Well now you've done fine and hurt mah feelings. I suddenly find myself motivated to takes a more significant mandate in order to be all innovative and stuff. Harrumph.
Oh dear, I seem to have inspired the QM to seize UNLIMITED POWER.
As for the reality of the NPCs, that's a conversation we could have had wth Levi if Awareness got more votes. You're best off considering them as real enough to have qualia, pain, desires and background- but fake enough that the AI and showrunners can make those all be whatever they want. Be willing to kill them, or be trapped in the scenarios of the sadists in charge.
As for the Desperado... It's portrayed as basically the Rogues Guild. The tattoo is a bloody knife, the motto is 'So Fun It Hurts,' the only canon entry quest was an assassination, the main characters in canon got membership through infanticide. It's clearly sold as the drugs, sex, gambling and murder club. Of course it's mostly fluff, as most victims aren't real, but it's sold as the bad place for bad people where bad things happen. That's the setting.
Vanquisher is set as this upper-class country club for retired priests, it has many temples and probably assorted other goodies to make it equal to Desperado, but the main characters haven't visited it much and the people around them tend to prefer wild parties to a quiet bar.
I'm fairly certain that these aren't 'real' people. We're effectively picking an evil option in a video game: maybe a little distasteful but morally neutral. Winning saves the earth.
Define "real". They think, they feel, they bleed, they have self awareness. Their memories were created in an editing booth and have huge gaps in them, making them similar to someone with a partial case of retrograde amnesia.
On the other hand, they were created in a biological printer instead of born naturally, they didn't form memories organically, and they're going to be crushed in a week when this floor collapses.
On the gripping hand, killing them improves your chances of survival and thereby the chance of saving billions of lives.
Unintentional infanticide, should be emphasized. Carl didn't know until after he pushed the detonator that there were babies in the room. (Donut did, but she had only been a sophont for a short time and was still working on that whole 'moral code' thing. Plus, cats are assholes.)
This part, mostly. They don't have real lives. They're literally NPCs. I'm not saying that their lives have literally no value but they have infinitely less value than any Earthling who has a shot at legitimate survival.
If we could somehow cheese it such that brutally murdering all of them personally would win us the dungeon - heck, maybe even the floor - it would be a no-brainer.
This part, mostly. They don't have real lives. They're literally NPCs. I'm not saying that their lives have literally no value but they have infinitely less value than any Earthling who has a shot at legitimate survival.
If we could somehow cheese it such that brutally murdering all of them personally would win us the dungeon - heck, maybe even the floor - it would be a no-brainer.
...That would take more time from their collective lives than our party's remaining normal lifespans all combined and cause immense suffering. Clearing the dungeon I'll grant might be worth it for the sheer number of humans saved.
It struck the ground and spun like a ballerina, the petals flowering open to reveal a potion bottle filled with pulsing golden treacle. Visibly eager to be done with this, Moose glanced at the description and then immediately gulped the potion down.
That's implied by upper-class country club. :V
I don't mean to sell Vanquisher as The Good Guy Place, especially since I'm pretty sure the AI has an allergy for anything good. But I'm pretty sure the club quests are 'good', which will probably lead to about as much suffering as the Desperado ones.
After the Vespa battle on the previous floor, the party had a fair number of boxes to open. They had all earned a half-dozen Bronze boxes for various things. Taylor and Drew had earned Silver 'Ambush Assassin' boxes for killing over fifty enemies in a single attack while striking from hiding. Calliope and Moose had both earned Gold 'Master Baiter' boxes for leading over 1,000 enemies into an ambush box. And, of course, everyone had earned a Silver 'Choosing an Earth Class' box.
His Gold 'Master Baiter' box gave him the Crupper of the Philharmonic Pheromonic Furiousity, which allowed him to issue forth a level 15 Mob Madness spell. It would cause every red-tagged mob within 150 yards to be hit with a powerful Taunt effect. It also caused him to fart. Loudly.
Her Gold box contained the Bandana of Daredevil Distraction, a black bandana with a white design of a fist with upraised middle finger. When worn around the neck it gave +1 Intelligence, +1 Constitution, +3 Dexterity, +3 Charisma. When pulled up over the face so that the design showed, it also gave her +4 to her Taunt spell.
Drew and Taylor received more potions and Confusing Fog scrolls in their Bronze boxes, and a potion in their Silver boxes that gave them +2 to the Assassination skill, which increased their damage by 50% per level when attacking from ambush. Taylor also received several more bags of Kobold Fire Gel.
The Desperado Club was very out of place in the elegant city of Large Skyfowl Settlement. It was a massive cube that squatted across an entire city block and boasted a solid six stories, towering over the much smaller buildings around it. Flashing red neon spelled out 'Desperado Club', with a two-frame cartoon of a buxom woman dancing. Instead of the city's normal elegant wood and cozy brick, the building was poured concrete with peeling whitewash on the outside, the entrance braced by square columns with a semi-circle relief showing triangular, sun-like rays.
The room immediately inside the door was small for the size of the building, maybe thirty feet square. In front of the group as they came in was a scattering of tables, all occupied by NPCs. Beyond them was a glittering red door with a tiger-headed bouncer slouched against the wall, arms folded. To the team's left was a bar with three NPCs, two of them staring morosely into their drinks and the third chatting with the bartender. To the team's right and on the other side of the room was what looked like a coat check. A bald human slumped on a stool behind the counter. He looked bored.
"First things first," Levi said. "The Desperado Club is not a safe room. You can be attacked and killed in here and the AI won't save you. Management might ban your attacker, but that won't prevent you from being dead.
"This is the outer room of Desperado Club. It's open to the public and you don't need a pass to get in. That guy over there"—he gestured towards the bald man—"gives out quests that let you earn a pass. Once you have a pass we can go through the red door and into the club proper.
"Having access to the Desperado Club is important if you want to survive in the dungeon. The dungeon is vastly harder if you don't have access to either Desperado or Vanquisher and, in my experience, Desperado is the better option. There's an enormous marketplace where you can buy key gear and sell off the random junk that you get in loot boxes but can't use or don't need. There's training guilds, although those are complicated and we'll deal with it later. There's entrances to the Club all over and they all open to the same place, meaning that you can get together with other crawlers despite being a thousand miles apart."
"Cool," Calliope said. "So it's fast travel?"
"No," Levi said, shaking his massive head. "When you leave the club you'll always return to the same spot you came in from. Even if you carry someone through the door, they'll appear where they came in and you'll appear where you came in. People have tried to exploit this for ages and it can't be done. The AI will not allow you to fast travel through the club. That's—"
"I bet I can," Taylor interrupted. "My Sysop class allows me to 'rehome' someone's departure point to be the other side of an open teleport door. Pretty sure that means that we'll be able to bring someone else to our location, or us to theirs, given a bit of time."
Levi harumphed. "That class is so fucked," he mumbled. "Anyway, absent your ridiculous shenanigans, it's important to know that you go out where you came in, because if you run inside a Desperado in order to get away from something that's chasing you, you need to make sure that it's gone before you walk back out. Notice that your map isn't showing you the outside of the club right now? That means that you're not going to know what's out there until you actually open the door, and since this isn't a safe room that means that the bad guys can attack you as soon as you open the door."
