- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The cannons actually have carriages. The problem is that maneuvering them around stanchions and across gangways is difficult and takes time.
[] Get out at station 85, explore
[x][Stunt] E-Mail coordination, whenever Taylor meets people with admin powers active, work on copying contacts to and from (especially in hubs like Club Desperado!); Pass on Tinas header idea; Try to get people to organize the chain messaging; Try to see if he can reach any Computerscientists with good ideas on good solving the message distribution (broadcasting in a meshed ad-hoc network)
If they get a plausible plan going, they could get people to organize into chains of equal ish length, where everyone has 3 people as next chain element, then that would cut spam massively and get short paths.Assuming perfectly equal partitioning and same length chains, that would lead to chainlength of log_3(388732)=11.715... ~12. Assuming the organization isn't perfect and it works more like everyone has 2 people its chainlength of log_2(388732)=18.568...~19.
Could be good to do these things as [][Stunt] votes, so it doesn't get lost between the "how should Tay & co continue" votes.
[x][Stunt] E-Mail coordination, whenever Taylor meets people with admin powers active, work on copying contacts to and from (especially in hubs like Club Desperado!); Pass on Tinas header idea; Try to get people to organize the chain messaging; Try to see if he can reach any Computerscientists with good ideas on good solving the message distribution (broadcasting in a meshed ad-hoc network)
If they get a plausible plan going, they could get people to organize into chains of equal ish length, where everyone has 3 people as next chain element, then that would cut spam massively and get short paths.Assuming perfectly equal partitioning and same length chains, that would lead to chainlength of log_3(388732)=11.715... ~12. Assuming the organization isn't perfect and it works more like everyone has 2 people its chainlength of log_2(388732)=18.568...~19.
Made the Nigerian Royalty a sunny like you suggested. And added this to my other plan but wanted to make sure it doesn't get missed. I have this on discord too.
So, EJ gave us the not so subtle hint to reread the Sysop Power list and said that it had changed slightly. After going over it several times I was wondering. Do we have any idea what this power really does?
You may edit the stylesheet of a crawler's chat system. Range: touch
Could we reprogram the way communication works in the dungeon?
[] Know Thyself
Have Taylor figure out what the
You may edit the stylesheet of a crawler's
chat system. Range: touch
Power does
So, EJ gave us the not so subtle hint to reread the Sysop Power list and said that it had changed slightly. After going over it several times I was wondering. Do we have any idea what this power really does?
You may edit the stylesheet of a crawler's chat system. Range: touch
Could we reprogram the way communication works in the dungeon?
[] Know Thyself
Have Taylor figure out what the
You may edit the stylesheet of a crawler's
chat system. Range: touch
Power does
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Taylor can communicate with anyone he's fist-bumped, right? And anyone they've fist-bumped, in turn? With the normal chat being overwhelmed with spam, maybe Taylor can start an underground/informal chat for Crawlers, using his Class Abilities?
(EJ, is this the shiny you meant?)
(EJ, is this the shiny you meant?)
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You put people in your contacts list by fist bumping them, yes. Taylor's chat system is only set up to message people he is directly connected to.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 47: Intelligence Gathering
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 47: Intelligence Gathering
"—hit the car now," Taylor said. "I don't want to deal with an entire trainload of mobs at once."
"Works for me," Drew said. "Stack up." He moved to take position near the door to the next car, pulled an inflated garbage bag from inventory, and opened it; a cloud of smoke poured out and condensed into a ball that hovered next to his hip. Thus prepared, he cast his Shield spell and looked to the others with a 'well?' expression.
Taylor sighed internally; they had discussed it with Levi after the recap and before Drew woke up; the final decision was that it didn't make sense to not use Shield and anything else that Drew managed to hold over from one floor to the next.
The Former Child Actor class required that each time they hit a new floor Drew had to choose a class to emulate for the duration of that floor. Most classes came with bonus levels to skills or spells and when he reached the next floor he would lose the bonuses from his prior class...but if he had managed to level a skill or spell then he would keep the skill experience he had earned. In this case he had managed to raise the Shield spell from 6 to 7, net of the penalty from violating the Wizard Supremacist stricture. Upon reaching the fourth floor he lost the +6 levels from Wizard Supremacist, but the remaining earned experience was sufficient to keep a level 3 Shield spell.
It might be a bug. Perhaps the idea with Former Child Actor was that Drew would start from scratch each floor, and the fact that he had kept the Shield spell was a glitch which would be corrected as soon as Borant noticed.
On the other hand, perhaps not. Perhaps the intent of Former Child Actor was for the crawler to accumulate more and more abilities, the accumulation balanced by the need to train them up from a low level after the initial bonus was lost. If so then they might be able to keep the Conjure Cannon spell and complementary Cannon Cocker skill. If Team Trick Shot could go through the entire dungeon with the capacity for a massive alpha strike...that could be a game changer.
Taylor shook away the ruminations. Time to focus, and the others were looking impatiently at him.
He took his position in the stack, Taylor Orange second in the line after Moose, Taylor Blue second to last ahead of Drew. The 'ready' signal went up the line and Moose burst through the door into the next car, ready to rampage—
—which wasn't super relevant, since this was the dining car.
The floor was covered in thick red carpet, the bar running down the right side was done in richly polished wood and spotless brass with five shelves of progressively more expensive-looking alochols behind it. Six four-person tables were covered in white linen with cut-crystal glassware. Two uniformed waiters stood at the middle of the car, facing each other with their backs to the walls. The bartender was shaking up a mixer of something and the maître d' stood in the very center of the car, looking directly at the Terrans.
Those were Taylor's first impressions. Then he looked again and saw the bits that didn't fit with the image of opulence the car was intended to provide. Some of the glasses were chipped, some of the silverware had spots of tarnish, and all of the tablecloths were moth-eaten.
More importantly, the bartender was a hobgoblin, the maître d' was a human with ant mandibles around his mouth, and the waiters were dead. At least, Taylor hoped they were dead. They were corpse grey, eyes white and fixed, and their lips had dried and retreated slightly to show yellowed teeth. Weirdly, the towels that hung over their arms were pristine, the richest fabric in the room.
"Welcome, passengers, to the dining car," the maître d' said in an unctuous tone that sounded like an unskilled voice actor aiming for a posh British accent and missing. "Will you be dining with us, or would you prefer to relax at the bar?"
