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Dungeon Crawler You!

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Adhoc vote count started by eaglejarl on Jul 13, 2022 at 7:20 PM, finished with 33 posts and 14 votes.
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Alcohol burns. In cannon DCC, later floors (after the first) have towns and they just about all have bars in them. Besides that, some of the safe rooms serve alcohol. There was a scene, which I think was in cannon but could have been Dungeon Crawler Daryl (DCD) or Dungeon Crawler Katia (DCK), where Carl puts an entire liquor store worth of booze in his inventory from a safe room. We might be able to get grain alcohol from one of those places.

Too bad Taylor isn't a chemist. We could work with that. For example, if we get acid from the Kruthak then we could react that with the grain alcohol to add an ethyl group to whatever is the conjugate base of the acid. Hydrochloric acid, which is common in Biology (e.g. stomach acid), would get us chloroethane. Actually, any acid plus salt might work. You just need to have enough chloride ions in slution at a low enough pH. Chlorinated hydrocarbons like this burn with a thick black smoke and are sometimes used in smoke bombs. Formic acid (like nettles) would be disappointing. Nitric acid would be great. We could make nitroethane which would should make a half way decent rocket fuel. Actually, Drew, in his quest to get high, might be the more likely to have chemistry skills, although not on a professional level. What could possibly go wrong?...

See the reactions at this page for an example. The bottom one is essentially the same thing as what I mentioned. It would be exactly the same procedure, just different ingredients.
 
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Chapter 8: The Doctor Is In!
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 8: The Doctor Is In!​

    "Why didn't they just write 'boss fight' on it?" Drew asked. "C'mon, there's no way that room is anything but a boss fight."

    "I dunno," Calliope said. "It's pretty close to the edge of the territory. Aren't the boss rooms supposed to be at the center?"

    "I don't think Levi said anything about that," Taylor said with a frown. "He repeatedly told us to fight a boss, but I don't remember him saying where to find them."

    "I'm guessing the answer to that one is 'in that big room over there which is suspiciously unlabeled, unlike the safe rooms and guild halls which are the only other rooms we've seen in the dungeon'," Drew said.

    Taylor chewed on that for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. I say we hunt up some more zombies in order to get an idea of what we might be facing in there. Levi said we should all be level 6 or 7 before we take on a boss but we're only at 5 now. Let's grind until all four of us are at level 6, then we'll go deal with the boss."

    "Sweet," Calliope said. "C'mon, oldies! Let's do this!" She hopped on her board and pushed off.

    "Barrel," Taylor grumbled under his breath. "Nice big barrel with the top nailed shut."

    Drew laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Relax, Tay. Think of it as a chance to get better. Now let's get a move on; my Running is up to level 2 and I want that next point."

    o-o-o-o​

    Taylor: Leo, a pair of zombies just came out of one of the side tunnels up ahead and they're between us and you. We're going to take them out but it would be great if you and Moose could come give us cover.

    And stop being so goddamn far away, he didn't say.

    Calliope: Be there in a blink, twink.

    Taylor waved the chat message away and peeked around the corner. The two zombies were approaching at a dragging amble. The one on the left was big and bulky, twenty something, the sort of college boy you'd see wandering around any college town in his varsity jacket. Well, if you ignored the large patches of mold that covered his hands and face. The second was a skinny man in his late forties wearing pince-nez glasses and a banker's suit. The left half of his face had rotted away, exposing the bone of the jaw and causing the eye to droop in its socket, on the edge of falling out completely.

    He looked back to find Drew waiting expectantly, jittering in place. And, of course, his finger was on the trigger of his shotgun where it hung from its sling and he wasn't watching where the barrel was pointing.

    "Jesus, Drew!" Taylor hissed, pushing the weapon away from himself.

    Drew's hand leaped guiltily off the weapon and he cringed. "Sorry, sorry."

    "Don't be sorry, man, just don't frickin' do it!" The angry words were a hiss owing to the need not to give away their position.

    "Sorry."

    Taylor shook his head. "Whatever. You ready? You're on shotgun this fight. And keep it on slugs, because I don't want to catch a rogue pellet in the back while you're shooting something else."

    Drew saluted sloppily. "Roger dodger, O Captain My Captain."

    "And mind your damn muzzle! I'll stay to the side, but do not point that thing at me."

    "I won't, I promise."

    "Good." He risked another quick glance around the corner. The zombies were in position. "Three...two...one." As the final syllable left his lips, Taylor was around the corner and charging.

    He rapidly closed to ten yards, heads up and therefore looking at the zombies more closely than his previous quick peeks had allowed, and as he did their status lines clicked into focus. Instead of the simple 'Zombie' that had been shown on the map, which was what he had damn well been relying on, they now said:

    Zombie Linebacker — Level 5
    Zombie Pyromancer — Level 6


    Ah, shit.

    The zombies didn't react to his appearance for a moment, but when they finally did their reaction was frighteningly fast.

    "Blue forty-two! Blue forty-two!" the linebacker shouted, dropping into a three-point stance and launching himself at Taylor.

    "Buuurn!" the pyromancer groaned. He raised one rotted hand and sent a fountain of fire down the hall at Taylor.

    Taylor threw himself to the side, slamming his shoulder into the wall and using the impact to bounce out and forward. The pyromancer shifted its arm, tracking the fire fountain towards Taylor. Fortunately, the zombie was stiff and slow so Taylor wasn't instantly fried, but the heat coming off the edges was enough that he could smell burned hair.

