look around in the cockpit and through the door just to check there are no more skeletons or other enemies nearby.

Assuming that nothing special is seen (it's a quick look around, so we may miss some relevant stuff, like a portal to the underworld or something like that :) ), go to the controls, look at the graphical command interface and pull the joystick following the instructions. Try to leave the controls in such a way that the altitude is maintained, even after we release the joystick - something like an auto-pilot. While we're doing this, we should look around to avoid being surprised by someone.

(I assume that the alarm should sound again for unauthorized use of the ship controls... Since nobody came the last time, I guess we may have the time to take a look at the security footage that was available the last time we were on the cockpit.)

BEFORE accessing the controls: Engage the command interface, and see if you can't obtain some kind of emergency authorisation to use the controls.

That's a good idea!

Well, you see, I'd prefer not to walk out into the corridor and be incinerated by the defences. We don't know if more defences will activate if we use the controls.

(I don't really think that the skeletons were part of the ship defences. I think they're related to the reason why the cockpit was empty and the ship was crashing, but that's my theory.)

I hadn't considered that, actually. It's certainly possible. But I guess we'll find out what's what in due time. And besides, there might be traps or defences quite apart from the reanimated skeletons.

Hey, guys. I'm really sorry for not posting before now, but I've been overwhelmed with homework and engaging in other priorities like language learning.

You check around the door into the dining compartment, and see a series of booths on each side of the room, with large tables in the middle. There is another door at the other side of the room, this time a simple, relatively unsecurable metal door. The compartment is furnished opulently with tapestry, golden chandeliers, and fine Persian rugs. A slow jazz tune plays in the background that you didn't hear before, and you recognize it as "Summertime". There are ashtrays on all of the tables, nigh all of which are (heavily) occupied.

There are also two skeletons seated at the tables, but they appear to be unanimated at the moment, or at least do not notice you. One of them is wearing a full set of personal armor with medals for valor fastened to it, while the other is wearing an evening wear hat with fine millinery work.

Your observation complete, you proceed back to the cockpit and access the command interface. You muck about with the guidance system, and eventually you end up at the section on acting captains and the due process for obtaining command in the case of the loss of a captain. The guidance system tell you that you must be the highest-ranking capable officer aboard the ship in order to take command, have been appointed by the captain before taking his place, or otherwise prove that no other individual aboard the ship is capable of commanding the ship to the extent that you are. You must select one of these options in order to gain authorization to run the ship.

You then pull the joystick back, given that the aircraft will crash if you don't, and a similar alarm to the first one sounds. However, no one comes, and the alarm shuts off more quickly than it did before. Once more, the world shifts beneath you, and you feel the airship tilting back until you have to lean in order to stay upright. You've bought yourself the time to go through the process of becoming Acting Captain or to review security footage.

Hmm. Personally, I would say that due to the fact that without our intervention the airship would have crashed, we are probably the only people to be capable of piloting and in a situation of being able to pilot the airship. At best, the Captain is a prisoner or off-ship (Assuming the skeletons weren't the original residents - they probably would have been more concerned about the ship crashing if they were. Maybe they're the skeletons of the original residents). So choose that option to be made acting captain.

Assuming it works, try to find some kind of autopilot function and review security footage.

@Duckling: Have you prepared all of this in advance? Or just mapped out the basics then made it up as you went along?

(Duckling: No problem. Take your time. We all have more stuff to do from time to time.
Just make sure the hero looks around with some frequency to avoid being caught off-guard.)

You choose the option of asserting your ability to pilot the airship over that of all the others on board.

** cutscene **

You sit in the pilot's seat, as you suspect that the command interface may take a while in its data processing. However, an error message pops up on the screen, insisting that you are not, in fact, the most qualified person aboard the airship to pilot it. You close out the message, and look up how to conduct searches for people aboard the ship, receiving a detailed video on how to search for passengers and crew by name and by rank. After watching it, you open the Surveillance section and conduct your search. First, you look for the most qualified person -- the Captain. You get the response: "Captain is aboard the vessel. Captain is deceased. Captain is no longer capable of piloting the airship."

Next, you search for the Lieutenant, and receive a similar, but much stranger message: "Lieutenant is aboard the vessel. Lieutenant is deceased. Lieutenant is capable of piloting the airship." You refresh the page, but you get the same result. "Lieutenant is aboard the vessel. Lieutenant is deceased. Lieutenant is capable of piloting the airship." You check the location reported for the Lieutenant on the screen, and see that the deceased Lieutenant is the kitchens, just beyond the first class dining compartment to the left. You decide that he must have died there when the skeletons arrived.

Since the computer is reporting that the Lieutenant is able to fly the airship, you start to head in the direction of the kitchens, just to be sure; any pilot with real flying experience would be better than a kid whose only flying experience comes from online flight simulators of jet fighter airplanes. Just because the result is so odd, you decide to refresh the page once more to see if the command interface made a mistake. However, when you refresh it, you see that the location of the Lieutenant is now the first class dining compartment. You hear a mighty crash and splintering of bone behind you in the next room, and you turn around in the chair to see what the noise is. You get up out of the chair, and peep around the edge of the doorway. Looking around, you see that the two tables at which the skeletons were sitting are overturned, and the skeletons are in pieces. You see no sign of the reportedly deceased Lieutenant. Addled, but somewhat relieved, you turn around back into the cockpit and see right in front of you a large creature, ten feet tall, with four long, spindly legs of ivory white. They all draw together in the middle at a quite normally-sized torso which is covered with an Royal Air Force uniform; when your gaze is done there, your eyes finally reach the head, with a disproportionate and discolored face on it. This fearsome creature stares at you for a moment, and then walks over to the chair in the middle of the cockpit and sits down in it. Two of its legs press buttons and pull levels, while with its hands the creature pulls on the joystick, righting the airship from its earlier tilt. Then, it sighs, and it starts to cry silently.

This, you surmise, is the Lieutenant.

** end cutscene **

(I'll probably put in cutscenes every once in a while when the player reaches a crucial plot point and I don't want them to have to figure out just the right way to do things through trial and error and un-subtle hints by me.

(@Steelfist: Nope, and nope. I'm just making all of this up as I go. I had no idea that there were kitchens beyond the dining compartment, or a Lieutenant who is warped in ways you'll only find out later, until I posted it just now. I mean, I kind of had the idea that there needed to be an NPC, and that he needed to be a badass non-human ('scuse the language, sorry), but that was all rather nebulous in my head.

(Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I'm modeling the combat system somewhat off of that of Dark Souls and partially Skyrim, in that there's no such thing as a "turn", and you can win a fight no matter what you've got on or are wielding as long as you're willing to micromanage combat enough to the point where you don't get hit. In that sense, basically there's no limitation on what you can fight or do at any given time -- it's just going to be harder or less hard, depending on the quality of your equipment)

 . . . Huh. Right. A crying 'badass' alien.

Try to communicate with it; ask it what happened. If it doesn't understand, try to engage some kind of translation software on the command interface.

I'm not going to get it yet, but one of the dismantled skeletons in the dining area had a full suit of armor. We might want that, if its not too badly damaged.

(That was a cool cut-scene! :)
I had the same idea as SteelFist, so I can only say that I hope we made a good choice.)

(Thank you for not trying to kill it and getting yourselves killed in the process. That would have been depressing to write. And thanks, Ert! Two o'clock in the morning is the font of all inspiration  :D)

You walk closer to the Lieutenant, circling around to his right side. He is somberly flipping small switches on and off, subtly guiding the ship to whatever destination he intends for it to reach. You timidly say, "Um... hello?". The Lieutenant turns his head to you, nods, and turns back to flying the airship.

Ask if the Lieutenant understands what you're saying.

You quietly ask, "Can you understand me? Do you speak English?". The Lieutenant continues to look out the windows in the cockpit, and sighs loudly. He then says in a deep bass, "Yes, on both counts. Men, jeg vil foretrække at taler dansk, som jeg talte som barn.

(The lieutenant speaks Danish, and you can run it through a translator if you want to know what it means, but it's not plot-essential. It might provide a bit of characterization and backstory, but that's it)

Ask the Lieutenant if he needs help. And ask him to reply in English because we don't understand Danish. And ask what happened. (He may know why are all those skeletons in the ship and why those portals opened.)

[spoiler=If you're curious about the meaning]
Google translate said
"Men, jeg vil foretrække at taler dansk, som jeg talte som barn."
means
"But, I would prefer to speak Danish, which I knew as a child."

Usually we find some inaccuracies in automatic translations...
[/spoiler]

Hmm. While I'm not certain if it's a good idea to tell him about the portals, I'll go along with it. After all, it might be related to the skeletons.

I agree. Let's keep the ears open. The Lieutenant may end up mentioning the portals by himself... Asking what happened is generic enough.

You ask the Lieutenant, "Is there anything I can do to help?" He replies, "Just get rid of those forbandede skeletons for me. I can handle them myself, but they're a real nuisance when you're flying a ship."

Then, you ask the Lieutenant, "What exactly happened here, anyway?", and he says, "A ruthless sorceress in the pay of the Third Reich attacked this airship. The crew and passengers were burned alive from the inside, victim to her terrible magics. Some were pulled apart as if by wild horses, and still others dropped dead where they stood, their faces turned black from their lifeless blood. I was ... lucky -- if you can call it that -- enough to be having a midnight snack in the galley refridgerator when the arcane assault began. I almost suffered the same fate as the rest, but every fiber of my being was stretched, twisted, and corrupted until I became what you see before you. My legs were pulled out to six feet and split to the bone to double their number, and to my arms the same, though I still have two. I feel... so old.

Then she ressurected the dead whose bodies were intact, denying them peace and dignity in death. They stand guard throughout the ship, surely damning any who might think to stop this ship crashing. This is the HMS Vinternat (Note: it's pronounced "VEEN-tah-Net"), arms transport vessel for the Danish Resistance Force, and it was headed straight for Reykjavik in Iceland. Had it crashed, the ship's magazine would have gone up with a bang, killing thousands.

Any questions?"

(Interesting...
The ceremonial sword may be useful against the sorceress... but let's keep this for ourselves... and there is still the other portal to the cell to explore...)

Say "I'll be glad to help.". Ask for advice on weapons and tactics against the skeletons and ask where is the sorceress now.

Get more information on this evidently unusual world - it's history, how it's different, if the sorceress is responsible for the portals, more on magic (Especially more on magic - could we use it as a weapon?). Also, inquire about the location of weapons and armor on the ship, and what kind of weapons this world contains (Gunpowder, swords, modern?). Also inquire as to the number of skeletons and if anyone survived.

You ask the lieutenant about tactics against the skeletons:

"Well, once they've grabbed a hold on you, they can be a bugger to get off, but I've found that the most effective way of combatting them is to break their bones with a blunt weapon; you'd dull a sword far too quickly if you consistently used it to smash through skeletons. A pipe or a baseball bat like you have is just about perfect for that. If you were a bit stronger, I'd say that a longer blunt weapon would keep them at range, like a metal pole or the back side of a long axe -- but those take a bit of practice and strength to pull off. I have just my legs, but I can kick a skeleton further than most, and they don't exactly land well."

Then, you inquire as to the whereabouts of the sorceress:

"Oh, she's probably flown back to Berlin to recieve her payment, but it's common knowledge that she lives in Cologne. Forbandede collaborators. She was originally Polish, but when Poland was annexed by the Third Reich, her family became Nazi instead of fighting with honor."

(Don't worry, Steelfist. I'll get to yours in a bit)

Ask if there's any more advice he can give you.

You ask about the history of this world:

"What, you don't know what's been happening? Have you had your head under a rock for the past forty years? We've been locked in war with the Axis for the better part of half a century. To think they used to call our first war with Germany the "Great War". All of our attempts at liberating France have failed; one time, we organised an invasion force to land on the beaches of Normandy, where the enemy least suspected us to strike. But on the way over, most of the ships sank, due to a sudden storm. The United States reinforcements never came at all. They thought they were so great, with their "atom bomb". It never worked, of course. Did they really think they could harness the power locked inside glowing rocks to rain terror on the enemy?"

Ask if there is any way you can help

Or ask why the glowing rocks didn't help.

Hmm. He evidently doesn't know about the portals. So we oughtn't mention them, for now.

Aside from that (And the history question), ask the questions from my previous post.

Don't worry. I'll get to it eventually, but right now I'm kind of... taking care of piled up stuff in my life.

Asking the Lieutenant about weaponry:

"Well, we have rifles, machine guns, cannons, anti-aircraft turrets, lightning catalysts, shoulder-fired railguns, packs of frost runes, spell scrolls, and some pink glop in a bucket in the back of the armory.

If you're interested in magic, you could head over the the ship's library; they've got some spellbooks that'll actually help you cast the things, but it'll cost you. After all, it takes work to make a good spellbook, and once it's used, it's no longer useful."

About the glowing rocks:

"Who knows? Those Americans were messing with some stuff that was strange as hell before we lost contact with them. None of our expeditions over to reach them have come back yet."

Ask why spellbooks are so fragile, and if they're even worth the effort of getting to.

You ask why the spellbooks are so fragile, and whether they're even worth the effort of getting into:

"Oh, y'see, the problem is not that they're fragile, but that they only have a certain amount of psychomagnetic potential in them... and basically it's like a one-use thing, because the next person who picks it up won't get much from it. Maybe they'll feel a small trace of the spell, but for the most part, the imprints are flattened as soon as one guy's mind blunders along and squishes them.

"Highly skilled arcane researchers, like the ones we have at the University of Reykjavik, can read spellbooks and retrieve their information while preserving the imprint, but it's all a matter of delicacy. Anyway, we can mass-produce them for the war, now that we can record the psychomagnetic impulses of a high mage in our arcane presses, and reproduce that impulse approximately with machines. Or at least, we can do that with simpler spells. It's like the difference between copying a simple design, like a cross, in a pixel based format, and copying a Rembrandt with pixels. You get the idea of the cross plain and simple, but you lose the brushstrokes that you could analyze with the Rembrandt.

"Then, we came up with another idea. If our approximations were too crude at a small scale to capture the essence of a spell, then perhaps if we, so to speak, increased the size of the photograph, we could reproduce it more exactly with our 'digital' format. So now, if a spell is quite complicated, it can take up many pages in a spellbook, and you have to hold the imprint in your mind while you read the book, a skill not quickly learned.

"Lastly, there are spells so intricate in their reasoning and process that they simply cannot be recopied onto a page. Liken it to a fractal. These spells must be learned through a spellbook created by hand by a high mage, and even then, it isn't easy.

"As to your other question, a bit of magic never hurts. Some people simply don't have the aptitude for it, I'm afraid, and even the simplest spells escape them. Perhaps one in six of our soldiers has learned with some competency a few spells that are applicable in the field: light spells, enchants for accuracy on his rifle, and a spell to fortify his strength before engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. Our medics can take specialized courses in regenerative spellcasting, though only the Nazis would deprive human life of sanctity to such an extent as to reanimate the dead. If you think you can do it, go right on ahead. You should be able to find some money on the dead you find to buy books. Don't worry; they won't need it.

