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A War Story

Started by ArtDrake, January 13, 2012, 10:34:16 PM

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bugfartboy

Ask where the library is.

ArtDrake

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."

Steelfist

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.

ArtDrake

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."

bugfartboy

Start on your way to the library.

Steelfist

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.

ArtDrake

#111
(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.)

Ertxiem

(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.)
Ert, the Dead Cow.
With 2 small Mandelbrot sets as the spots.

ArtDrake

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.

bugfartboy

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

Ertxiem

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.)
Ert, the Dead Cow.
With 2 small Mandelbrot sets as the spots.

ArtDrake

#116
"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)

bugfartboy

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.

ArtDrake

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.

Ertxiem

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.
Ert, the Dead Cow.
With 2 small Mandelbrot sets as the spots.