For the record, I'm more interested in the preventing armageddon angle rather than keeping the ship in one piece. I mean if the ship ends up intact as a consequence, that's cool, but the damn thing's caused so much trouble that I wouldn't mind if it ended up getting driven into the sun.
Of course that'd probably be another extinction level-event, so, maybe just leave it parked in a bad neighborhood with the keys in the ignition?
From what I've heard, most people do as well. Anyway, it seems like attempting to stave off the apocalypse is the winning vote. I started on a Karin interlude a bit ago to kill the time, so it will be a bit before the next update.
Edit: Tacking it on to the beginning of the next update rather than making two separate story posts back to back.
I really wanted Cynric to be the Ultimate Destructive Saviour. Like, gods help you if you're his enemy, but at least take solace in the fact that gods can help you if your only his enemy because his allies don't even get that.
Shh, it'll be okay. We'll be leaving them a portal to Louise's doomed realm where Dremora Lords are duking it out, and they intend to colonize that. It's only a matter of time before the demon armies come knocking.
The first thing Karin noticed as she awoke was the sound of crackling flames. Parting her eyelids slowly, the sunlight stabbed at her brain. A creaking noise behind her made the duchess sit up abruptly to see a vaguely familiar person cranking away at a well.
The motion must have drawn their attention, as the armored figure waved in her direction, accidentally letting go of the handle. Quickly grabbing hold again, the man called out, "Just a moment!"
Nodding slowly, Karin coughed as she noticed just how dry her throat was and looked around. She was in a ruined building of some sort at the edge of cliff with a bonfire crackling just a few feet away. On a block of stone to the side sat a man in a steel mail, no tabard or other form of decoration to identify his allegiance. Considering where she was, she had her doubts that she would have recognized any if he'd worn them.
"M'lady?" A voice asked, shaking her from her sluggish thoughts. The knight in the strangely shaped armor was kneeling beside her with a bucket of water. Her attempt to grab the bucket were halted by a large hand on her wrists. "Now, now... no need for haste, allow me. You just focus on recovering your strength." The knight said as he held the rim of the bucket to her lips and slowly tilted it until she could just barely sip at it. At her look of gratitude, he gave a warm laugh. "You're very welcome... Ah, but where are my manners... I am Siegmeyer, a knight of Catarina and due to a fortunate mistake on my part, I couldn't help but notice your predicament."
It took a few tries, but eventually Karin croaked out, "My... My daughter."
"Oh! I'm sorry, M'lady... but there was no one else around when I discovered you." Siegmeyer replied sadly. Pointing to her soiled clothing and bandages, he asked, "If you don't mind my asking, how did you wind up in such a state?"
Her voice coming back to her slowly but surely, Karin explained, "I was tracking an elderly man... he kidnapped my daughter and brought her here. When I... he ambushed me and left me for dead. Now he's with my child, doing Brimir knows what to her impressionable mind!"
Removing his helmet to reveal a thick cheeked and mustachioed face, Siegmeyer ran a hand through his sweaty and unwashed hair and sighed. "Oh... Oh my... As a father myself, you have my dearest sympathies. I cannot imagine the grief of having one's child taken." Wrapping her hands in his armored ones, the man declared, "On my honor as a knight of Catarina, I shall not rest until we recover your daughter!"
Standing to his full height, the knight donned his helmet and set about gathering his meager belongings. Karin had just begun to wonder how the man could so easily wield such a heavy sword with one hand when he turned back to her with a hand beneath his chin in a thoughtful pose.
"Hmm... Despite my words, you don't seem quite ready for such an undertaking... Perhaps we should take a moment to rest up a bit before setting out."
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Another explosion shakes the ship and the room slowly begins to tilt. Clearly the vessel isn't going to last much longer, either because of combat damage or deliberate sabotage, though sabotage seems more likely. If you knew for a fact that somebody was going to defeat you, you would try to ensure their demise as well. The golden trail of Clairvoyance pointing to the hole in the ceiling lets you know where to go to fix this at least.
Flicking the radio back on, you're just in time to overhear Vahlen saying, "-ance, the Earth will be consumed."
"That doesn't sound good." Espinoza says unnecessarily. Of course it doesn't sound good, not only are they destroying the planet you keep all your things on, but they're trying to take your prize away at the same time! This ship was to be yours!