Ask where the library is.

You ask about the whereabouts of the library:

"The library on this ship will be past the dining compartment, off on your first right from the Grand Ballroom, up a flight of stairs, and on your first left, through the double doors. The sections of the library are clearly marked, and you should be able to find the spellbook vending section quite easily, if you're interested. The machines only take Icelandic and Danish crowns and English pounds, so make sure you have the right currency on you."

Ask:
Is the crew's pay is on board (And if so, if it is accessable)?
Does he have any money?
What is the purpose of the pink glop?
Where is the armoury?

We probably ought to get moving again.

You ask the Lieutenant about the crew's pay:

"Well, their pay should be either on them, in their quarters, or in the ship's vault. The vault's out of the question, but considering the crisis situation, the wallets on their bodies and their wages in their quarters are fair game."

You ask about his money:

"Only in my quarters, and there'll be plenty of skellies between us and them, let me tell you. Did you think I'd gone for a midnight snack with cash on me?"

You ask what the deal with the pink glop is:

"Well, all we know for sure is that it's pretty gloppy. And it's very pink."

Finally, you ask where the armoury is:

"Oh, it's up the same flight of stairs as the library, then you cross the hall, and take the staircase you see there up to the third level deck. When you're there, there'll be a short hall, and a large corrugated steel sliding door. It's locked, but here, I have a key with me. We're told to keep these with us at all times. And by the way, we're hovering over Reykjavik right now, and I'm going to call in with our situation soon. We might be able to get some Marines to help us out with the skellies. In the mean time, try not to get yourself killed."

Start on your way to the library.

ASK FOR THE KEY TO THE ARMORY!

Anyway. Check the corpses as you go, and move with stealth where possible. Don't turn a corner without peeking round it, too. And see if the armour might be useable.

(I'm thinking about starting this up again, since it's so much fun for me to write)

You ask for the armoury key, and the Lieutenant hands it over. Then, you walk out into the dining car to take a look at the armoured skeleton. The Lieutenant had been true to his word in at least one way so far, to be sure -- the skeleton's cuirass has a solid dent in it. The rest of the pieces of the armor are fully intact and in good condition. They include a helmet, greaves, cuisses, pauldrons, vambraces and solid leather boots. The poleyns, gauntlets, and sabatons are missing. There is no gorget in this armour set.

(Aaaaand since there are clearly lots of pieces of armour here that not everyone can name or knows of, so how about a nice handy command like equip all armour of set. You can call this set the RAF Major personal armour set, or just Set 1 for short

(Correspondingly, you can simply say equip piece of armor set. For example, equip vambrace set 1.

(Also, a quick guide on personal armor of the middle ages:
greaves: lower leg
cuisse: thigh
pauldron: shoulder
vambrace: arm
poleyn: knees
sabaton: upper side of foot
gorget: neck
cuirass: torso
gauntlet: hands and wrists

And we all know what helmets and boots are.)

(Assuming that the armour is of the right size and that the cuirass is unusable...)

Equip skeleton's armour except cuirass.

(I'm also assuming we still have the baseball bat.)

Go to the armoury (as carefully as possible, like SteelFist described.)

You continue onwards and into the Grand Ballroom, and see that at the far end, a posse of five skeletal soldiers is patrolling back and forth. They don't see you yet. At least two of them have rifles, two are wearing MP's uniforms (one of the former MPs is carrying a riot shield), and the one in the centre of their group, taking the lead, wears a captain's uniform and is wielding a submachine gun in one hand and what looks to be a wand or catalyst in the other. As for the space itself, the dining car on its own wasn't nearly big enough for the soldiers aboard the ship to eat in, so the Ballroom was converted into a makeshift mess hall. Tables are lined up throughout the room in four rows running lengthwise.

The sorceress must not have wanted survivors to get anywhere fast -- your baseball bat won't be enough this time. However, it seems odd that the guards towards the midship would be more heavily armed than those in front. Could she have been afraid of a ship takeover from the hold in the back? Then who would be back there?

Silently, you take the stairs up to the next floor. Once there, you see the library off to the left, and take a moment to look in. It extends for some ways, so it must also connect to the second door to the left as well. There are no skeletons in the hallway of the second floor of the ship that you can see. To the right, you see a billiards room behind the first door, but it is unclear what is beyond the second door on the right.

Next, you take the stairs up to the topmost floor, where you see the armoury door, just as the Lieutenant said. You approach the door, and insert the key into the lock. It turns easily, and you can now slide the door open to the right.

In front of you are all the weapons that the Lieutenant described earlier -- even the bucket of pink glop.

Wonder how a skeleton can see you if it has no eyes. (Assuming they don't have eyes.)

That has an easy answer: the skeleton's ear bones feel the air waves provoked by our movement (the amplitude and the frequency are dependent of the body size, shape and speed, the phase difference between the ears gives the direction where the wave came from). :P

(While in the armoury we should look for armour - our is incomplete, and the frost runes may be used to freeze the skeletons... I have no idea what other weapons would be a better idea to have.)

"Well, we have rifles, machine guns, cannons, anti-aircraft turrets, lightning catalysts, shoulder-fired railguns, packs of frost runes, spell scrolls, and some pink glop in a bucket in the back of the armory.

You look in the armoury for some more armour to complete your previous set, preferably at least a breastplate, footplates, kneeplates, and gauntlets. You find that on the far left side, in the back of the room, there are several sets of each of a few types of personal armour. There's a type that's similar to the one you're wearing, but less decorated and more befitting of a foot soldier than a major; there's one that looks more like modern armor, made of tough pressure-distribution fibres and covered in strategic locations with rudimentary warding runes; and the last type is a kind of heavily runed mail, good for mobility and spellcasting, along with absorbing arcane energies, and capable of blocking a few swordstrikes. On the flip side, the abundance of holes in the mail make it all too easy for a stray bullet to put the hurt on you, so to speak.

The rifle is a precision weapon, and requires some practice to use well. The machine gun, on the other hand, just requires lots of ammunition to use well. The cannons and turrets will be of little use to you, unless you happen to need to stage a defense of the ship for some reason, or you think that the skeletons aboard need to be shot down with heavy weaponry. Lightning catalysts, you figure as you survey the armoury, must be a kind of magical instrument that is especially good for firing lightning spells, although the name is probably a misnomer, in that the spells are surely more closely linked to artificial electrical phenomena, like those studied by Tesla, than the natural one after which they are named.

The railgun is an exceedingly powerful kinetic weapon, capable of firing metal slugs at speeds by far exceeding that of sound. However, there is sure to be a significant amount of recoil -- bracing oneself against something would probably be a good idea.

You read the militarily simple instructions on the back of the pack of frost runes: "Place on ground. Activate with palm of hand. Retreat to a safe distance." In smaller print, it goes on: "The rune functions as an aura-sensitive proximity mine. As such, it will not function against mechanical constructs, or those with sufficiently little aura as to fail to activate the rune. Seek secondary activation when facing these foes." Then, in slightly larger font, with three pictures of a soldier tossing the rune like a discus, the instructions conclude: "Throw rune at least 20 ft for safest results. When rune breaks, secondary activation takes place.

Spell scrolls appeared to be medium-sized squares of a special kind of paper. You decide that you will ask the Lieutenant more about them when you next see him.

Finally, there is the pink glop. You cannot tell much about it, other than that it is "pretty gloppy, and very pink." It lies in a small metal bucket, and a equally well made brush just next to it, with a single complex rune carved in its handle. Somehow, it seems to you that the two go together.

You decide to take a couple of packs of frost runes from the armoury held in one arm, still keeping your baseball bat in the other.

----------------------------------------------

(A couple of things. First, that the armor types function like a rock-paper-scissors triangle. Melee armour is strong against melee weapons, okay against guns, and weak against magic [metal conducts arcane energy pretty well]. The modern gunnery armour is strong against guns, okay against magic [basic runic protection], and weak against melee [one good chop or stab with a sword....]. The runic mail is strong against magic [absorbs it mostly], okay against melee [it's mail], and weak against guns [lots of holes].

(Second: runes can mean two things -- the written characters imbuing magical power to armor and weapons, and the ceramic discs with the first type of rune inscribed in them, used usually as magical proximity mines.

(Third: I strongly reccomend taking the pink glop. It has lots of uses, though none are immediately apparent. Oh, and it's fun to say. Glop glop glop. Am I supposed to make reccomentations? I don't think so...  :-X

(Fourth: ya might want to go back and get your knapsack from home through the portal again, since there are lots of things you'll want to carry, and arms only go so far. On the other hand, it won't be a Bag of Holding or anything -- you can only store the normal amount of things that you could in a regular backpack.

(@Ert: Ah... yes... I understand some of these words....  :3 [nah, I ken all of them]
And does that give you any better of an idea of what would or wouldn't be good to use against the skellies?

(One last thing, sort of a general question... am I giving you guys enough freedom with this game? I kind of feel like I'm limiting you guys too much)

Summon a blade of pwning, capable of emmiting a spell resilient barrier, projectile deterrent (If it moves too fast, knock it out of the air), and autopilot with the capabilities of a master swordsman. Then smother the blade (not the hilt or grip) in pink glop. Then teleport to the enchantress and kill her with a glare.

(Limitations are good. They stop me from doing stuff like I did above.)

(I think the heavily runed mail may come in handier in the long run. Ecspecially if we end up going against the enchantress. And the glop? I concede, it is very fun to say and type.)
Take and equip the heavily runed mail and the bucket of pink glop. Then go retrieve your backpack.

You unequip the RAF major's armor, and put on one of the heavily runed mails hanging on the rack in the armoury. You assemble all the pieces of the heavy personal armor into as compact a jumble as you can, and carry that under your arm. You keep the frost runes in pockets in your cargo pants (not very fashionable, but good for adventures), and you carry on your right side the bucket of very pink glop. You feel acutely that you're running out of room for found items, and the plate armor is really heavy. In fact, you can't actually move very quickly like this.

Nonetheless, you leave the armory for the moment (you can always come back), and head back downstairs to the second floor, where the library is.

(A couple of notes: the skeletons at the far end of the ballroom, the big room you had to go through to get here, have guns. Modern bullet+shrapnel-proof armor might have been a better choice, but you never know.

Second: you might want to leave something in an easy-to-reach place. For the most part, there's no one aboard who'll steal your stuff. You're pretty loaded down at the moment.

Third: the library also has some books on weapon enchants. Sorry I left that out. Could be very important. Very. Important.

I think it would be better to equip the modern bullet+shrapnel-proof armour and hide the runed armour somewhere out of the "sight" of the skeletons.
And be sure to lock the door of the armoury. I don't want to have the unpleasant surprise to find it filled with well armoured skeletons the next time we went there.
And it seems that, other than the baseball bat, we're not carrying any other weapon... unless the pink glop may turn out to be used as a weapon.
Another thing, make sure that we're being as discrete as possible.
I would like to go to the library and learn something useful before engaging the armed skeletons.

You think better of your decision to wear the runed mail, and instead go for the modern personal armor with a few runic inscriptions, leaving the mail on the second floor. You lock the armoury behind you, just in case some skeletons find their ways up there, and proceed into the library, glop in hand, but decide to drop your heap of plate armour at the door. Before you lies a vast array of books on diverse subjects, with one set of shelves dedicated to magic and magic usage. The spellbook vending machines are right nearby. There are books on necromancy and ways to combat it, well-illustrated tomes on the various uses for enchanting and the proper runes associated with the process, simple and complex, even some meant for curious children.

The tactical use of magic is also broadly discussed in a subsection of the shelves, and you can see that this section is heavily used and slightly augmented, due to the military repurposing of the airship. You haven't got any money with you yet, but the books on the shelves should be of some use, and provide greater detail on the methods of using the magical devices you have encountered and the precise effects of the spells.

(What's wrong with enchanting a baseball bat? Worried the MLB will object?  ;)

(Another thing: is it just me, or is this turning into more like a tabletop role-playing game [minus the tabletop], with me being the "dungeon master" person, than a real text adventure? I think I ought to change the title, since it's starting not to fit any more.

(It's just, the "turns", so to speak, aren't simple commands so much as complex considerations of best strategies for the scenario... all we need now are some ten-sided dice. [But as I said before, combat is entirely deterministic, so what you do will determine the outcome, not random chance. So no dice  :3 {bad joke}])

Look through the section devoted for children's use. Based in the fact we know very little as to how magic really works, a simplified version may help. Then look through the books on necromancy and search to see if we can un-animate a skeleton and then reanimate it for our purposes.

(What do you mean cargo shorts aren't very fashionable?!? I love my cargo shorts!)

You take out a few books that present a simplified view of enchanting from the shelf, and sit down at a table to read them. The first is a look into warding enchants, like the ones on the personal armour you're wearing. It is divided into ten practical rune combinations that might be useful for children to know, each requiring its own arrangement and orientation of the magical symbols.

The introduction to the book states that enchanting is an simple and fun process that, with practice, can be done with great ease. It warns that a misdrawing of a rune could result in grievous bodily injury, so it is best to have parental supervision while attempting to inscribe runes. These runes can be inscribed on anything, but as a general rule, the bigger the object being enchanted is, the stronger and more plentiful the runes have to be to have their full effect. Also, runes may have a effect which differs slightly or drastically when inscribed on a living being. Living enchantment is not to be attempted except by those of advanced skill in enchanting.

The basic process of enchanting consists of inscribing the desired rune on the item to be enchanted, and then clearly saying the name of the rune soon after. If the inscription and the pronunciation were accurate, the rune should start to glow visibly in the colour associated with the enchant. These colours are somewhat arbitrary, and are not necessarily unique from enchant to enchant, but the effect combined with the colour can prove helpful with the identification of an unknown runic inscription.

If the rune is not inscribed properly at all, or the pronunciation of the rune's name is clearly incorrect, the enchant will fail and nothing will happen. If either the rune or the pronunciation is close, but not right, there is a threshold within which enchanters should take caution, as the arcane energies binding to the site of the rune will fail to bind, soon before they normally would infuse the item with magic. That is, the energy would build up to a high level, but be rejected at the last moment, and cause a violent reaction that can be damaging to the item in question, or even to the individual enchanting if it is a powerful rune with higher magics imbued in it.

Also, if a rune is misdrawn to resemble, even by accident, another, more potent or harmful rune, then the "arcane whiplash" that occurs will be more potent or harmful, respectively. As such, it would be best to practice acquired runes on drawing paper before attempting them on the actual item to be enchanted, so as to be sure to inscribe the rune correctly when the enchantment counts, and also to examine the effects on the paper itself and be assured that the rune you have drawn is desirable for your chosen item.

You realize that this book must be for some darn bright young children (the chemistry sets children used to play with come to mind), and that enchanting could be potentially dangerous if you aren't careful. The book goes on to outline its 10 basic protective enchants, but now you want to take a look at the book you picked up on necromancy.

