[X] (Gifts) Information is the Best
[X] (Where) East,East (kobolds)
[X] (Action) Use your time to train as circumstances allow
Kobolds can sometimes be gageteers and, therefore, have useful stuff.
For wepons, if I were on that trip to Home Depot I would have bought all the machetes they had in stock. We could hand out a few of them if we have enough.
Another possibility along the lines of communication/information: While it's true that the dungeon cuts off all communication devices, mobile phones can probably still be used as personal computing devices. We might be able to encrypt short messages on phones and then send the cipher text over the dungeon chat system. Given the level of technology here, One Time Pad (OTP) is the only form I would trust. The key thing is a good random number generator since the OTP has to be unpredictable. I should check if there are phones with hardware random number generators. It would probably be the kind where they force electrons backwards across a diode which requires quantum tunneling. I think what you would have to do is have someone take two or more phones into a bathroom, generate OTPs for later use and copy them to each phone. We probably would not have a lot so this might be for party members only or just a few most trusted others.
[X] (Action) Taylorpilot Will Embrace Munchkin Inventory everything that can be inventoried unless abundant or presents significant social benefit untaken (e.g. signposts, tacos) If things are abundant, inventory some instead of all. Like at least 10. Monsters Parts can be used as weapons by...
Another possibility along the lines of communication/information: While it's true that the dungeon cuts off all communication devices, mobile phones can probably still be used as personal computing devices. We might be able to encrypt short messages on phones and then send the cipher text over the dungeon chat system. Given the level of technology here, One Time Pad (OTP) is the only form I would trust. The key thing is a good random number generator since the OTP has to be unpredictable. I should check if there are phones with hardware random number generators. It would probably be the kind where they force electrons backwards across a diode which requires quantum tunneling. I think what you would have to do is have someone take two or more phones into a bathroom, generate OTPs for later use and copy them to each phone. We probably would not have a lot so this might be for party members only or just a few most trusted others.
[X] (Action) Use your time to train as circumstances allow
Kobolds can sometimes be gageteers and, therefore, have useful stuff.
For wepons, if I were on that trip to Home Depot I would have bought all the machetes they had in stock. We could hand out a few of them if we have enough.
Another possibility along the lines of communication/information: While it's true that the dungeon cuts off all communication devices, mobile phones can probably still be used as personal computing devices. We might be able to encrypt short messages on phones and then send the cipher text over the dungeon chat system. Given the level of technology here, One Time Pad (OTP) is the only form I would trust. The key thing is a good random number generator since the OTP has to be unpredictable. I should check if there are phones with hardware random number generators. It would probably be the kind where they force electrons backwards across a diode which requires quantum tunneling. I think what you would have to do is have someone take two or more phones into a bathroom, generate OTPs for later use and copy them to each phone. We probably would not have a lot so this might be for party members only or just a few most trusted others.
Amazingly, this is actually a thing that I was intending to have Taylor have done. It was suggested to me by a friend who is ISCC-certified. I was planning on it being paper based.
Taylor's preparations exist in a quantum state consisting of "everything I think is reasonable." That applies to what gear he brought, what actions he took, etc. I intend to be pretty generous with rulings, as I mentioned at some point earlier in the thread where I described a conversation with the aforementioned friend in which he suggested that Taylor should use a crawler to pull down relevant YouTube videos and put them on low-power readers for reference, to which I said "nah, web crawler is too technical", to which he said "browser extension", to which I said "cool, you've got a bunch of videos."
Taylor's preparations exist in a quantum state consisting of "everything I think is reasonable." That applies to what gear he brought, what actions he took, etc. I intend to be pretty generous with rulings, as I mentioned at some point earlier in the thread where I described a conversation with the aforementioned friend in which he suggested that Taylor should use a crawler to pull down relevant YouTube videos and put them on low-power readers fruit reference, to which I said "nah, crawler is too technical", to which he said "browser extension", to which I said "cool, you've got a bunch of videos."
Ah, so i underestimated Taylors tech level.
So would it be reasonable for Taylor to have prepared compilers (with interactive mode) of a few programming languages?
Also, we can assume he searched articles like this and got both a campfire charger and a camping sized battery with solar panels, right?
[X] (Team Name) Trick Shot
[X] (Gifts) Information is the Best
[x] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
[X] (Team Name) Yo Radical Yo
[x] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
-[x] (Action) Try to take a kruthak corpse, quick inventory it very quickly, before all of its pheromones leak out, and drop it from inventory close enough to a few sheeps thta if kruthak come they could attack the sheep
[X] (Action) Taylorpilot Will Embrace Munchkin
[X] (Action) Take everything
I've seen devices like that before. They are mainly intended to be cook stoves and the charging is just a side benefit. They typically work on the principal of wood gasification which works much better in the large ones than the small ones. So the base camp model is probably the most efficient of the ones mentioned in your linked article. The big ones are also good for things like working glass since they are hotter than a normal wood fire.