"Granger, Espinoza, get your teams back to the base! I will try to stop it if I can, but just in case, take everything you can through the Oblivion gate; manufacturing equipment, design plans and recipes, weapons, the cow, food and ingredients... you might not be coming back." Shutting the communicator off before they can argue, you summon another three fire-birds, forcing one to take the ninja children with them as you send two of them to the other teams.
A mental command sends most of the remaining atronachs through the opening. Shouting to the sisters to follow, you let your remaining bird lift your suit out of the room. Soon the three of you are jogging along the exterior hull toward what appears to be a machine in the likeness of an ethereal, a vertical ring encircling the thing as it looms over a deep orb of swirling violet energy. Wisps of light stretch from the orb to connect it to the mechanical statue and a pair of flanking pillars.
Since the orb is obviously the problem, evidenced by Clairvoyance coating the thing, and the fact that it is psionic in nature, you decide to summon a creature with the required ability. Once more searching the realm from which you'd summoned both Louise's sword-spirit and the giant serpent, you reach out for a creature similar to the ethereals and pull it through. What appears is a yellow humanoid with brown armored sections, spikes on it's head, and a long mustache of similar color to it's skin.
The creature immediately turns to you with glowing eyes and begins to levitate as it effortlessly snaps it's binding. You can't help but watch as a dozen spoons begin to circle around the creature before you suddenly find yourself on the floor. Pushing yourself up, you look over to see a bruised and bloodied Louise being held up by Cattleya. Flashes of memory float to the surface of your mind as you rise; summoning a green creature in a white dress, Louise shouting for the yellow creature to release you, Louise's legs snapping as she's thrown against the statue hard enough to dent it, the green creature creating a portal to a grassy field. With the two beings gone, it's safe to assume they left.
Your head pounds as you stumble over to the sisters and grumble, "That is why I will not teach Conjuration to either of you."
The entire event couldn't have taken much longer than a minute or two, but already you can feel a strong pulling sensation as the dark sphere pulsates and sucks in the air around it. You barely manage to shove the girls to the ground as a metal tile is ripped from the floor and bounces off your armor before it disappears into the sphere. Any moment now, the suction will be strong enough to lift Louise, so you waste no time in scooping the girls up and having the bird transport the three of you back to the base.
You arrive in a flash of fire to see men and women working in barely contained panic. Espinoza and two other armored individuals are helping people on forked machines push crates through the Gate. People in all manner of strange clothing are trickling in from the skyranger hangar, likely the townsfolk from the surrounding area. Victoria is somehow climbing around on the ceiling and using her webbing to help move larger equipment over the shelving and other obstacles in the area. The rumbling of the walls and falling chunks of debris from the ceiling let you know that they are feeling the effects of the ship's destruction even from here.
Louise's pained whimpers draw your attention as Cattleya does her best to comfort the teen. The elder pinkette gives you a pleading look, unable to get a word across with all the shouting and other noises in the room. Nodding to her, you absorb the last of the broken girl's magicka and use it to heal her as much as you can before popping the seal of your helmet and pushing it up to gulp down a bottle of milk. Wounded, fatigued from the day you've had, and mentally exhausted now that all of her magicka is gone, your apprentice falls asleep in her sister's arms.
Knowing she's no longer at risk of dying from blood-loss or brain injury, you put your helmet back in place and-
Louise Status: Shattered Right Tibia, exhausted.
Magicka: (0/3500)
Choose 1:
[] Send the girls through before seeking out-
[] Moira Vahlen.
[] Raymond Shen.
[] Jeremy Flagg.
[] Take your people through the portal and seal it. There's far too many families with disgusting children to bring along and you've got the supplies they've already managed to push through, you can summon the others you want to bring along.
[] Write in.
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A/N: Pokemon are not an answer to everything, especially when you need to control a precognitive/hyper-intelligent/telekinetic/telepathic/matter creating pokemon such as alakazam. Seriously, pokemon are stupidly dangerous and you guys got lucky with the fact that Rayquaza hates aliens so much that it didn't really care to resist your control.