This books clearly states at the beginning that necromancy is an abominable application of magic, and is never to be attempted by those of the legal or righteous persuasions, and thus that efforts must be be made to combat those who use it. Necromancy, in fact, is not a resurrection of the dead to become living, but merely a reanimation of the corpse, meaning that necromancy is not so much a dark revival as the ultimate violation of the sanctity of death, made convenient by the strong thought impressions left throughout the body during life, which can then be turned towards the efficient animation of the decaying dead. The impressions are linked through a runic flow to the bones, which means that a spellcaster can cast a spell initiating a flow of arcane power which contains the patterns of runes required for the necromancy, and thus the dead can be reanimated without actually coming into contact with the corpse.

Before runic flow spells were discovered (though even now these are limited to only some of the most skilled spellcasters in practice, so those who are not as skilled must resort to the method below), an enchanter had to actually carve the correct animation runes on all the bones to be animated from the corpse, a very messy and inaccurate process that left all the bones in the body uncovered. Out of some respect to this tradition, modern necromancers often strip away the flesh from the dead they reanimate to reveal the bone, even when this is no longer a technical necessity.

As necromancy is a complex and intricate magic, and the runic flow link is actually quite fragile, the reanimated are quite vulnerable to magickonegative signal interference -- that is, the flow can be disrupted by any sudden spike in arcane energies around the "undead", as they are called. Thus, offensive magics are proven to be highly efficient in dispatching the reanimated dead, and defensive magics also prove themselves damaging to the integrity of the runic transmission driving the magic, so each time the undead meet with a defensive spell or enchant, it can "wound" them, and make them easier to dispatch, as the forces holding them together weaken.

You put the book aside for a moment, and consider that this weak point could prove very useful to you. The frost runes you picked up were probably a wise choice after all. The runes could easily provide a spike of arcane energy and knock out the runic flow to the skeletons. The dead would be put to rest.

(Cargo pants are fun, useful, and look fine, but they're not the height of fashion.

(Oh, and you're not allowed to do necromancy. It's evil and unlawful, and people would hate you for it. And it's very complicated as spells or enchants go, and there are no books that would teach you how to do that. So, no, you can't reanimate a skeleton for your purposes. You can disanimate [not to be confused with deamination...  :D ... bad science joke] skeletons, but you lack the skills, resources, and moral bankrupcy to redo the necromancy)

(Yeah, I know that was a lot of information, but magic is a science, after all.  :3)

(Nice explanation. I liked it. :) )

Look for some books that explain what lightning catalysts are. They might also be useful against skeletons, but perhaps they might damage the ship.

You look for a book on the topic of lightning catalysts, but you find that your query's a bit too specific. However, you do find a book on catalysts, so you bring it over to your table and read some of the starting passages.

Catalysts are much like staves and wands, in that they conduct arcane energies and are used in concert with the mind to shape these energies, but instead of being made of a convenient and cheap material, like wood or steel, the substance, usually metal, from which the catalyst is hewn matters greatly in terms of the end purpose of the particular catalyst. For example, a tin catalyst is best suited for the banishing of conjurations and constructs, while a brass catalyst is much more inclined to be used for pyromancy.

To the orientation of the atoms and the character of the bonds is owed the affinity of one metal over another for a particular purpose, and while not all purposes have a catalyst which serves them, all catalysts serve a purpose. If the catalyst is used for a purpose to which it is not suited, it may haltingly serve the purpose, fail to work, or shatter in a massive arcane discharge, depending on the extent to which the attempted purpose differs from the intended purpose. If a brass catalyst is used for a frost spell, the spell will surely backfire and the catalyst shatter.

However, the advantages to using a specialized catalyst far outweigh the drawbacks. If one wishes to cast a spell for speed, they need look no farther than a silver catalyst (which are quite resistant to shattering, but casting spells of hindering with this catalyst is inadvisable), and the magickonegative imprint of the spell will be literally drawn into the catalyst from the mind (worry not, reader -- the spell is not forgotten) to be cast at a flourish of the arm. With a staff, the caster might have to force the mental imprint of the spell into the wood, a tricky business at best.

You flip to the short section on lightning catalysts.

Lightning catalysts are those made from zinc, and are quite useful when casting lightning or other electrical spells, for the purposes of shorting out electronics, electrocution, or ignition of gases or fuels without first having an open flame. They are highly receptive of these spells, and are applicable in a wide variety of military environments, including rendering enemy vechicles unusable due to electronics failure.

You figure that the lightning catalysts were probably another form of anti-aircraft defense for the airship that were simply not used in time. Given the power of the sorceress, they most likely would have done little good against her attacking forces.

Right now, the baseball bat is effective against the skeletons. I was wondering if we could inscribe a rune in it in order to improve it's efficacy. But before we should practice on a piece of paper, assuming it's available somewhere. And we have to choose a rune set that fits what we want (perhaps there are some combinations that help the offensive side of combat and others that help the defensive side).
(Sorry for not being objective in the actions to take.)

Quote from: Ertxiem on May 26, 2012, 08:06:29 AM
Right now, the baseball bat is effective against the skeletons. I was wondering if we could inscribe a rune in it in order to improve it's efficacy. But before we should practice on a piece of paper, assuming it's available somewhere. And we have to choose a rune set that fits what we want (perhaps there are some combinations that help the offensive side of combat and others that help the defensive side).
(Sorry for not being objective in the actions to take.)

Inscribe a rune of a magic attack so it does magic damage too and so it doesnt matter much whatever armor the enemy is wearing.

Look at the 10 basic runes given in the children's book and see if any of those would be beneficial for the baseball bat. Perhaps one to reinforce the internal structure of the bat, allowing it to last longer. Or one that redirects kinetic energy used against the body of the bat, but not the handle, back into whatever distributed the energy in the first place. That would be useful or both structural support and offensive means.

-Edit-
Also, how do runes work together? Is it possible to order them similar to writing a script in a program? (I.E. DOS, ActionScript, Java, etc.)

Quote from: aziz on May 26, 2012, 12:18:19 PM

Quote from: Ertxiem on May 26, 2012, 08:06:29 AM
Right now, the baseball bat is effective against the skeletons. I was wondering if we could inscribe a rune in it in order to improve it's efficacy. But before we should practice on a piece of paper, assuming it's available somewhere. And we have to choose a rune set that fits what we want (perhaps there are some combinations that help the offensive side of combat and others that help the defensive side).
(Sorry for not being objective in the actions to take.)

Inscribe a rune of a magic attack so it does magic damage too and so it doesnt matter much whatever armor the enemy is wearing.

We should train making runes in a sheet of paper before trying it on the baseball bat. I would hate to be spanked by my bat or something like that! ;)

I would be surprised if the runes worked like a script. I think it's more likely that they enhance some characteristics/effects and that some may have conflicting effects when used together.

You look around the library for some drawing paper, and find a notebook behind the circulation desk, probably belonging to a librarian, from which you can tear a few blank pages. There's a mug full of pens behind the desk with which to draw the runes.

You look through the children's book on protective runes, and find that the seventh rune listed is one for reinforcement, to prevent the enchanted item from breaking. You recognize the rune as one present on the personal armor you're wearing. It looks like (Fig. 1), and it's name is "salim." You carefully draw it out on the notebook paper, but it doesn't take. You realize that you made the lower loop too large, and the tail didn't intersect with the left angle. This was going to be harder than you thought.

But after several more tries -- after the third of which the rune glowed briefly, but then flashed brilliantly, hurting your eyes and returning to black -- you manage you get the rune drawn just right, and it glows a lime green, and stays. You've managed your very first enchant. The paper doesn't appear different, but you decide to test out the rune's power, so you try to rip the page. You find that you can't easily do it. After much effort, you've made a small rip in the paper, but your arms are feeling tired. The rune works. (Fig. 2)

You decide to practice the rune a few more times on different sheets, and three times of five you get the rune to glow, and the energies to bind. Finally, you think you're ready to try it out on your bat. You grab a pair of scissors from behind the desk -- a pen wouldn't write well, and you want your rune to last -- and score the rune on the bat with the utmost precision, paying close attention to each stroke as you write it. Making the task more difficult is the curved nature of the surface, and you fear the proportions are not right. Finally, the rune fully inscribed, you say its name, "Salim," and hold your breath. Nothing happens for a moment. Then, the rune turns lime, and your bat is enchanted.

----------------------------------

(A note for newcomers and old readers who might not have fully gotten this: there isn't plain old "magic damage." There is no particular cure-all spell which can pierce any armor. There are spells which might bypass a particular armor type, or even make use of the armor an enemy is wearing, but "magic attack" and "magic defense" don't exist, as such. Elecrical spells will arc towards any foe wearing metal armor, flame spells can burn through fabric, and ice can give opponents hypothermia and stop them in their tracks, perhaps kill them if they aren't dressed warmly enough. But the quasi-realistic magic I wish to portray does not possess anything so vague as a "magic attack."

(To elaborate, most of the effects of basic offensive spells could be achieved with some napalm, some liquid nitrogen, or some high-voltage tripwires. If you want a golem, you could conjure a magical one, or you could build or buy a mechanical version. Thus, all magical effects are governed by certain immutable physical laws.

(And no, runes don't work in sequence like a script. They work in concert, interfering with one another and changing each other. Enchanting is less like a computer language and more like a pictographic language, with potentially many characters making up a word.

(Also, I recommend just looking at the available rune types and combinations and their effects, and finding one that suits your purposes, rather than seeking out one effect -- not everything one can desire in a weapon can be done with enchanting and runes. That is, buy off the shelf, don't seek custom.)

(Oh, and aziz, I hope I don't hurt your feelings or anything by telling you that what you're asking can't be done. It's not personal, it's just I have a set idea of how magic should work in this world, and that's how it'll work. I'm open to some constructive criticism, but not much.  :D)

A lot of text has accumulated since I last looked at this. I'm glad you decided to resurrect this (though it was immoral, being necromancy, ahaha), and if you do decide to do a more formal RPG D&D style I'd be glad to play with you as DM if the world is as interesting as this one.

Okay, so, try to procure a list of basic offensive and defensive enchantments, then list them. Attempt to find a sample of zinc, brass, tin and whichever catalyst governs frost within the library. Look up if salim produces magickonegative energy to disrupt the skeletons or not, and if it doesn't look up which runes do. Also, check if you can use a catalyst to enhance an enchantment.

You find a book on the shelves which lists basic enchants useful in combat, called Børnheim's Compendium of a Combatant's Enchants. It lists about fifty enchants, split up into five sections of ten runes each: armor protection enchants, armor offense enchants, firearm enchants, close-quarters weapon enchants, miscellaneous and utility enchants. The book goes on to explain that it would have included more than these few runes, but even within the book, the runes' magics interfere, and as there are more runes in a volume, the more volatile it is -- thus, these have been selected as having the most basic, easy, and useful effects. Furthermore, more complex but more useful runes or rune combinations do exist, but their places are elsewhere, not in this collection.

----------------------------

(I would list them, but I find making lists tiresome, and development of the plot much less so -- just say which section interests you, one or two at a time, and I'll list its contents. You can use the runes you find for enchanting and such, then come back to the book. I just can't come up with a list of all fifty at once in one post, in the interests of time and the interests of maintaining my interest.

(Also, all spells and runes carry magickonegative energy and potential -- it's just a fancier and more precise way of saying arcane power. However, passive runes' (such as salim's) magickonegativity won't influence that of the rune flow spells maintaining necromancy as much as will active runes' (such as, say, one for frost or flame or blindness or hallucination or pain or electrocution, etc.). Thus, the frost runestones (Important: name change. The stones used as proximity mines with runes on them are now runestones.) will probably destroy the flow and disanimate the skeleton in one hit, but consistent contact with the salim rune on your bat will degrade and eventually destroy the flow as well. It'll just take longer.

(Another note: there are only lightning catalysts in the armoury, and none in the library (other than a one-use activation catalyst on the wall for activating condensation runes embedded in the walls in case of a fire). So, while there might be some privately owned by soldiers in their quarters [at least, I'm not going to say there aren't], there are only lightning catalysts available to you, to the best of your knowledge at the moment.

(Finally: you can't use a catalyst to enhance an enchantment, per se... but you can use an activation catalyst to.. well... activate a rune that takes too much arcane energy discharge to function constantly. And a lightning spell cast at a lightning rune with a lightning catalyst, for example, might have some interesting results. All will be revealed as you explore)

(Oh, and thank you for that complement. It means a lot.)

Look up cyromancy runes, and practise them on a piece of paper.

Then, combine salim and the cyromancy rune on the piece of paper, because I honestly don't know how they'd react on the bat.

I think we need an offensive enchantment on the bat, and fire doesn't seem like a good idea. The bat is wooden, after all.

Is magical effect defined by intention? And if so, could you seperate enchantments, such as frost and fire, so they do not interfere with one another? And also, can you enchant part of an object but not another part (eg. enchant half a piece of paper with one rune, and then the other with a different rune)?

Also, look up if there is some kind of rune that will bind magic; we may have to confront a magic user (Mage? Sorcerer? Arcane Practitioner?), and I'd like something to use.

In the Compendium, you look under close-quarters weapon enchants, and the second entry is a frost rune (fig. 3), which looks very similar to the one you saw on your packs of frost runestones. You take out another piece of paper from the notebook, and then rip it into four pieces to try to conserve your limited paper for the moment. Then, you carefully try to replicate the rune on the paper. The first couple of times, the half-circle at the bottom doesn't come out quite right, skewing to one side or another, but once you figure that piece out the rest of the rune, "bakor", is quite easy. You finish tracing out the last part of a curve -- the rune is finished, and you voice its name. The rune takes, and a soft gray-blue light emanates from the magical symbol (fig. 4).

Nothing seems different about the paper at first, but as you look at it, condensation appears on the paper from the surrounding air, and after a while, they turn to miniscule ice crystals. You are somewhat reluctant to touch the paper, but it doesn't seem to be too powerful a rune, so you pick up the quarter-sheet. It's very cold to the touch, and rough with ice. You try to bend it, and it does so easily enough, so it seems that the paper itself does not become frozen stiff, but merely chills what comes into contact with it. Since the children's book on enchanting also said that runes can wear off after a time, and must be renewed by repeating the name of the rune, you don't worry too much about the small frost rune freezing up the library -- you just leave it on the table.

You go back to the Compendium's informative introduction for more on enchanting, particularly about multiple runes.

When two runes are placed on the same item, they can interact in multiple ways. If the two are not placed in proximity to one another, they will not act together or interfere directly, although their effects (rather than their magics) may indeed interfere. A flame rune and a frost rune, for instance, will cancel each other's effects out if they are of the same strengths. If one is more potent, then its effects will prevail. If the two runes are not in conflict with their effects, they will simply act separately. However, if the two runes have the same effects and are not placed in proximity to one another, but enchant the same item, then they will each act on their own, and the effects will add together. It is difficult, though, to place multiple runes on the same item, because the arcane energies are sunk into the magickonegative "well" of a previous enchant, and so one must be more precise in getting the energies to bind. Put simply, the rune must be inscribed more carefully and accurately, or it will fail. Secondly, if indeed the new rune binds in spite of the first's presence, if the first rune was not placed with sufficient precision, it too can fail, possibly in a violent reaction.