He had been standing in the doorway while he talked, but now he broke away and headed for the quest-giver, who was leaning on his forearms and looking their way.
"Hey, Levi!" the man said, straightening up. "How's it hangin', mah brother?" He was human, tall and square with a complexion that could have come from anywhere across half of Earth's land area. He had a squashed nose and a cauliflower ear that suggested he'd been in more than a few fights, and his scraped knuckles suggested that at least one of them had been recent. He wore a blue T-shirt and black jeans with a wide leather belt. There was a tattoo on his neck and one on each arm.
"Doin' okay, Steve, doin' okay," Levi said, rapping knuckles with the man. "What's up with you? Still with Loranie?"
"Still together, still happy, although it sucks that she's running a magic guild on eight this season," Steve said. This close, Taylor could see that the tattoo on his neck was of a dagger dripping blood, the one on his left bicep was a multi-headed hydra, and the one on his right forearm was a werewolf in mid-transformation, lunging forward with jaws spread wide.
Steve glanced at the Terrans and back to Levi. "You're a manager?"
"By the grace of Her Hair," Levi said, nodding. "These are my eager little ducklings. Got a quest for them?"
Steve scratched his jaw as he looked at the little slips of paper pinned to a corkboard beside him. "Got a few, actually. Something gentle, I'm assuming?"
"If you would." He looked over to Taylor and the others. "He's going to give you some options for quests. You choose the one you want, he gives you the slip of paper, you go do the quest. When you complete it successfully you'll get a loot box and the paper will mark itself complete. You go to a safe room, open the loot box, you get your Desperado pass. Once you have it, you can move in and out of the Club freely from then on."
Steve finished looking over the options and turned back.
"You've got a few choices," he said, eyes shifting between the humans. "First one is to burn down an orphanage and kill the owners."
"Burn down an orphanage?!" Calliope said.
"Cool your jets," Steve said. "Quest doesn't say the kids have to be inside, or that you have to kill them. Just the owners."
"Land deal?" Levi asked.
Steve nodded. "Yeah, the premise is that there's a local land developer, skyfowl asshole named Sunfollower. He wants to buy up all the buildings on Swift Street, tear them down, and build fresh so he can flip it for a profit. He's got everything except one particular orphanage that refuses to sell. You need to make sure the owners are dead so that they don't object in court, but the kids can go free."
"I am not burning down an orphanage," Calliope said flatly.
Moose: MOOSE DOES NOT LIKE THIS IDEA EITHER!
"What else you got?" Levi asked.
"Lessee...standard assassination mission. Go to the address on the paper, whack Jim Bob."
"Who is he?" Taylor asked.
Steve shrugged. "No idea."
"These are the gentle options?" Calliope asked.
Steve nodded. "Desperado ain't for goody two shoes, girl. Trust me, the stuff I'm not offering you is worse."
"What—you know what, never mind," she said. "I don't want to know."
"We don't want a random assassination," Taylor said. "What else do you have?"
Levi: Keep in mind: NPCs aren't real people. They're more like flesh robots. They were built in a biological printer and their memories were edited together in the equivalent of a sound booth, then typed into their brains. Plus, they're all going to die in a few days when the level collapses.
Drew: Steve here seems pretty real. He knew who you were.
Levi: Steve and his wife are former crawlers, eleveners like me. Many of the employees here at the Desperado are. It's one of the better indenture jobs.
"This one ain't too bad," Steve said. "Caravan raid. Disappear the caravan, bring the cargo to a designated location." The paper was slightly curled up, so he pressed it down with a finger so he could read the rest. "Huh. Looks like it's a payroll caravan for Squonik Shipping and Travel. The tag says that the quest givers know how much is in the chest, so you fail if you skim."
"I'm assuming that 'disappear the caravan' involves killing all the people?" Taylor asked.
Steve nodded. "Kill all the people, break up the wagons, hide the bodies and the wagons in the ruins at least a mile from the road."
"Jesus," Taylor muttered. "If these are the gentle quests, the stuff you're not offering us must be horrible."
"Pretty much, yah," Steve said. "How do you feel about genocide? I've got a few torture quests, if you like those better. Or I can go back to the gentle ones."
Calliope shuddered. "Go back to the gentle ones, please."
"Lessee...here's another assassination one, but it's got more detail. Madame Allisandre. She's one of the best madams in the city. Someone wants her dead of 'natural causes'. You need to sneak into the Velvet Pussycat without being seen and slip the contents of this vial into the bottle of brandy on her bedside table." He shook his head. "She gets fussy about clients who don't ask for consent before getting rough with her girls. I guess she banned the wrong guy."
Drew took a long hit on his joint.
"I'm not killing some madam for being protective of her girls," Calliope said.
"Steve. You didn't have to say that part," Levi said, a low anger in his voice.
Steve grimaced. "Yeah, I forgot they're still noobs. Sorry."
"Hang on," Taylor said. "Isn't she an NPC? How can there be this history around her, and around that land developer guy for that matter, if they only just became real?"
"There's always history, kid," Steve said. "This place is made so that it looks real. The NPCs have memories, there's pre-written stories that they fit into, whatever. Doesn't mean they're real."
"But—"
"How about we keep moving," Levi said quickly. "Steve, what else you got? Seriously, start 'em off easy, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah." Steve skimmed through the remaining slips on his board. "Oh, hang on. Here's a good one. Raid a drug house, kill everyone inside, bring all the product to this address."
Everyone paused to consider that.
"Last one," Steve said before anyone could speak up. "This one's a doozy." Unlike the rest, he unpinned the slip from the board, held it up in two hands (apparently he was quite nearsighted) and read it aloud. "Poppy Melkwasser is a seven-year-old skyfowl. She's been kidnapped and is being kept at the first address below. Free her, bring her to the second address without being seen, and deliver her to the arms of her loving parents."
Levi snorted. "I don't know who this kid is or what the twist is, but there is no way this is on the level. Most likely she's currently with her parents and you're actually abducting her. Or maybe she's a crime lord's kid being used as security to prevent a gang war. There will be something. The ones that seem the cleanest are always the dirtiest."
"We really have to do this?" Taylor asked. "We can't go over to Vanquisher?"
Levi shrugged. "You can, but I wouldn't suggest it. For one thing, I don't have a Vanquisher pass and can't get one since I've got a Desperado pass. That means I can't go in with you so you'll be working blind. I haven't been in there so I haven't seen it myself, but I've had plenty of colleagues who were members. There's no marketplace and the guilds there are all for paladin and cleric classes that you guys don't have, which means there's nothing you can train. You'll be able to get a bunch of quests, but quests are generally a time trap. You level faster and get more loot boxes by grinding than by doing quests. About the only advantage of Vanquisher is that you'll get access to some powerful healers and cursebreakers, but there's other ways to manage that."
The Terrans exchanged unhappy looks.
"Tell us about the drug den," Taylor asked Steve. "What's likely to be there?"