    And then the linebacker ran straight through the flames, igniting itself while also shielding Taylor from the heat.

    Taylor was so shocked that he barely managed to react in time. He threw the Skyhawk down, whirled it in an Around the World spin to gain speed, and lengthened the string on the upswing so that the yo-yo shot forward. An instant before impact he sent the mental command that changed the yo-yo from a measly 80 grams to a much more impressive 1100, somehow without changing its speed.

    More than a kilo of high-speed and invulnerable yo-yo slammed into the linebacker's stomach. Taylor had been aiming for its broad chest but was still getting used to yo-yo style fighting. The impact knocked a chunk off the linebacker's health bar but still left it in the green. And then the flaming creature was on top of him, arms outstretched to grab.

    Taylor dropped into a crouch, bracing himself and letting the zombie run into him. He got his shoulder into its stomach and stood, lifting with his thighs and sending the linebacker up and over. The creature was faster than the shambling braaaaains-eater that he and Drew had expected, but it was still stiff and poorly coordinated. It hit the stone floor with its chin, knocking off another big chunk of health. The fire that covered its back was grinding steadily away at its health bar and by the time it managed to pull itself back to its feet it was already halfway down the yellow.

    Taylor couldn't pay attention to that right now. He was up and moving, dodging to the side as the pyromancer fired another blast of flame at him. This was a fist-sized sphere instead of the previous massive fountain, which hopefully meant that the larger attack had been a one-off.

    The Skyhawk lashed out again, swinging wide and looping around the pyromancer's legs. Behind him, a shotgun blast went off as Drew dealt with the linebacker, but Taylor ignored that in favor of summoning the yo-yo back to his hand.

    The Summon Yo-Yo spell pulled all yo-yos in sight to the caster's dominant hand with a force based on the caster's Strength and the level of the spell. With a strength of 5 and a level of 3, the force left something to be desired.

    The yo-yo's invulnerable string was currently looped around the backs of the pyromancer's calves. Taylor had been hoping that it would slice the legs off the pyromancer as the yo-yo's head was pulled back to Taylor. Instead, the monster went over on its back, its arms waving in surprise and sending another ball of flame into the ceiling. It was dragged several feet towards Taylor before the string slipped free. He shortened it, snapping the yo-yo back to his hand, then spun it around and lashed out. The string lengthened, the mass increased, and the Skyhawk came down on the pyromancer's chest like a flail, knocking its health from full to half in one blow. It had been struggling to rise, but the impact knocked it flat again.

    Taylor proceeded to beat the zombie to death with his yo-yo while behind him Drew shot the linebacker's head open with fast-moving chunks of lead.

    Once it was over and the zombies were dead, both men stood panting.

    New Achievement! Killer Yo-Yo
    You beat a monster to death with a yo-yo! Kinda weird, kinda badass.
    Reward: You have received a Silver Adventurer box

    New Achievement! You've killed a mob a higher level than yourself!
    You're getting the hang of this. Don't let it get to your head.
    Reward: You've received a Bronze Adventurer Box

    Skill Acquired! Flexible Weapons, Level 3
    Meteor hammers, manriki-gusari, chain whip, kusarigama, rope dart...the mysterious ancient Orient sure loved them some 'ouchie thing on a string'! You have added a new entry to that list: the yo-yo! Congratulations, you now deal 25% more damage per skill level when fighting with a chain- or rope-based weapon.

    Skill Acquired! Combat Specialization: Yo-Yo, Level 3
    A unique variant of the 'Weapon Specialization' skill, this represents the nearly fifty thousand hours of practice you have put into slinging that thing around in weird and wonderful ways. Ways that you are now learning to repurpose for more murdery use. When wielding a yo-yo you do an extra 50% damage per skill level.

    Something clicked in the back of Taylor's head. Experimentally, he spun the yo-yo in an Around the World to build speed and then let it shoot forward. It was easier than it had been. Somehow, his fingers and arm knew when to release tension on the string so that the yo-yo would go where he wanted it to instead of striking two feet low as it had the first time. He grinned and flipped the yo-yo into a trapeze, over into a reverse trapeze, and let it bind up to his hand.

    Couldn't do things the simple way if you wanted to impress the audience.

    "Thank you for the new skills, My Lord," he said to the ceiling, grinning.

    Drew looked up from where he was standing by the head-splatted body of the zombie linebacker. "What'd you get?"

    "Couple of things that enhance the yo-yo damage," Taylor said, distractedly as he was currently busy pinching out his map. "I see another group at the edge of the map over there." He pointed. "Five of them. Moose and Leo are almost back, so let's team up and go take those guys out."

    o-o-o-o​

    They roamed the halls for another three hours, killing every zombie they could find. Most were human but there were some disturbing alternate options; giant snakes larger than a python, a strange cat/insect amalgam, and a handful of snake/human amalgams. Very strange amalgams—one of them was simply a ball of stitched-together snakes that moved by rolling. Another had a human body with a five-foot snake coming out of the neck. A third had a human head and torso mounted on an enormous snake body and snakes where the arms should have been. They ranged from level 4 to 7.

    Level Up: You are now level 6. Three attribute points gained.

    "Finally," he said, relieved. "Level 6."