There is also a second way of placing multiple runes. If the two are in proximity to one another, their magics instead of their effects will interact, and create a slightly or drastically different enchantment. Also, the manner in which the two are placed with respect to one another can change the magical interaction -- if one of the runes is bigger than the other, or one contains the other, that rune will have the dominant effect. For example, if a flame rune is drawn inside of a protection rune, the protection aspect will be dominant, and the overall effect will most likely be protection from flame. On the other hand, if the protection rune is drawn inside the flame rune, then the flame aspect is dominant, and the combination would probably be most useful on armor, where it would badly burn an attacker that came into contact with the armor (i.e., fiery protection vs. protection from fire). There are, however, finite valid ways in which to combine the runes, so while a correct combination may be discovered easily, the rune combinations are not infinite in their variation. As a result, reference guides are a necessity when dealing with many runes in conjunction. Also, this method does not require greater accuracy in the drawing of the runes, but given that the relative placement of the runes must be somewhat accurate and that there are more runes involved in the process, this method of enchanting with multiple runes can also be difficult.

(Nope. It's aluminium.

Quote from: Duckling on January 16, 2012, 05:57:26 PM
Then, in thinking about somehow defending yourself, you think of the ceremonial sword in your father's study, and the aluminium baseball bat in the basket of sports equipment downstairs.

(You're going to have to look up a valid combination of salim and bakor (or another protection-frost pair) and figure out what you want out of the combination, or inscribe them separately [and get some more practice, since they have to both be done quite accurately if you want to use them both on the same bat].

(Magical effects are never defined by intention. In this universe, magic is 100% objective and scientific, and merely resembles in part any more... squishy, temperamental, subjective magics you have seen. I think I answered the magical interference question in this post... and about enchanting parts of items, I dunno, why don't you look it up in the library?  :D
I think it kind of says something about me that I want magic to be an objective science, eh?

(What do you mean by binding magic?)

I've always enjoyed the idea of magic as a quantifiable, direct and scientifically testable force. It's just it's rare to find an author that agrees. Incidentally, I really like your magic system in general, especially the magical language, which is et another concept which appeals to me.

Oh, I forgot the bat was aluminium. But the point is still valid; fire would damage or ruin it.

And by 'binding' magic, I refer to preventing the access to magic, or the fulfillment of a spell.

I don't think we have any choice but to try to install another rune on the bat; we need an offensive enchantment.

Also, look up the possibilities magical rune tatoos. Just because I find it interesting.

Okay; practice the bakor rune, because I don't want the bat blowing up in my face.

What was the ceremonial sword made out of? And what is it a catalyst for?

Also, look up concealment and lock-opening runes; I want that sword.

(I think you forgot to attach fig 4)
(I haven't forgot the ceremonial sword and the other portal that leads to the prison, but I'm having a hard time linking those aspects of the story with what is happening right now.)

What does the book says about close-quarters weapon enchants?
(I fear that inscribing the frost rune in the bat will make all of it too cold to pick up.)

Is there anything in the library about removing/disabling a rune of an object?
(It may be useful to disarm a trap or to weaken an enemy.)

Look for a rune that alters time, such as accelerating the one holding something causing the world around them to "slow" down. This could probably be useful in combat if you can allow yourself a little more reflex time.

You go back and look more at the book of catalysts for trying to identify the arcane catalytic properties of your father's steel ceremonial sword, and see the two types of catalyst the sword might act as. Since the carbon steel of the sword is composed of iron and some carbon, it could act mostly as a corrosion catalyst (iron), but might also have some capacity as a means of casting blindness and darkness spells (carbon). Also, you happen to notice an inhibition catalyst (tungsten).

An inhibition catalyst is capable of being used for two primary purposes -- to negate the effects of other incoming spells, or to temporarily deactivate an enchanting rune. These are commonly referred to as warding and blinking, respectively. A warding spell establishes a negative arcane field, which cancels out incoming spells and functions as a shield of sorts. This field is not visible to the naked eye, and a sufficiently powerful spell can break through the "shield," punching a hole in it. Also, some spells are designed to carry large amounts of arcane potential in an array, with no other effect but to take down the arcane field. A blinking spell, on the other hand, must be cast to a precise location, and is therefore most effective when used at close range or on a large target, such as a rune as one might find on a vehicle, perhaps for speed. Casting the spell at this rune would knock it out for a minute or so, and slow down the vehicle as a result.

Similar effects can be achieved with blinking runes placed on weapons or projectiles, such that these weapons can be used against foes wearing armor which magically defends them. A sword with an blinking rune on it can stab through mail enchanted for durability and an electrical discharge on contact quite easily, and with no ill effects, as long as the blinking rune is powerful enough. Also, runes for blinking placed on weapons can act as warding runes temporarily, blocking a few direct hits from incoming spells before giving out, and "blinking" themselves, unable to deactivate runes or block incoming spells for a time.

Blinking spells and runes must be more potent than the runes they are deactivating in order to be successful. Otherwise, the rune will flicker and weaken, but still remain active, whereas the spell will need to be cast again, and the blinking rune will have been blinked. Also, a rune must be even more powerful still if it is to deactivate multiple runes in a short time. Owing to this is that blinking spells consist of a negative arcane wave which is used to cancel out the arcane energies which affix themselves to a rune, while blinking runes, when first inscribed, activate in reverse, attracting negative arcane energy to the spot, and thus cancelling out the built-up energy at the site of the rune it is deactivating.

Just as a blinking rune can be used in the short term as a warding rune (which, when inscribed on an item such as a shield, allows the item to block spells very effectively), warding spells can in the rare instance that an enchanted item, whether it be projectile or blade or armor, deactivate a rune. However, the amount of negative arcane energy it takes to do so is large enough that a large swathe of the ward is lost.

Finally, if any form of inhibition spell or rune is powerful enough with respect to a rune it contacts, the rune can even be permanently deactivated, the site of arcane energy buildup completely unbound from the material in which the rune was inscribed. In this case, the rune goes dark, and its name must be respoken to reactivate it again, a touchy process which can only be done a certain number of times (the precise number depending upon the accuracy of the inscription of the rune).

You put the book aside for now, and practice the frost rune bakor some more. When you feel confident that you can inscribe the rune on its own, you also take a minute to practice it alongside salim, but it doesn't seem to take. After a couple more unsuccessful tries, you realize you're getting the proportions of the loop at the top of salim wrong, and after that, you get both runes to take on a single piece of the notebook paper. You see that they each glow in their individual colours. Great. The paper is very cold to the touch, and you can't rip it easily. After acheiving this a few more times and feeling confident in your ability to draw the bakor rune accurately enough to perform a multiple rune enchant, you take the scissors again and draw the rune carefully once more on the surface of your baseball bat, hoping that you've drawn the salim rune well enough that it will stay as well. Nothing happens for a moment, and then the salim rune flickers. You sigh in disappointment.

You look at the bat again, and see that the salim rune is now glowing fully once more! It seems that you drew the rune of protection well enough that it was able to stay on, by some bizarre good luck. Its buildup of magickonegative potential was temporarily partially dispelled, but it came back.

(Steelfist, I'll get to the unlocking and tattoos in a bit. You've given me a lot of stuff to write about. I'm glad you like my magic system.

(Ert: Don't worry, the effect of a rune decreases somewhat with distance from said rune, so the leather handle itself is just a bit chill, though the bat itself feels ice-cold. If it bothers you too much, you can look up a particular kind of inhibition rune called a division rune... oops. Was I supposed to give you in-story info out of story? Eh, who cares? And thanks, I uploaded figs. 3 and 4

(Buggy: Time warping runes are really complicated. That's something I'd decided beforehand, and it makes sense when you think about it. Simple phenomena have simple runes -- heat, cold, static electricity.... But complicated phenomena requiring lots of arcane energy to sustain, like spacetime distortion, get very complex. Don't worry, you'll see it mid-to-late game or so, when you're better at enchanting, and there'll be enemies who use it.)

Interesting. Well, I'm not sure what effect blindness would have on a skeleton, but look the spell up anyway, and darkness too.

Sorry if I've inundated you with questions.

see if there is a salim or any other rune on your armor if not draw a salim rune after practicing ( because the people here were soldiers some of them must have thought of it.) And about this

Quote from: Duckling on May 26, 2012, 04:49:31 PM
(Oh, and aziz, I hope I don't hurt your feelings or anything by telling you that what you're asking can't be done. It's not personal, it's just I have a set idea of how magic should work in this world, and that's how it'll work. I'm open to some constructive criticism, but not much.  :D)

I don't mind  :)

(This is getting interesting. And I'm thinking that there may be a reason for Ducky to be drawing the runes for us... perhaps we're supposed to make some run combinations, one inside another and stuff like that.)

(And I'm wondering about the glop... it may be useful to inscribe one or more runes in a door to prevent the skeletons from entering, for instance, or even to open a portal to some place, later on the story.)

Regarding the cold bat, a pair of gloves seems to be enough (and it may even protect the soft skin of our hands!!! lol).

(I was wondering about the best strategy to take down the armed skeletons at the ballroom... do you think placing a couple of frost runestones - proximity mines - and attracting the skeletons, while hiding in a safe place is enough?)

(And we're certainly taking our time at the library! We probably should be moving soon... we can always come back if we need some extra info...)

Is it possible for a blinking spell to be used to disrupt the skeletons' supply of arcane energy? If so, see of you can plant a few around the door to the library, making it a place that can be fallen back to in cases of dire need.

Will the frost runestones only be activated by the skeletons or will us also trigger them? Perhaps there is a mention about it in one of the books.

Which spells are available in the vending machine? (I find it quite weird to have spells being sold inside a military ship!)

You look up a few more subjects: darkness spells, runestones, and enchanting of living organisms.

Darkness and blindness spells will impair the vision of a target, by rendering a portion of its surface darkened by a light-absorbing matrix of arcane energy. They will only darken a medium-sized area around the spot hit, so precision must be employed when casting these spells for greatest effect.

Runestones are stones which are inscribed with an active rune, such as frost, flame, corrosion, electrical discharge, etc., and a pair of runes insribed inside the dominant, active rune. The two are a shattering rune and an activation rune with another, even smaller rune to its right for a variety of signs which would indicate an enemy. Common runes to place here are magnetism runes, heat runes, pressure runes, and sonic runes. Respectively, they trigger the runestone to shatter and activate when vital electrical impulses (such as those which keep the heart beating) are near, when body heat is detected, when the runestone is stepped on, or when a sound is made close by, such as a footstep or a voice triggering the rune. Then, on the back is an inhibition rune keeping the thing from blowing sky-high before it's ready. This one contains a deactivation rune inside it, which in turn has a smaller heat rune to its right. Thus, when the palm is placed on the runestone, this triggers the deactivation rune, which in turn deactivates the inhibition rune. Then, the runestone is primed, and can be triggered to activate the dominant active rune on the front. Interestingly enough, the deactivation of the inhibitor only lasts so long, and the runestone can be reclaimed if not tripped within a certain period, usually ten minutes on a standard military runestone. The packaging in which a runestone was found can be checked for the exact time, along with the precise activation method, but caution is advised when reclaiming the rune -- do not hold the rune too long in your hand when picking it up again, or it can reactivate, and it is preferable to wait a few minutes more than the listed cooldown time for the rune, since the arcane energies can be somewhat unpredictable.

Living enchantments are a type of enchant which is performed on a living being, usually a human. The effects of a rune often differ between living enchants and item enchants and, overall, the rune inscriptions must be performed more carefully since a violent arcane reaction is not, generally speaking, desirable on a human being. For instance, a frost rune drawn on the back of a hand will not freeze what the hand touches, but will instead slowly encase the hand in ice, perhaps to be used as a club, and render the hand unusable until the rune wears off or is deactivated by a strong blinking spell. Complicated workarounds must be employed to achieve what might ordinarily simple effects to attain on an enchanted item. For these reasons, extreme caution is advised when self-enchanting or enchanting others -- the ill effects can be disastrous, and semi-permanent. It is usually more effective to use personal spells than living enchants to make magical alterations to one's body, and spells are much more easily removed, and in fact must be actively sustained.

Experimentation of living enchants on other human beings is illegal, and experimentation on oneself is frowned upon, mostly because of the self-endangerment it involves.

(@aziz: the armour you have equipped is currently enchanted with multiple unidentified runes, and you are uncertain as to the quality of the inscription. Adding your own enchant whose effects are certainly covered in the enchants currently on the armour would be terrible risky, and most likely not worth it. Imagine you have a patient in your care with serious wounds which have been sewn closed and bandaged well. You don't want to put another bandage on the guy -- you could shift his previous dressings and open recently-closed wounds, and he could bleed to death. It's like that, but more explosive when it comes to runes.)

(Ert: I'm mostly drawing the runes for fun, and for partial illustration of the story. Also, if you do happen to want to try out an enchantment with multiple runes, but don't want to have to describe the arrangement in words, feel free to draw what you mean! Also, you're closer than you think when you mention portals...
About strategy... I dunno, what do you think? Whatever you do, it'll have a result, eh?  :3

(Buggy: yup. Any spell that generates a spike in arcane energy [which is most, I'll tell you] can knock out the rune flow spells holding the skeletons intact. So, even the frost runes should do it. That is, when they thaw, you'd just end up with a pile of bones.

(Ert again: runestones react to certain stimuli, and cannot discern between you and the skeletons, unless one of you is not providing the stimulus. So, if it's a sonic activation type, and you're wearing boots enchanted to create no noise, then they will not detonate for you. However, if you're caught in the radius of the active rune when the stone is tripped, it still will not discern you from the enemy. Once again, the magic here is objective, and unless you tell it to do something, it won't do it. About the vending machine, the military's attitude towards magic is that if you're not a specialist required to perform magic as your job, you learn the spells on your own time and money.

(Buggy again: I guess the enchanting process is a bit like a programming language, not because it is in any way sequential, but because a given set of runes will put forth a given result, and if the enchant goes wrong, you screwed up, not the magic.)

Is there something in the books that describe how can we detect if there is a rune or a spell active in the proximity? That may be useful to avoid traps.

Taking your hint, Ducky, is there something in the book about portals?

Quote from: Duckling on May 22, 2012, 06:56:31 PM
You continue onwards and into the Grand Ballroom, and see that at the far end, a posse of five skeletal soldiers is patrolling back and forth. They don't see you yet. At least two of them have rifles, two are wearing MP's uniforms (one of the former MPs is carrying a riot shield), and the one in the centre of their group, taking the lead, wears a captain's uniform and is wielding a submachine gun in one hand and what looks to be a wand or catalyst in the other. As for the space itself, the dining car on its own wasn't nearly big enough for the soldiers aboard the ship to eat in, so the Ballroom was converted into a makeshift mess hall. Tables are lined up throughout the room in four rows running lengthwise.

(Regarding the skeletons in the ballroom, it seems that we are not only outnumbered but also under equipped. The combination of the firearms and the wand worries me.)