[x] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
-[x] (Action) Try to take a kruthak corpse, quick inventory it very quickly, before all of its pheromones leak out, and drop it from inventory close enough to a few sheeps thta if kruthak come they could attack the sheep
[x] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
-[x] (Action) Try to take a kruthak corpse, quick inventory it very quickly, before all of its pheromones leak out, and drop it from inventory close enough to a few sheep that if kruthak come they could attack the sheep
Ah, so i underestimated Taylors tech level.
So would it be reasonable for Taylor to have prepared compilers (with interactive mode) of a few programming languages?
No, that was the point -- he's NOT super technical. He was able to find and install a browser extension that would allow him to queue up and download a whole bunch of videos, but he couldn't use a crawler program.
He didn't bother bringing solar panels since the dungeon is underground, but he's got multiple batteries, a gasoline generator, and three large jerrycans of gas.
The guide advice is bad. You know what will get you in the recap? And far more goodies than regular mobs? Boss killing. 200 people is enough to murder bosses in job lots. He brought tools, right? And... wood? Everyone can use a spear. Its basically hardwired into our dna at this point.
SO;
Step one: Mandarin Duck tactics. Killing beasts is not about individual heroics, it is team work.
Make tridents / bidents and spears. Send people out in groups large enough to be a wall of pointy death. .
Tridents are for yanking monsters off balance/keeping them out of your face, spears are for killing.
Teams are to kill everything, and find boss rooms. Boss rooms get hit with even more overwhelming force. Limited xp? Not if you escalate!
I mean... even with all of our prep, we don't have the supplies to outfit ~200 people. And even if we leverage the meat shields to take down a boss, the XP divided ~200 ways will render the effort pointless.
Not to mention, what do we do about Loot Drops? Let's say that the Boss is a goldmine and drops 5 really cool things. What's to stop the group of ~200 from going "all of the loot is ours now?" They have the numbers advantage, and we'll have already given away most/all of our equipment to outfit them against the boss.
Again, minimum gain for maximum effort. Give them some information so they can act in an informed manner, give them some decent low-level equipment (which is easily outpaced by Dungeon Drops, according to Levi) and let them make their own decisions.
Turning out twohundred spears with power tools and 200 people to help is not hard. Well, mostly, set up a spear production line, then get going with a kill team.
Also. You are thinking too small! One boss? Kill *all* the bosses you can reach. Mostly, this is not about the drops, really, it is about the achievements. There is enough people here, and they are interested in fighting. This means a first kill on a higher level boss is in reach.
Not to mention, what do we do about Loot Drops? Let's say that the Boss is a goldmine and drops 5 really cool things. What's to stop the group of ~200 from going "all of the loot is ours now?" They have the numbers advantage, and we'll have already given away most/all of our equipment to outfit them against the boss.
As per Levi, killing a boss means that everyone who participated gets a box of the appropriate type and the boss map drops on the floor. It remains there and any number of people can touch it, thereby getting their interface updated with the relevant information. In the case of a Neighborhood boss that means the map of the entire neighborhood is revealed and the location of every mob appears, updating in real time.
Granted, Neighborhood bosses give Bronze boxes, which usually aren't that great.
"Not that great x 10 " should still get everyone something. And with 200 people, killing borough bosses should absolutely be in the cards. (Though, yes, do kill every neighbourhood boss in reach first)
"Not that great x 10 " should still get everyone something. And with 200 people, killing borough bosses should absolutely be in the cards. (Though, yes, do kill every neighbourhood boss in reach first)
AI controls boss rewards, so if it thinks your 200 person mob rush is boring, everyone gets crawler biscuits and health potions as rewards.
Drawing on meta knowledge again, some people tried killing a borough boss on floor 1 in DCC canon, they mostly died. IIRC it was a slime that was impervious to their low-level non-magic weapons.
I'd love to find out what the tutorial guild told the mass of people. Levi knew that getting involved in them was a bad idea on the basis of XP splitting. Presumably their guide just...doesn't care about them very much and declined to give them serious advice on the basis of them being wildly unlikely to make it past the...second, third floor?
In any event, these folks need a serious reality check and hopefully they get it, or we can give them enough information that they can extract it from their guide (guildmember?) themselves. I don't envy Charlie - leadership is difficult at the best of times and this is a far, far cry from that.
"I think we can do that," Taylor said to Levi. He looked at his teammates. "Drew? Leo? Anything you want to ask?" Both of them shook their heads, so Taylor turned for the door...and then paused.
"Oh, actually: Levi, can we get you in our contacts list so we can chat to you? That way we don't have to keep interrupting you while you're doing other stuff." Like watching space TV instead of helping them survive, but he wasn't going to say that part out loud.
Levi shook his head. "Sorry, no can do. Game guides have rules, and among them is that we can't communicate with you outside the tutorial guild. And, before you ask, no. We can't leave the guild."
"I see. Okay, can you at least brief us on the monsters around here?"