    The rest of the team sighed in relief. Calliope and Drew had made level 6 already while Moose had hit level 7. The dog was absolutely enormous now, his shoulders nearly to Taylor's waist. His teeth were longer and sharper as well, which had led to one yelp-inducing incident of accidental tongue-biting.

    "We can do the boss room now?" Calliope asked hopefully.

    "We can do the boss room now," Taylor said, nodding. "Although it would be a good idea to hit a safe room first so we can open our boxes. Might get some mana potions that way—you only have enough for one use of Gravity Resurfacing, right?"

    She nodded, looking torn.

    "Plus, I'm tired," Drew said, admitting the thing that neither of the others hadn't wanted to say. "Wouldn't mind a few minutes of sitting. Maybe take a couple caffeine pills to get a little revved up."

    Calliope rolled her eyes theatrically and sighed, long and gusty. "I suppose," she begrudged. "C'mon, oldies. Let's go find a place for you to rest your weary oldie bones. I saw a safe room a couple of corridors ahead."

    Taylor laughed and gave her a one-armed sideways hug that she enjoyed until he ruffled her hair on the release.

    "Hey! Don't mess with the 'do!" She finger-combed at her messy hair, glaring at him.

    "At that sweaty, straggly mop?" Taylor asked, his voice mocking as he started down the hall. "Hate to tell you, Nibblet, but you're not cover-ready right now."

    Her glare turned grumpy as she struggled to hold onto teenage pride.

    o-o-o-o​

    The safe room was a Wendy's, taken directly from the surface somewhere. There were plastic tables with attached plastic benches, a counter with a menu above it, and a small gnome-like creature standing behind it.

    Ho — Bopca Protector. Level 61.
    Caretaker of this saferoom.
    This is a Non-Combatant NPC.
    Bopca Protectors are magical, gnome-like creatures who exist solely to watch over safe rooms. They do everything from scrub the toilets to prepare your food. They are surly, smelly, and they never wash their hands.

    "Hey there," Drew said to the Bopca. "I'm Drew. Nice to meetcha."

    Ho eyed him suspiciously. The Bopca looked like an explosion in a Brillo factory. His face was completely overtaken by a jungle of gnarled, wiry grey hairs that sproinged in all directions. A giant and heavily veined nose stuck out the middle of the hair and if you looked closely it was possible to locate a pair of eyes.

    "Ho is greeting you," the Bopca said after a moment. "You are ordering food?"

    Drew looked up at the menu. "There aren't any prices. How much is it?"

    "Is free. Last season food was not free but crawlers had no money. Many people starved and it made for boring TV. This season, Borant tells us we are to be sure crawlers are well fed. All safe rooms will have food and all food is free." He sighed. "Different locations are given different establishments. Ho would have preferred one of the custom-order safe rooms where menu is unrestricted. Unfortunately, Ho was assigned to burger place. It is the life of a Bopca."

    "That's rough," Calliope said, sidling up to join the conversation. "No chance you can get relocated?"

    "No. Assignments are fixed. Now, you are to order food, yes?"

    "Right," Drew said. "I'll take a baconator fries, a chili and cheese baked potato, and a large Coke."

    Ho slapped a large paper cup on the counter and pointed to the side. "Drinks are there, next to plasticware and napkin dispenser. You go sit; Ho will have food shortly. Next!"

    Calliope and Taylor both placed their orders, with Calliope ordering about three times as much food as should be possible to put in a human being. ("What? I'm a growing teenager and I'm hungry.")

    While they waited, everyone opened their boxes. The loot was unimpressive aside from a handful of health and mana potions.

    "Either of you want this?" Calliope asked, staring dubiously at the rainbow-striped propellor beanie that she had just pulled out of her final box, a Silver Gutsy box that she'd gotten for killing a mob after deliberately leaving her teammates behind. "It's +2 Intelligence but -1 Charisma."

    "Dibs!" Drew said, snagging the beanie out of her hands and plopping it on his own head. He pulled a small hand mirror from his inventory and admired himself.

    Taylor and Calliope exchanged looks, both of them struggling not to laugh.

    "Leo, you may want to—oh, thank you," Taylor said as Ho came out and slid three plastic trays of food in front of them.

    The little Bopca grunted. "You are polite for crawlers."

    Taylor frowned. "Really?"

    "Yes. Many crawlers curse at Ho. Others pester him with questions about dungeon that Ho cannot answer. Most sit and cry. Very distracting. You ask reasonable questions, order food, wait quietly, and even say thank you."

    "Uh, well, it...seemed like the sensible thing to do?" Taylor tried. "It's not your fault this is happening."

    "You are to take compliment," Ho said with a sniff. "Eat food. Let Ho know if you want anything else." He turned around and hurried back behind his counter.

    "Right," Taylor said, shoving a handful of fries in his mouth. "Leo, I was saying that you might want to reallocate your Mutable Ring if you haven't. You're using the shotgun, so Strength isn't important. The duration on your Gravity Resurfacing spell is based off Intelligence, right?"

    "Yeah. I'm figuring split between that and Dex so I can dodge better. Plus, I feel like the skateboard gets faster as my Dex goes up."

    "Ooh, cool," Drew said, chewing on his potato. He hadn't bothered with flatware, preferring instead to simply pick the potato up and bite it like a burrito. "That wasn't in the description, right?"