You take a look in the vending machine, and see labeled spellbooks for a basic flame spell, a telekinesis spell [note: not psychokinesis, governed by movement of casting implement, whether it be hand, wand, staff, or catalyst], a knife conjuration spell, a magic detection spell, an easy ward, and a corrosion spell. These are the only six available, and they each cost half a British pound, five Danish kroner, or 120 Icelandic krona.

You search for a book on detection of magic, and you find one discussing detection spells and runes.

Detection spells are an essential implement of the combatant spellcaster, given that they can be nearly infinitely specialized to do all manner of searching for the caster, from the simplest enchant detection for picking up dangerous magical traps, to even locating survivors after an enemy ground-strafe, or pointing the caster towards important documents while attempting espionage. All of these can be done if the spell is well-constructed enough, or if the rune is enchanted finely enough.

(Nothing in the books anywhere about the effects of the pink glop, I assure you, and I haven't decided precisely on the nature of the portals yet. Sorry, a bit of a plot hole at the moment. Soon to be repaired!

(And don't worry so much about the skeletons. Their bones are fragile, their magic is fragile, they can't see schnitzel, and since the skeleton with a wand is not governed by conscious thought, it can only cast a spell already loaded into the wand by the sorceress, and that a finite number of times. The frost runes will be just fine.)

(I couldn't help myself to mention that you just said that that portals are plot holes!)

(I'm also waiting on other people to post their ideas. They may think of something important to do in the library before moving on.)

(Yeah, about the portals... they were basically just spur-of-the-moment plot devices to get the character into the universe, and if I came up with some contrived explanation as to why they were there out of the Big Book o' Tropes, it would just be quite lame. Instead, I'm not going to ever address it unless some sensible explanation occurs to me while I'm doing this role-playing romp (my pet name for this thread). So... the portals shall remain open. [insert cheesy grin here])

Look to see how voicing a rune's name activates it. Does it need to be a living thing? Or does it require a specific pattern of sound waves to activate.

You look at the more technical book on enchanting that you took off the shelf earlier, and look up how saying a rune's name can activate it.

It turns out that the name of a rune isn't actually the combination of syllables spoken by an enchanter, but rather a fractally complex arrangement of tones and overtones over a short period. Humans can only approximate these tones, often with words and syllabary guides, but machines can reproduce the tones much more faithfully, which actually makes it simpler for machines to enchant items than for human beings. The wavelengths of the magickonegative energies are very near those of spoken sound waves, so a pattern of mechanical oscillation in the air can correspond to and resonate with the arcane signature of a particular rune to be enchanted.

(Also, I've now got a viable explanation for the portals. Turns out 3AM on a Sunday is great for writing. Sorry it's been so long -- I've been working on my YouTube channel. 50 videos! But now it's my off-week.)

Having nothing more that you wanted to research, you leave the books on the table in case you should choose to come back later, pick up your frost runes and pink glop, and leave the library. However, as you step out into the hallway, you see two unanimated skeletons lying in front of the library door, one near enough to trip over had you not been looking downwards, and the other five feet from the first, to the left, with a trail of small joints behind it pointing towards the billiards room. You remember that skeletons' runic flows can be disrupted by a strong arcane field, and the library would naturally create such a field. That was close -- it was just good luck that you were in the library when the skeletons tried to hunt you down. If you had been, say, in the armoury, that might not have gone so well.

On the other hand, clicky bones don't make for good stealth.

(So, basically, there might be a skeleton or two in the billiards room or the second room on the right, and whether you want to confront them or not is your choice)

Stealthily see how many skeletons are in the billiards room. If there aren't too many, attempt to lure them near enough to the library for their flow of energy flow to be disrupted. (I'm thinking the library may be a better place for defense than we originally thought. And I'm too lazy to try spelling magickopositive or whatever. Sorry. :D)

You go over to the door of the billiards room, which is ajar from the skeleton having opened it, and look inside. However, there are no skeletons in there. There are, however, four large billiards tables which seem to be outfitted with a coin receptacle system, so you would have to pay to play a game.

(And you just spelled it right, except it's magickonegative, but you knew that, too. You troll. Good to see that someone still wants to play.)

(Well at this point, I'm not real sure what we should do.)

Continue with what we were going to do before discovering the skeletons in the hallway.

You go back downstairs to the very large room converted into a mess hall, making sure to open and close the door to the stairwell quietly, seeing that the skeletons are still there.

(Well, you've pretty much fully explored the forward upper levels, and the Lieutenant is getting ready to land, but he's waiting for your okay -- he's basically giving you first crack at clearing out the skeletons [probably not very safe] and exploring the ship [probably very interesting]. The marines might shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to alternate life forms like the Lieutenant on the ship unless they're given a heads-up.

(But first, you'll have to either be stealthy, or deal with the five-skelly squad at the far end of the Grand Ballroom. Either way, you won't be getting through the particular door they're guarding if you don't clear them out.

(It's up to you guys on whether you want to risk it. Oh, and there's looting of the soldiers' quarters for money for spell scrolls, if you want.

(I forgot: there's also the matter of possibly getting a backpack either from somewhere on the ship or from home, because all this equipment [armor, bucket, runestones] is getting heavy)

I think it might be better to search for a backpack to store some stuff. Coins would also be nice to find, so a quick visit to the quarters, being careful because some skeletons may be walking around. Then we should store the extra armor and the bucket somewhere (perhaps in the library) before engaging the skeletons in the ballroom.

So, here is my plan of action:
1. Store the extra armor and the bucket in the library.
2. Go to the quarters and see if we find some quarters :P and dimes or whatever currency they're using (if I had written the correct names (http://sinisterdesign.net/forum/index.php?topic=1059.msg41586#msg41586) I would have spoiled the pun).
3. Search for a backpack and also a small mirror since we're at it.
4. Assuming that we find a backpack, store some stuff in there. Keep holding the baseball bat and have some frost runes close at hand.

If the other people agree, let's fight the skeletons in the ballroom.
5. Head to the ballroom. Use the mirror to look inside the ballroom so that we won't be surprised.
6. Choose beforehand a few safe places to hide in case the skeletons start shooting. Behind a wall or some thick furniture may be good options. Place the mirror so that if we're in one of the safe places, we can have an overall (or at least partial look) at the ballroom.
7. The way I think it's better to engage the skeletons is to throw a couple of frost runes at them (I don't think there is the need to be extremely accurate) and hide quickly from them, since they have firearms and may fire. Use the mirror to evaluate the effect and throw a few more runes if needed and move to another safe place. If things seem to be too dangerous, go back to the library (so, leaving that option open when moving is crucial).

You stow your extra armour set in the library, along with your as-yet-unidentified bucket of pink glop, heading off to the Grand Ballroom again. You crack open the the door again, seeing the skelly squad, but this time you cautiously tiptoe out of the door, which closes behind you with a regrettably lound clunk which, though partially muffled by the lavish furnishings about the tall room, echoes enough to reach the skeletons on the other side of the hall. One of them pauses for a moment, as a curious or confused animal might, but returns to its patrolling the back reaches of the room.

You know that the soldiers' quarters are through the door the skeletons are guarding, or, even if that isn't the only route, through one of the two doors that open off to the left and right very near the far end, so it's unlikely you could get through undetected.

You look around for furniture which might be used for cover under fire, and spot six heavy and thick oak tables, three at either end of the room, which might quickly be overturned and take many bullets. The long tables running the length of the room could be useful for sneaky crawlspace from which it would be a simple matter to place your runestones into the avenues the skeletons would take in coming to attack you. For that matter, though your baseball skills are still sharp and you could easily hit the ground where a skeleton stood with a baseball from where you stood, the runestone has a different weight and shape, so you would need to be closer, say, one-third the length of the room or about twelve metres, maybe a bit less until you had thrown them a couple of times.

(So, no new spells until you get some money. No money until you get to the quarters. No getting to the quarters until you've dealt with the skeletons.

(And I'm waiting a little bit for a consensus before attacking the skeletons, and I didn't want to go ahead with it if your willingness to go at them was dependent on first getting some coin in your pocket, Ert)

Attack the skeles using Ert's plan.

You decide to overturn one of the large oak tables and use it for cover from skeleton rifle-fire, making a very loud noise. All five of the skeletons hear it, and they run towards you in a formation of three rows of two, two, and one. The skeleton with the submachine gun and catalyst who was standing with them before takes the back of the group, while the two with rifles take the very front. You wait for a few moments, and then poke your head out to check on how far they've come. About halfway. You open up your pack of frost runestones and take two out; one goes on the ground, and the other you place your palm on as per the instructions. The heat and deactivation runes on the back glow, and then the inhibition rune goes out. You hurl the runestone across the room at the right column of advancing skeletons, missing the frontmost of them, but hitting the ground just behind him, which shatters the rune manually instead of causing the shattering rune to go off, and the frost rune on the stone takes effect. Instantly, a set of white icy tendrils sprout from the spot where the stone landed, three of them arcing off towards the rifle-bearing skeleton, turning the very air to crystalline branches in a flash, while the last one reaches out for the skeletal MP with a riot shield.

When the frozen air touches exposed bone, icy bridges form between the joints, bringing the blue-white doom to the rest of the skeleton's body. Its leg bones splinter and crack, and the rifle falls to the floor, shortly covered by a man's supercooled remains. The last icy vein grabs on to the riot shield held by the former military policeman, coating it with a wintry frosting and then climbing up and around the shield, onto a hand, then an arm. There, it stops, out of energy. The skeleton and the ice stand still for a moment, and then its arm shatters into ivory fragments, the ice melting and evaporating almost as quickly as it had arrived. The skeleton looks at its jagged point of an upper arm, and then resumes its charge more slowly than before, his animating force weakened.

In the three short seconds in which this happens, the three skleletal soldiers on your left never stop their charge, but for the rifleman, who slows down to take a shot at you. The percussive crack of rifle-fire wakes you up from your awe at the deadly power of the runestones, and you quickly duck down behind cover, another bullet whistling above you near where your head had been seconds before. You activate a second runestone and pop up again quickly to toss it, seeing that the MP on the left has caught up with the rifleman, making them easy targets. Again, your runestone flies through the air between you and your attackers, breaking into pieces on the floor as the magic within is released. In mere seconds, both the rifleman and the MP are down on the floor, completely immobilized with the frost runestone's power split evenly between them. You stay, unfortunately, a second or two too long to witness the results of your toss, and the skeletal captain [you can now see his rank clearly on his uniform from this distance] opens fire with his submachine gun. Many of the bullets punch into the solid oak table you're mostly hiding behind, but a few hit their mark. One hits your extended arm, which is covered in armor but still recieves a solid blow, another two slam into your chest and shoulder, tossing you back like a ragdoll, while another luckily misses your head, but rips through the soft tissue of your ear, blood and flesh leaving with it as it passes. The captain fires a couple of more bursts from his firearm, but they all either miss or hit the table. You can see wood splinters flying up from where you are.

The skeletal captain and the MP are close in on you with only about fifteen feet between you and them, so you decide to try and rush your more dangerous opponent. You quickly reorient the oak table with a huge effort, and as the skeletal captain approaches, you grab your enchanted bat and spring from behind cover. Then, many things seem to happen at once. You stand full up, leaping forward to bludgeon the skull and disanimate the skeleton, but it raises its gun and fires a burst straight at your chest. The momentum of the bullets knocks you back down, but you scramble to your feet and keep running at the skeleton, hoping to close more distance quickly. This time, the captain raises his catalyst to cast a spell, but you try to stop him before he does, smashing your bat into his ribs and breaking his spinal cord in one huge blow, and his legs fall out from under him. But the spell is done being cast, and now it travels in a black glow up the length of the catalyst and right at you. You realize too late that it's a carbon catalyst, and that this is a blinding spell.

It hits you with a tingle on your right shoulder, an inky blackness that spreads down your torso and across it, and up your neck and onto your face. You close your mouth for fear it might go inside, but then you get a taste like a lump of coal in your mouth -- gritty, bitter, and not at all organic or nourishing. But you feel it continuing to climb up your face, and you close your eyes to protect them, but then the tingling stops just above your eyes. You then open your eyes again, but you can't see a thing. Or at least, you can't see at first. Then, you realize that the spell must have run out of energy before it could fully blacken your vision, and you know that your eyes are going to adjust. The darkening is stronger in the bottom of your field of view, so when you feel a scratching at your feet, you have to look all the way down at it to see that the skeletal captain is making a pathetic assault on your feet. You smash the skull, and the bones disanimate. Then, you take a solid blow to the back! You turn around in a literally blind panic, trying to figure out who your attacker is, and remember that the MP with the riot shield hadn't been completely incapacitated. As you desperately try to recover into a fighting stance, the skeleton rains down weak but consistent and painful poundings with his billy club, until you start to hit back with your bat. On the first strike alone, the skeleton's side freezes up, and you shatter its ribs and pelvis with a second. It falls to the ground, still swinging its billy club, but you simply bash its arm off with another pair of quick strikes, and then, tilting your head downwards to be able to really see well, you place the end of your bat on the skeleton's skull. You wait a moment, and the skull becomes covered with frost, then thicker ice, and then the ice cracks, then also cracking the skull. The skeleton has long since been disanimated from the slow and steady effect of bakor planted squarely on its head, but you keep holding your bat there, partially out of your anger at the skeleton and the sorceress, and partially because you need something to lean on. The ice cracks the skull even more as it stresses itself in too many directions at once, and then with one last shove downwards on the bat, the skull chips and breaks into more than ten different pieces. Then, satisfied, you limp over to a table [your calf grazed by one of the first skeletons you took out has had its cut reopened], hurting all over, your ear most of all. You place your head down in front of you, and you listen to the sound of your ear dripping blood in a growing pool, moaning softly from the pain and waiting for your vision to clear and for the awful taste to leave your mouth.

(Okay, that was a lot of stuff happening. You have some moderate wounds that you wouldn't be able to explain to your parents, so looking for some healing magic would be advisable, and using a form of long-ranged weapon would also be advisable in the future, given your last encounter; you'll come across spellcasters and gunners that you don't want to have to run at like with the captain. You got lucky that time.)

I was afraid that the attack could result in a bad outcome. This was not as bad as it could have been. Looking back, perhaps it would be more effective throwing each a hand full of frost runestones in a way that they landed somewhat scattered (on the other hand, it might happen that the first to be triggered could block partially, or even totally, the effect of the others).

Congrats Duckling on the writing. It was exciting to read.

Now we have to be extra careful because we're wounded and partially blinded. And how bad is our armor. Does it need to be fixed?
Are any of the skeleton's items useful to us? The riot shield may be useful if we can use it.

We should explore the other 2 doors on the ballroom. Looking for healing spells (and coins) is a priority.