"Nope. Not in advance, anyway. I can help after the fact—after a battle you can come back and I'll go through the logs with you, point out options you missed and help analyze what happened. Even there I've got limits, but I can still be pretty darn helpful. It'll let you come up with better tactics and notice patterns that will be useful against similar opponents."
Taylor blinked. "Seriously? You can't warn us but you can do detailed analysis afterwards?"
"I don't make the rules."
"...Okay, well, in that case let's do it now. We can go over the fight that we had with the kruthak."
Levi's left eye stalk flicked very briefly towards where the screen would be if it weren't currently hidden, but the eye immediately turned back to the team. Levi nodded and sat forward, gesturing them back to their chairs. "Can do. One sec." Lavender lids irised closed over his eyes and glowed faintly for a moment the way a crawler's eyes did while using the chat system.
"Unc...?" Calliope said quietly. "Is this really important?"
Taylor shrugged. "Dunno. Let's find out." He led the others back to the couch opposite Levi and got them settled, waiting patiently while Levi did whatever he was doing.
A minute dragged by and then Levi's eyes opened. "Okay, I went through your feeds and it looks pretty good," he said. "A lot to like, but a few problems."
"Hey, I thought we've done pretty good," Calliope said, sounding slightly hurt.
"Yeah, your biggest problem is that there aren't enough fights," Levi said.
"I told you!" Calliope said, swiveling in place so that she could point dramatically at her uncle. "I told you that you were being too careful! Ha! I was right and you were wrong, I was right and you were wrong, nanny nanny boo boo!" She stuck her tongue out and gave him an urchin grin to show that she was joking.
Taylor stuck his tongue out back at her.
"A little snide, but not wrong," Levi said. "You've only got five days on this floor and you need to level as fast as you can. Yes, finding mobs is the first thing you have to deal with and yes, you need to choose your battles carefully, but you've also got to be aggressive about it. Get yourself six or seven levels and kill a boss so you can get the map. That'll let you know where the mobs are so you can be more efficient about finding them. As to the specifics..." His eyes glowed for another moment and then he snorted.
"Taylor, the less said about the rat fights, the better. Keep your weapons ready at all times. You're lucky that Moose was with you."
Taylor smiled and ruffled his dog's ears. "I really was."
Moose panted happily.
"Cally," Levi said, "as to—"
"Calliope," she corrected. "Not Cally."
"Oh." His eyes blinked, one after the other. "Sorry."
"S'okay. Second-grade girls are mean, you know?"
"Having never been a human girl, I don't. But I'll take your word for it. Anyway, Calliope, your first kruthak fight was pretty much perfect. You saw it coming, you went towards it instead of away. You did that thing where you punched it in the face with your board, then skated over the top of it and shot it into mulch. That was..." He tossed a chef's kiss to the ceiling. "Brilliant. Only things that makes it not perfect are that you fell off the first time and got stabbed, which looked dumb. Also, what was that 'Oorah' thing?"
"Yeah, don't do that. First, when it's coming from a fourteen-year-old girl with skinny little legs and arms, it sounds silly and not badass. Second, it's a military phrase from your world and you using it is stolen valor. A good fraction of the Crawl's audience are either disabled veterans or military nerds of some stripe. Some of them always get fascinated by the lore and those guys will be combing through Earth's military history and protocols with a picoscope. The minute they discover that little factoid, the tunnels light up with angry memes and parody sensestreams of you wearing oversized uniforms and falling down while trying to get through boot camp."
"Oh."
Levi watched her for a moment, then nodded. "Anyway, you've got the right general idea. Catchphrases are gold. Something short and memorable that summarizes who you are. It gives you a hook to hang your brand on."
Taylor nodded. "I can work with that. For my outros I used to say 'Play on'. It's a pun—yo-yo people are called players, and 'play on' means let YouTube autoplay into my next video."
"Hm...it's not awful, but it doesn't fit well into the format. You aren't doing your catchphrase during an outro here, you're doing it in the middle of an exciting moment. Figure something else out."
"Okay."
Drew stirred restlessly, stretched and yawned, conjured a taco bowl out of his inventory, and proceeded to rip into it. "I get that we need to get out there and kill stuff," he said around bites of sour creamy, meaty goodness, "but can we get some sleep first? Clock in my interface says we've been walking, jogging, and fighting for almost eight hours now. Plus, I'm still baked. We've gotta find something else to make smoke with. Weed's great, but only recreationally and only when we aren't about to"—a yawn ambushed him—"get into a fight."
"Find a safe room," Levi said. "You don't want to be sleeping in the corridors where something can get at you. And let's wrap this discussion first." His eyes glowed for an instant. "The way you dealt with the assassin bugs was solid—heroic stands at the barricades play well as long as you aren't cowering—but you need to be more careful about making sure things are dead. And better ammo discipline."
"Those two things seem to be at odds," Taylor noted.
"Just one of the joys of dungeon life," Levi said with an amused smile. "Oh, Calliope: using the board like an axe? Good. The board is your gimmick so the more versatile you can make it look, the better."