Blastoise can punch holes in concrete and reinforced steel
Pidgeot can bend large trees by flapping its wings hard
Raticate can topple concrete buildings by chewing on them
Nidoking can casually topple metal transmission towers and snap telephone poles and can pierce diamond with its horn
Dugtrio can cause massive earthquakes just by tunneling underground
Golem can tank dynamite without any damage and can blow itself up with enough force to blow it over a mountain
Ponyta's hooves are 10x harder than diamond and it can jump over the Eiffel Tower and Ayers Rock in one leap
Cloyster can tank bombs and missiles without any damage
Walrein can easily shatter a 10 ton block of ice in one hit with it's tusks.
Dragalge can spit a poison that melts through a Tanker's hull. Also coupled with the fact that it appears to sink ships in it's other Pokedex entries.
Vanilluxe causes violent blizzards naturally.
Regice drops the temperature around it to -328 degrees Fahrenheit
Even many of the more mundane pokemon are upper tier by Worm standards... don't summon psychic pokemon without at least four other mages and a ritual to help bind the damn thing's mind. Remember, there was a reason that summoning a bound ethereal was denied earlier in the thread.
I really wanted Cynric to be the Ultimate Destructive Saviour. Like, gods help you if you're his enemy, but at least take solace in the fact that gods can help you if your only his enemy because his allies don't even get that.
[X] Take your people through the portal and seal it. There's far to many families with disgusting children to bring along and you've got the supplies they've already managed to push through, you can summon the others you want to bring along.
Alright, now that we've made a token effort to save earth, can we leave through the portal?
[X] Take your people through the portal and seal it. There's far to many families with disgusting children to bring along and you've got the supplies they've already managed to push through, you can summon the others you want to bring along.
Couldn't we have summoned a benevolent psychic type Pokemon that would want to help us. Ex Chimecho... Apparently it's the only kind psychic that's not a legendary.
Couldn't we have summoned a benevolent psychic type Pokemon that would want to help us. Ex Chimecho... Apparently it's the only kind psychic that's not a legendary.
Is it just generally kind and accepting of everything or is it 'good'? Because much like Fawkes, naturally 'good' aligned creatures aren't likely to help a man like Cynric of their own free will, especially when he tries to control them. Of course, it may have tried to help anyway given the circumstances, but I don't know enough about most non-gen1 pokemon to say for sure.
The vote called for Alakazam though, so that's what you got. I'll probably make any future pokemon summons be an RNG by type rather than specific species.
Fun loving and innocent you say? Sounds like something easily manipulated.
If you summon it in the future I'll try to remember that, but I doubt you guys want to risk going back to the ship at this point, the singularity's strength is increasing exponentially.
Well, we tried. Gosh, what a bitter taste this leaves. Best to console ourselves by looting this doomed world. Those fiery birds are relatively inexpensive, magicka-wise. Moira should have a good idea of what would be worth sending them after. She also seems to have some idea of exactly how the situation has gone tits-up. Knowing how much time you have to seal the portal will be essential for salvaging maximum profit from this boondoggle. Depending on what the situation is on the other side of the Oblivion Gate, we might need all the time we can get as well.
(Though if anyone has a Hail Mary they wanna try, I'd vote for that. Whatever we'd summon can be delivered to the ship via phoenix, no further risk to Cynric. But I can't think of any sufficiently psychic character or critter from the available worlds on the front page that could be bound or willing/easily manipulable enough to help the situation and survive the expanding singularity.
...unless, as we summoned Iago, that put's Alladin's world in play. Then we could summon the lamp and boom, three wishes!)
Knowing Louise is no longer at risk of dying from blood-loss or brain injury, you put your helmet back in place and point the toward the Oblivion Gate. Nodding in understanding, Cattleya runs over to Espinoza and follows him through as he carries a crate to Halkeginia. The crowd of townsfolk grow more restless at seeing the pinkette leave and one of the guards fires his weapon into the ceiling before shouting at them.
You put it all out of mind as you set off deeper into the base in search of Moira. You have no desire to sacrifice yourself so that the unwashed masses can escape, but there is looting to be done and the chief scientist should be able to tell you how long you have to do it.
Marching down the halls, you push through the harried base personnel as they carry everything they can toward the storage bay. Televisions, computers, weapons, clothing; everything that isn't a permanent fixture seems to be being taken along. One man you pass is even dragging a sled with a large mechanical arm from the foundry. Shaking your head at the ridiculous sight, you continue on until finally arriving at the main lab.