You examine your armour for rips or other damage, but it seems that the armor held together quite well, probably due to some runes for durability, and did a good job of saving your life. Next, you look around at each of the broken skeletons for useful items, seeing that the rifles are the same standard issue you saw in the armoury, while the submachine gun must have been owned personally by the army captain [I forgot to say, it was an army captain, not a navy captain -- lower rank], or at least you did not see any like it upstairs. The riot shield is intact, though the hard plastic is chipped around the edges from the cold, and it may take some time to defrost, though you could probably speed up the process if you put it somewhere particularly warm. While it's this cold, it will be uncomfortable to handle, impossible if not for your gloves. Either way, you'll probably want to come back for it later.

You walk across the room to the door on the right, and when you open it find that it leads into the officers' quarters, extending fore and aft for the length of the room you just came from, but on the port side [you're facing backwards, which means your right is port]. You open the closest door to you, and see a room with two beds on opposite sides of the room, small windows looking off the side, and a dresser at the foot of each of the beds. When you search those, you see ID cards, laundry, a pistol, and about a fifty Danish crowns' worth of change between them. You pocket the money and leave the room. To your left and right, the hallway extends for about five compartments in either direction.

(Thanks! I like writing fight scenes. Also, about throwing several frost runestones at once, they're each about as big and as thick as your hand [excluding the fingers -- think burger patty], weighing about one and a half kilos each [bit less than 3 and a half pounds], and they take a full second to activate with the heat of your palm, leaving them with three seconds before they go off. So, even if you use both hands to activate them, and then both hands to throw, I'd say four is the maximum you could really ever manage at a time if you've practiced the technique, and even that's posing a serious risk of losing a limb to some frost. I hope that clears up the any issue with the scale of the runestones. And, the reason you have to throw them before a certain time isn't because after that time they'll instantly go off, but because after that time they become highly sensitive to vibration and pressure, their main application being as part of a trap, so if you tried to throw them after a few seconds had passed, then they would go off instantly. That make sense?

(You guys' choice on whether to loot other compartments in your state. Could be skellies. Could be more money.)

It might be a good idea to hide the weapons in the ballroom (store them in a closet nearby or behind some curtains). Who knows if more skellies will appear and decide to pick those up. But only do that if we're feeling up to the task. Extra care is still needed when moving around, since we're wounded.

We should also go back to the Lieutenant and ask where are the healing spells. And the infirmary, we can take care of ourselves in there, if there are no healing spells available.

(Later on, we should go back to the library and look for some info about the portals. Picking a backpack from home may also be something to do later. Finally, we the players have completely neglected the other portal. We should explore it sometime.)

(Duckling: You made perfect sense on the runestones. And on everything else, by the way.)

You decide to go back into the Grand Ballroom and hide away the weapons the skeletons dropped, kicking and nudging them under the long tables where the skeletons won't be able to see them. You make sure not to put too much weight on your leg or lift with your arm that was shot, but you manage to hide them all away. The riot shield has warmed up enough at this point for your to be able to take it, but you're feeling horrible right now, and you don't think you could manage the extra weight right now. Instead, you put it with the rest of the equipment.

You walk up to the front of the ship, through the dining car, and talk to the Lieutenant.

"Say, do you know where I could find a healing spellbook? I kind of hurt myself a bit fighting it out with that squad of skeletons in the Ballroom."

He replies, "Healing spellbook? No, we don't have any on the ship. It's a bit complicated for your average recruit, even one who's particularly good at spellcasting, though it was even harder before we started using telerunespace embedders, I think they're called. I don't know too much about the exact enchantments they use to make them, but they help us out a lot with our more complicated, but useful spells. Anyway, if you're looking for healing spells, you'd want to try at a hospital or an army base once we land. As for your present injuries, there should be a salve mixer in the infirmary, which would be on the port side of the second floor, aft from the library. There's a door between the library and the infirmary, so you could go that way, or through the soldiers' quarters and up the stairs on the left. If you're planning on using the salve mixer, take some food from the kitchen, preferably with a good mix of proteins and fats; it takes in organic matter and turns in into medicine. Industrial enchanting at its best, I think."

(It took me some time to figure out how to deal with healing: how to make it a relatively simple spell so it doesn't take until the end of the game for the player to learn the simplest healing, but while also respecting the fact that healing is an incredibly complicated and physically arbitrary biochemical process which cannot be fully encompassed in a basic rune or two. I ended up coming up with a relatively cool game mechanic in the process to find a compromise between the two aspects of healing.

(I've neglected lockpicking magic and the ceremonial sword, so I think I and the players are about even on neglect to the story.)

I would like the hero to go back to the hero's room and take his school bag/backbag, where he could store the runes and other stuff. Maybe when he gets a sharp weapon, he could easily store the bat in it too. Also I would like the hero to enchant the bat with frost magic (as in giving it the ability to freeze things on impact, so it could shatter the ones of the skeletons more easily. Also it'd make it easier to broke any armor your enemy could have. Maybe draw the frost rune so it'd be around the reinforcement one?)

Then go check to the kitchen to search for ingredients for the salve.

By the way, I just stumbled upon this, spen an hour and half reading all the way through it and love it :)

You walk over to the corner of the room to casually lean against the wall, and when you decide that the Lieutenant is more intent on flying the ship than he is on watching you, quietly walk back through the portal. It's not that you don't trust the Lieutenant necessarily, but you really don't want this strange adventure of yours spilling over into your everyday life; fortunately, he doesn't seem to notice.

You stumble as you come through the portal into your room, falling to the floor after your leg buckles under your weight. You catch yourself, but when your eyes are at floor level, you notice the bones still under your bed; those will be hard to explain tomorrow morning if you don't get rid of them. Trying to remember that for later, but also finding it hard to keep a clear head in your battered state late at night -- you look over at your clock and see that it's actually five minutes past midnight. The time had gone so quickly! Either way, you know you can't leave your room looking like this and expect your parents not to pitch a fit. Moreover, your father was going to be returning from the energy summit in Japan late tonight and if he were to find your room empty, he would be decidedly grumpy; instead of letting that happen, you empty out your backpack on your floor and put your remaining runestones in the medium pouch [you have six left], turn out the light in your room, and go back into the second portal with your backpack. You find yourself in the ship again, and the Lieutenant is still fixed on piloting the large airship around Reykjavik airspace.

When you are at the door of the cockpit, the Lieutenant says, "I don't know where you go when you walk into that wall, but do not think that I did not see you; also, given that you are being quite helpful in ridding this ship of skeletons, I won't ask you where you got your hands on that kind of magic. I also won't tell the Marines anything they don't directly ask about you. Sound fair?" You nod silently, very surprised at the Lieutenants lenient attitude towards you, but then realize that he's still facing forward. "Yes, Lieutenant," you reply, not really believing that you would have been able to change his mind on the matter if you had wanted to.

Then, you go on to the ship's kitchen to get some foodstuffs for the salve mixer to use, and decide to get some eggs, a couple of tomatoes, and a fistful of nuts and put them in a bowl. The Lieutenant had said that just about any food or organic matter would do, but it couldn't hurt to use decently healthy foods.

(I'm really glad you like it! I always love to hear that people are enjoying something I've written or designed or produced, but especially what I've written. Another thing: it was easy to miss, since it only really took one post to do, but the hero has already enchanted his bat with both protection and frost runes, which was useful in his fight with the skeletons, since it allowed the bat to shatter the bones more easily. Also, if you drew the frost rune around the protection rune, the frost would become dominant with protection as the secondary rune, so the magic would "ice protect" the bat, encasing it in a layer of ice, which I don't think would be the desired effect.

(I'm not trying to discourage you from trying out new rune combinations or enchanting in general, but I will tell you that most desired effects from multiple runes can be acheived by having their two effects exist separately, and thus drawing them separately on the item to be enchanted. Also, since the bat has already been enchanted with two runes, that's pretty much the limit for now, since the arcane energy gets too unstable.)

I'd like to know what day it is in the hero's own dimension, since if he has school the next day it could be a little awkward. He has homework so I don't think he's having a vacation of any sort? But even like that the time would go in the other dimensions and the aircraft might have to land and that'd quite ruin the whole plot with what's happening inside the aircraft? I'd like to know more about the flow of time in these dimensions. Is it the same in all of them, or does it slow down when you go to another one?

You remember that today is Friday, or rather, it was; now it's been Saturday for six minutes. It's actually the Labour Day weekend now, so you have three free days to spend on something other than your homework, since you threw that into the prison cell portal, and it's now lying scattered there unless someone else has picked it up since then. You also make a mental note to conduct a simple experiment or two to determine if the flow of time is different on the two sides of the portal.

Go and make the salve, and after that get back to your room, and make a note for your mother that you're gonna go out with your friends for the whole day, but will come back before your father gets back. (In case she comes to wake you up in the morning) After that ask the Lieutenant if there is anything that would take your exhaustion and sleepines away.

You go up the stairs to the right of the door into the Grand Ballroom, through the library, and into the infirmary, carrying your bunch of foodstuffs in your pack. Once there, you see that three soldiers had taken ill and were in the infirmary when the attack on the ship occurred; now, they have been reduced to skeletons, though they all seem to be unanimated. You walk over to a large basin with two simple runes on it along with two hand-sized metal surfaces on the front also marked with runes, none of which you recognize, and conclude from the food stains near the top and the pinkish stains at the bottom that this is the salve mixer. Simple instructions are written on it trilingually, so you read the English version: "Insert organic matter into basin. Close lid and lock in place. Set hands on rune interfaces on front. Wait at least thirty seconds before opening valve for healing agent. When done, allow to drain -- agent becomes caustic after thirty minutes."

Follow the instructions, use the salve, and then continue on what I wrote before..:D

You dump all of the food you took from the kitchen into the mixer, close the hatch, and lock it in place. Then, you place both of your hands on the rune-inscribed plates, and the food inside of the mixer stays still, doing nothing, doing nothing... then it starts to sort of melt and bubble, rendered down into chunks, and then into a sort of sludge, but at this point in the process, you hear a sudden clacking noise behind you. Turning around, you see that one of the skeletal soldiers has gotten up, and is now pointing a machine-gun at your head.

(I stopped halfway through completing what you asked to be done because you could have checked to be sure that the skeletons, which are kind of suspicious in the first place, were actually unanimated and not just unaware of your presence.)

(I saw this coming when I was reading... Oh well, that's what we get for going away for a few days! :) )

How close is the skeleton?
How fast can we pick up our bat?
Or, even better, will it be possible to grab the machine-gun (if it's really close) while deviating ourselves from it and pull the skeleton against the runes? The magic in the runes may help disabling it. (The salve mixer may be damaged by the impact, let's hope not, but some bullets in it may also damage it.)
Where are the other 2 skeletons, are they also up?
(And not really important right now, but I would like to know, if we survive, if the salve mixer been working for more than 30 seconds.)

The skeleton is eight feet from you, and your bat would be quite easy to pick up from where you are, since it's leaned against the counter on which the salve mixer is sitting. You might be able to grab the machine-gun from where you are if you leap forwards and to the side in a way that you can grab the gun quickly enough that the skeleton won't have time to turn its firearm around and turn your head into a lead-filled strawberry smoothie.

The other two skeletons are still in beds, motionless, and they still appear to be de- / un- / dis- / non-animated, but since this one was able to surprise you, you might want to check the other two when you're done dispatching the one with the machine-gun.

(The salve mixer has only been working for fifteen seconds, so the food is reduced to a somewhat uniform-ish soup of small pink chunks. The salve mixer still needs to break down the chunks a bit more and separate out the liquids. In short, no.)

(Mmm... 8 feet is about 2.5m... I'm more used to the metric system... but perhaps most people around here isn't. :) )

So, now I have two choices:
1 - Grab the machine-gun and pull the skeleton against the slave mixer runes and hope that they can disable it. A variation would be to it against our baseball bat.
2 - Since the bat is handy, we may also pick it up with one hand while we move forward and grab the machine-gun with the other hand. Taking advantage of our speed we can (hopefully) hit the skeleton with the bat. Having the risk of being too specific, I was thinking that since we've turned around, the bat may be on our left side (assuming we're right-handed), so we would pick it up the bat on our left side with the right hand while advancing quickly. The left hand would grab the machine-gun while the right hand would move outwards and hit the skeleton in the chest in a rotating movement slightly upwards, and then downwards smashing the skeleton's skull... if things go as planned...

(I prefer the 2nd tactic, but I would like to hear the other players own ideas before making a definitive choice. I fear that the other skeletons may also have firearms near them and if we aren't fast enough we may be hit by them.)

(On a different note, is the soup starting to look like the pink glop?)

How fast are these skeletons? human fast? faster? zombie slow? this really matters right about now

Go with Ert's second tactic. Ert's been handling most of the skeleton combat, and seems to know what he's doing.

I noticed, he seems to have the best solution, but the speed question still stands

You decide in the fraction of a second you have to respond to pick up your bat, which rests to the left of you, and lunge forward and dive to the left, delivering a backhand blow to the machine-gun, whereupon you hear a breaking sound from the gun. The skeleton retains its grip on the firearm, however, and points it towards you, ready to kill you where you lie on your side after your frantic leap. You start to scramble up in order to club the skeleton, but it already has its bony finger on the trigger. The the skeleton fires a burst of fire into your side, completely knocking all the wind out of you and huring like hell, but it looks like something you did to the gun made it catch on its ammunition belt and cease firing. Regardless, you've just been pummeled badly and broken a few ribs, and you're having a hard time getting up, so while the skeleton is fumbling with its gun, you grab on to the skeleton's legs and hold your bat up next to the naked bone, waiting. Your efforts are rewarded when the skeleton's leg collapses out from under it, and it falls to its side in front of you.

However, it manages to club you with its now-useless gun on its way down, and you grimace from the blow to the head. However, you manage to reach over to your attacker's skull with your bat, and let it start to work. The skeleton gets in two more whacks to your head, each one weaker than the one preceding, before its bones finally fall apart with no arcane forces to animate them. You lack the anger and the energy to freeze and shatter the skull, and besides, with no malevolent will behind them, destroying the bones would be a desecration.

You lie there for a moment, waiting for your vision to clear, but it doesn't. You're bleeding internally, and you're not sure you can walk. Instead, you drag yourself over to the salve mixer and put your palms on the plates while sitting up with your back against the counter, hands reversed on the runic mechanism, and wait for the healing salve to finish, giving it twenty seconds to account for having been interrupted. When it finishes, you heave yourself to your feet, grimacing from the pain you're feeling, open the salve valve, fill your cupped left hand with the stuff, promptly collapsing back to the floor. You'll just have to hope beyond all hope that the other two skeletons aren't animated.

(To answer your question, the skeletons move at about the speed of a normal human being, with a similar dexterity to their movements. They have no capacity for complex reason, so they couldn't solve a puzzle lock if such a thing were to exist, but they can carry out most of the basic actions a mercenary sorceress working under the Third Reich would want them to be able to do.

(Oh, and guys? Don't think that you screwed up this fight or anything -- it was kind of inevitable that you'd get yourself hurt here.

Use the salve, and pretend to be dead as best as you can, hoping the other skeletons aren't animated, or are gullible enough to think you're finished. Make sure your bat is close at hand, however.

Good thinking to pretend we're dead.