Calliope's face lit up. "Excellent!"
"Um, akshewally, I believe you intended to say 'radical'," Taylor said severely, pushing imaginary Coke-bottle glasses up his nose. "That's how board skaters talk these days."
Calliope snorted. "There were so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't know where to start."
"You guys are funny," Levi said, smiling. "I hope you don't die."
"Uh...thanks," Taylor said.
"Also, Calliope?" Levi said. "It was two sentences."
She blew a raspberry at him.
o-o-o-o
Charlie took them to the safe room where they could get a bed. It was full and the dungeon was better at enforcing occupancy limits than any fire marshal's fondest dream: the doorknob simply would not turn once there were 30 people inside.
Charlie pounded on the door until someone finally opened it. He was an older man, fifties and greying with thin-framed glasses and, bizarrely, a striped necktie. There was a stain on the tie but it was still neatly put together.
"John, I need to get three people out of there," Charlie said. "These guys need beds."
John stood half a step inside the safe room, studying Team Trick Shot (as Taylor had named them moments after leaving the tutorial guild), then looked at Charlie. "Why do we have to give up our slots for them? They're newbies."
"Because they've got firearms and can use them to get the rest of us good weapons, but to do that we need to make sure that they are rested, taken care of, and motivated to help us. So c'mon. Step out of there so I can go in and haul Betty and Alex out. Their shift ended two hours ago."
John folded his arms. "I'm not leaving."
"John, you've been in there for two full shifts. Other people need to get some food and a bed."
"If other people want to leave, fine. I'm staying."
"You know that the floor's going to collapse in a few days, right?" Taylor asked. "If you aren't out there grinding, you'll die."
"If we die we just get put in storage," John said. "Plus, it's fast and painless. Going out there and fighting just gets me killed painfully and messily."
"You don't get put in storage if you die in here," Charlie said patiently. "Lord Covvingtyn-Smythe told us that. Plus, we don't know if the collapse is fast or slow. Maybe the ceiling will come down slowly, one inch at a time so that you can see it coming. You'll duck, but it will keep coming until you have to lie down. You'll try to hold it back but it's billions of tons of rock and it won't even notice your efforts as it slowly and relentlessly compresses your chest, making it impossible to breathe. You'll gasp for air, struggling to get a tiny sip of life-giving oxygen as the ceiling presses harder and harder in tiny little increments until your sternum shatters and drives inward, piercing your heart and lungs. What do you think—would you drown in your own blood before your skull exploded?"
John swallowed nervously. Calliope was pale as a sheet.
"Or, alternatively, you could come out of that room and go with the next patrol," Charlie said lightly. "Kill some of the lower-leveled cats around here, get stronger, and have a small chance of surviving. Even if you fail, you'll die helping others. There's meaning in that. Purpose."
John stepped out the door and hurried off.
"Jesus fuck, dude," Drew said as soon as John was out of sight. "Why didn't you just murder the guy?"
"It's the apocalypse. There's no time for nice," Charlie said, stepping inside. "Wait here while I get you guys some beds. Don't let anyone else in."
o-o-o-o
There were twenty rooms for rent in the safe room, at a price of 0 gold each. The bedrooms were the size of a prison cell and contained a cot and nothing. The cots were stretcher wide and disappointment long, with sheets so thoroughly starched that the creases could cut and mattresses no thicker or more supportive than a gas-station sheet cake. In the morning, the team cycled through the showers (the hot water wasn't, the towels were missing, and there was no soap in the showers so it was necessary to pump it out of the dispensers by the sink before getting under the water. Despite all the lacks, Taylor felt a dozen times better in the morning than when he went to bed. He hadn't realized how tired and stressed he was.
Breakfast was self-serve tacos with a side of tacos. The only beverage was donkey urine falsely advertising itself as beer, but Team Trick Shot had plenty of water in their inventories. Eating was an uncomfortable experience; the taco house was filled with people and nudges and nods went around the room as they came in, leading rapidly to the existing boisterous conversation fading into expectant, hopeful silence and desperate eyes. The team tried to ignore the stares but all three of them quickly broke like soft pine, wolfing their food and racing out the door.
"Heading out?" Charlie asked, materializing at Taylor's elbow and making him jump.
"Jesus! Where did you come from? Did you even sleep?" It was clear that the shorter man had not; he was in the same clothes and the bags under his eyes had been promoted to trunks.
"No. You're leaving? Are you planning to come back?"
The team exchanged looks and Calliope tossed her chin at Taylor in a 'you can take this one' gesture that made him roll his eyes.
"Yes, we're leaving and yes, we plan to come back," Taylor said. "Until we do, these should help." He set his hand down by the floor and conjured up five metal spears, a .45 pistol, and two hundred rounds of ammunition. ("How much ammo do you want?" Joe the firearms dealer had asked. He had snorted amusement when Taylor replied, "Yes." Joe had been even more surprised when Taylor bought literally every shotgun shell and .45 bullet in the store.)