    "Nope. Not sure if it is or not. Feels like it, but I might be wrong. Only way I can test it is to put the ring on and take it off again and it was only set to two points of Dex so it didn't make that big a difference." She tapped at the air for a moment. "Anyway, it's set now. Five to each."

    "Cool," Taylor said. "What are you at, anyway?"

    Wordlessly, Calliope chatted him a copy/paste from her interface.

    Calliope: Strength: 3, Intelligence: 10, Constitution: 4, Dexterity: 14, Charisma: 5

    Taylor's eyes widened. "Wow. That ring of yours is busted."

    "Yeah, well, my beanie is baller," Drew said, spinning the propellor with one finger and offering them a grin.

    "Eat your potato, Uncle Drew," Calliope said, amused.

    o-o-o-o​

    The unknown and totally-not-a-boss-room-honest room was, based on walking around the outside of it, huge. At least a hundred feet long and eighty feet wide—well, less than that depending on how thick the walls were. Still.

    The door, when they finally found it, was a big steel thing with lines of rivets around the edges and a thick plastic viewing port at eye level for a tall man. The viewing port was covered with a metal shield on the inside of the door. A professionally-printed sign was bolted to the wall beside the door:

    Dr Cutter McSlicerson, Doctor of Recorporation

    Experimental Laboratory

    Parts deliveries in the rear, please    ​

    Below the neatly-printed words someone had added a handwritten note, slightly askew from the text: And try not to squish the livers so much! Those things are expensive!

    "Ready?" Taylor asked. He waited to get two answering nods and then pushed the door open and looked inside.

    Inside was a doctor's waiting room.

    It could be nothing else. It was carpeted in thin beige. It had a dozen chairs scattered around the walls and in neat aisles. There was a sliding window with a sign next to it saying 'All copayments are due at time of service' and 'Please check in 15 minutes before your appointment'. The door they had entered through was on the east wall and there was a door opposite them next to the sliding window.

    They stepped inside, weapons drawn. Taylor noticed that, for once, Drew was careful to keep his shotgun aimed down and his finger along the trigger guard instead of inside it.

    They had taken only two steps from the door when it slammed shut behind them and locked with an ominous click.

    "So totally a boss fight," Calliope muttered. She gave the door an experimental tug and found, to no one's surprise, that the handle wouldn't turn.

    No one was in the room aside from them, but their map suddenly updated, showing this room and the small office on the other side of the sliding window. There was a white dot inside it.

    Calliope moved to the window and tapped on the glass. Taylor and Drew hurried to follow.

    An arm, rotted enough that the muscles were dripping away from the bone, slid the window back and the zombie catgirl inside looked up at them. "Naaaame?"

    "Uh...Taylor?" he said, confused.

    She looked down at a blank sheet of paper in front of herself. A moment later she looked up again. "No appointment," she groaned.

    "...True," he admitted. "Can I make one?"

    She shook her head slowly. "Doctorrr very busy." Her voice was creaky and dragged like a prisoner with a metal ball on their leg. "Come back in July."

    Calliope stuck her shotgun over the divider and blew the zombie's head off, causing Taylor and Drew to jerk in surprise.

    "Boring conversation anyway," she said. "C'mon, let's find out what we're dealing with." She turned for the door that led deeper into the office.

    "Did you just quote Star Wars at me?" Taylor demanded, setting his Skyhawk to rave mode and following along.

    "Yeah, and not even the good ones. The ones with the shit CG."

    Taylor spluttered while Drew laughed. Before he could come up with a reply, Calliope pushed the door open and started to step through. Taylor quickly shouldered her aside and went in first, the patrol-slung shotgun in his right hand and the sparking Skyhawk in his left.

    "Not you, Ms Calliope 'Caution to the Winds' McCormick," he said. "Let's try to take a little bit of care about this, okay?"

    She growled annoyance and crowded through behind him, spreading out to his left while Drew moved to his right. Moose, of course, went up the middle and stood with his side pressed against Taylor's left leg.

    The inner room of the doctor's office was a massive open space with a series of stations along the walls, each with a body on the table being poked at by a zombie while a second zombie stood ready with a gurney. Nine surgical tables in three neat rows of three stood in the center of the room. Each of the stations had a body on it, as did each of the surgical tables; the table in the center had a man in surgical scrubs, gloves, face mask, and face shield . Above each surgical table was something that looked like an exotic chandelier, pulsing with crackles of gold and blue energy as it shone light down on the body. The room was so hot that it was hard to breathe.

    A notification popped up on Taylor's interface, blinking furiously. He clicked on it just as Calliope started to say, "Let's do—"

    New Achievement: Time to Dance, Motherfucker!
    You have met your first boss monster! Fun fact: for most crawlers, this is the last achievement they ever get.
    Reward: Let's wait a few minutes before we decide on whether or not to waste a prize on you.

    The achievement closed itself as soon as he finished reading it, and the world around him froze. The doctor had been starting to look up at them, the zombies at the various stations had been turning to face them, Drew and Calliope had been shifting their weight, and a handful of flies had been buzzing around some of the bodies. All of it stopped, the flies suspended in midair as though trapped in transparent amber.

    The door slammed shut behind them, locking with a lound clank!

    Music started playing. It was teeth-rattlingly loud, filled with a thumping techno beat and a jangled, uneven melody line that sounded like an accordion and a steel-string guitar trying to claw each other's eyes out.