Taylor Blue's eyes flicked involuntarily to the bartender, a hobgoblin two meters tall with weeping sores on his face. His hair was cut in a short fade on the left side, the hair flipped over and long to the right in a sideways mullet. Someone had attempted, or at least pretended to attempt, to make the hobgoblin more presentable through the use of cosmetics. The sores had been covered over with what was more or less industrial spackle, yet the pus still oozed out around it. The greasy skin had been slathered with inexpertly-applied foundation that wasn't a good match for the wearer's natural coloration. He wore a gold ring in his left ear.
"They want a drink, obviously," the hobgoblin slurred. One of the largest sores was on his lip and it distorted his words. "Geez, Pete. You're always so snooty."
"My name," the maître d' said, anger not fully hidden, "is Pierre. As you well know."
The hobgoblin's ugly face split open in a wide grin. "Yeah, but it's fun watching you stew."
Moose: MOOSE WOULD LIKE TO GO BACK TO THE DESPERADO CLUB AND GET A MOJITO THERE, BUT HE DOES NOT WANT TO DRINK ANYTHING THAT BARTENDER HAS TOUCHED! ICKY! ALSO, MOOSE THINKS THAT THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE WAITERS! THEY SMELL STRANGE AND MOOSE'S DANGER SENSE SKILL IS TWINGLING!
"Mine too," Calliope said quietly. "Also, 'tingling'. Not 'twingling'."
Moose: MOOSE LIKES MOOSE'S VERSION BETTER! MOOSE HAS ALREADY TOLD THE PEOPLES THAT MOOSE IS A POET AND GETS TO USE THE POETIC LICENSE!
"Hey there!" Taylor Orange said, stepping around Moose with a friendly wave to the maître d'. "Lovely place you have here."
"Thank you, sir," the man said. "May I offer you a seat?" He gestured to the table beside him.
"Very kind of you," Taylor said, not moving. "I'm afraid we just ate before getting on the train. If we'd known you guys were here, maybe not, but as it is I'm stuffed." He looked around. "Where does the food come from?"
"It is in storage, sir. If you do not wish to dine, please feel free to sit at the bar."
"I'm not really much of a drinker..." Taylor said carefully.
The maître d's mandibles clicked together. "Sir, the dining car is for patrons. If you wish neither to dine nor to drink, I shall have to ask you to leave."
"Now arriving, Doomhawk station, number 85!" the loudspeaker suddenly said. "This is an exit-only station, please make sure you have all your belongings."
Moose: MOOSE CAN SEE SEVERAL HUNDRED MOBS UP AND DOWN THE TRAIN! IF THEY ALL GET OUT HERE, THE TRAIN WILL BE EMPTY AND WE COULD EXPLORE THE REST OF THE HIDDEN CARS WITHOUT TROUBLE!
"Do you happen to know how long it is until station 86?" Taylor asked.
The maître d's brow wrinkled in a frown. "Seven minutes, sir. Again, I must insist that you either dine, drink, or depart."
"I'll have a drink," Drew said, sliding onto one of the high stools in front of the bar. "Don't suppose you have Old Rasputin?" A thick wisp of smoke broke off from the sphere he was carrying at his hip; it drifted up and into Drew's nostrils as he looked the bartender in the oozing face sores.
"Ha! Trying to catch me out? Of course I've got it," the bartender said. He reached below the bar and pulled out a dark brown bottle. He twisted the top off and set it in front of Drew. "That'll be forty gold."
That was simultaneously ridiculously expensive compared to the cost of a rental room and ridiculously cheap compared to the amount of gold the team were each carrying around. Drew dropped forty coins on the bar without bothering to haggle.
Taylor reluctantly slid onto stools at the bar, Blue at the last stool to Drew's right and Orange three stools up so that Moose and Calliope had room to sit (or stand, in the dog's case). "I'll have the same," Blue said.
Taylor: Leo, I know you don't like it, but please get fruit juice or soda. You don't have the body mass for booze and you're a close-range dodge fighter, so I would worry about you being even slightly tipsy.
She shot him a dirty look and rolled her eyes, but she ordered a cranberry juice.
Moose: SINCE EVERYONE ELSE IS GETTING DRINKS, MOOSE WILL GET A MOJITO IN A BOWL. MAYBE IF MOOSE STICKS MOOSE'S NOSE IN IT, IT WILL KILL THE SMELL.
"Care to join us?" Taylor asked the maître d', gesturing to the stool at the end.
"I'm afraid I am not permitted to fraternize with the passengers, sir," the man said stiffly. "My position is to manage the car. I need to maintain awareness and cannot be distracted."
Taylor looked pointedly around the empty car, then back to the employee. "I don't think anyone is going to mind."
"It would be most inappropriate, sir!" Mandibles that looked like they could chomp off an arm clacked together.
"Okay, okay," Taylor Orange said, raising his hands in surrender. "Just trying to be polite. Barkeep, I'd like your finest ginger ale, please."
Drew had his bottle inverted, slurping down the last few drops of beer. He plonked the bottle back on the bar with a happy sigh. "That was good," he said. "Hey, Frank, can you do a cherry bomb?"
Taylor: Easy on the booze, Drew.
Drew: Relax. I cycled it through inventory and dumped most of it in a jug.
Moose: EXCUSE MOOSE! NO ONE HAS ORDERED MOOSE'S MOJITO!
The bartender grinned. It was nauseating. "Of course!" he said in his gravelly voice. "Nobody ever gets the weird stuff. I didn't get my MM to sling beer, y'know?"
Taylor blinked at that and examined the hobgoblin's details.
Frank — Hobgoblin — Master of Mixology — Level 27
You know how some kids are super driven? They want to be doctors or lawyers or some rich-kid shit like that. Then you get the other type. The slackers. The stoners. The lazy bums who drift through life and end up bartending because it's the only thing you can do with no useful skills. Frank here somehow managed to combine the two. When the other hobgoblin snot factories grobbled on about how they wanted to be legendary warriors who bathed in the blood of their enemies, Frank had a different path to walk: mixology. From the first time his drunken, abusive father first hauled him to a bar, Frank wanted to be a bartender. He wanted to polish the bar with a rag while dispensing worldly wisdom and offering a sympathetic ear for the patrons' problems. Like a therapist, except not as well paid and not at all respected. Okay, nothing like a therapist. Anyway, Frank worked as a paralegal for four years to put himself through bartending school so that he could get his master's degree in mixology. He graduated with honors because he's a fucking nerd. Even took the optional electives like Weird Shit No One Ever Orders and How to Juggle Bottles. Degree in hand, he went out to find his dream job.