Charlie's eyes went wide. "Wow. Thank you."
Taylor shrugged. "S'aright. I hope they help." He looked down, checking the scratchpad in his interface where he had jotted down a todo list. "By the way, are you all still in one big party?"
Charlie nodded. "Yeah, why?"
"Our game guide said that's a bad plan. Any XP your hunters receive is being divided among everyone, which slows down the hunters' advancement. You should make sure that everyone has everyone in their chat and then break up into multiple smaller parties."
"Huh. That...makes perfect sense." He shook his head in frustration. "Lord Covvingtyn-Smythe hasn't been that helpful. He hurries everyone through and he gets pissy a lot."
Calliope winced. "Damn, that sucks. Our guy generally wants to watch his shows and would prefer that we get out ASAP, but he's still diligent."
"Sounds like you lucked out," Charlie said. "It's gotta be tough on these guys. They get all these strangers stumbling into their homes. The guides need to prepare them and send them out, knowing that the vast majority of them are going to die no matter what they do and they don't know exactly what to prepare them for. Not too surprising Lord Covvingtyn-Smythe doesn't want to spend more time with us than he has to."
Taylor cocked his head in thought. He hadn't considered that aspect of it.
"Use the gun to get started, but stick with dungeon weapons as much as you can," Calliope said. "Bullets run out. Oh, also, don't worry too much about food. Apparently it's pretty common in loot boxes. I've got dozens of those crawler biscuits."
Charlie snorted. "Have you tried those things? They're dry as a salt flat and they taste like sawdust."
"Also, health potions are apparently pretty common on the lower levels," Taylor said. "If we can get you down a staircase that should help a lot."
"Yeah," Charlie said. "It's our biggest priority right now. Lord Covvingtyn-Smythe says that on the third floor you can choose a class and a race, both of which give you special abilities. As soon as we can find a staircase, we're going down. We'll do the same thing on the second floor and once we're there maybe some of our noncombatants can rank up enough to contribute."
"You want six-year-olds to fight?" Drew said, eyebrows rising.
Charlie glared at him, but it was an anemic thing. "No, but apparently when they change your race they rebuild your body into something young, fit, and attractive to that species. It would let our older members be effective."
"Oh," Drew said. "Yeah, that makes more sense."
"By the way," Taylor said, quickly diverting things to a less fraught topic, "there's this team wandering around. The leader's name is Luke. They're all from Tennessee and wearing Confederate flags; I got a bad vibe from them. One of them, a woman named Roxy, has a player-killer skull. Luke has two."
"Yeah, those guys went through earlier," Charlie said. "They saw that we didn't have anything and they blew right on by even though we asked for help."
"They didn't harrass anyone?" Drew asked.
"A few harsh words and a couple of shoves, but nothing serious. Still, I got the same bad vibes you did. We'll let you know if they come back."
Taylor nodded. "Cool. Can we get you and as many other people as possible from your group in our contacts list? The best way for us to all get out of here is to share information about what's where, both monsters and staircases."
"Sure," Charlie said, holding out his fist and bumping each of them in turn. "I'll take you around." He turned and started walking, gesturing for them to follow. "As to monsters, we know that this area has cat-based things. They mostly travel solo, which is good. The weakest we've seen was the Krazy Kitteh, which are generally about level 2 and the size of a Maine coon with one three-inch fang." He chuckled. "Honestly, they look dumb. Still dangerous if you aren't armed, but not as bad as some. West you've got birds and bats. The bats have a ranged sonic attack that made us back off; it's not that strong individually but they tend to gang up. Plus, we don't have any ranged weapons and the ceilings there are high enough that you can't hit them with melee stuff." He thought for a moment. "North are these winged snake things. Sort of like those South American critters? Bright feathers, something of a hypnotic effect. South is oozes and slimes; they're acidic and kinetic damage just splatters them on you. We stepped back from those real fast."
"Cool," Taylor said. He quickly described the kruthak and how the team had fought them.
"Yeah, we met one of those and stepped off. It was a level 4 Kruthak Gatherer. Low damage but very tough. Killed three people and ate the bodies before ambling off. We've stayed out of their turf since."
"Smart," Taylor said. "When they die they release pheromones that attract others."
Charlie winced. "Yeah, glad we stayed away. We'll keep grinding on the cats, thank you very much."
Taylor: I'm thinking birds and bats? Unlikely that other crawlers will go after them for the same reasons Charlie's group hasn't, so they'll be mostly untouched. Gives us the most grinding targets and also lets us thin things out for other crawlers who might need to cross through there.
Calliope: Cool! Can't wait to ramp up the wall and grab one of those things out of the air!
Taylor: Yeah, let's hold off on that until we see what they can do, okay?
Calliope: Yes, mom.
She even rolled her eyes when she chatted the last.
Drew: I'm cool with birds and bats. Smoke will likely help since it can reach them. This time I'll just burn it, not smoke it.