    Boss Battle!
    You have discovered the lair of a Neighborhood Boss!


    The announcement was booming and echoey, words being repeated like at a Monster Truck rally, and it was out loud instead of in Taylor's head.

    An oval mugshot of Taylor appeared in midair with a whump!, his name and level hanging below it and its expression shocked. Mugshots, name, and level for Calliope and Drew hammered into existence in a neat row alongside Taylor's, each accompanied by the sound of hammer on anvil. A red Versus! appeared, written in a font that looked like dripping blood.

    There was a dramatic pause and then a picture of the doctor appeared opposite those of the team. The doctor's mugshot was four times the size of theirs and its expression was intense and threatening instead of the gormless and slightly panicked looks of the team's portraits.

    Doctor Cutter McSlicerson!
    Level 9 Neighborhood boss!
    When he started his work, Cutter was doing it in the quest for knowledge, an attempt to cure aging. Now, after a decade of cutting bodies up and stitching them together, it's become more about the power of life and death and the ability to play god. It's a sobering look into how easily humanity can descend into depravity!

    Put your game faces on ladies and gentlemen! Aaaand Here. We. Go!




    Battle ensues! No voting for now.

    New Achievement! Discordian Delight
    You are invited to drop by the #dungeon-crawler-you channel in the Quests and Stuff Discord. That second link is an invite to the server, if you hadn't figured it out!
    Reward: You are invited to have social experiences and you want more?! Yeesh, some people.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Did... did the linebacker zombie really set himself on fire to add damage?

    Also: damn, very nice loot >:3

    Leo continues to be awesome, but what else is new? Her poking fun at Taylor is adorable :D
     
    Loving the story so far! It's looking like this will be a boss+minion combo but our party is pretty uniquely suited to taking on hoards. Gonna have to tell the big group to come get the map after this as well.
     
    Guys I think we might be a bit screwed

    So I'm thinking in the middle phase the chandeliers are gonna spew their light energy into the bodies and reanimate them into zombie minions! SpooOoOky anyway shoot the lights before that happens.

    Was thinking just set everything on fire but that might not be such a good idea after the last zombie fight went. Wondering if the heat is a clue. From reading Dungeon Crawler Katia (by eaglejarl as well!) I believe there should be a clever cheese in here that drastically reduces the difficulty if we can find it! Maybe an incinerator in the room where we can kite zombies/dump bodies. Is there any airflow in the room?

    While fighting the zombies outside, were any zombies baited by any of Drew's smoke minion decoys?
     
    kitkatnacho said:
    So I'm thinking in the middle phase the chandeliers are gonna spew their light energy into the bodies and reanimate them into zombie minions! SpooOoOky anyway shoot the lights before that happens.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    or have the Yo-Yo entangle 2 of those lights and then shorten rope until it breaks the lamps.
    kitkatnacho said:
    From reading Dungeon Crawler Katia (by eaglejarl as well!) I believe there should be a clever cheese in here that drastically reduces the difficulty if we can find it!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Maybe the lamps you mentioned? Could be that they the zombies they resurect in you theory are elite monsters (whatever the terminology might be in dungeon crawler)
    Or beheading the boss zombie (Yo-Yo entanglement + string shortening)?
    Or having Calliope drive along the ceiling while emptying some fuel canisters on the zombies, then retreat, block of a door to the inner room via barricade from inventory, light via torch/firearm/whatever, retreat as far as we can while closing all door and hope the zombies dying from burning opens the door out before party suffocates?

    All have some ways to go really wrong.
     
    I wonder. If Drew dies, and we Inventory his corpse, can we rez him at the 3rd floor by making his race change a zombie?

    Taylor gains the title "Victor Frankenstein"
    Achievement Unlocked: "The Real Monster"
     
    I think the clues are from the sign at the entrance to the boss room - deliveries in the back specifically.

    Also the liver might be a weak point for these zombies.

    Diplomacy could be fun if we're evil, let the zombies know about the large and fairly weak group of crawlers, farm the resulting horror. Could be a last resort if we're overwhelmed too - of course with the intention of stopping the horde somehow
     
    So, had a thought. Can Drew store gasses? Assumedly he can control any smoke he wants, and I'm wondering if vapors/gasses fall into a similar category. If so, we could outfit him with as many lethal, and non-lethal smokes/gasses as we felt like. From tear gas/CS Gas to Napalm. That stretches Drew's relative usefulness from a distraction, to outright being able to tear gas waves of enemies (at least one's susceptible to it) and possible cripple entire droves of hostiles.
     
    Chapter 9: That Fight Was Boss!
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 9: That Fight Was Boss!​

    The world unfroze and the doctor shouted, "You do not have an appointment! This is a restricted area! Remove them!"

    The head of every single zombie worker snapped around to stare at Team Trick Shot. The monsters bared their variously-specied dental weaponry and charged.

    None of these were the slow-shuffling braaaainsing type of zombie. They were fast, and they were damn strong to judge by the way the elf zombie with the nurse's scrubs flipped a body-laden gurney out of the way with one hand.

    The forty or fifty duty stations around the room were clearly stops on an assembly line that produced bodies ready for processing by the doctor. Every single one of those duty stations had some collection of body parts in some degree of fastened-togetherness. The first station had a bin full of organs and bones, a giant spindle full of skin standing beside it. The station at the very end of the line held the fully assembled body of a brown-skinned humanoid nine feet tall with two heads.