Turns out, not so easy to get a customer-facing job when you look like an Ebola victim who fucked a syphilitic whore. Fortunately for Frank, the Iron Tangle don't give a shit.
Taylor didn't know whether to feel amused or sad, but he kept both feelings off his face and examined the maître d'.
Pierre — Fomorman — Maître d' — Level 25
Pierre isn't his real name. He was born Melvin Birkenshmirtz and changed it in order to seem more sophisticated. Unfortunately, Melvin ain't the brightest bulb in the lamp; he changed it to Pierre Birchshit. Human / ant hybrids, am I right? Weird motherfuckers.
To complete the set, Taylor looked over at the waiters.
Waiter — Level 14
The Iron Tangle is a shoestring business that constantly teeters on the edge of financial ruin because of its owners' stupidly wasteful design decisions. Their HR department has had to get creative about cost-cutting, so when they realized that reanimated corpses didn't need to be paid, they jumped on that shit with both feet. Granted, corpses do a lousy job as waiters but free is free, right? Fair warning: they can get pretty bitchy if you don't tip.
"So, Frank, what's it like working on this train?" Drew asked the bartender.
Moose: MOOOOOJIIIIITOOOOOO!
Taylor: Hush. Drew has something going here and I don't want to distract the barkeep.
Moose whined softly.
"Can't complain," Frank said, polishing the bar with a rag. "The run takes about three days and the pay is decent. The mobs get a little raucous sometimes, which keeps me awake, but it's usually not a problem. What's it like being a crawler?"
"Kinda shit," Drew said, taking a taste of the boozy reddish syrup that Frank had set in front of him.
"Naaaah," Calliope said quickly. "It's awesome. Every day's an adventure, right?"
Calliope: Uncle Drew, keep it positive, yeah?
Drew: He wants to sling rare or complicated drinks and offer a sympathetic ear for his patrons' problems. So, I'm getting rare or complicated drinks and we've got problems.
"It's not an adventure," Drew said grumpily. "It's all shit. We're constantly about to die, everything is trying to kill us. We never know where we need to go or what we need to do or what to expect."
Calliope: ...you are way more devious than you let on, Uncle Drew.
Drew: It's just people, Leo. When you give them what they want, they're nice to you.
"That sounds rough, man," Frank said, leaning on the bar in front of Drew. "At least on the Tangle you know where you're goin', yeah? Up the line."
"Sure," Drew said, taking a hard pull on his girly drink. "But what's up the line? Shoot, we don't even know what's at the next station."
"Oh, that's easy," Frank said. "Station 86 is Marastone station."
"What lives there?" Calliope asked.
Frank chuckled wetly. "Funny enough, marastones. Most times the mob type and the station name don't have anything to do with each other, but they do here. Weird lookin' things, the marastones. Top half is a human woman, bottom half is a giant snake. Eight arms, covered in fine green scales. Nice ladies, actually. Not that I get to talk to them much—mobs aren't allowed in the dining car. Doesn't stop them trying to come in if they know there's crawlers in here, of course, but they aren't allowed normally."
"Huh," Drew said. "Do you know what's at 87?"
"Sure! I know the whole line. You want to know anything, I'm your hob." He puffed out his chest, hooking a thumb at himself.
The maître d' snorted.
"Something funny?" Frank demanded.
"Yes," said Pierre the fomorman maître d'. "You. Claiming that you know the entire line. You're always asleep through the 200s and sitting in your room playing with yourself after 350."
"Playing by myself," Frank said. "By myself. Not like there's any other musicians on the train to jam with, y'know?"
"If one wishes to be called a musician, one should be able to make music," the fomorman said snidely. "Not that sproinging and caterwauling."
"Hey! That's classic bluegrass!"
"Do you know what's up through the 200s, sir?" Calliope asked Pierre, her eyes wide.
"Of course I know," Pierre said. "I pay attention. And I don't sleep, unlike this shambling monstrosity." He sniffed disdainfully while gesturing to Frank.
"Would you be willing to walk us through it?" Taylor asked hopefully. "In particular, where can we get a train that runs down? We want to get to the stairwell stations."
"You may take any line," Pierre said, as though answering the stupidest question ever asked. "The trains go up the line. Passengers get off at the Terminus station, number 433. That is the final transit station. From there you may transfer to any number of lines, some of which run down." He hesitated, then grudgingly added, "I presume. I and the other employees get off at station 435, the final stop. We take the employee portal back to the depot at station 10 while the engineer takes the train on for return."
"This train runs down?" Calliope asked. "It's a big loop?"
Pierre sniffed. "How else would the trains get back to the depot?"
"So we can just stay on it and it'll take us back to station 10?" Taylor asked. "And then it will start the run again and we could get off at the stairwells?"
"Passengers may not remain on the trains after stop 433," Pierre said, offended. "It is against regulations."
"You can, but I wouldn't recommend it," Frank said. "We had a guy do that last year. Well, might have been a girl. Dunno. Is 'Pat' a guy or a girl?"
"Could be either," Taylor said. "Why?"
"I did the run like always, went through the portal like always, found myself back at station 10 like always," the bartender said. "But when I got on the train there was a skeleton on the floor behind the bar." He gestured down at the floor where he was standing. "There was a little sign next to it saying: 'Crawler Pat O'Rei. Died for being too fucking stupid to follow the rules.'" He shrugged. "Just the skeleton. Perfectly cleaned, not a trace of meat. The train gets sterilized and cleaned before each run and it's not good for people. That's why everyone needs to get off before the return trip."
Calliope: How could there have been a crawler on 'last year'? This floor has been open less than a day. Is he thinking of last season?
Taylor: Could be, or it might be part of the backstory they program them with. If so, it's probably important.
"What about the engineer?" Calliope asked. "He has to stay on, right?"
Frank shrugged. "I guess? They probably do the cleaning after the train gets back to the depot and he gets out."
"Speaking of, what's up with all the sterilizers?" Drew asked, inhaling some of the ball of smoke that he was still keeping under control beside him. "All the mobs we've seen were carrying them."
"Obviously, they are to maintain cleanliness," Pierre said with a sniff. "The conditions within the Tangle are perfect for mold to grow. It gets out of control if not regularly cleared back. No one wants to be wading through corridors knee-deep in black slime. It's quite disgusting, and it tends to attract monsters. Thus, sterilizers."
"All the sterilizers we've seen have been expended," Calliope said.