Inside you find men and women in lab coats frantically undoing the bolts on a gene-mod tank while others pack away boxes and bags of various liquids. Through the window to her office, you see Vahlen working at her computer. Not bothering to look up as you duck through the doorway, she brushes a stray hair out of her face and says, "Judging by the rate of expansion, I'd estimate we have around fifteen minutes to leave, whatever you need to say, say it fast."
"Ignoring the manner of how to obtain them, what equipment or resources are required to maintain X-com's current capabilities and where can they be found?"
Pausing briefly to give you a considering look, the doctor picks up her datapad and types out a long series of entries. It takes roughly two minutes before she slides the device across the desk to you. On the screen is a list of equipment along with images and a map of where to find them. When you finish browsing the list, you call the fire birds back to you and even summon a few more before showing them the datapad to let them know what they are grabbing. With the delay between each teleport, there's no way the creatures will be able to collect everything on the list in time.
Sending them off, you look back to the doctor just in time to see her pull a large rectangular block from her computer and lock it in her briefcase. "If there is nothing else?" She asks, to which you shake your head. "Let's leave then, I don't believe either of us wants to stick around much longer."
Agreeing, you lift the gene-mod tank as you leave and lead the doctor to the storage bay. By the time you make it to the elevator, the entire base is shaking nonstop and the walls are beginning to crack. The doors open ahead of you and people begin to pile in, only for a metallic twang to sound as the box falls, carrying the occupants to their doom. Looking back toward the doctor to see the irritation on her face as her subordinates scream in panic, you can't help but agree with her attitude. Honestly, it's like these people can't seem to remember the wizard in their midst.
Sighing, you wade into the crowd and use your free hand to pick up the man that had been dragging a canister of pressurized Meld and call out to Moira, "Grab onto me!"
Sensing what you're about to do, the crowd of scientists surge toward you, fighting and pushing to find purchase on the surface of your armor. Vahlen is forced to use her briefcase as a bludgeoning weapon in order to reach you, but as soon as she does, you cast Recall. A moment later finds you all in sight of the Gate as screaming civilians trample one another in their rush for the portal. The ceiling has been torn away and the howling of the wind drowns out everything around you.
With Victoria and the soldiers nowhere to be found, you assume that they went through already, so you set the tank on the ground. "Wha- Hey!" Is all the man with the Meld has time to say as you throw him across the room and through the gate. With the crowd too thick to walk through, you proceed to do the same with all the others you brought along. With just Vahlen and you left, you use the last of your magicka to create a wall of ice at the doorway that the townsfolk are coming through.
Once the crowd thins, you step over the fallen bodies of those that had been crushed by their neighbors and begin pushing the supplies your birds had gathered. Thankfully your armor is up to the task, but you order the birds to help speed things along, the creatures being surprisingly strong for their wingspan. It doesn't take more than five minutes, but the sight of several large rock formation flying through the air above the base is more than enough to encourage you to leave. Ignoring the civilians' pounding on the magical ice, you walk back across the room to pick up the tank and head through the Gate, paying no mind to the crunch of limbs under your boots.
On the other side you find a scene of barely contained chaos as the soldiers attempt to direct the refugees around the slowly growing camp. A few tents have been erected with a running generator nearby and you would have gone to investigate, but a loose scrap of fabric being sucked back through the Oblivion Gate reminds you that there is still an important task ahead of you. You push your way through the crowded clearing to reach the tower in the center. Levitating to the top with the help of your vest, you pluck the Sigil stone from it's plinth and the Gate closes.
Letting out a tired sigh, you hop off and settle in for a nap in your armor. Resting against the stone column, you drift off to sleep with the sounds of weeping families in your ears.
Choose 2 for the phoenix flock to gather:
[] Assorted mining equipment: Drills, blasting tools, Crushing equipment, mineral analysis equipment, etc.
[] Subsurface radar and spectrometry equipment.
[] Chemical synthesis equipment.
[] Rare earth elements, chemical stockpiles, enriched Uranium.
[] Svalbard Seed Bank inventory and samples.
[] Strategic National Stockpile repository: antibiotics, vaccines, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, and other critical medical equipment and supplies
Choose:
[] Stick around and assist X-com in setting up.
[] Expand the Ward bubble. Everything is stacked up and cramped as is.