    The workers at the duty stations were first off the mark, but the work product at each station followed. The humanoid at the last station pushed itself off the table, tried to stand up, and fell over when its left leg came off—the limb had been in the process of being sewn on and the stitches popped the moment weight was applied. Other partially-complete zombies pulled themselves off their assembly station and started hobbling, hopping, or crawling towards Taylor and his friends.

    Worst of all, the unassembled organs at the head of the line flopped out of their bins and started squelching to the attack.

    All of this went through Taylor's head in a flash. And then he pulled the shotgun out of his inventory and started shooting.

    The Tavor shotgun has three ammunition tubes, each of which can hold five 2.75" shells. The tubes can be rotated to change ammunition types or to bring a fresh load into position. A semi-automatic shotgun with fifteen shells in the magazine and one in the chamber, all loaded with slugs, is an ideal tool for dealing with a zombie. Or two, or three. Maybe even four.

    Forty, maybe fifty zombies? No.

    Worse, Taylor realized as he fired his first shot, he wasn't loading sixteen slugs. He had been using his yo-yo in order to level up his combat skills with it and he hadn't changed the load on the shotgun since the team backed out of the neighborhood with the birds and bats. He had one tube devoted to slugs, one to buckshot, and one to birdshot. Birdshot. He might as well spit on the zombies.

    Moose growled and lunged forward, flashing across the distance to the zombie horde and bowling them over. The horde stopped moving towards the humans and descended on Moose, snapping and clawing at the dog's flanks.

    "Get off my dog!" Taylor screamed. He took three long steps forward and started firing into the scrum as carefully as he could.

    On his right, Drew stepped forward and dumped all three magazines as fast as he could pull the trigger, killing three of the zombies that were charging for Moose and wounding several others. He dropped the shotgun back into his inventory and pulled out a pair of machetes.

    Right! They weren't limited to guns!

    "Barricades!" Taylor shouted. "Moose! Come!" He jumped back until his back was almost against the door, then dropped a 5' metal barrier out of his inventory in front of himself. On either side of him, Calliope and Drew did the same.

    Moose shook himself free of the tide of zombies and soared over the barricade, only to turn back and put his front feet up on it so he could bark furiously.

    "Moose! Drink!" Taylor commanded, pouring one of his three precious health potions into the wounded dog's mouth. Moose's health bar was at the high end of red after only a few seconds of scrumming with the zombies. A few precious seconds that had saved the lives of his human friends by giving them time to think.

    Moose's health shot up, almost to full. He licked furiously at his chops, clearly struggling to decide whether he preferred being healed more than his disliked the foul taste of the potion. Either way, he licked Taylor's hand and snooted him in thanks.

    Taylor took just a moment to ruffle his dog's ears, started to raise his shotgun to stop the zombies that had turned back towards the humans, and stopped. "Cover me!" he demanded. He stepped back from the barricade, bumping against the door, and knelt down. The shotgun went into his inventory and out came a plastic jerrycan and a machete. He tipped the jerrycan on its side and started hacking at the top.

    "What the fuck are you doing?!" Calliope screamed, blasting the head off the first zombie to reach the barricade.

    "Buy me a minute! And tie the barricades before they—"

    A godawful screeching noise showed that one of the zombies had grabbed the forward barricade and was pulling it out despite the friction grip that the braces inside it had on the floor.

    Drew cursed and chopped the thing's hands off, then had to jump across to the other side to slash at the fingers of a zombie doing the same on that side. Calliope shoved her shotgun through the gap in the barricades and shot another zombie in the face before it could grab on. She stepped back so that Moose could lunge his head through and bite most of the way through a zombie's leg. One of the zombies clouted him on the neck, only to rend its hand on the dog's spiked collar. Moose ducked back inside the ersatz fort before the zombie could try again.

    Nothing they were doing was enough; the barricades were wide enough for three zombies at a time and they were all grabbing and pulling. If they had been smart enough to lift then the barricades would already be gone, but they were dragging them instead.

    "Torch it!" Taylor shouted. He yanked hard on the mostly-severed top of the jerrycan, tearing through the last few bits of plastic holding it together. It jolted the can, splashing some of the contents across his calves and shoes, but he ignored that and ran along the inside of the barricades, pouring gasoline stuffed with styrofoam—also known as homemade napalm—over the sides.

    Drew tossed a lit torch over the barricade on the right and the napalm went up with a FUMP! The flames spread rapidly around the outside of the barricade, but the stoner wasn't waiting. He tossed another torch to the left and to the front.

    The zombies screamed as they burst into flames, but they didn't stop pulling. The center barricade was dragged back and out of position.

    Taylor conjured another one, and this time he took a moment to put a premade loop of rope around two of the bollards, one on each barricade, that were there for the purpose. A couple quick turns, twist and loop and pull, and the barricades were solidly fixed together. He turned to see that Calliope had done the same on the other side, so he crouched down and used a rag to wipe up the spilled napalm, then tossed the rag over the wall.

    The zombies had drawn back from the flames at first, but the creatures were wading back in now. Apparently the unliving dead didn't care too much about being burned.

    "My children!" the doctor shouted. He raised a hand and a beam of light zipped out, striking one of the zombies that Taylor had just set on fire. The flames winked away and all the damage they had done healed over the span of a second or two.