When a man with ant mandibles looks down his protuberant nose at you, it's an impressive and disturbing sight. "Yes. The mobs use the sterilizers to maintain the cleanliness of their quarters. When the sterilizers are expended, they ride up to the next recharge station, get a fresh one, and portal back to their home."
"The recharge stations are at the fives and zeroes?" Taylor guessed.
"Indeed."
Taylor nodded thoughtfully, trying to decide the next question.
"Going back a sec," Drew said. "Sounds like you guys disagree on who knows more about the line."
"Hah!" Pierre said. "There is no question. That sickly creature can't even stay awake through the entire run."
"Oh please," Frank said. "Spare me. I know the line."
Drew grinned and raised his half-finished glass to both of them. "Sounds like time for a trivia contest to me," he said. "Winner gets bragging rights. Pierre, you go first. Which stops have transit stations?"
The maître d' sighed. "There are far too many to list."
"Okay, how about the first five?"
For a moment the antman didn't speak, but then he rolled his eyes. "Oh, very well. The first five are at 13, 19, 29, 31, and 41."
Drew looked over at Frank. "Did he get that right?"
Frank glowered. "Yeah. And after that it goes 53, 61, 71, 79, and 83." He chuckled. "And before you ask: the next few are 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, and 137."
"You skipped 127 and 131, you ignoramous," Pierre said. "It goes 109, 113, 127, 131, then 137."
Frank winced. "Yeah, okay, fine."
"I don't suppose there's a map?" Taylor asked. "Of the Tangle as a whole, I mean?"
Pierre snorted magnificently. "Of the entire Tangle? Certainly not. There are far too many trains for such to be practical."
"Now who's being stupid?" Frank demanded, grinning. "There's got to be one down at the depot somewhere so they can do scheduling."
Based on the way Pierre's mandibles clacked together like castanets, Frank had scored a point.
"Every transit stop has three lines at it, right?" Calliope asked. "Station 83 had the Sapphire, Coquelicot, and the Flaying Express. What does 'Coquelicot' mean, anyway?"
"It's gotta be a color," Frank said. "All the regular trains are colors, and there's only ever one of the named trains at a station."
"At most one," Pierre corrected. "Not every station has a named train."
"That's a pretty scary name," Taylor said. "The Flaying Express, I mean."
"Yes, well, the Tangle designers were perhaps a bit colorful," Pierre admitted.
"Does every transit station have different lines?" Calliope asked. "If so, that's a crazy number of trains. You weren't kidding about the Tangle being huge." She nodded respectfully to Pierre.
"Nah, there's repeats," Frank said. "You want a chaser?" he asked Drew, who had finished his cherry bomb.
"Thanks," Drew said, sliding the empty glass across the counter. "How about...a chocolate appletini?"
Calliope laughed. "You drink like a girl, Uncle Drew. Why don't you just ask for cough syrup with Everclear?"
Drew smiled and shrugged. "I figured I'd give Frank a chance to show his stuff."
"You want to show off?" Taylor asked Frank, grinning. "Here's a challenge for you: a seven-layer pousse-café. Your choice on the layers."
"Hah! You think you can stump me, but you can't," Frank said happily. "Hang on. Oh, and these are forty gold each." He waited until both men had placed coins on the bar, then pulled two bottles out from under the bar. He flipped them in the air and caught the first one on his flat palm with the second balanced atop the first. With his left hand he kept the stack balanced while his right pulled out a martini glass and set it on the bar before reaching for yet another bottle.
"Pierre, what was that about repeats on the lines?" Taylor asked.
"There are many," the man said. "For example, this train crosses the Gamboge line at station 107 and again at 263. We cross the Alabaster line at 127 and 199, and the Amber line at 103, 277, and 397."
"Yeah, and don't forget the Barbie Pink line," Frank said. "We get that one at 139, 257, and 401." He frowned. "I think that and Amber are the only ones we cross three times."
Pierre's sigh was long-suffering and also rude. "The Kokushoku line? 211, 293, and 317." He looked at Taylor. "As I said, he always sleeps through the 200s."
Taylor chuckled and added the Kokushoku line information to his scratchpad along with the rest of what the two had been telling him.
"Now arriving, station 86!" the loudspeaker said. "Next stop is Camazotz station, number 87, in thirteen minutes."
"You said the next transit station was 89, right?" Taylor asked. "About how long?"
"Forty-five minutes or so, if the driver is on schedule," Frank said.
Taylor nodded. "Cool. Hey, speaking of the drivers, I don't suppose they do that thing where you can pay to tour an engine car? The train line where I used to live did that and it was super cool."
Pierre snorted. "The engine cars are for engineers only, sir." It was said in much the same tone as 'pooping is only for toilets'. "It is against regulation for the drivers to open the door for any reason except while in the depot."
"He reads that regulation book obsessively," Frank stage whispered. "It's a little weird."
"That's a real shame," Taylor said, putting as much regret in his voice as he could. "Still, any reason? If a passenger was ill, wouldn't the engineer come out to help?"
"Any. Reason," Pierre said with a sniff.
"Wellll...unless the train stopped," Frank suggested. "You know, if it broke down. Or derailed. Or there was an obstruction on the track. Or the train in front of us stopped. Or—"
"Yes, you have made your ridiculous point," Pierre said. "Such things do not happen on the Tangle and therefore are not worth mentioning."
"The trains never break down?" Drew asked in surprise. "Wow, you guys are impressive. Trains where I lived were always breaking down."
"The Tangle is a civilized venture," Pierre said. "Maintenance is carried out on schedule." He pronounced it 'shedyool', something that always caught at Taylor's ear.
Something else caught at Taylor's ear: the sound of fumbling at the door behind them.
"Ah," Pierre said, his gaze going to the door. "I believe some of our passengers have noticed your scent."
Moose growled, long and low.
"You said they aren't allowed in here, right?" Taylor asked, his voice tight.
"It...is against regulations," Pierre said. The pause was not reassuring.
"It, uh, might be better for you guys to move on," Frank said. His tone was apologetic, so points for that. "The mobs aren't always quite as uptight about the rules as Pete. If they've smelled you then they're going to try to break in."
"Wouldn't any of the other cars be just as dangerous for us?" Calliope asked.
Frank shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, probably. But if they come in here..."
"They might attack you," Taylor said, his voice flat.
"Mobs are constrained against attacking line employees," Pierre said. He paused. "However, accidents do happen and a confrontation between yourselves and the mobs is certain to cause collateral damage to the physical plant."