"We'll head west," Taylor said out loud. "Thin the herd on the hard-to-reach things in case you need to go through there at some point."
"Thank you," Charlie said. He bent to gather up the weapons. "And thank you for these. They'll make a big difference. Let's get you introduced around and on your way."
o-o-o-o
Charlie's group was camped near the border with the next neighborhood, so it didn't take long to get there. It was easy to tell when they arrived, because the ceiling suddenly soared from twenty feet to fifty or perhaps more—it was hard to tell given the shadows.
"Yeah, there is definitely not going to be an ambush by another one of those 'invisible on the map' mobs," Drew said. "Nope. Definitely not."
"Definitely," Taylor agreed. "Leo, please stick close until we get a handle on what we're dealing with?" Inspiration struck. "Drew and I are going to need your mobility to cover us if we get swarmed."
Calliope had been opening her mouth to object, but she closed it again and smiled, delighted. "Since you ask so nicely, I guess I can stick around and protect you oldies," she said, swaggering a little. "Welp, let's get it on." She dropped her board and glided forward, shifting her weight to weave back and forth so that she didn't get too far ahead.
Taylor winced. He checked to make sure that his Tavor was currently set to birdshot and waved for Drew to follow after Calliope while Taylor took the rear. He wasn't comfortable having Mr Poor Muzzle Discipline at the back of the group.
It wasn't long before Drew was proven right about the ambush theory.
A red dot suddenly appeared on their minimaps, directly above them; an instant later a bird dove on Drew from behind.
This time, Taylor had been keeping an eye glued to the map. "Down!" he shouted, dropping to one knee and raising his shotgun. Drew went down on his face and the bird streaked through the space where Drew's head had been, its feet balled into tiny fists that would have hit like twin hammers. It wasn't large for a hawk, only about as large as three large human fists overall, but the glimpse that Taylor caught showed a savagely hooked beak and nasty claws.
Nitrofecal Kestrel — Level 4
Taylor's shotgun barked twice as the bird went past, followed by a wild shot before he could recognize that the target was gone. It looped up, disappearing back into the darkness on the ceiling and off their maps.
"Did you get him?" Drew asked, coming back to his feet with his weapon upraised.
"Doubt it," Taylor said. "Keep moving. Don't give him a stable target for another of those dives." He stepped aside to show what he meant.
It was a good thing that he did, because it meant that the explosive bird shit landed next to him instead of directly on him.
The blast wasn't that powerful, but it landed within inches of Taylor's shoes and swept his legs out from under him, breaking both his ankles in the process. Taylor shrieked in pain and managed to twist as he fell so that his weapon was aimed upwards. A flash of movement made him track right and fire.
The bird spun around Taylor's shot with arrogant ease, disappearing back into the shadows and vanishing from their minimaps yet again.
Taylor cursed and hit his Heal spell twice, leaving himself with 1 mana and a pair of unbroken ankles. He climbed to his feet and moved to put his back to the wall, shotgun aimed up. Drew and Calliope stayed in the center of the hallway, back to back, while Moose patrolled around them, eyes on the ceiling.
The red dot appeared and all three humans discharged their weapons at it reflexively. The dot disappeared again but no dead body fell from above.
"Guys, we've got a problem," Taylor said.
"Wait for it," Drew said, smiling.
"If we can't see it—"
"It's okay. Just wait."
"But—"
A bird fell from above and hit the ground a short ways off, peeping and kicking its legs weakly. Drew walked over and shot it from a range of six inches, turning its body into birdburger.
"What just happened?" Taylor demanded.
Drew slung his shotgun and pulled an empty plastic storage tub from his inventory. He peeled back the lid and looked up; a moment later a small cloud of bluish smoke wriggled down and crawled into the tub. Drew snapped the (relatively) air-tight lid back on and shoved the whole thing into his inventory.
"I took your advice," he said to Taylor. "Got the thing so high it couldn't stand up."
"Right. Didn't see you deploy it, but cool." He looked around. "Okay, time to get off the main corridor and head inwards. Let's take a minute, though. There's something I want to try."
He sorted through his inventory tab until he found what he needed. A moment later he conjured forth two metal tanks and a box of party supplies.
o-o-o-o
They found a side corridor branching off the main throughway and turned onto it, heading towards the center of the neighborhood where there would presumably be more monsters. Over the next fifteen minutes, they had two more encounters with the birds.
The first encounter was with another singleton, the second with a swarm of five. By now they had evolved a protocol: at the front of the group, Calliope walked backwards in the middle of the corridor, eyes and shotgun up. Moose walked a few paces to her right, facing forward. Drew and Taylor hung back and stayed spread well apart, eyes and weapons up. In this formation at least one of them had eyes on the moment a bird dropped on them.
The birds didn't adapt well; they always started with a diving attack and if that didn't work they followed up with a fecal bomb. The bombs were powerful but had a narrow blast radius; as long as you were two or three feet away they felt like nothing more than a shove.