[] Conjure atronach guards.
[] General survival necessities. Water, shelter, etc.
[] write in.
[] Send Louise and the ninjas to scout the area while you and Vahlen prepare the equipment to finish your gene-mods.
[] POV: Louise
[] This world's people are hostile and ignorant, begin preparations to move the entire camp and tower to a new realm.
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A/N: X-com will be capable of providing you with certain support and equipment in the future depending on what you choose to send the birds after. For example; picking mining equipment and spectrometry equipment together will mean that they can find and excavate mineral resources to refine and craft with.
Of the roughly 600 people in Springdale(the town near the base) around 150 made it through the portal. Including x-com personnel and your summoned people to the count, the population of your cramped little camp is 274 people, a third of whom are children and the elderly.
I'd envisioned the X-Com world being used as a hub or base world, which could serve as a safe place/fall back area from which Cynric could launch expeditions to new worlds from & do research. Knowing next to nothing about the setting, I assumed that once all the Ethereals were dead, there would basically be nothing to worry about. It's all a moot point now, but I would want to establish some sort of base were we could stash our stuff/let research projects percolate.
Halkeginia's probably not the best place to establish a long-term base. We don't even know when we are in the setting, and the future shown in the interlude a while back seemed fairly bleak. I mean it could be INTERESTING to explore, but I favor consolidating moves at this juncture.
Unless we transplant X-Com to another world with present-day/near-future tech levels, I think the equipment options would be better, assuming X-Com is capable of operating them with their current resources. Everything in the stockpile options should be obtainable through gathering/synthesizing/flexing of magical might, but having a big heap of resources immediately may be the superior option depending on the rest of the vote.
It hinges on where we put X-Com, I think. If we're restricted to the worlds on the front page (are generic/random Earths/Earth-analogues available?), I think that Stargate would be the most reasonable place to stash X-Com. I mean there's a ton more aliens to deal with, but IIRC they're not terribly competent, and having SG-1 roll into X-Com's refugee camp sounds like its got a lot of potential. Not for Cynric, but I think it'd be entertaining.
Failing that, Fallout. Set up enough defenses and X-Com should be fine, maybe take the seed-bank and the chem synthesizer. The world's a dump, but I don't think there are any existential threats in that setting to worry about.
I'd envisioned the X-Com world being used as a hub or base world, which could serve as a safe place/fall back area from which Cynric could launch expeditions to new worlds from & do research. Knowing next to nothing about the setting, I assumed that once all the Ethereals were dead, there would basically be nothing to worry about. It's all a moot point now, but I would want to establish some sort of base were we could stash our stuff/let research projects percolate.
Halkeginia's probably not the best place to establish a long-term base. We don't even know when we are in the setting, and the future shown in the interlude a while back seemed fairly bleak. I mean it could be INTERESTING to explore, but I favor consolidating moves at this juncture.
Unless we transplant X-Com to another world with present-day/near-future tech levels, I think the equipment options would be better, assuming X-Com is capable of operating them with their current resources. Everything in the stockpile options should be obtainable through gathering/synthesizing/flexing of magical might, but having a big heap of resources immediately may be the superior option depending on the rest of the vote.
It hinges on where we put X-Com, I think. If we're restricted to the worlds on the front page (are generic/random Earths/Earth-analogues available?), I think that Stargate would be the most reasonable place to stash X-Com. I mean there's a ton more aliens to deal with, but IIRC they're not terribly competent, and having SG-1 roll into X-Com's refugee camp sounds like its got a lot of potential. Not for Cynric, but I think it'd be entertaining.
Failing that, Fallout. Set up enough defenses and X-Com should be fine, maybe take the seed-bank and the chem synthesizer. The world's a dump, but I don't think there are any existential threats in that setting to worry about.
Generic Earth isn't an option, but more options will become available over time. One example is RWBY, which will be available shortly after the current season ends(unless you wait for the next season to start).
The only continental scale or higher threat I can think of for Fallout at the moment is the New Plague, which has at least made it to the DC area. If you go to Fallout, you will be in the Boston region, but I won't restrict you to that area if you choose to leave it. Since it is post fallout 3, the zetans aren't really a problem you'll need to worry about.