    "FUCK!" Calliope shouted. She aimed towards the doctor and fired a blast of buckshot over the wall, but there were too many zombies in the way and she couldn't get a good shot. "Jesus, dude! Does your MD stand for Massive Douche?!"

    The doctor ignored her and fired more of his healing rays, restoring a half dozen zombies to perfect condition. He held the beam on one of the ones with a hole blasted in its face and the face in question started to reassemble itself, the bits and slurry from the ground oozing back from whence they had come and restoring the zombie piece by piece like Hell's own 3D-printing process.

    The filthy black smoke of the napalm washed into Taylor's face and set him to choking. Drew waved a hand and all the smoke condensed into a ball that wrapped itself around the doctor, blocking his line of sight. The rest of the smoke followed as quickly as it was produced. Choking coughs could be heard from within the cloud and then the doctor dashed out, moving from the surgical table he'd been standing at to the next one over.

    Out of the smoke stepped the body that had been lying on the table the doctor had just vacated. It was eight feet tall, humanoid, with an insect head and an extra arm sewed onto the lower left ribs. It moved slowly but with a ponderous inevitability; Taylor had not the slightest doubt that when it reached the barricades, ten or twelve seconds from now, it would tear them aside like tissue paper and let its weaker but more numerous cousins pour in. Moose barked a threat at it, which it completely ignored.

    "I've got a malpractice suit for you, doc!" Calliope called. And then she abandoned her friends in order to skate up the wall and across the fucking ceiling towards the doctor.

    Taylor was suddenly too busy blasting zombie faces and hacking at zombie fingers to do anything more sophisticated than shout, "Goddamnit, Calliope!"

    The first rush of the napalm had burned itself out and it had settled down into a moat of low, smoky flames that did nothing to stop the zombies from pressing forward. Oh, it set them on fire, but they didn't seem to care very much in the first place, being as they were dead and didn't feel pain. Also, none of them were on fire for more than a second or two before one of those healing rays would strike them. The flames would disappear, the zombie would heal and continue forward, only to catch fire again a moment later. Taylor and Drew jumped back and forth across the left and right barriers respectively, blasting and chopping at zombies who tried to climb over the walls or pull them apart. Moose took the center, biting any half-rotted fingers or faces that were unwise enough to show themselves. Their best efforts were just barely enough, and Taylor could already feel himself starting to slow down from exhaustion.

    "Die, asshole!" Calliope shouted somewhere off to the side, followed by several blasts from her shotgun. There was a clatter-thump as she dropped from the ceiling and hit the ground skateboard-first. Taylor's heart jumped to his throat but he didn't have time to look.

    And then one of the zombies flopped over the barricade and threw itself at him. A burning zombie.

    He caught it in his peripheral vision and started to turn, but it was too late. The zombie was on him already, knocking him to the ground face-down and climbing on top, dragging itself up his body while clawing and biting at him.

    Taylor screamed as the flames on the zombie ignited the napalm that had spilled on his calves and feet. He struggled frantically to turn over so that he could push the monster away, but it was too heavy and he didn't have the leverage. Moose savaged the creature but the zombie ignored him and refused to be distracted from murdering Taylor.

    And then Drew was there, putting his shotgun against the zombie's ear and blowing its head into a spray of bone and blood across the floor. Taylor's world became silent except for a loud ringing.

    Taylor dropped his pants, socks, and shoes into his inventory to get rid of the flaming napalm, leaving himself with nothing except boxers below the waist. He clicked on a healing potion to restore his hearing and his health.

    New Achievement: Stealin' My Look, Bro!
    You have attempted to copy the dress style of a crawler who caught my eye before. Nice try, but I'm not that kind of AI.
    Reward: A Silver Bitchy Box

    The fuck?

    "Thanks," Taylor said, pushing himself to his feet and nodding to Drew. "Keep the smoke on the doctor." He conjured two more machetes into his hands rather than spend time picking up the ones he had dropped. He lunged and chopped, embedding his right-hand machete into a zombie's head as it tried to come over the barricade. The monster lost its balance and tumbled backwards, pulling the blade out of Taylor's hand. He conjured another one; he had bought out Home Depot's entire supply. He, Drew, and Calliope were each carrying ten of the things. To his right, Moose bit another zombie's face off.

    There was another shotgun blast from across the room and then the doctor screamed. "Help! My children!"

    Every single zombie spun towards Calliope and the moment's pause in the fighting allowed Taylor to get his first clear look since things went to hell.

    Calliope had grabbed her skateboard by the front trucks and was holding it along her right arm like a shield that she used to block the frantic stabbing of the doctor's scalpel in between smashing him in the face with it. In her left hand she had a machete that she was using to chop at the doctor's knees at the same time. The doctor saw that this was a losing fight; he pulled away and ran, the teenager right on his heels. He raised a hand and shot himself with one of those healing rays, restoring all the damage she had inflicted.

    Calliope screamed her frustration and threw the machete, trying to tangle the doctor's legs up. She missed but a moment later she had another machete in her hand.

    "Use the smoke!" Taylor hissed to Drew. "Tight around his head! Choke him out."

    "Right." Drew waved a hand and the cloud of napalm smoke that had been hovering in a compact two-meter ball flowed towards the doctor.