Steve glanced at the paper. "Doesn't say. My guess is it'll be blitz, maybe Angel Wing. That shit is super nasty. They both give some guaranteed short-term benefits and there's a small chance of getting a permanent stat boost, but they're incredibly addictive. One hit on blitz has something like a 60% chance of addiction and it goes up 10% for each hit after that. Angel Wing is worse—you take a hit, you're hooked, end of story. Makes you very strong and gives you fast healing for a short time, but it also drives you berserk. The effects degrade over time so you need to take bigger and bigger doses to get any benefits and it pretty quickly starts giving you nasty debuffs. Plus, it eats your Constitution."
"Also, whenever drug quests appear on the board, it usually means there's going to be a drug-war storyline," Levi said. "If someone doesn't take that place out then they're going to be selling to the NPCs and you'll see 'roided out berserkers on the streets in a day or so."
"So it's kinda moral," Drew said, taking another drag on his joint.
Steve shrugged. "As moral as any of these things are gonna get, yeah." He looked over his board, then shook his head. "If you're worried about the morality then this is the best I've got. Remember, the NPCs ain't real. They're meat machines. Literally the only reason they exist in the dungeon is to cause problems for crawlers. Either they're trying to kill you, or they're part of a storyline that's going to cause a plague, or blow up a city, or cause a war, or some damn thing." He studied them for a moment and when he spoke again his rough voice was gentler. "Seriously, kid, it's okay. They aren't real people, so it's not an issue. Even if you want to believe they're real, they're still better off dead. Their lives are pretty much always bad. Killin' 'em is a good thing."
Moose whined and looked at Taylor.
"Remember the part about 'drug war'," Levi said. "I guarantee you that tomorrow, day after at the longest, you're going to see drug dealers fighting in the streets and junkies going on murder sprees. I've seen it hundreds of times. You'll be saving NPC lives by taking this place out."
Taylor chewed on that one uncertainly. He looked back and forth between Calliope and Drew who seemed equally unhappy about it but also uncertain.
Moose: We should do it. Take out the drug den. We apparently need the Desperado passes to survive and, according to the experts, someone is going to die in this scenario. If that's the case then I want it to not be you three.
Taylor grimaced. "All right. We'll take the drug raid one. We'll do it as a team."
"Cool," Steve said. He put the Poppy 'rescue' quest back on the board and took down a different slip. The edges glimmered for a moment as he passed it to Taylor. "Good luck."
Levi looked sad for a moment. "I'm sorry you lot are having to do this, but I promise you that it's the right move." He gestured towards the red door. "I'm going inside to take care of business. Go do it now, go to the nearest safe room and get the passes, then meet me here. Make sure that there's no blood on you when you come out of the building. The guards will go red if you've got blood on you. And keep all the product in your inventory, not in your hands. The guards will also go red if they see you carrying drugs or stolen goods."
"Couple tips," Steve said. "First, scout the place before you go in. Identify all the doors beforehand. You can't afford to let anyone get away or you fail the quest and have to come get another one. Also, move fast. The guards will investigate if they see a door that's clearly been broken down, and if they see you on the scene they'll be able to tell that you did it and they'll aggro. Get in, get it done, get out. Ideally, leave through a non-broken door."
Taylor nodded unhappily. "Thanks. And the second tip?"
Steve nodded towards the red door that led into the main club. "Chat to Levi before you go in so he can meet you at the door. There's a lot to know about the club and you don't want to be figuring it out on the fly."
"Got it." Taylor looked at the others. "Calliope, I'd like you to stay outside on this one."
"No can do," Steve said before Calliope could object. "Anyone who doesn't risk themselves doesn't get counted for the quest. She doesn't have to kill anyone, but she does have to go inside before the environment is contained."
"If we're doing this then I'm doing this," Calliope said firmly. "I'm not letting you three carry the load without me. I'm not some damsel in distress, Unc. Don't treat me like one." She paused. "Besides, it's not like I haven't been killing stuff all along, right?"
Taylor rubbed his necks in frustration and sighed. It wasn't worth going into the fact that they had yet to kill humans and had killed very few sapients. Calliope was clutching onto her bravado like a shield and taking that shield away wasn't going to make anything better. Besides, maybe the drug dealers would be non-human. That would help.
"Fine," he said. "Let's do this. You and Moose, me and Drew. Nobody breaches until we're all ready."
o-o-o-o
Taylor waited until the town guard turned the corner and out of sight. The creature was seven feet tall, level 75, and each step clomped with the weight of several hundred pounds of steel. He was taking no chances on angering it.
Taylor: Clear here. You guys?
Moose: MOOSE AND CALLIOPE ARE READY! NO GUARDS HERE!
Taylor: You know we all saw you chat like a normal person, right? Back at the Desperado you had proper grammar and punctuation and pronouns and everything.
Moose: FIBS! TAYLOR IS FIBBER! MOOSE HAS ALWAYS TALKED LIKE SMART BRAIN DOG! BAD TAYLOR, SAYING UNTRUE THINGS THAT ARE FIBS!
Taylor: Uh-huh. Whatever. I'm moving now. Hold for my signal.
Calliope: Check.
Moose: MOOSE ALSO SAYS CHECK!
Undertaker Court was an especially bad street in a bad part of town. It stank of urine in puddles and uncollected garbage in wet and torn paper bags piled up on the curb. This side of the block was six buildings long: three apartment buildings (two of them abandoned with the windows broken or boarded up), then the drug den, then a bar with loud honky-tonk music stomping from the windows, then a small grocery store containing mostly droopy produce and graying meat that fascinated the flies.
Drew and Taylor Gold were sitting at one of the honky-tonk's two outdoor tables while Taylor Blue hung out with Levi back at the Desperado Club in order to serve as an information conduit to their expert adviser. The waitress, a middle-aged human woman who had a smile for them even through the weight of her tired body and aching feet, had settled them in with a pair of surprisingly decent beers and a plate of bread and olive oil dusted with pepper and salt. The bread was a bit stale but the taste of the olive oil covered it up. Combined with the beer, it was a decent meal for only a couple of gold. More importantly, it had given them an excuse to sit here for half an hour while Moose and Calliope got into position on the other side of the block.
Taylor stood up and sauntered down the street towards the drug den. Large Skyfowl Settlement didn't have sidewalks, preferring instead to have horses and riding lizards and pedestrians and the occasional carriage all mingle together. The buildings butted right up on the street.
As he passed by the rot-faced building that housed the drug den he casually reached out and tried the doorknob; locked, as expected. Fortunately, whoever had papered over the windows had been sloppy and left a couple of small spaces uncovered. Neither was larger than a thumb and the fact that the room inside was darker than the late-afternoon sunlight outside meant that the window made a decent mirror.
To a Multacorpalan, that wasn't a problem.
Taylor Gold leaned in close, cupping his hands so as to cut out the glare and allow himself to see a tiny sliver of dusty floor and dirty wall. Taylor Blue appeared atop that floor.
The room was perhaps fifteen feet on a side, a decaying box filled with human misery and two guards. The outer door, the one that was Taylor's objective, was five feet behind him and ten feet to his right. The inner doorway, the one that led to the rest of the building and sported sagging broken hinges with no door, was diagonally opposite. To the right of the outer door, a set of stairs led up to the second floor.