You apply some of the salve to your leg wounds from before, both in your very first skeleton fight and in your battle with the five-skelly squad. Then, you place some on your scratches from the skeleton that clawed at your side before you had armor [holding your vest up as you do so -- being caught without it equipped could be regrettable] and on the spot where your ribs had been broken by the burst of machine-gun fire. You also try to put the last bits of the salve in your hand under your hair so as to at least deal with the surface bruise, though you could very well be concussed, which a salve would be unlikely to help. You do all of this while generating as little noise as possible, lying against the counter in the infirmary, so that if a skeleton happens to be animated after all, it won't necessarily "wake" from its apparently dormant state.

After doing so, you just sit and try and reflect on the events occurring in the last two hours, and find that you're actually very tired, and, quite accidentally, drift off to sleep.

Some time later, you wake with a start as you feel yourself falling to your right, responding in time to break your fall and prevent hitting your head again, and as you sit up again, you feel that all over your body, the wounds you had had before are no longer hurting -- the salve had done its work. You also remember that your were unsure of whether the two skeletons in the room with you were animated or not, so you get up and find you can do quite easily, without any trace of injury but a dull ache in your head from a beating taken from the skeleton's gun. You pick up your bat and walk over to each of the skeletons in turn and bring down your bat on their skulls heavily, breaking them. With the first, all of the other bones jump in place, much as an animal's dying twitches, but on the second, there is no reaction from the bones assembled in front of you indicating that they were animated at all.

(It's getting a bit late at night for your character, and it would probably be best for him to go to bed soon. Whether you want to stay the night on the ship and only leave a note for your mother at home, or just sleep in your own bed is up to you guys.)

Ah.. I'd like to still go with my plan of leaving the note and asking the Lieutenant for something that'd help you recover with maybe less sleep? It's a warship so the soldiers don't have much time to sleep at times so there could be something like that couldn't there?

I like Kaseke's idea.

agreed

You walk back through the library and the Ballroom and the dining car to the cockpit, where the Lieutenant is still sitting in his chair. As you reach him, he turns around, his gruesomely stretched body not fitting properly as he tries to maintain his posture with his damaged vertebrae.

"I wanted to discuss something with you," he says, just as you are about to speak. "This is important. I need you to stop destroying the skeletons." You're quite surprised, and ask him why. The skeletons are a menace, after all. "Yes, I know this. But do you know how these skeletons are animated?" he asks.
"Yeah, by something like a runic flow spell from the sorceress."
"And this requires active effort to maintain," says the Lieutenant.
"Yes. What are you getting at?"
"One moment. Do you remember when the ship's computer told you that I was capable of flying the ship, on board, but dead?"
"Yeah, sure," you reply. "But that can't be true."
"Ah, but it is true. I'm clinically speaking, dead. Beyond the grave, I've bought the farm, kicked the bucket, and the rest. The same magic that animated the skeletons distended by body and stopped my heart, but at the same time is the only animating force in my body, other than my thoughts at the moment."
"Wow. I didn't realize. So, why don't you want me to kill the skeletons? Wouldn't decreasing the amount of bodies animated by the spell increase your vitality and such?" you ask.
"Technically speaking, yes, but if the skeletons keep dying and only one body the sorceress animated remains, competently flying the ship, she'd get suspicious. In fact, she might be suspicious as it is, which is why my biological processes are just asking to go out any minute, since she could cut off the flow of magic with ease if she knew what was going on here."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"Well, most of the skeletons are actually dormant at the moment, so they won't pose a threat to us, except in the case that they should realise that their mission aboard this airship has failed completely -- that is, if we land. Don't you think that the shock throughout the ship would be enough to alert the dormant skeletons that they had screwed up, and through the mass waking of these animated corpses, alert the sorceress and then cut off all the necromantic magic. Normally, I'd say that would be a great idea, but right now, that dark magic's a bit like my life support. Fortunately, there's really good biomagical care given to Danish Air Force officers, so there's a slim chance I could survive this ordeal.
"I need a Marine detachment to board the ship, bring the medical crew aboard so they can operate on me, but at the same time, keep the Marines from being gun-happy in the rear of the ship; again, there might be other survivors like myself. In order for that to happen, I have to explain the situation fully to them, albeit making the skeletons sound more dangerous than they really are, in order for them to get that they oughtn't go to the back of the ship. Now, I'm guessing that the operation will take many hours to perform, and I can't have you seen in that time, so you have to either be through that hole in the wall you go through, or you have to be in the rear of the ship. It's your choice, but I need you to be back there if you want any chance of finding the other survivor."
"The other survivor?" you ask.
"I did a shipwide bioelectrical reading, and it looks like there's one other survivor like me; the computer recognized him as the Warrant Officer. I tried to look for the man on the cameras, but all I'm getting is occasional blurry shots of some roundish shape as it goes past the camera at high speed. Goodness knows what the magic did to him, or how he escaped it. What I do know, however, is that he's well worth the trouble. Good man, highly skilled in certain practical enchants, and a damn good knippelsuppier, too. Best we've got in the whole division of the Air Force.
"Either way, I want you to wait in the hall of the officer's quarters, which I'm also going to section off from the Marines, and make sure no skeletons come out of their rooms. They shouldn't do anything like that, since they're probably dormant anyway, but in the case they do, you need to stop them. Also, when the operation's done, I'll ask someone to switch the lights in that room on and off, so you know that either I'm okay, or the procedure failed and I'm dead. Either way, go on to the farthest-back part of the ship where the Warrant Officer will be. The most important part of this is clearing a path to him, so he can escape. I assume he's pretty much surrounded by the skeletons, but kill only as many as you need to -- the sorceress can still cut the necromantic rune flow spell at any time, and we can't have him dying on us."
"If you need to restock on weapons, ammunition, runestones, whatever, or buy a spell from the vending machine in the library, do it now, since you can't be seen until you're coming out into the Grand Ballroom, with the Warrant Officer in tow. If the Marines see you before you've got the WO, they'll figure out that I've got a kid in there doing their job and go in there guns blazing. That's best-case scenario. Worse-case probably involves you getting shot. In the head."
"Well, now that I've told you what has to happen, I've also said that it could take me a while, possibly even a whole day, to get the skeleton situation under control and get them confined to the back of the ship. Some time in between kiling the skeletons would be a good way to ease the sorceress' suspicions about the goings-on on the ship, and you can get some well-deserved rest."

"How did you know I'm tired?" you ask.
"Just look at you! You're completely wiped out. For a trained soldier with proper field experience, I'd just say to take a serotonin suppressant to keep you awake, but for one, you're a kid, and secondly, you don't have the look of a child soldier, hardened by harsh experiences in battle to the point where suppressing your body's need to sleep would be cake compared to pains you've been through. You just don't. You're just someone who really wants to help the people around him. Any questions about the plan?"

(I would like to read later from the library something about portals. Perhaps we could pick a book about it and read later while we're waiting. I would also like to know what is the pink glop for. Did it look like the salve? And how fit are we, are we as good as new, except for the tiredness? And there is the ceremonial sword and the other portal into the prison cell that we haven't explored.)

It might be safer to sleep at our house. Do we have time to sleep at home and come back and give a hand to the Lieutenant? Or would it be more helpful if we sleep in the ship?

Regarding the plan, is it possible to place some furniture or even better, to lock some doors to keep at least some of the skeletons confined without causing trouble?

Ask what is a knippelsuppier.

(I don't recall any useful spells from the machine, but I might be wrong. Some more runestones may be useful. It would be great if we had something else that would allow us to attack the skeletons at long range with some efficiency. I fear that guns will not be the best choice, unless there are some special bullets, perhaps with a rune...)

(I'll be away for a couple of weeks and I might have limited access to the internet, but I will try to keep an eye on the story!)

You ask about furniture for barricading important doors:

"Yes, that might work. How about those tables in the Ballroom? They're pretty huge, and we could use them to block off, say, the door between the Ballroom and the enlisted men's quarters, and between the officers' quarters and the enlisted quarters. Of course, you'll have to remove the latter of the two barricades to get in once my procedure to get me back to normal again is done, but you know that. None of the doors really lock, except the ones to the officers' individual quarters, since privacy is one of the luxuries not afforded during wartime, so the barricading will have to work."

You ask what a knippelsuppier is:

"Why, it's someone who pilots a knippelsuppe, of course. The Warrant Officer is damned good at it, too."

You ask what a knippelsuppe is:

"Oh, I see. A knippelsuppe is a very thick metal ball of steel a foot thick which flies about under magical power. It is enchanted heavily [and therefore very precisely] on the outside and inside for two important characteristics. The first is lift. The second is much more complex, but basically boils down to the ability to chose arbitrary anchor points in airspace, to which the knippelsuppe is attracted, causing it to revolve about that point in orbit. Choosing a new anchor point in mid-orbit can cause an increase in speed if done right, and the vehicle is strong enough that it can simply smash into enemy aircraft and knock them out of the air, utterly destroyed. It's a highly effective weapon for breaking up formations and establishing air superiority, as well as raids on the Nazi air bases. Actually, there's really not much it's not good for, since there isn't anything much that can destroy it, and there isn't much it can't destroy with enough momentum. The best part is that the interior is also enchanted to negate the effects of inertia on the pilot, so the incredible g-forces involved in flying this device don't cause the pilot harm. And the walls are invisible from the inside.

As you might guess, it takes a very special type of person to fly this thing. We're lucky to have the Warrant Officer on our side."

(Okay, finding a book on portals will be the next order if you have nothing else you want to do in light of any information I give you right now.

(As for the pink glop, I have been entirely too cryptic, so I shall be slightly less cryptic, but still a little bit cryptic. Try spilling it on the floor in front of a skeleton, or painting it on the floor in two places, and messing around with it.

(We're fine, except for a dull ache in the head, and generally being pretty tired.

(I don't see why guns wouldn't work. If you're accurate enough with them to destroy the skeleton's skull, they're fine. And usually, it's the guns that you enchant and not the bullets. I mean, you could enchant a bullet, and it might be slightly more effective than just enchanting the gun that shoots it, but it would be time-consuming. As for enchanted ammunition, it's not really something commonly produced.)

(You do have time to go and sleep at home. The Lieutenant will stall the Marines for as long as it takes, and it'll be fine. Do make sure you don't forget to come back. He has to land eventually.)

hmm... I think we should go to sleep and then use the tables to build a partial barricade so the areas we haven't cleard out don't give us any suprises. Then we should go check the library for those portal books. (We've cleared the whole area onwards from the library, yes?)

(On the other hand, barricading before going to sleep may prevent future problems... at least a quick placement of the tables and perhaps painting the passage with pink glop... We can improve it after sleeping.)

(A few key areas to leave easier access to are the library, the infirmary, the armoury and the cockpit. They may have to be partially blocked from us while we're hiding, so we should take what we need before hiding. And choose a few places to hide runes and stuff like that in case the skeletons organize an attack and we need to make a strategic retreat.)

I suppose that the Lieutenant is briefly seeing a knippelsuppe on the security cameras... we can ask him about it.

We can also ask him what is the pink glop for (and we may later look for the meaning of the rune inscribed on the bucket handle).

(We should also think about things to take with us while we're hiding, after we sleep at home. Runestones are a must, the bat, some food, a book about runes, the armour we're wearing, perhaps a machine-gun with a frost rune like the baseball bat - I suppose we don't have train at shooting things, otherwise, a sniper rifle may be better. More ideas?)

(We must not forget to hide at home, before going to sleep, the things we already have. Oh, and take a bath and brush our teeth. :) It's too risky to try to take down skeletons with halitosis, I prefer long range attacks.)

(Yeah.. We should get some more weaponry.)

(I think after we're done with the whole ship thing we might want to go investigate the other world, and find out about the things in there. We could use the knowledge we have from the other world in there, and maybe get something handy from that world as well, but might want to leave it for later.)

(The pink glop might turn out to be a sufficient way of building magic walls that the skeletons can't pass. We could read a book about fortifying runes after sleep? For now maybe move some tables to block any way to the library/armory. I don't want any skeletons in there. Also maybe block all the ways into the dining room so we'd have a big area where we can walk freely.)

(Also, as I suggested before, we could make some magic walls with runes while we clear the way for that knippelsuppier. Lure the skeletons to some room and seal it off. That'd also take care of that "no de-animating problem.)

If I remember right, didn't the power emanating from the tune collection in the library de-animate a few skeletons before? Or are we trying to keep them away from the library to avoid de-animating them?

Yeah, I'd like to make walls that they can't get through, but that they don't get de-animated when touching/trying to get throught them. And if we only de-animate a few with a lot of time between doing so, it'd seem only natural that they'd stumble upon places like the library or fall off and shatter or something. The skeletons don't seem to think too much about where they're going, as long as they complete their mission.

You ask the Lieutenant whether the fast shape he is seeing flying across the camera screens could be one of the knippelsupper, but he shakes his head: "It's much to small to be a knippelsuppe; they're on the order of three metres across, while what I'm seeing is hardly one fifth that. Besides, once those things get momentum, they aren't in the habit of stopping, so the ship would probably have a hole or two in it by now."

You thank him, and then go over to the Ballroom to haul the oak tables into position. While you are in the hallway outside of the officers' individual quarters, the door directly across from the table you're pushing through the hall opens, revealing a skeleton wielding a very large pistol. It fires shots at you, one of which misses, and the other of which hits you in the chest, knocking the wind out of you. You duck under the table to avoid its shots, and with your bat (which you had been holding with your thumb while the rest of your hand pushing the large oak table), smash at its legs, knocking it to the ground. Before it has a chance to shoot at you again, you finish it off with a smash to the head.

Unfortunately, this seems to wake another skeleton in the room directly to the right of the table, which blocks the door. You decide that you can't risk waking any more of the skeletons, and instead try to destroy the skeleton quietly. You wonder if arcane fields can penetrate wood well, and press yourself up against the door, along with your enchanted bat, in the hopes that the strength of the runes alone will be enough to disanimate it. You wait there, kneeling on the table, trying to stick to the door as best you can as it's battered from the opposite side. Slowly, ever so slowly, the battering slows down, and stops completely. Finally, you hear a clatter as a pile of bones fallls to the floor. Success.

You finish pushing the table to the far door at the aft end of the hall, and make an executive decision to go to bed, since your decreasing coordination is hurting your ability to do the things required of you. As you pass the Lieutenant, you tell him, "Good night. I'll need about half a day more." at which he is puzzled, since it's actually around 3:30 in the afternoon on the ship, and says nothing in response.

(You brush your teeth and change into pajamas, too, Ert.

(Don't worry, I'm not forgetting anything: books on portals, pink glop, finding alternate routes to the library, infirmary, and armoury if possible [cockpit is out of the question, since that's where Marine presence will be greatest], hiding spots for runestones, restocking runestones, the Compendium, food, a rifle or two to try and enchant, magical barriers, and possibly methods of maintaining stealth in order to minimize killing of skeletons.