Taylor teleported Blue to the car's front door and Orange to the rear door. Both of him started hammering wedges into the gap around the door, jamming it in place against intrusion.
"Sir!" Pierre said. "Stop that at once please, sir! You will damage the mechanism."
"Yeah, not worried about that," Taylor Blue said, not looking back as he focused on getting the sixth wedge into place. "We aren't leaving, so you can either deal with collateral damage from mobs breaking in or you can deal with a small chance of me bending the door."
Pierre's mandibles clicked unhappily, but he said nothing else.
"How did you get a job on the Tangle?" Drew asked Pierre. "Seems like being in charge of the dining car is a lot of responsibility. There must have been a lot of competition."
The fomorman brightened. "Indeed there was, sir. Fortunately, I am admirably well suited for the task and my credentials shone through."
Frank snorted. "By which he means that he's a tight-assed prig and micromanager."
Taylor took his seats while the two monsters bickered back and forth, with Drew providing conversational grease to keep things moving. Calliope started to say something but Taylor put a hand on her arm and shook his head slightly.
Taylor: [private message] Let Drew handle it. He's always been good at this part and it's working. If he starts to get into trouble, your liar skill can bail him out but for now let's not rock the boat.
She glowered but went back to sipping her cranberry juice.
After ten minutes the conversation was going well and Taylor hadn't spoken for five. Taylor Blue stood up and moved quietly to the door.
"Sir?" Pierre asked.
"Don't mind me," Taylor said with a smile. "I've been worrying about those mobs and thought I'd go check on them. Leo, Moose, want to join?"
"Signs!" Calliope said, bouncing to her feet. Moose, who had been sitting quietly at the bar looking from speaker to speaker, lumbered to his feet, shook himself, and shambled over to Taylor.
"I'm gonna stay here," Taylor Orange said, maintaining the fiction that he was a separate person from Blue. "This is fascinating and I don't want to miss out. You guys be safe."
"I'm staying too," Drew said after only a slight hesitation. "Be careful and don't go too far." Stay inside my luck aura, he didn't add. No reason to disclose capabilities to the NPCs.
"Keep our stools warm," Taylor Blue said with a grin. He slipped his yo-yo onto his finger and checked that the string was clear. Calliope kicked her skateboard up into her hand, holding it by the trucks like a shield, and drew her sword with the other hand.
Taylor Blue removed the wedges with a little effort and led the way to the door of the next car. The team stacked up and charged into the next room, weapons ready.
o-o-o-o
Despite the fact that Pierre was theoretically not a threat, none of the team had wanted to push past him to get to the door that led down to car 6. Instead, they went back the way they had come, heading up towards the engine. They spent a couple of minutes trying to come up with some way to jimmy the engine car's door open, or bait the driver out, but nothing worked. Eventually, they gave up and murdered their way back to car 4 so that they were within Drew's luck aura. They blocked off all but one door and simply waited for the next influx of XP dumplings.
At each station, Taylor tossed a bunch of gold-coated steel ball bearings onto the platform along with a distributor cap and a bag of fire gel. He lit the gel and used Gold Grabber to slam the ball bearings into the backs of the mobs. Calliope tossed Feathers Fall into the faces of the mobs as they boarded and hurled her kruthak needle like a javelin before teleporting it back to her hands. Once, Moose used Legion Rush to blast out the door, mulch a whole lot of mobs, and then scurry back onto the train before the doors could close. Taylor nearly lost his mind at the idea that his friend might have been left behind and scolded Moose until the big dog promised not to do it again.
The XP rolled in. It was enough that all three of them leveled and Drew made it halfway to his next level despite the fact that he was still chatting with the NPCs and therefore receiving only the 'because you are in the party' XP. Taylor leveled both of his incendiary skills to 8, and his Gold Grabber skill to 5, causing the force it exerted to substantially increase. Calliope leveled her Thrown Weapons and, weirdly, her Acrobatics skill. Moose managed to bump Back Breaker up to level 8.
Some of the stations were more of a problem than others. Levi had made the door blocks without having exact measurements, so they didn't fit tightly. The larger mobs couldn't get in through the blocked-off doors, so the team only had to deal with a handful of them for the two minutes that the car was in the station. Some of the smaller mobs could weasel through, coming at the team in greater numbers than they were comfortable with. Then they started slowing down for station 97 and Moose jerked.
Moose: THE ENTIRE PLATFORM IS SOLID RED! MOOSE DOES NOT LIKE THIS!
"I don't see any mobs," Calliope said, looking out the window as they pulled in. The lights at this station were flickering, off more than on. The train came to a halt with the familiar blue flash and the doors slid open.
Moose: THE PLATFORM IS NO LONGER RED! THERE IS NO RED ON THE PLATFORM AT ALL!
Taylor leaned back and forth, trying to get the widest angle of view out the door before sticking his head out. He finally did, and found that the platform was just as empty as Moose had promised.
"I don't get it," he said. "There's nothing here. All of the stations have had some—"
"Look," Calliope said, pointing at the platform.
Taylor bent down and looked more closely at what the catgirl's enhanced senses had noticed. He had thought that the platform was simply made from a different material than the others, a slightly paler version of the otherwise ubiquitous grey-green concrete. It was not.
It was made of the normal material, but it was coated half an inch deep in dead bugs, each about the size of his pinky nail and an almost-perfect color match for the concrete. He crouched down so that he could check the properties on one of the bugs.
Corpse of Destroyer Beetle
You have no idea how crazy lucky you are that this little bastard was dead when the doors opened. No. Idea.
"That's not ominous at all," Taylor mumbled. The door-closing chime sounded and he quickly leaned back inside before he was decapitated.
They rode the rails for hours, getting track information from Pierre and Frank while killing mob after mob.
Drew: I want it on record that you three owe me. You're out there having fun and I'm stuck in here with these two.
Taylor: Hey, I'm in here too.
Drew: And you're also out there having fun at the same time, so it doesn't count. Seriously, if I have to listen to Pierre sneer down his nose at me for much longer, I'm going to kill him and call it a day.
Taylor Orange looked at his childhood friend with a note of alarm. Ever since they were kids, Drew had been good at the fine art of self-effacement; he could keep a smile on his face and a calm tone in his voice with the best of them, although sometimes he needed to call Mary Jane for reinforcements. He had been talking with her extensively throughout their time in the car, as well as ordering drinks from Frank. Fortunately, Drew had been sipping and not slamming, but it was still more alcohol than Taylor was entirely comfortable with under the circumstances.