Two men were sprawled on mattresses on the floor, playing cards on an upturned cardboard box. They were heavy-bodied, barely on this side of fat, and wore stained T-shirts with canvas pants. Metal wands and long knives lay within easy reach. As Taylor appeared with a faint pop, the two men looked up in surprise.
Marshall — Human Drug Dealer — Level 8
Dougie — Human Drug Dealer — Level 9
"Hey—" Marshall said, just as an 1100 gram yo-yo smashed him in the head.
Dougie jumped to his feet only to get a splurt of yellowish gel in the face. He staggered back, swiping at his eyes, and started screaming when Taylor pulled a lit torch from his inventory, threw it at him, and turned him into a temporarily-living funeral pyre.
Taylor spun and leaped for the door, slapping the bar back and yanking it open. Drew slid past him, pointed both fingers, and fired a pair of Annihilation Darts that turned Marshall and Dougie into giblets and splattered burning fire gel everywhere. The walls lit and the flames spread hungrily.
Taylor: Front door's open/undamaged. Go go go!
Calliope: Breaching now.
A massive crash sounded from farther back in the drug den as several hundred pounds of armored and angry war dog Legion Rushed through the back wall of the drug den.
You have been Packed!
The system message popped up on Taylor's HUD and he waved it away as Taylor Gold teleported in, appearing on the far side of the room at the open doorway, yo-yo on his right hand. Taylor Blue dropped his copy of their yo-yo into inventory, Gold pulled it out already equipped on his left hand. He blitzed the next room, the yo-yos striking out in opposite directions to take Tony — Human Drug Dealer — Level 10 and Lisa — Human Drug Dealer — Level 10 in the chest. He shortened the strings, snapping the weapons back to himself, spun them for momentum, and lashed out again. This room was larger, a combined kitchen and dining area with boxes piled along the walls. Half a dozen gangers were eating, each of them with a metal wand and some form of hand weapon on their belt.
While Taylor Gold dealt with the main room, Drew and Taylor Blue stormed the stairs, one of Drew's smoke clones in the lead. The moment the clone's foot touched the hallway at the top of the stairs it was cut in half by a scimitar.
"What the fuck?!" the attacker yelled as the smoke clone drifted apart. Taylor didn't have a chance to see what the man looked like; Drew had splattered him across the walls by the time Taylor reached the top of the stairs.
Taylor's childhood friend was a relaxed man. In the normal course of life, he moved slowly, smiled dreamily a lot, and was very slow to anger. Granted, much of that might be because he was usually as baked as Betty Crocker brownies.
Drew was not like that right now. His face was emotionless, his movements quick. He hit the top of the stairs, pivoted on the ball of his foot, and rushed the hall on swift feet. There was a closed door directly opposite the stairs, then four more staggered along the hall to the left, plus a papered-over window at the end that admitted a wan yellow light. The first two doors were open; Drew glanced in and fired an Annihilation Dart through each door as he went past, then grabbed the handle of the third door with his right hand, wrenched it open, and fired an Annihilation Dart into the room with his left. After each shot came the sound of exploding meat.
Taylor crested the stairs just as the door opposite them opened. Jacob — Human Drug Dealer — Level 13 came through, low and fast, with another of the metal wands in his right hand and a short sword in his left. He raised the wand and fired, only to have the blue bolt of energy intercepted by a metal barricade that popped out of Taylor's inventory in midair. Jacob ran headfirst into the heavy chunk of metal and staggered back as it clattered to the ground. Taylor transferred one of the yo-yos from Blue to himself and tossed it forward so it passed over the man's shoulder. He maxed out the yo-yo's weight, stepped slightly to the side and used his Summon Yo-Yo spell to call the Skyhawk back to his hand. An 1100-gram mass of invulnerable plastic smacked Jacob in the back of the head, knocking him forward so that he toppled over the barricade and sprawled at Taylor's feet.
Out of the corner of his eye, Taylor saw the fourth door open and a woman step out with a knife the length of her forearm held in a professional grip. Drew had finished with the third door and was just starting to turn as she closed the distance and stabbed her blade into the back of his neck.
The blade bounced off the air a foot from Drew's head. A blue aura flickered as his Shield spell contemptuously deflected the attack. Drew finished his turn and calmly blew the woman's head off, then fired another Dart off-hand to finish Taylor's opponent. Blood and meat showered as Taylor teleported away.
He reappeared downstairs behind Sally — Human Drug Dealer — Level 11, the leftmost of the three gangbangers who were currently engaging his other body. His machete appeared in his hand and he swung, slashing across the back of Sally's knee and sending her to the ground with a scream just as the other two fired their wands at Blue.
Blue vanished before the bolts could touch him, appearing to the right of the ganger on the end. He stepped forward and rammed his machete up under the man's chin. Whether through bad luck or the fact that his Sword skill was still at 2, the attack failed to connect. The ganger shot him in the thigh with the wand and stabbed him in the shoulder as he fell. Taylor screamed from both mouths as Blue collapsed, but he had taken a healing potion by the time he hit the floor and the damage was erased. The ganger raised his wand to Taylor's head; Taylor struggled to roll aside—
And then Moose was there.
The massive dog dared not use his Legion Rush ability inside for fear of hitting his friends, but that was fine. He was currently the largest dog that had ever existed, just barely small enough to get through doors without too much trouble, and he moved so fast that the gangers had no chance to react before he sent them flying like pins from a professional bowler's strike. They bounced off the walls with breathless grunts, went to their knees, and struggled to get up. Moose bit the head off the first one before he could get his bearings, Calliope bounded through the air and stabbed her Kruthak Needle through the second one's chest, and Taylor Gold smashed the third one's head in with a yo-yo strike.
"Anything left?" Taylor asked, cutting his eyes towards the door Calliope and Moose had entered from.
Calliope shook her head. "No. Four of them, putting product in bags and boxes. We dealt with it."
Taylor nodded sharply. "Building's on fire. Let's get the product and get out of here."
"Clean up," Calliope said, pointing at Taylor Blue. "You're drenched in blood and we don't want the guards to aggro."
Taylor touched his face and looked at his fingers. Sure enough, they were red with blood, presumably from the guts of the man he had put down and Drew had exploded.
Smoke was pouring into the kitchen from the outer room, bringing furnace heat with it. The fire was a giant's gushing glee, devouring the outer room and reaching for more.
"Fuck," Taylor said, pulling out a towel and scrubbing furiously at his face and hair. "DREW! GET DOWN HERE!" The words were drowned out by the howl of the flames.
Drew: Already here. Dealing with the fire.
The smoke abruptly stopped coming into the room and what was already there was sucked back.
Taylor held the towel up in front of himself, dropped his bloody clothes into inventory, and popped a fresh set on. He also conjured up a heavy blue hooded cloak; it was one example of the unenchanted junk that showed up in Bronze boxes and he'd been carrying it around since the first floor. He could have used one of the things he'd brought into the dungeon—a canvas rainfly, or a yellow plastic rain poncho, or half a dozen other things—but he didn't want to get them bloody if he didn't have to.