I'd envisioned the X-Com world being used as a hub or base world, which could serve as a safe place/fall back area from which Cynric could launch expeditions to new worlds from & do research. Knowing next to nothing about the setting, I assumed that once all the Ethereals were dead, there would basically be nothing to worry about. It's all a moot point now, but I would want to establish some sort of base were we could stash our stuff/let research projects percolate.
Halkeginia's probably not the best place to establish a long-term base. We don't even know when we are in the setting, and the future shown in the interlude a while back seemed fairly bleak. I mean it could be INTERESTING to explore, but I favor consolidating moves at this juncture.
Unless we transplant X-Com to another world with present-day/near-future tech levels, I think the equipment options would be better, assuming X-Com is capable of operating them with their current resources. Everything in the stockpile options should be obtainable through gathering/synthesizing/flexing of magical might, but having a big heap of resources immediately may be the superior option depending on the rest of the vote.
It hinges on where we put X-Com, I think. If we're restricted to the worlds on the front page (are generic/random Earths/Earth-analogues available?), I think that Stargate would be the most reasonable place to stash X-Com. I mean there's a ton more aliens to deal with, but IIRC they're not terribly competent, and having SG-1 roll into X-Com's refugee camp sounds like its got a lot of potential. Not for Cynric, but I think it'd be entertaining.
Failing that, Fallout. Set up enough defenses and X-Com should be fine, maybe take the seed-bank and the chem synthesizer. The world's a dump, but I don't think there are any existential threats in that setting to worry about.
I was kinda feeling the same way as it being a good hub/rest world. We'd be seen as world saviors there after defeating the aliens, but obviously that didn't really work out. Stargate or Fallout could work. I don't know too much about either, but we might want to watch out for some threats like the Institute or the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout. Chrono Trigger (Risky with Lavos, but the future there does have some neat stuff and we aren't too likely to be attacked by anything else X-com couldn't handle, especially if we set camp in the past and get the tech from the future) and Dragonball might work (their advanced technology is mostly capsule stuff, but Bulma could probably make some neat stuff, and we might get in with the Red Ribbon army and their android stuff, though that has it's own risks).
After we pick a base world, we should decide what world we want to adventure in next. I'm going to vote for RWBY, for a couple of reasons. Advanced technology, even if it's all Dust powered so might not be compatible with our stuff. Aura, a great defensive measure, something which we don't have a lot of compared to our offensive and utility abilities, and it comes with a unique super power for everyone (Semblances), and the only requirements that I can see for using it are having a soul and having someone unlock. We have the first and the second shouldn't be too hard to find there. Finally, we won't be so outclassed that we'll get insta killed, and our wide set of spells gives us a lot of things we can do, even if we are up against some of the very strong people/Grimm there.
Was doing some random math and have calculated the +40 strength of your power armor to be almost as strong as strong as the Master Chief in full armor... Though nowhere near as reactive, agile, fast, flexible, or durable.
Still, it should be more than enough to punch out most creatures under ten feet in height if you're careful.
We should relocate to mass effect instead of star gate. The ancients/ascended would screw with us so bad. Also if we do go the mass effect universe where would we start off at?
We should relocate to mass effect instead of star gate. The ancients/ascended would screw with us so bad. Also if we do go the mass effect universe where would we start off at?
I don't really know stargate, but I don't think Mass Effect would be a great place to relocate to. I mean, it'd be decent for us to explore and adventure on our own, but for X-com, it would be terrible. I can't see the council or any of the races their taking kindly to us, and the Reaper invasion might be incoming. And reaper technology itself has all that indoctrination stuff that would make it about as bad for x-com as it would be for us to go to Prototype.
We should relocate to mass effect instead of star gate. The ancients/ascended would screw with us so bad. Also if we do go the mass effect universe where would we start off at?
Point of arrival for mass effect is a coinflip between Omega and Tuchanka.
Star wars is Tatooine, halo is likely either Guilty spark's installation or Balaho or a rebel base, Stargate is a rng between known planets planet.
I'm only giving away the arrival locations for universes with space travel because of how obvious I would need to be with the 'hints' in the voting options.
Edit: keep in mind that the current discussion of universes is about where to set up a 'safe haven' to store loot, research, etc. There's nothing stopping you from dipping in and out of various settings for brief periods of time. I'd recommend you set your hub somewhere without the threat of interplanetary war, but I won't stop you if that's what you want.