Taylor: Why don't you go join the others and I'll keep milking these two? They're a gold mine and I want to get the rest of the transit station connections.
Drew flicked a glance to Taylor, considered, and then knocked back the last of the strawberry-coconut-kiwi-raspberry daiquiri he had been nursing. He pushed himself to his feet with an easy smile for the two NPCs.
"Imma step out for a sec," he said. "I've left my niece alone for too long and if I don't check on her then she's likely to..." He shook his head in exaggerated amusement. "I dunno, set her pants on fire or something. Or maybe cause gravity to spontaneously reverse. She's weird like that."
"Aww," Frank said. "I wanted you to try my Dark and Stormy next. You'll love it—I use ginger beer made from real ginger, not that artificially flavored junk."
Drew chuckled and slapped the bar in jovial amusement that Taylor's long familiarity said was forced. "Next time, my friend. Next time. For now, I gotta go." He gave Pierre a curt nod and headed through the door to where the others waited.
"So, we were doing train line trivia, right?" Taylor said with a bright grin. "What about station 196? What's waiting—"
Marcus Gallo 4: Bo Hsieh > Lucy Monmout > Jake Tal > Tashlultum > Jonathan Quell > Munyaradzi > Marcus Gallo Hello everyone. My team and I have some important information for you.
First, in case you missed the earlier announcement from my deceased teammate Chang Li, the stairways are at stations 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72. We do not yet know why they skipped station 60.
You have undoubtedly seen that there are two kinds of trains, subways and other. The subways all have color names—Red, Blue, Indigo, and so on. Some of the colors are very unusual—for example, 'Atrovirens', which apparently is a blue-green color. The subways always run up the line, not down. The depot is at station 10, the final stop for crawlers is 433. We do not know if there are stations 1-9 and, if not, why not. There must be a turnaround at some point so that the trains can return to the start of the line but it does not appear that the trains carry passengers on that part of the run.
The named trains are completely different. Most importantly: they run in a loop that intersects with various colored lines in various places, meaning that you can use them to move from a higher-numbered station to a lower-numbered station. None go as far down as the stairwells so far as we can tell. They have names like 'Flensing Flyer' and 'Extermination Express'. Also, they do not seem to be subway cars or subway engines. We have seen a steam engine, a diesel engine, and a bullet train. THESE TRAINS ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. We know this because we planned to ride the Extermination Express down to station 83 on the Alabaster line but we are not going to complete that journey because there is a truly disconcerting number of screaming crabs piled up against the door to this car. Their screams are a sonic attack that is slowly tearing holes in the door. We will die when the door fails, but I intend that everyone else know what we have learned. If it allows someone else to find their way to the stairs then our deaths will have meaning. First, the named trains can be used to backtrack. Second, the stops in the 70-100 range seem to be about 10 miles apart. Also, the tunnels through which the trains move are made from regular stone and can be mined in the same way as regular stone. If you have explosives, or tools, or spells that allow you to quickly dig pits in the floor or walls, ones that are large enough to hide in, you can use this to escape. The three named trains we have examined all have a stop at station 83. If no better method could be found and all else failed, you could ride a named train to station 83 then hike on the tracks down to 72, taking shelter in such escape pits whenever a train passes by. 110 miles is a long way but with our enhanced endurance it could be manageable in the amount of time that remains on this floor.
The door is about to fail, so this is my last thought: please, work together. Whatever divisions existed between us before now, whether of nation or race or religion, none of those things matter anymore. Whether or not you changed your race at path selection, you are still human in your soul. That is all that matters, and all that matters is that we are human in the eyes of God. Let us be human together.
—Bo Hsieh, human of Earth
"Is something wrong, sir?" Pierre asked. The words were professional, with no actual concern behind them.First, in case you missed the earlier announcement from my deceased teammate Chang Li, the stairways are at stations 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72. We do not yet know why they skipped station 60.
You have undoubtedly seen that there are two kinds of trains, subways and other. The subways all have color names—Red, Blue, Indigo, and so on. Some of the colors are very unusual—for example, 'Atrovirens', which apparently is a blue-green color. The subways always run up the line, not down. The depot is at station 10, the final stop for crawlers is 433. We do not know if there are stations 1-9 and, if not, why not. There must be a turnaround at some point so that the trains can return to the start of the line but it does not appear that the trains carry passengers on that part of the run.
The named trains are completely different. Most importantly: they run in a loop that intersects with various colored lines in various places, meaning that you can use them to move from a higher-numbered station to a lower-numbered station. None go as far down as the stairwells so far as we can tell. They have names like 'Flensing Flyer' and 'Extermination Express'. Also, they do not seem to be subway cars or subway engines. We have seen a steam engine, a diesel engine, and a bullet train. THESE TRAINS ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. We know this because we planned to ride the Extermination Express down to station 83 on the Alabaster line but we are not going to complete that journey because there is a truly disconcerting number of screaming crabs piled up against the door to this car. Their screams are a sonic attack that is slowly tearing holes in the door. We will die when the door fails, but I intend that everyone else know what we have learned. If it allows someone else to find their way to the stairs then our deaths will have meaning. First, the named trains can be used to backtrack. Second, the stops in the 70-100 range seem to be about 10 miles apart. Also, the tunnels through which the trains move are made from regular stone and can be mined in the same way as regular stone. If you have explosives, or tools, or spells that allow you to quickly dig pits in the floor or walls, ones that are large enough to hide in, you can use this to escape. The three named trains we have examined all have a stop at station 83. If no better method could be found and all else failed, you could ride a named train to station 83 then hike on the tracks down to 72, taking shelter in such escape pits whenever a train passes by. 110 miles is a long way but with our enhanced endurance it could be manageable in the amount of time that remains on this floor.
The door is about to fail, so this is my last thought: please, work together. Whatever divisions existed between us before now, whether of nation or race or religion, none of those things matter anymore. Whether or not you changed your race at path selection, you are still human in your soul. That is all that matters, and all that matters is that we are human in the eyes of God. Let us be human together.
—Bo Hsieh, human of Earth
"Yeah," Taylor said, pushing himself to his feet and turning for the door with steps that spiked with hasty anger. "Some of my friends just died."
o-o-o-o
It took two hours for Drew to relax enough that he was able to go back in and continue schmoozing Frank and Pierre. The two NPCs were, as Taylor had said, a gold mine of information on what was at the various stops and what lines connected to which at what station.