He scrubbed at his hands, checking to make sure there was no visible blood left.
Moose: CALLIOPE HAS BLOOD ON CLAWS! SHE MUST GET CLEAN OR GUARDS WILL BE GROUCHY! ALSO, MOOSE IS A BIT DIRTY AND WILL NEED A BATH! OR AT LEAST SOME HELP TOWELING OFF!
'A bit dirty' was an understatement. Moose was leaving bloody pawprints behind, none of the blood his own. His muzzle was soggy with more blood and it was splattered across his peytral and greaves, with a light misting in the fur of his thighs and wet spots on his underbelly. There was also dust and dirt and wood chips across most of his body where he had exploded through the wall, his and Calliope's breach having been rather more literal than that of their human male counterparts. Taylor's heart sank; as absorbent as Moose's fur was, there was no way they were going to get him clean in the minute, perhaps two, that they had left before the entire building was engulfed.
Drew stepped into the room. Foxfire light glimmered fairy-like across his skin.
"Thought I could smother the fire in smoke," he said. "Didn't work. We need to move."
"What's with the sparkles?" Taylor asked. "Wait, never mind. No time. Help clean M—"
That was as far as he got before being blasted in the face with a water cannon and sent flying amidst the sound of armageddon.
Both of him slammed into the wall hard, his shoulders and heads taking the impact. His health bars dropped into the red and the world got wibbly around him, but he forced himselves back to his feet, weapons ready as he each used a Heal scroll and struggled to figure out what was happening around him.
Everything was drenched and the wall between this room and the previously-enflamed outer room was mostly gone, knocked aside by an enormous wooden cylinder. Massive wooden beams were embedded in the opposite wall. One of them, a hefty thing as thick as Taylor's palm, had hit him in the chests, missing his heads by inches.
"What happened?" Taylor mumbled, stumbling and then righting himselves as the dizziness finally faded.
"I think that's a water tower?" Calliope said, pointing uncertainly at the thing that had smashed the wall in. "Must have been on the roof and the fire burned through the supports." She took a few steps and craned her neck to see into the other room. "Fire's out."
"Gosh, how lucky," Taylor said, snorting.
"What can I say?" Drew said with a shrug of his light green Tir Inqua shoulders. "Better to be lucky than good." He was no longer glimmering.
"Right," Taylor said. He looked around, then pointed at the sink, which had conveniently been filled to the brim by the deluge of water. "You guys get Moose cleaned up, then clean yourselves. Can't have blood on us or the guards will aggro. I'll collect the product and the bad guy's weapons while you two deal with that." Without waiting for a response, he scooped up the magic wands and knives from each of the dead gangers and sucked them into his inventory before moving to grab the boxes of product along the walls.
o-o-o-o
"How'd it go?" Levi asked as they walked into the outer room of the Desperado Club for the second time today.
"You didn't tell us the passes were tattoos!" Calliope snapped.
The quest had resulted in a snarky achievement called 'The Primrose Path'.
New Achievement: The Primrose Path
You murdered fellow humans purely for your own greed and lust for violence! (Well, one of you was doing it for the violence-lusting thing. I'm sure that's not important.) Oh, sure, you told yourself that it was okay because NPCs aren't real and you need those passes to survive, but let's be straight: that's bullshit and you knew it from the start. Hath not an NPC eyes? Hath not an NPC hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a crawler is? If you crush their heads with your yo-yo, do they not bleed and leak brains everywhere? If you shoot them in the belly with an Annihilation Dart, does it not burrow into their soft, wet bodies and explode? If you stab them in the spine with your bug blade, does not the feeling go from their limbs as they collapse in agony and bleed out while the darkness claims them by slow degree? And if you wrong them, shall they not revenge? (Yes, I just made all that up fresh from my own cosmic brain. No, it's not inspired by anything. Shut up.)
Ah yes, revenge. Consequences. Delicious, painful consequences for your actions, redounding across the hours and days remaining on this floor. Don't worry, I'm sure there won't be any of those. Oh, and, in case you were wondering: yes, your manager and his friend were 100% truthful with you when they gave you all those excuses about why this was okay. Not saying they were right, but at least they were honest.
That's a lie! They absolutely knew that it was bullshit and that they were sending you out to murder real people with real mothers and fathers and sisters and cousins and little baby daughters who still look like adorable little meatballs in their mothers' arms!
Reward: You have received a Bronze Asshole's Box
They had returned to the safe room across from the Desperado and opened the loot box. From each of those boxes, an image had floated into the air of a slowly-turning dagger from which dripped a steady flow of blood. It rose up, turning and dripping, and then suddenly lunged forward and plastered itself onto the opener's neck, burning its way into the skin with a momentary pulsing of heat and pain.
Desperado Pass
Great. Now you're running with the type of kids who sit in the back of the bus. What would your mother say?
This pass allows access to the Desperado Club. Warning: Holding a Desperado Pass negates the ability to obtain a Vanquisher pass.
An excited Calliope had been the first to open her box and was taken by surprise by the pain of the tattoo's attachment. The surprise made it easier for her and meant that the rest of the team had to open their boxes knowing it was going to hurt. Moose's tattoo could not be made out through his fur, but it glowed softly to indicate its presence. Taylor's box had generated a pair of tattoos, one for each of his bodies. When he tried to wrap a scarf around his neck, the tattoo showed on the scarf and he received a system message: Rejected! Pass tattoos cannot be hidden unless you purchase a cover-up sleeve. Will show through any armor or clothing you may wear.
"If I'd told you it was a tattoo, you would have objected to getting it," Levi said, shrugging.
"Dude," Calliope said, anger audibly floating up from the depths of her soul.
"More importantly," Taylor said. "Why don't you have one?"
"Oh, I do," Levi said. "I've also got a cover-up sleeve." He reached up and tugged on his neck. A previously invisible film peeled away and a tattoo of a blood-dripping dagger was revealed. He smoothed the film back into place and the dagger faded from view.
"Having a Desperado pass can cause problems with some NPCs," Levi explained. "I got myself a sleeve on the seventh floor so that I didn't have to deal with that. Still can't get a Vanquisher pass, but at least cleric and paladin NPCs don't look at me cross-eyed."
"You're a fucking asshole," Drew said, dragging on his joint. He'd been smoking heavily from the moment they left the drug den. The sopping-wet but blood-free Team Trick Shot had hurried out the front door and away, leaving the mostly destroyed building behind as quickly as possible. The town guards had been converging on the site of the destruction and the Terrans had struggled to act natural each time they passed one of the massive metal-clad creatures. They must have been successful, as the guards ignored them.
"Fair," Levi said, unaffected by the insult. "It was for your own good, so suck it up and follow me."
Without waiting for further comment, he led the way over to the red door with the tiger-headed man in front of it.
Steve — Tigertaur — Level 41
Employee of the Desperado Club
Tigertaurs are a physically powerful race who easily and frequently get work as assassins and enforcers. Not the brightest bulbs in the drawer, they have trouble getting jobs as doctors or lawyers. (Also, that whole 'losing their temper sends them into a berserk rage' thing gets in the way of white-collar jobs.)
