World On Fire: Shadow Ops [a Fantasy WWII Quest]

[><] Magical Items

If you're going to go poking around in an armory and you're pressed for time, you may as well grab the most valuable things there. Guns and swords can be easily replaced, but magic? There's a reason your coven back home spent the money on a strongroom.

Getting in and finding your stuff is easy. So easy, in fact, that you start to become suspicious. Is the Baron that arrogant, or just an idiot? You file the question for when you have time to kill him. For now, you have more important things to do.

Gathering your equipment is easy , if only because there isn't all that much here. Your broom had been on a separate train, but there are plenty of regular brooms here to choose from, and you take one of the sturdier-looking collapsible ones for yourself. You find a pistol (a Nagant revolver, to be precise, and a few rounds), a bigger submachine gun (a Thompson, surprisingly enough, with a few stick mags), and a bayonet on the way to the magic items room, and once there...

"Bloody hell..." Roy admits, looking around. You nod. There are a lot of things here, most of them magical weapons, and most clearly of Chinese or Mongolian origin, you think. A lot of polearms, though there's plenty of everything else.

Wandering about, the first thing that catches your eye is- well, your own sword. It's still in it sheath, and it seems whoever the Baron's sources are, they didn't realize whose it was. Looking around, there are plenty of other options to choose from nearby, but your eyes are drawn to jian in an inky black sheath. You pull it out, noting the lack of decoration to the hilt, and the blade is equally black, and seems to drink in the light. It feels oddly warm to the touch, but the sensation vanishes as soon as you sheathe it again.

"Oh, my, my," you hear Simon say. You turn your head and spot him practically ogling a pyramid of fifteen or so gold ingots, lifting one up in his hand.

You roll your eyes. "If you're that obsessed with gold, you can carry it," you say as you walk over. You say that, but your pace slows as you approach. The gold looks odd and dull, almost greenish.

Simon turns to you in surprise. "You mean you don't recognize it?"

You shake your head, and he scoffs, before quickly apologizing. "Still, even without the seal... this is genuine orichalchum."

You tilt your head. "Ori-what?"

"A metal, highly prized by Atlantis. As far as I'm aware, they've stayed strictly neutral in the war - which is a surprise, they've always had close ties to Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, but if this much orichalchum has made its way all the way here..." He holds his chin, looking down at the ingots.

"Should we take them all?" you ask. He frowns, picking up a second ingot and examining them more closely.

"It's up to you, ma'am. You're right about one thing, they are quite heavy, and the Atlanteans guard them and the secret of making them quite closely. Even having them could make things awkward if we ever run into any, regardless of if we were giving them back. Still... just this pile here could buy a respectably sized island, and they would no doubt provide a reward of similar value for returning them. And if we're as far inland as I suspect, it's hardly like they can come and get it themselves."

[ ] Keep Silver's handout (Colt 1908 and Sten gun, both silenced)
[ ] Replace the Colt with the revolver
[ ] Replace the Sten with the Thompson
[ ] Replace both
[ ] Keep all four (-1 to Quick)

[ ] Use your sword (Give the jian to who?)
[ ] Use your new jian (Give your sword to who?)
[ ] Use both (-1 to Flashy)

[ ] Just one ingot
[ ] Everyone gets one ingot
[ ] Take them all (-1 to Careful) Screw you Obsidian, I'm letting go of poverty biiiiiiiiitch

[><] Greedy Greedy

All weapons considered, in terms of firearms what you have now is fine, really. It's fine - not a lot of firepower, but the longer you stay under the roof of this madman, the more you're concerned you're going to have to fight some Buck Rogers meets Conan bullshit. And if you're going to deal with that, you'd rather deal with it with Abigail, and preferably Abigail with her tank. Maybe a whole group of them - what're they called, squadrons?

The jian is another boon, but whatever mystical powers it has, it doesn't really feel quite right for you. Maybe it's the weight, or maybe you're just more used to a curved blade like your katana (or the sabre it replaced). For now, you give it to Roy in hopes that if nothing else he'll be able to identify it.

The orichalchum is far more interesting. If these Atlanteans Simon mentioned are angry about you carrying it around, they can complain to the consulate. But you wager they'll be a lot more pissed to learn that they were first in the hands of a hardcore Axis sympathizer before you, ah, recovered them.

"Take 'em all. We'll split them up amongst ourselves, and hope the prison level is as lightly guarded as [Silver] seemed to imply."

Simon raises an eyebrow. "Didn't Ethel label it a 'dungeon' on the map?"

You snort. "Ethel has a flair for the dramatic. She's probably exaggerating."

She was not, in fact, exaggerating.

The smell hits you first. Being a city kid from a rich city in America for most of your life, you've encountered quite a few. Trash from behind a cluster of restaurants, heating in the sun because all the garbagemen had been fired and nobody owned a truck big enough for it all. Raw sewage from a burst main. From your time after San Francisco, the smell of a freshly manured field - and boy wasn't that a pleasant surprise to learn that the whole area would probably smell like that every year! And once you got into the military, there was the sweat of human bodies, exerted to the limits.

The smell from the dungeon levels somehow combines all of them. Whoever the baron was taking his ideas for prison care from, he certainly didn't live in this century.

The dungeon/storage block is dark, but there's enough light to see that nearly every surface is metal apart from the wooden storage crates, and nearly every metal part in sight is rusted. There seems to be a thin sort of film on everything. You reach out to touch it before you think better of touching a thin film in an area that smells as badly as this.

"Fucking hell," Doris says as she looks around. There are chains on the walls surrounding the dungeons. None of them are occupied, but from the stains on the ground, some were recently. Holes in the ground let in air (and smells) from the livestock floor below, and from the smell you imagine the baron might be getting into the manure business himself. You try and avoid thinking of what he must be feeding his animals.

Give me six d10 rolls for the condition of your seven missing teammates, and indicate who you're rolling for (that'll be Abigail, Arthur, Ethel, Emanuelle, Weronika, and Liselot)- Marian will be with and in the same condition as whatever teammate gets the lowest.