Finally, they had what they needed: a complete listing of which lines appeared at each transit stop all the way up to station 433. For whatever reason, neither of the NPCs could say specifically which lines were available from 433, although they were both confident that there were 'many, many' lines connected to the aptly-named Terminus Station and that the crawlers would have no trouble finding a train that ran back down the line.
It was a tired and footsore team that rolled into the saferoom at station 113. They grunted their hellos to Levi and traipsed into their respective bathrooms to get cleaned up. Twenty minutes later, everyone was sitting on the couch, decompressing after their long and stressful murder ride. Calliope was working through a pile of sudokus on Taylor's tablet, Drew was smoking and looking off into the distance, Moose was lying down beside the couch in his pony-sized form while Taylor gave himself a shoulder rub and slowly stroked Moose's back. Levi sat silent, a small smile on his face as he waited for everyone to get themselves together.
After a couple minutes, Taylor had gotten himself sufficiently back on balance that he was able to think usefully again. Without stopping the self-massage or the canine petting, he pulled up his interface and started poking through the description of Sysop, his bizarre class unheard of by Levi, an expert with centuries of dungeon experience. He had never gone through the powers in detail, and it was time to fix that.
Give anyone a manager. Yum, although it would require finding an NPC who knew enough to be worth it. Also, it didn't say that the NPC would be happy about becoming a manager. Still, Levi had been incredibly helpful thus far, and Taylor had a feeling that if Team Trick Shot made it out of the dungeon it would be in large part due to the man's help. If the team ever found an appropriate candidate, it would definitely be worth giving managers to as many other crawlers as possible. It might save literally hundreds of lives.
Changing where someone came out of a portal...that had some serious potential. The doors to the Desperado were portals. He could use this ability to let people fast travel, something that would be worth major dosh. Not that the team was short on cash, but maybe they could ask for gear?
Then there were the minor abilities, like contact list manipulation. The message chains that Chiang Li had instigated had shown themselves to be ridiculously useful, despite the wave of spam that necessarily followed them. Broadening everyone's contact lists would make the information spread farther and faster. As broken as the powers of his race were, the powers of his chosen class were simply ludicrous.
Hang on.
You may edit the stylesheet of a crawler's chat system. You must touch the target.
What was that doing there? And why was it in the section of powers with a five minute cooldown, alongside things like 'send a buff to any crawler in your contact list, from any distance'? Why wasn't it up at the top with the no-cooldown minor powers like copying another crawler's contact list into your own? It seemed like a joke ability.
Curious, he pulled up his own interface and activated the ability. Instantly, everything shifted; the various controls suddenly had a shimmery outline and when he looked at one of them he could see properties describing it—its position, size, color, shape, transparency, label, enormous amounts of alien code that he couldn't understand... There was an 'Edit' control next to each property, but he forebore to touch it.
He browsed through various tabs, finding them all fairly similar except for 'Character Sheet', where the 'Edit Stylesheet' power now contained a droplist describing what seemed to be every control in his interface. The list was nearly endless and cramped enough that it was hard to work with, so he moved on. He skimmed through the various controls and experimented, very carefully, with changing their text and making small changes to their size or position. Those were things that the interface supported normally, so presumably this was simply the low-level version of what he already knew how to do.
He tapped the 'Color' attribute for the 'Add Item to Inventory' button. Instantly, a sphere popped up, showing different patterns, colors, gradients, degrees of transparency, and more. He canceled out of it without touching the selector.
He browsed around a bit more, finding the system quite intuitive. He could touch any control to see how it was defined. He could change sizes and labels (he took the chance to change the descriptive yet verbose 'Sort Message Threads By Name of Initial Message Sender' to the simpler 'Sort by Name') and even reorder things by changing their positi—
Why was there an outline around that blank space?
"Tay, what are you doing?" Drew asked.
"Hm? Oh, sorry." Apparently, poking and swiping at thin air for long periods made you look like a loon. "I'm futzing with my interface. One of my class powers is to edit the stylesheet and I was curious what that meant." He selected the outlined blank area.
A properties selector for a button came up; the label said Screenshot and the color said Transparency:100%.
What.
He canceled out of the editor and clicked on where the invisible button lay. The world flickered and a system message popped up.
Interface screenshot saved to scratchpad.
He flipped over to his scratchpad and sure enough, there was an image of his interface as of the moment he clicked the button.
He went back into the stylesheet editor and started browsing around. A few minutes of investigation showed a plethora of other controls that had been clumsily 'redacted' by making them invisible, or moving them so far to the sides that they weren't in the default viewport and could only be accessed by frustrating amounts of scrolling. He would never have found them if not for that list of all controls. He edited everything to have a useful location and visible colors, then paused to review the newly-found items.
- Help
- Screenshot
- Media Sharing
- (+) Text
- (-) Images
- Network
- (-) Deduplicate
- Relay
- (*) None
- Contact List
- Signed
- Open
Welcome to ValtayComm, Free Edition!
Your new chat system will enable you to communicate with friends, family, and mesh contacts anywhere within your local planetary network. (Upgrades available for system-wide and cross-tunnel communication! Check pricing details on our meshhome.)
The chat system allowed for copying text from the scratchpad into a message and it allowed for drawing images in the scratchpad, but it did not allow for copying images into text messages. Taylor clicked 'Images' under Media Sharing and watched the little (-) turn to a (+). He scribbled a happy face onto the scratchpad and tried to copy/paste it over to a chat message.It worked fine.
A smile spread across his face as he went into the Help system and asked about the other newly discovered controls.
Screenshot: Take a screenshot of your viewport and save it to scratchpad. By default, the currently-visible interface will be included with the screeshot. Focus-tap to omit the interface elements.
Deduplicate: Duplicate messages will be filtered to your spam folder. Duplicate status is determined by message hash.
Relay: Your ValtayComm chat system supports opt-in mesh networking between other ValtayComm users within its authorized zone. Mesh networking functions by assembling a graph of all users who have opted in to the network and then relaying messages from one user to the next to the next in order to support communication between crawlers who know one another's IDs but are not in one another's contact lists.
Example: Alice and Bob are in each other's chat lists. Bob and Carol are in each other's chat lists. Carol and Daniel are in each other's chat lists. All of these people have opted into the mesh network. If Alice knows Daniel's chat ID then she can send a message to him despite not having him in her chat list. From her perspective this will work normally. In the background it will be relayed from Alice to Bob to Carol to Daniel instead of going direct. The message will be retained on Bob and Carol's systems but this exchange will happen in the background without need for direct action. The first time a remote message is received the recipient will be asked if they wish to accept messages from that crawler. Permission may be revoked at any time.