"Hey Steve," Levi said, slapping fists with the tigerman in greeting. "How is it tonight?"
"Dead," Steve said. "You lot are the first crawlers I've seen."
"Hang on," Calliope said. "I thought that guy's name was Steve?" She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the quest giver.
The tiger-headed man cocked his head askance at her. "What, you thought there was some kind of limit in the world, only one Steve allowed?"
She blushed. "Yeah, that sounded dumb the minute I said it. Sorry. It's just weird, both of you working in the same room...you know what, never mind. Forget I said anything."
The tigertaur chuckled. "If it's any comfort, the bartender's name is Fred. Not Steve."
Calliope laughed. "Good to know, thanks."
Steve looked down at Moose. "I'm afraid you folks can't bring a—whoa, you're a crawler. Sorry about that. Guess there's no problem then."
Moose sat down, tongue lolling in a happy grin.
"Right," Levi said. "Let's do this. Steve, good seeing you. Not sure when I'll have the chance, but if I do then let's grab a drink."
"Cool cool. I'm working here the whole season." He pulled the door open and waved them in.
There was a shimmery ripple in the doorway. It rendered the other side visually and aurally blurry, although shapes could still be vaguely made out and the faintest hint of a four-on-the-floor beat oontzed over the threshold.
Taylor followed on Levi's heels, bracketing the rest of the team so that he was between them and any possible attack from before or behind. Both of him had their yo-yo in hand and were doing a quiet Rock the Baby that allowed him to keep the weapon at the ready while seeming unobjectionable.
Stepping through the sonic curtain of the door felt like being smacked in the face with a loud pillow. The music was so loud it hurt, literally. Both of Taylor winced and grabbed his ears as Taylor Blue stepped into the Desperado Club's main room.
Levi was there, circling one finger around Taylor Blue's head. Golden light followed Levi's finger, closing into a ring that then expanded into a bubble. The noise dropped from 'sonic attack' to 'enjoyable and permitting of conversation'.
"Careful, it's painfully loud in here but Levi's on it," Taylor Gold said from the rear of the group.
Levi waited beside the door, drawing the halo around the head of each person as they came in. Each of them reacted the same way: a stumble upon first entry, instinctive tensing into fight-or-flight despite Taylor's warning, then relaxing when the manager bubbled them.
"This is a basic privacy spell provided gratis by the club," Levi explained, gesturing at the faint golden shimmer around his own head, twin to those of the crawlers. "While the spell is operating, acoustics are being managed by the AI. Easiest way to think of it is that you can talk to anyone in the room without having to shout, and you can hear as though you were in a medium-busy cafe back on Earth. That means that you'll be able to hear at least snippets of a conversation halfway across the room if you're paying attention, so if you have anything private to say then keep it to chat. As with everything in the dungeon, what's actually happening is complicated and there's always edge cases where things don't behave the way you'd expect, but don't worry about that."
Taylor was having trouble focusing on what the manager was saying, as he was too busy drinking in the main room of the Desperado Club.
Team Trick Shot was standing just inside the door on a wide walkway that circled the room. The place was enormous, easily a hundred feet on a side. It existed on multiple levels with many nooks and crannies tucked away here and there; twenty feet from where he stood, the floor dropped down a foot or two to a wide ring of tables where people chatted. That ring was another twenty feet wide, there was another one below it, and then below that was the dance floor. There were easily 500 people in the club, more than half of them on the dance floor; male and female, of every race imaginable and some that Taylor had imagined only in his nightmares. There were three crawlers in the middle of the floor having a dance battle while the remaining dancers circled around them, clapping and cheering and woo-ing like mad things. The music oontz-oontzed like repeated hammers inside Taylor chest, four on the floor at the base with a fast EDM beat tracked over it.
Cantlilevered staircases scattered around gave access to two separate mezzanines, each with their own bars and dancers and dining. Multiple doors around the perimeter on the various layers led off to different areas, each door labeled with more of the red neon in a 1920's speakeasy font. Among the options were Bitches, Penis Parade, Jobs, The Silk Road, and Restrooms. Three more signs were unlit but easy enough to make out: Casino, The Hunting Grounds, Guild-O-Rama.
"The Hunting Grounds?" Taylor asked, pointing. "Like, the sixth floor?"
Levi nodded. "Yes, but ignore that. First off, those doors won't be open before crawlers arrive on the sixth floor. Once that happens you'll be entering the Desperado on the floor below us and you'll be able to use those stairs to pass back and forth between this floor and the one below in order to access the various side rooms like the Guild-O-Rama."
"What about those others?" Calliope asked, sounding both uncomfortable and fascinated.
"Bitches is the strip club with girl dancers, Penis Parade is the same with boy dancers," Levi said "Don't go in there. You're likely to get rolled, and it tends to hurt your social numbers. Jobs is where you go to get quests, but I already said to avoid those unless there's a good reason. The Silk Road is the marketplace, which is part of what we're here for. They likely aren't fully set up yet, but I want to see if there's any good gear in there and find out who is going to be selling this season."
"'Part of'?" Taylor asked. "What's the rest of it?"
"I wanted you to see the place and maybe meet some other crawlers. Plus, I need a damn drink." He headed for a nearby booth, red leather benches with brass fittings wrapping around three sides of a heavy walnut table covered in names and symbols carved by centuries of crawlers and other vandals. The booth was already full with a half dozen elves barely dressed in tight-fitting leather, mesh, and shocking hair dye. They jumped up just as the crawlers arrived and moved off to the dance floor.
"This place always looks full, but most of the people in here are bots," Levi said. "Every time a crawler enters, one of the bots disappears and vice versa. You'll be able to spot the bots pretty easily; if it's young, buff, gorgeous, and half-naked then it's probably a bot. The bots aren't NPCs. They are literal meat robots being piloted around by a simple rules engine whose only job is to make the club look active. They can hold a conversation about as well as an Earth chat bot, they can dance, they can even fuck if you want, but that's it."
Taylor shuddered and Calliope's reddening face was a confusing mix of guilty, intrigued, and embarrassed.
The waitress arrived, a forty-something human woman with frizzy hair pulled up into a swoop and a red uniform. The name above her head was simply Waitress. "Drinks, folks?" she asked.
"I'll have a Throat Punch," Levi said. "Also, is the Silk Road set up?"
"You'd have to check," she said, waving airly towards the relevant door. "I think it's still in progress—there were a bunch of empty booths still, last I heard." She looked around the table. "What can I get for the rest of y'all?"
"You have Earth alcohol, yes?" Taylor asked.
"Sure do, hun. Also from lots of other places, but booze is booze no matter where it's made."
"Fair. Two fingers of Macallan 18, please."
"Ooh, yeah!" Calliope said. "Same for me."
"She'll have water," Taylor said firmly.
"The fuck I will! I'm old enough to kill people, I'm old enough to drink some fucking Scotch!"
"She'll have water," Taylor said firmly, speaking from both his mouths. Both of him glanced over to his niece who sat bracketed between him. "Behave yourself or I'll make you have a girly virgin drink with a goddamn umbrella and sparkles on the glass."