    Calliope had been an athlete before entering the dungeon, a soccer player who could outpace most of her agemates. Since entering the dungeon she had more than tripled her Dexterity, thereby increasing her speed significantly. The doctor was a middle-aged man in not great shape, but his legs were longer and he was able to hide behind the various exam tables. He was managing to stay just ahead of her.

    The massive uberzombie that had been seconds from tearing the barricades apart and killing Taylor and Drew had been standing motionless ever since Calliope distracted its creator. Now it turned and strode towards the girl.

    "Motherfucker!" Calliope shouted, pulling a fist-sized bag of lead fishing weights out of her inventory and hurling it at the doctor's chest. It slapped into him, staggering him and distracting him but not doing significant damage.

    The distraction was enough. Calliope cat-leaped over the table the doctor had been keeping between them and smashed the doctor in the face with the edge of her skateboard. His nose crunched, blood flying out and glittering in the bright yellow light that lit up the operating table. He grabbed for his nose, eyes watering in pain. It started healing instantly, the blood that ran down his face reversing course and crawling back up into his body.

    Calliope smashed him in the face again, and again, driving him backwards and then kicking him in the crotch. He bent over with an oof!, clutching at his privates. She flicked a slipknotted loop of rope around his neck, pulled it tight, and dropped her board to the ground. She stepped on and suddenly zoomed away as though she were plummeting down a steep ramp. The doctor was yanked off his feet and dragged after her, clutching at the rope as his face turned purple.

    The uberzombie lunged for Calliope but she dropped down, squatting low on her board and zipping under its grasping hand.

    The doctor, unwisely, grabbed onto a table in an attempt to halt his forward motion. He succeeded...and then Calliope's full weight came to bear on the rope. She was snapped backwards off her board, which went skirling away and flipped over. At the same time, the doctor went limp as his windpipe collapsed and his neck broke.

    Once again, the world froze.

    And the winner is: Team Trick Shot!

    Mugshots for Calliope, Drew, Taylor, and Moose appeared in midair with the word Winner! stenciled over each of them.

    All of the zombies collapsed.

    The boss music stopped, the world unfroze.

    Taylor fell to all fours and puked.




    Voting time! What do you do next? Voting ends at .

    Author's Note: A big thank-you to the players who proposed punny insults for the team to use on the doctor, especially @KreenWarrior for the 'does your MD stand for Massive Douche' line. +1 gratitude cookie to you, fine person.
     
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    • DaOneInDaCorner said:
    So, had a thought. Can Drew store gasses? Assumedly he can control any smoke he wants, and I'm wondering if vapors/gasses fall into a similar category. If so, we could outfit him with as many lethal, and non-lethal smokes/gasses as we felt like. From tear gas/CS Gas to Napalm. That stretches Drew's relative usefulness from a distraction, to outright being able to tear gas waves of enemies (at least one's susceptible to it) and possible cripple entire droves of hostiles.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    First off, welcome to the quest. :>

    You can only store gasses if they are contained. Whenever there is a question about a spell, ability, etc, the AI decides how it comes out, meaning that you can't be 100% sure what's going to work. (There's other factors involved as well, which will become known soonish.) As to Drew being more than a distraction: at level 10 that spell allows him to make the smoke solid. :>
     
    eaglejarl said:
    First off, welcome to the quest. :>

    You can only store gasses if they are contained. Whenever there is a question about a spell, ability, etc, the AI decides how it comes out, meaning that you can't be 100% sure what's going to work. (There's other factors involved as well, which will become known soonish.) As to Drew being more than a distraction: at level 10 that spell allows him to make the smoke solid. :>
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Okay, actually that's super helpful to know. So essentially, we could create gasses, smokes, and store them into a container for Drew to put away and pop out at will. That's huge until he can start making solid things from his smoke.

    Which brings to mind a thought... what happens when you have a solid creature made of Mustard Gas attacking you? Food for thought.
     
    ^ what he said

    [X] Grab the map, search for loot in the place then gtfo to a safe room to recover and open our boxes

    [X] Strongly reconsider our use of napalm.

    ^ Being on fire is bad mkay... But Drew's ability to protect us from smoke inhalation is a cool hack of his power, allowing for lighting fires in enclosed spaces while we occupy them. Let's develop a way to set fires more carefully, further away (even if we need to seek magical means).
     
    eaglejarl said:
    First off, welcome to the quest. :>

    You can only store gasses if they are contained. Whenever there is a question about a spell, ability, etc, the AI decides how it comes out, meaning that you can't be 100% sure what's going to work. (There's other factors involved as well, which will become known soonish.) As to Drew being more than a distraction: at level 10 that spell allows him to make the smoke solid. :>
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Can he un-store containers without un-storing the contained smoke?
    Can they store a shotgun, use the low-level manipulation of the inventory (compare drews "store pot and paper, un-store joint") to reload it with ammo from inventory then un-store it?

    We could tell the 200 group about the map and let them have all the zombies we don't need for exp anymore (i.e. especially tell them when we are about to move on to more exp heavy mobs).

    If the 200ers make it to level 3 and get to choose classes they could become really useful:
    The non-combatants could take suppost classes, like nurse/healer/bard or utility like crafters (items, medicine, weapons) or if the dungeon allows more fantasy: stuff like future tellers or something with magic spirits/pets good for scouting.

    [X] Grab the map, search for loot in the place then gtfo to a safe room to recover and open our boxes
     
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