During the first encounter, Calliope tracked the bird's dive at Taylor, waited for it to pull up after missing its attack, and blew it out of the air with two quick blasts of buckshot. The second time was trickier because of the multiple attackers, but Team Trick Shot kept moving around fast enough that the birds had no good targets and therefore stayed up on the ceiling until Drew's marijuana smoke sent them plummeting to the ground. Unfortunately, Drew's spell expired at that point and the smoke dispersed, forcing him to burn another ounce of pot in order to refresh his weapon.
The birds were enough to push Caliope and Drew to level 5 and Taylor to 4. Moose, who hadn't been able to get involved, remained at level 5 and seemed grumpy about it. He made a point of peeing on one of the dead birds which, along with a sufficient amount of ear-ruffling from Taylor, was sufficient to mollify him.
It was then that they had their first encounter with the bats.
The first that Taylor knew something was wrong was when his stomach suddenly flipped over. The corridor tilted around him; he staggered drunkenly and went to all fours, the slung shotgun barrel ringing against the stone floor before being drenched in an outpouring of Taylor's vomit.
You have been rendered Queasy!
You have been rendered Vertiginous!
Everything was too topsy-turvy for Taylor to even stay on all fours. He flopped to the ground, rolling onto his back and releasing a swarm of red, white, and blue party balloons from his inventory. They floated lazily upwards to the ceiling where dozens of tiny red eyes marked the locations of the red dots that suddenly carpeted his minimap. The balloons bumped up against the ceiling but they did not obstruct the view of the bats or interfere with the supersonic screeching that was disabling the team.
Moose was unaffected by the shrieking. He howled in pain at the supersonic noise and danced back and forth, barking and jumping in futile threat.
"Skyfire!" Taylor said weakly, waving his shotgun blindly and sending multiple loads of birdshot in the general direction of the bats. Several of the balloons popped and one bat fell to the ground, its left wing and leg mauled, but the attack continued unabated.
A pair of lit torches arced away as Drew and Calliope played their part in the Skyfire tactic. Both of them were on their backs like Taylor and suffering just as badly from the vertigo; Calliope's torch flew down the corridor and fell to the ground ten feet away. Drew's bounced off the wall ten feet up instead of arcing cleanly to the ceiling, but the semi-magical dungeon torch was not extinguished and it continued upwards after the bounce. That, as it turned out, was enough.
Take a party balloon and fill it halfway from a hydrogen tank. Fill it the rest of the way from an acetylene tank. Let it fly up to the ceiling and burst it with birdshot, then throw a lit torch into the released gas.
The explosion sheeted across the ceiling, tearing bats apart and disrupting their shrieking. The bats who weren't outright killed dropped from the ceiling and swooped away, charging at the downed humans with tiny claws and not-so-tiny fangs spread wide.
The humans, no longer disabled by the shrieking, responded with a storm of shotgun fire that shredded the attacking bats.
"Hah!" Taylor said. "Got that ding-ding noise that all the boys chase. Level 5, baby."
"I was there first," Calliope grumbled. "Also, was that a quote? It sounded like you were quoting."
Taylor looked at her. Was she joking? "Seriously? 'All About That Bass' by Meghan Traynor? 'I got that boom boom that all the boys chase', except the system announcements go ding and not boom. Yeah?"
She shrugged, mystified. "Is that one of those nineties songs you like so much?"
Drew started laughing.
"Just ride," Taylor grumbled.
"Also, Calliope? Moose made level 5 first," Drew said, grinning. "If we're being accurate."
Calliope glared at him and jumped on her board, pivoted it and glided down the corridor.
"Hold up a sec," Taylor called.
Calliope looked back over her shoulder, saw him waving, and rolled her eyes. She pivoted the board and monster-walked back to them, the board repeatedly turning 180 under her while continuing in the same direction. "What?" she demanded.
"I think we should back off," Taylor said. "That sonic attack is too rough. We barely survived it and I used up all the balloons."
"Jesus, Unc!" Calliope said, throwing her hands in the air. "We can't always back off from everything! You heard Levi—we haven't been aggressive enough. We need to level faster. If you're going to be a complete—"
"Easy, kiddo," Drew said. "I'm with Taylor on this one. We're better set up against flying things than anyone else we've met, but the birds were still a challenge and the bats were impossible."
"Also, Moose can't level against these things," Taylor added. "How about we head anyplace else, your choice?"
"Except not the winged snakes," Drew added. "Those things sound like they'd blow goats."
"We can go back and hit the kruthak again if you want—those guys gave good XP," Taylor said.
She chewed her lips for a moment, thinking. "Nah," she said at last. "We'd have to go past Charlie and his gang. We'd look like a bunch of chickenshits for backing off right after getting here. Let's go back to the main corridor and punch through to the west—part of the idea of coming here was that we would clear out the path in case he and his people need to head this way, so let's do that and then see what's in the next neighborhood over."
"Sounds good," Taylor said, relieved. "Lead the way."
"I always do. Mostly because you oldies are so damn slow." She dropped her board and jumped on, pushing back the way they had come.