"Fuck you!"
"Easy, folks," Levi said, patting the air. "You had to do something really hard and it's getting to you. Taylor, don't try to control Calliope just because you're feeling like you can't control your life. Calliope, it's perfectly normal for you to be angry and scared right now, but don't dump it on Taylor just because there's no better target. Remember that you both love each other."
Man and girl glared at him, each of them wanting to say something and neither of them knowing what.
"Just ice water, for me," Drew said, his voice relaxed as he took another heavy toke. "Thanks."
Moose: MOOSE WANTS A MOJITO! MOM USED TO DRINK MOJITOS AND THEY SMELLED YUMMY!
Taylor blinked.
"He'll have a mojito in a bowl," Drew said, jerking his thumb towards Moose. "Calliope will have a shot of Macallan 18 and I'll have the responsibility for making sure she stays sober and safe."
The waitress looked around the table to see if there would be any objections, then nodded and flashed them a smile. "Coming right up." She turned and disappeared into the press of bodies.
Voting time! Summary of the votes, details follow:
(Silk Road) what to get in the silk road, if anything
(Invulnerability) what to do with the spellbook
(Actions) how to spend the night
write in, if desired
Specifically:
[] (Silk Road) plan name here
-[] thing you want to buy
-[] other thing you want to buy
-[] etc.
Selection will be limited so don't get your hopes up. The characters will buy things of their own accord; the only purpose of this vote is to ensure that they check for things I might not have thought of.
You have plenty of the basics, meaning health potions, mana potions, Heal scrolls, and Heal Critter scrolls.
Next is what to do with the spellbook of Invulnerability.
[] (Invulnerability) Taylor reads it
[] (Invulnerability) Drew reads it
[] (Invulnerability) Calliope reads it
[] (Invulnerability) Moose reads it
[] (Invulnerability) Sell it for at least [put number here] gold
Only those 5 options will be accepted. Levi is not going to let you continue sitting on it. If no option gets more than 3 votes then I will decide what happens.
Next is what to do after you're done in the marketplace. You are still rested from the tier-3 bed you had during path selection. It will be just after sunset by the time you leave the club. You can do any of the following mutually exclusive options with that nighttime:
[] (Actions) Grind in the ruins
[] (Actions) Explore the city
[] (Actions) Stay in the safe room until dawn
[] (Actions) write-in. plan name goes here, details below
The nighttime monsters in the ruins are more dangerous than the daytime ones and therefore (presumably) give better XP.
Finally, as always, there's an option for general write-in:
[] Plan name here
Details go here, either as sub-bullets (meaning '-[x] stuff here' on its own line) or as general text
Voting ends no earlier than Saturday,
or when there have been no votes for 24 hours.
[] [Silk Road] Plan: Items for surprise attacks
-[] Items with skills like Backstab and advanced Backstab
-[] Items with stealth related skills (helping with Backstab-ing, helping with Skirmisher getting in surprise attacks/increase the time enemies need to realize what is happening when they are blitz'd by Leo)
[X] (Invulnerability) Taylor reads it
[X] [Actions] Plan: Finding Scholars
-[X] Find Mystic Scholar Players. Ask them to help you with a secrect project.
--[X]Ask Levi how to best find such Players.
--[X] If Levi asks why, tell him that there are many usefull spells (like Grease, Armor, ...) and you want something special done for a plan.
--[X] do not risk the showrunners hearing about the make spellbook of make spellbook plan until you absolutely have to.
----[X] (have mystic scholar make a spellbook of make spellbook under the influence of drews luck aura)
-----[X] have the scholar make scrolls of make spellbook after the spellbook (if possible)
--[X] be on the lookout for betrayal.
---[X] Don't be an asshole about it.
--[X] Pay for working for us for a few hours: Cooperation in mystic interview for rare spells (for example invulnerability). During our downtime they can stay in Drews Luck Aura. Offer us using our Discount from Wizard supremacist for them. Or pay them directly. After the fact spread spellbook making through our team (Taylor, Drew, Levi, Moose) and offer to sell rare spellbooks.
-[X] Find a Borough Boss in preparation for a raid
--[X] one Taylor rides on Moose, rest of team stays in Club Desperado.
---[X] In case of actual danger to the expedition Team use the petcarrier to put Moose into Taylors inventory and then "Skill: Body Flicker" Taylor to safety.
---[X] If we get a spellbook of spellbookmaking, recall expedition team immediately to make new spellbooks of spellbookmaking, they can continue when they are in CD or the cheese got patched.
-[X] Chat with Friends (valkyries, Astro Army)
-[X] Also Chat with Team Southern Pride, give them information to even the scales' after the Piss incident.
-[X] socialise with arriving players (as Long as it doesn't inhibit the spell work)
--[X] let Leo party If she wants, the chance to decompress could be good for her. Just keep an eye out on her.
---[X] let Leo train her 'You never Fed me, honestly' skill and see If she can get interesting information (Lore in the floor story, bosses etc)
We're going into town, the big city has stores. We should consider what we should try to pick up or keep on the lookout for.
Wish list:
All: Some way to see through smoke. Odds and ends for turning into combat solutions.
Leo: An item, skill or spell that turns speed into damage. Something to keep her from crashing. Rubberize, maybe?
Taylor: Spells: Self-casts, buffs, debuffs. A spell to take advantage of jailbroken LoS. Powerful stuff with crippling status effects and debuffs as drawbacks we can use both ends of. We'll want him armored up by the time we hit the stairwell.
Drew: Various smoke spells, items, scrolls. Toxic smoke, burning smoke, smoke with mental effects. Blitz Sticks have hallucinogenic smoke. Bottomless Stack of Chance Cards. (We're unlikely to get it, but hey, we might get lucky.) Randomized effect items like the coins we used against the tree. We'll get better bang per buck out of them than most would. Some sort of mobility option since Moose, Leo and Taylor can all nope out of a bad situation, but Drew can't.
Moose: Big rocks are cheap. Something to get him into tight spaces. A saddle.
Levi: Can he make us armor, what does he need other than a table? Material?
Pets or familiars. We could really use their boxes, but it would give EJ even more creatures to juggle. We need a reason to not buy some.
To ask Levi:
Are there personal space options that will turn our SysOp class back on, or at least significantly shorten the 30-hour shutdown?
What benefits are there from Vanquisher's proximity to temples, and what are the classic ways of unlocking a membership?
Who do we talk to to track down a Mystic Scholar with a Grease spell?
What would he suggest would be useful from this floor and shouldn't wait?
Are there any obvious holes in our party composition?
To not ask Levi but try to find out anyway, or worry about quietly:
What drugs are there that we can get the benefits from and pass off the drawbacks?
How many followers per Celestial box do we need to not have Borant looking at the Acceleration button?
How does the AI interact with the luck bonus? Will it resent it, honor it, or is the luck bonus the equivalent of buying off the DM?