(And the Lieutenant, as he rather implied earlier, doesn't really know anything about the pink glop. It's experimental, mildly dangerous if used improperly or without the proper equipment [like the runestones in that respect], and still being tested by the military.)

ooc,
1. how do you smash the legs of a skeleton that came in on the other side of a ballroom?
2. why not just break their arms and legs but leave them animated, they're essentially helpless but still animated exactly how you want them.?

When you wake up, you turn to your right to see that it is 9:45, meaning you have a little more than two hours or so to get ready for the Marines to arrive. You quickly write up a note to place on your door, saying that you've gone out with friends for the day, and that you'll be back in time for dinner. You also put on a watch, since you don't want to lose track of time while you're doing research in the ship's library, like you did last time, and go through the portal again, into the cockpit. The Lieutenant asks you,
"Are you ready?"
"No, not quite yet. I need to do a bit of research in the library and stock up on weaponry, but that's pretty much it. I'll let you know, okay?"
"Okay. Look, if I don't make it through my operation -- it'll be a complicated and messy biomagical procedure, since there's necromancy mixed into the picture -- if I don't make it, I just wanted to say that you've done more to help the Allied Forces today than most people do in their lives. You just saved thousands of lives by keeping this airship from crashing while I battled with the huge amounts of pain that sorceress inflicted on me; I wouldn't have recovered in time to save the ship if you hadn't intervened. You understand that, right? And whatever happens, whether I live or not, you're a hero."
"Thank you, Lieutenant."
"Call me Erik. Erik Jakobsøn."
"Then thank you, Erik."

You then go to the library, where you look for any books that might explain the existence of the portals. Sadly, you find none. At the end of an hours research spent on pursuing false leads in scholarly papers on teleportation, on temporary suspensions of force allowing soldiers to potentially walk through walls, and on the potential existence of alternate realities, due to an observation of the loss of force-carrying particles over lengthy distances, the idea being that they are escaping to these other universes. In the end, you have only one true lead, from a report in a file on failed intelligence missions, indicating that the Third Reich mages were working on a side-project of remote transportation via portals that could be opened up on any surface to allow greater troop mobility. However, the report had been discredited and promptly declassified, as the agent delivering the information turned out to have been working for the Nazis after all, meaning it was most likely that he was just feeding the Allies false information to make them fear magical innovations which had not arisen.

The document went on to say that true teleportation or any form of magical translocation was impossible, given that no known element or wood or rune in any of the millions of tested combinations could do it in a meaningful way, since teleportation was not a manifestation of a natural phenomenon in any way, other than perhaps quantum teleportation, which had a serious flaw in it; it was completely random. All the constituent particles of the person to be teleported would be scattered finely throughout the range of the device, rendering it completely unsafe.

Curious about this supposed dead end, you move on to finding information about the pink glop. Since all you know about it is that it is pretty gloppy and very pink, you find it difficult to research, and move on. Next, you find the Compendium you were fishing your practical enchants out of earlier and found quite useful, and decide to take that as well. You carry the book, and the portal document back downstairs, where you pick up your bucket and alternate armor, and carry the whole mess back to the officers' quarters hallway.

(I'm trying to split these into manageable-sized posts, since I find it hard to organise my thoughts when I can't see most of them, and it just becomes a huge wall of text to me. Instead, I'm keeping each post somewhat self-contained as far as content goes. Also, it gives me some time in between them without making you guys wait for a long time.

(@Namelesskitty, you weren't in the Ballroom. You were in the hallway outside of the officers' quarters, which one accesses through the door at the far end of the Ballroom to the right. The oak tables came from the Ballroom; the skeletons were in the quarters. Y'see?)

plz answer my questions, I'm dying to know.

(I just did. Well, half of them. If you leave a skeleton animated, it'll try and wake up the others, or gnaw on your feet as you go by, or do something dastardly. Anyway, you know how injured and dying animals are more dangerous than the healthy, happy kind? It's true about skeletons, too.)

(Also, don't get so antsy. I was answering four other people's issues at the moment, and I still haven't fully addressed all of them. It's a multi-post reply, in case that was lost on you. I'll answer your questions in due time, but keep in mind that others asked theirs first. I just happen to be answering your questions for goodness-knows-what reason, but don't expect me to do so necessarily in the future when I'm not finished with others.)

You then go up to the armoury, where the same equipment is present as was before, including rifles and machine-guns, runestones and catalysts, and large mobile anti-aircraft turrets (might could be useful for defending or clearing a hallway, once you had rescued and helped out the Warrant Officer. Probably good to keep in mind for later. You pick up a pack of four more runestones, bringing you up to ten, which really should probably be enough, along with three rifles and two machine-guns for attempting to enchant for different traits that could be of use to you in dealing with skeletons. That's as much as you can carry, and it's all that you need from the armoury for now, so you carry that load downstairs, too.

For what you're pretty sure is the last trip, you go to get the librarian's notebook for testing out enchantments -- all the sheets of paper will be useful when you're practising enchants you have no experience with. That seems to be everything you need. You take out your bucket of pink glop and paint the floor in front of the barricaded door with it, in order to hold off anything that might try and come through before you magically reinforce the barricade.

(I'll leave the story here so anyone that has any ideas can think of something we have to do before telling the Lieutenant that we're ready and sealing ourselves off in here.)

Plot an emergency escape route just in case things go absolutely horribly wrong (which I think most of us are expecting them to end badly. Nothing's ever easy.)

Agreed. Also, I'd like to have something that could distract the skeletons... Maybe small smoke bombs or something? That shouldn't be too hard to find.

You look around you for a way out of this hallway in the event that things should go south on you. On the ceiling at the very foremost section of the hallway, there is an air vent, about forty-five or fifty centimetres across -- big enough for you to climb into. However, it is higher than you can reach, and even if you could reach it and unscrew the grate, you see no good way of getting in; you're just not athletic enough to pull yourself up and into it. Maybe if you could find a horizontal opening into the shafts, you could use it as a way of getting between areas in the ship without alerting the Marines or skeletons.

However, you're just going to have to hope that nothing does go wrong, for the sake of the Warrant Officer. Realistically, if a horde of skeletons were to swarm this hallway, you could just walk into the Ballroom, thus saving the life of the Lieutenant by not having to kill scores of skeletons in a way that would surely attract the attention of the sorceress, but sacrificing your opportunity to help the WO.

As for a distraction, you don't know of anything on the ship that could help, but you know enough about runestones and how they work that you could probably improvise your own, perhaps a few for fire or just for sound. Your armor would save you from shrapnel in the event that you mess up a runestone while inscribing its runes, but the magical effects could hurt you. Of course, the same could be said about many weapons.

hmm.. How about getting some smaller plates (wooden preferably) and make them noise decoys with the runes. Or anything else that's flat, so you could carry many in a big pile without really taking much space, and so that they could maybe be tied to your backpack. Also the flat ones could be easily thrown for longer distances, if they are light enought

You walk to the kitchens, and take a large stack of plates [only steel, it seems, so they won't shatter on impact or even activation, probably, unless you could find a smith aboard the ship who could turn the steel martensitic, leaving it more brittle, but you don't really even know enough about the runestone magics to be sure that that would be a good thing, and you doubt that airships have smithies].

You look at the frost runes you have with you in your backpack for the arrangement of runes:

Primary rune on the front, with two smaller runes inside it, shattering on the left, activation on the right, with an even smaller rune for what you think is pressure to its right, based on what you saw when you used the runestones against the skeletons. Then again, it could have been a sonic rune. On the back, there's an inhibition rune, with a deactivation rune inside it, and a smaller heat rune to the right of the deactivation rune.

You think you can replicate the runes with some practice, so first you get to drawing them individually on paper. However, you soon remember that you have to know their names in order to enchant the plates with these runes! Back to the library, to look up information on the runes used in runestones.

(Well metal ones will do just as fine..:D They make more noice and attract the skeletons better)

To the library we go then! I'd like to investigate some decoy runes. Maybe you could make some smoking plates that would attract the skeletons, or noice ones? And then some for attack as well, so you could throm them long distances without attracting any attention to you so the skeletons would follow the plate, and then just BOOM.

Mmmm... I'm unsure if the runes itself will not be enough to disable the skeletons, like it happened to the skeleton on the other side of the door.
If this is the case, it may happen that instead of working as a decoy, the plates will disable the skeletons straight away. I think that in the beginning we only want to distract the skeletons to block them away from us.

To have a decoy, why not just a simple string attached to a few metal plates of even some large pans. We could even use a broom attached to that string as a fishing rod! :P
We can also use the legs of a table or a cabinet in case we want to drive the skeletons away from us. It would be even easier if we can get our hands on some pulleys.

(I'm actually going to do some oon [out of narration] plotting with you guys for a bit, since this part is important to the plot and I want it to go the right way, but I want to make sure you guys don't mess yourselves up by setting up decoys that will just alert the skeletons to your location. I won't tell you anything that you couldn't already know [probably], but I'll propose ideas and say what I think about you guys'. That okay? Anyway, my "I'm just another player" text will be in braces)

{ Won't the string be a bit visible, especially if it's moving up and down as long strings do, when they're being pulled taut and slacked? I mean, skeletons are imperceptive, but they're not that imperceptive. Or maybe I don't really understand what you're suggesting... }

OK. Point taken. In my mind, the skeletons were nearly blind. And I suppose it would take too long to create something hidden from sight that worked as intended.

Nevertheless, I still fear that the runes in the decoys may end up disabling the skeletons that approach it. The problem is that it may happen too soon.

And what about enchanting the rifles and the machine guns. Will a frost rune be effective or is it better to do some research on a better rune to use? A rune that help us aim would be great!

You look in Børnheim's Compenium of Combative Enchants you have with you under firearm enchants, and find a rune for accuracy, called "trakhu" and drawn as below. You practice it a couple of times and, once you get the hang of the rune, fold up the piece of paper you drew it on into a paper airplane, and throw it at the far door. You're immediately surprised at how it keeps its trajectory so well, eventually crushing its nose against the door.

(A frost rune wouldn't be that effective on the gun [or, at least, the round would have to be in the gun for a while for it to really cool down a lot], but it would probably be quite effective on an individual rifle round; however, if you were to be doing sniping, you'd actually want a fire rune for greater distance, along with maybe a dual enchantment of accuracy on the round along with the fire, and at least a basic accuracy rune on the rifle. [Some historical context: in this universe, sniping has about three times the range it did in our universe at any given time, due to technological advances in step with arcane research.])

Nothing's been happening here either lately. Wanna start it off again? I need a little time to read through some of the lastest stuff so I remember where we left at least but... I think we should practise a little on the fire rune if we want to use it on the gun. Since you probably have to make it smaller to get two of them to fit, and accuracy too.

Actually, I'm thinking I'm going to lock the thread for a bit -- I don't really have the time to invest on making this story good. At the moment, anyway.

However, I promise that when it returns, it will return with illustrations.

Just a quick update on the illustrated boot of A War Story. [It's not a reboot, since it wasn't really properly booted to begin with] Here's the main character:

(http://imgur.com/tlY2s.png)

I know what you're thinking: "Duckling, why is his skin grey?"

I think you're missing some of the more important issues at hand, like:

"Why doesn't this chump have a mouth? How the heck does he eat?" and
"Where are his fingers?" and most importantly
"How does he get his hair to do that? I want hair like that, if not necessarily in that colour."

Colour of skin should really be the last thing on your mind, considering this poor bloke's considerably more pressing anatomical deformities.

But no matter, for all of these questions will be answered in due time.

Especially the one about how he eats.

[spoiler=Kinda Gross in a Non-Canon Sort of Way](http://imgur.com/olekn.png)[/spoiler]

Quote from: Duckling on October 29, 2012, 01:59:22 PM
[spoiler=Kinda Gross in a Non-Canon Sort of Way](http://imgur.com/olekn.png)[/spoiler]

Heh heh heh heh heh. I'm very much so interested now. But by the by, I am wondering how anime characters get their hair to do that. I've always dreamed of having stylish hair in that manner.

Okay, I've got designs for the as-yet-unnamed character in his personal armor and his medieval helmet [no color scheme for the helmet yet -- that would require effort into something I haven't decided on yet], but one is a bit more legitimate [meaning it looks like an actual helmet], while the other looks sillier [... you'll see what I mean] but better serves to distinguish the guy when he's interacting with other characters with helmets on. Here they are:

[spoiler=no hair spikes](http://www.imgur.com/4kd3s.png)[/spoiler]

[spoiler=with hair spikes](http://www.imgur.com/xOT8n.png)[/spoiler]

And of course, if you're wondering why the front of his helmet has no mouth-grille-slots, it's for the exact same reason his face has no mouth-hole-slot. I really didn't need to tell you that, did I?

The explanation for the helmet hair-spikes? That guy's hair is so awesome-looking, the laws of time and space teamed up with the helmet and they all decided that they weren't going to muss it up by letting some protective plate of metal be where it was.

Also, sick foresight, giving you guys visuals for the runes, right? [No foresight there whatsoever]

Still, what do you guys think? I'm not polling, because a poll requires no regular reading of this story. I mean, SmartyPants might drop in and be all like, "I like the flat one better", despite the fact that he never posts here. Actually, who knows? He might regularly search for his own name on the forum, and still manage to put in his opinion here only because I've mentioned him. You just never know.

His hair has too much awesome to not make the metal bend. His hair is clearly magical and can't be hidden by anything. I guess it will make it harder for himself to distinguish himself but oh well. Who neets a disguise with that hair? He'd probably clear the whole ship of the skeletons with a whip of his hair, but it has too much awesome for him to do so.

I feel that making statements such as with the hair thing could break down the sensibility of the story. So far everything seems to be sensible and organised. Making exceptions for the hair could create issues.

[My idea for the illustrations is to let the story be serious and sensical, and scientifically plausible-ish, but have the illustrations not take themselves too seriously -- mostly because I can't take myself too seriously as an artist, because I lack the requisite skill for "serious drawing". The best I can do is add quasi-comical illustrations to the story to make it lighter in nature.]

You look for a firearm enchant in the Compendium, and you find one: "prykost". Furthermore, you read the preface on firearm enchants and realize that you've been using them wrong; you have to apply them in conjunction with a rune signifying "inside", so that it heats up the ammunition put into it only. A gun that burned anyone who touched it would be next to useless. This "inside" run is pronounced "nakarik" with a rising intonation on the second syllable.

You try out both of these runes on pieces of paper that you brought from the library, with mixed results.

You manage after a couple of tries to get prykost to "catch", so to speak, the rune glowing from the arcane energies affixed to it. The paper doesn't appear to do anything. However, you know by this point that one ought to exercise caution whenever dealing with these runes. Instead of touching it, you put your head to the floor and look along the surface of the paper. Sure enough, you can see some distortion of the light passing above it, indicating that the air is very hot. You quickly shuffle it with your foot into the corner, and leave it there.

The results of nakarik are much more easily apparent, and less dangerous. As soon as you finish the last stroke of the rune, and the magical energy starts to cause the inscribed character to glow, the paper crumples into a small ball. Curious, you attempt to pry open the ball, but only succeed in pinching your fingers. What had you just said about exercising caution?