"Language, young lady!" Taylor shouted after her.
o-o-o-o
The next neighborhood was another two miles on, which meant a bit less than half an hour at the walk/jog/repeat pace the two men could handle. Calliope ranged ahead, swinging back occasionally to roll her eyes and complain about how slow they were. Taylor made a couple of acidic comments about how it was a bit more tiring to go on your own two feet instead of rolling along on wheels.
Moose watched and panted doggy laughs at all of them.
They met two more birds and a lone bat and managed to punch through them through the clever tactic of filling the air with massive amounts of birdshot sprayed in the general direction of the enemy until said enemy fell down.
The borders of the neighborhoods weren't clearly marked, but it was easy enough to tell when they had left the birds/bats neighborhood, because mobs suddenly started appearing on the map again.
"Thank fuck," Taylor said. "May we never see anything with wings ever again."
"Race you there, oldies!" Calliope pushed off, zooming down the hallway and pivoting into the side corridor where the zombies waited
"Wait! Damnit!" Taylor cursed and started running.
"Have a—holy fuckballs!" came from ahead, followed by two pistol shots, then two more a moment later, and a lot of laughter throughout.
Taylor came puffing around the corner ninety seconds later to find Calliope well down the hall and gliding back towards them. On the ground in front of him was a pair of...a pair of...
"Dude, are those zombie catgirl cheerleaders?" Drew asked.
The two dead (re-dead?) mobs were in fact zombie catgirl cheerleaders. They were just under five feet tall with long, straggly blonde hair, fur that was reddish brown where it hadn't rotted off, three-foot mangy tails, pom-poms and tight pink sweaters that said "Zombie U" and underneath, in smaller letters, "Go, go! Eat those brainiacs!" One of them had both her kitty ears, the other had one and a rotted-away fragment of the other.
"Have I mentioned that this place is messed up?" Taylor said.
"Teetee," Calliope said, nodding.
Taylor looked over at her. "What?"
"'Two tees', which anyone who can figure out their phone knows means 'too true'."
Taylor felt old, started to say "You kids and your slang today", felt horrified and even older at finding himself having that thought, and said nothing.
"Come with me," Calliope said, grinning. "You'll love this." She flipped the nose of her board up, pivoted, and pushed off down the hall.
Taylor and Drew walked after her, struggling to catch their breath.
They made it seventy or eighty yards down the narrow corridor, passing by three branches, before Calliope stopped and waited for them.
"Pretty awesome, huh?" she said as they joined her. She was grinning fit to split her face.
Taylor pinched out his map and immediately saw what she was talking about. There were scores of zombies just in the hundred-meter radius that his map showed. He couldn't see their types or levels when he was zoomed out this far, but there were plenty of them. They were mostly shambling around but a few were standing still. Also, at the very northwestern corner of his map, he could see the lower half of a large room. It was the only non-corridor space they had seen thus far that wasn't a safe room or bathroom, and it was a solid grey block with no information about what was inside.
"So, what do you say, Unc?" Calliope demanded, turning to face him and putting her hands on her hips. "Can we actually go fight some zombies and level up, or are we chickening out again? Because that room over there is looking pretty damn tasty."
Author's Note: I wish to offer a great thank you to @Inferno Vulpix. I was trying to figure out what monsters to use in this neighborhood and I came up with boring old 'zombies'. I happened to flip past the tab that had the memes channel of the Discord on it and my eyes caught one sentence from the page: "Vampire catgirl foiled again!" And thus was born the neighborhood theme.
Voting time! What do you do next? Voting ends at
.
[] (Where) Go find out what's in the room
[] (Where) Stay and fight the zombies in the halls until you level up, then go check the room
[] (Where) Back up to the main corridor and keep going west to the next neighborhood
Write-in action plans are accepted. As always, please keep them under 300 words.
Farm some zombies until you level up. Don't use ammo beyond necessity - grind your dungeon weapons and any other skills that seem useful. Try to build up a good profile of how the zombies fight and pass the information back to Charlie and co. See if you can develop any good small-group spear-based tactics - zombies are stereotypically slow and dumb. Try out some catchphrases.
Explore the large room after taking some time to recover. Flood it with smoke (pot, wood, plastics, burn a monster?) first and then try to do something resembling a breach-and-clear: Drew and Taylor first through the door with shotguns followed immediately by a respirator-equipped Leo to scout the space. Pull hard on any gold as soon as you enter. Maximize the element of surprise, chaos, and confusion. Abort if it seems likely to be a boss room, or at least scale caution accordingly.
If an opportunity presents itself, ask Levi if there's anything we can do to make his life easier.
Do we heal on leveling up or our cooldowns reset? I can't remember DCC canon in that aspect. If so, it might be worth getting *close* to leveling up before checking out that room.
Do we heal on leveling up or our cooldowns reset? I can't remember DCC canon in that aspect. If so, it might be worth getting *close* to leveling up before checking out that room.