Levi shrugged. "You can, but I wouldn't suggest it. For one thing, I don't have a Vanquisher pass and can't get one since I've got a Desperado pass. That means I can't go in with you so you'll be working blind. I haven't been in there so I haven't seen it myself, but I've had plenty of colleagues who were members. There's no marketplace and the guilds there are all for paladin and cleric classes that you guys don't have, which means there's nothing you can train. You'll be able to get a bunch of quests, but quests are generally a time trap. You level faster and get more loot boxes by grinding than by doing quests. About the only advantage of Vanquisher is that you'll get access to some powerful healers and cursebreakers, but there's other ways to manage that."
People keep saying this, but I really don't buy it. As Desperado has a market, training halls, casino, drugs, strippers, assassins' and rogues' guild, it's hard to imagine that Vanquisher is set up to equal it if all it had was temples and a sense of moral superiority. Note that everyone saying this, including in canon, was a member of Desperado, not Vanquisher.
Taylor: You know we all saw you chat like a normal person, right? Back at the Desperado you had proper grammar and punctuation and pronouns and everything.
Moose: FIBS! TAYLOR IS FIBBER! MOOSE HAS ALWAYS TALKED LIKE SMART BRAIN DOG! BAD TAYLOR, SAYING UNTRUE THINGS THAT ARE FIBS!
Taylor's childhood friend was a relaxed man. In the normal course of life, he moved slowly, smiled dreamily a lot, and was very slow to anger. Granted, much of that might be because he was usually as baked as Betty Crocker brownies.
Drew was not like that right now. His face was emotionless, his movements quick. He hit the top of the stairs, pivoted on the ball of his foot, and rushed the hall on swift feet. There was a closed door directly opposite the stairs, then four more staggered along the hall to the left, plus a papered-over window at the end that admitted a wan yellow light. The first two doors were open; Drew glanced in and fired an Annihilation Dart through each door as he went past, then grabbed the handle of the third door with his right hand, wrenched it open, and fired an Annihilation Dart into the room with his left. After each shot came the sound of exploding meat.
Taylor's heart sank; as absorbent as Moose's fur was, there was no way they were going to get him clean in the minute, perhaps two, that they had left before the entire building was engulfed.
"Just ice water, for me," Drew said, his voice relaxed as he took another heavy toke. "Thanks."
Moose: MOOSE WANTS A MOJITO! MOM USED TO DRINK MOJITOS AND THEY SMELLED YUMMY!
Taylor blinked.
"He'll have a mojito in a bowl," Drew said, jerking his thumb towards Moose. "Calliope will have a shot of Macallan 18 and I'll have the responsibility for making sure she stays sober and safe."
UH MOOSE alcohol is not good for doggies. Though I guess his con score would help with that. Also his new race might be different.
[X] (Invulnerability) Moose reads it
[X] (Actions) If you have some time to spare maybe just wait in the club to meet other crawlers and grind some skills? I mean, Taylor grinds yoyo skill constantly anyways but...
UH MOOSE alcohol is not good for doggies. Though I guess his con score would help with that. Also his new race might be different.
[X] (Invulnerability) Moose reads it
[X] (Actions) If you have some time to spare maybe just wait in the club to meet other crawlers and grind some skills? I mean, Taylor grinds yoyo skill constantly anyways but...
[X] [Actions] Plan: Finding Scholars
-[X] Ask Levi how to best find a Mystic Scholar Player to do work for us.
--[X] If Levi asks why, tell him that there are many usefull spells (like Grease, Armor, ...) and you want something special done for a plan.
---[X] do not risk the showrunners hearing about the make spellbook of make spellbook plan until you absolutely have to.
----[X] (have mystic scholar make a spellbook of make spellbook under the influence of drews luck aura)
Is there any risk to the Mystic Scholar Crawler making the "Spellbook of 'Make Spellbook,'" seeing the value in such a thing, and then running for the hills with the spellbook still in their inventory?
If they just run, then we could disable/kill them, but that would risk a Skull... and I'd rather avoid that for as possible.
Or they might have something esoteric that allows them to teleport, vanish, or otherwise Sneak above our ability to perceive. In which case, we're fucked.
Is there any risk to the Mystic Scholar Crawler making the "Spellbook of 'Make Spellbook,'" seeing the value in such a thing, and then running for the hills with the spellbook still in their inventory?
If they just run, then we could disable/kill them, but that would risk a Skull... and I'd rather avoid that for as possible.
Or they might have something esoteric that allows them to teleport, vanish, or otherwise Sneak above our ability to perceive. In which case, we're fucked.
Possible risk? Sure.
But if we offer a 100k (just make sure they don't think they can kill us to get it) and they can stay close to drew for his luck aura as long as we are here (it is a chance if the 1h of work results in a spellbook and 6h cd or no spellbook and being able to try again), so that they don't have to waster nearly as much time on attempts?
Would be dumb to piss us off so early by running off. And once we have one we can start making new ones ourselves.
True, but not everyone can make wise decisions when faced with temptation. Especially with The Dungeon making it hard to be your best self.
If you'll add a line about keeping an eye out for betrayal, then I'll vote for your action plan. Hope for the best, believe in humanity's better nature and our ability to unify in the face of tragedy, but plan for the worst, just in case.
True, but not everyone can make wise decisions when faced with temptation. Especially with The Dungeon making it hard to be your best self.
If you'll add a line about keeping an eye out for betrayal, then I'll vote for your action plan. Hope for the best, believe in humanity's better nature and our ability to unify in the face of tragedy, but plan for the worst, just in case.
My preference by a lot is Taylor, but Drew getting it is okay. Just please note Leo or Moose.
Look at the combat! Even without being able to use his skills Moose was undamaged while everyone but him took some hits. He doesn't need the invuln. He's our tank.
Taylor getting it is everyone getting it, and the sooner he can start training it the more busted it will be
Edit: also wait heck, should we not vote until we can do plans that take care of every line item?
[X] [Silk Road] Plan: Items for surprise attacks
-[X] Items with skills like Backstab and advanced Backstab
-[X] Items with stealth related skills (helping with Backstab-ing, helping with Skirmisher getting in surprise attacks/increase the time enemies need to realize what is happening when they are blitz'd by Leo)
-[x] Chemical weapons ingredients
[X] [Invulnerability] Moose reads it
The unprotected follow through on Legion's Rush is a reason in itself. Moose got lucky the house was so flimsy.
[X] [Actions] Grind in the ruins
Loot boxes for the roll up grind, xp for all the other grinds.
Looking for a crawler with a specific class is a fool's errand. The dungeon is not set up to make networking without meeting someone first a practical proposition and there's a chance that no one has the class anyway. Odds are good that Drew will be offered it at some point - he qualifies, it doesn't come front loaded with wealth and he's lucky. Let's go somewhere dangerous to grind that luck.
I'm guessing the wands are low level magic missile. Dunno how that compares to 45 APC for range, damage and noise - probably quite well with Taylor's intelligence.
My preference by a lot is Taylor, but Drew getting it is okay. Just please note Leo or Moose.
Look at the combat! Even without being able to use his skills Moose was undamaged while everyone but him took some hits. He doesn't need the invuln. He's our tank.
Taylor getting it is everyone getting it, and the sooner he can start training it the more busted it will be
Edit: also wait heck, should we not vote until we can do plans that take care of every line item?