Setting Relay to 'Contact List' will allow relaying between crawlers so long as both crawlers are in your contact list. Setting it to 'Signed' will allow anyone to relay messages through you provided that the messages are cryptographically signed with grade-3 or higher encryption. (Note: ValtayComm Free Edition does not support cryptographic signing. Upgrade to Premium to add this feature.) Setting Relay to 'Open' will allow the system to relay any message through your node.
After a moment, he started to laugh and found that he couldn't stop. The fish had fucked up. So. Very. Much.Deduplicate: Duplicate messages will be filtered to your spam folder. Duplicate status is determined by message hash.
Relay: Your ValtayComm chat system supports opt-in mesh networking between other ValtayComm users within its authorized zone. Mesh networking functions by assembling a graph of all users who have opted in to the network and then relaying messages from one user to the next to the next in order to support communication between crawlers who know one another's IDs but are not in one another's contact lists.
Example: Alice and Bob are in each other's chat lists. Bob and Carol are in each other's chat lists. Carol and Daniel are in each other's chat lists. All of these people have opted into the mesh network. If Alice knows Daniel's chat ID then she can send a message to him despite not having him in her chat list. From her perspective this will work normally. In the background it will be relayed from Alice to Bob to Carol to Daniel instead of going direct. The message will be retained on Bob and Carol's systems but this exchange will happen in the background without need for direct action. The first time a remote message is received the recipient will be asked if they wish to accept messages from that crawler. Permission may be revoked at any time.
Setting Relay to 'Contact List' will allow relaying between crawlers so long as both crawlers are in your contact list. Setting it to 'Signed' will allow anyone to relay messages through you provided that the messages are cryptographically signed with grade-3 or higher encryption. (Note: ValtayComm Free Edition does not support cryptographic signing. Upgrade to Premium to add this feature.) Setting Relay to 'Open' will allow the system to relay any message through your node.
"I'm awake!" Calliope said, jerking upright at the sound of his laughter. She had fallen asleep at some point while Taylor was experimenting with colors. "Loot! Is it time for loot?"
"I've got something bett—" Taylor broke off, then shook his head with a smile. "Sure, let's do loot. I've got something cool to share, but it can wait." He held up a finger. "But remember our deal."
"Yes!" Calliope said, pumping her arm. "Here we go!" She made a gesture and a line of boxes shimmered into existence in front of her: three Silver, five Gold, two Platinum, and a Legendary.
Levi goggled. "Wow. I knew your Rollup ability was ridiculous, but that's a lot. Even with the ones Taylor transferred to you last time you were in the saferoom, that's a lot."
"The big ones are mine," Taylor reminded him. "I had one of the Platinums and the Legendary outright, she didn't generate those."
"I know," Levi said impatiently. "She can only make Gold boxes for now. Still. Five Gold boxes? That's nuts."
Calliope shrugged. "Between me and Unc we had sixteen Bronze, seven Silver, and two Gold. I only generated three of the Gold."
Levi took deep breath and let it out slowly. "'I only generated three of the Gold'," he said in a mocking singsong. "That skill is so ridiculously broken."
The first of the Silver boxes bounced up to Calliope and flipped itself open. Three potions floated up, spinning slowly in midair, and then popped away into her inventory.
"Acid Resistance," she said. "That's kinda scary."
Levi shook his head tiredly. "What do you want to bet that the mold that bartender guy told you about is acidic? Loot, especially consumables like potions, is often tailored to upcoming threats. Keep those in your hotlist."
"Will do," she said.
Her remaining two Silver boxes contained a dozen more healing potions and a scroll of Mappus Plusticus Memorabilus, which momentarily expanded her map out substantially and then captured a static image of it to her scratchpad before wearing off. Taylor chuckled when he saw it; she was going to be pissed when he told her about the Screenshot button, but the enlarging of the map was useful.
The first Gold box approached and she wiggled in delight. It flipped itself open with a spray of confetti and a red nylon cat collar floated out. It popped into her inventory as the system stowed it away. The box and the confetti sublimated away and the next box bounced up to her like a manic pogo stick.
A pair of fingerless gloves.
A wavy-bladed dagger made of blackened steel from which faint wisps of smoke emanated.
A tub of skin cream.
A small metal loop.
Each appeared, gave her a few seconds to examine the contents as they floated in front of her, then disappeared into her inventory. Finally, the last Gold box disappeared and the first of the two Platinums moved towards her.
"Yoink!" Taylor said before the box could open. He waved his hand and Calliope's three remaining unopened boxes disappeared as he reassigned them back into his own loot box queue.
Calliope sighed. "I know the deal was that you got those three back in exchange for all the ones you gave me, but I still wish I could have gotten them. Legendary box!"
"Mine," Taylor said smugly. "I earned it. In fact, I literally died for it."
Calliope looked a little bit disturbed by that but covered it with a grumpy "Yeah, yeah."
"What all does your stuff do?" Drew asked. "And what was that hoop?"
Calliope grimaced and pulled the five objects out of her inventory and set them on the coffee table for everyone to examine. Curious, Taylor picked them up one by one and examined their properties.
Bully's Kitty Collar
Grants +3 to the Bully skill. Bully gives +25% damage per level against enemies who are physically smaller than you.
"Nice," Taylor said. "Not exactly stylish, but more damage is always the what."
Calliope winced. "Oldies shouldn't try to sound waist."
"It's 'hip', not 'waist', and you know that," Taylor said. "And if you don't want me picking up your slang, stop using it."
She grinned.
Taylor passed the collar to Drew and went through the rest of the gear.
Cat Assassin Gloves
+1 to the Climbing skill
Grants the Retractile Claws benefit
+3 to the Rear Rake skill (+50% damage per level when an opponent is grabbed with the front limbs and disemboweled with the back limbs)
Assassin's Dagger
+6 to the Assassination skill
When attacking from behind, has a 3% chance to instantly kill any mob up to 10 levels higher than the user
Depilatory Kitty Cream
When applied to furry areas of the body, this cream causes the fur to fall out but toughens the skin to provide low-level armor.
"Cool," Drew said. "I didn't want to say anything, but the fur thing has been weirding me out."
"Signs," Calliope said. "Plus, it's hella hot." She opened the tub and dipped out two fingers of the cream, rubbing it across her arm.
Nasty Girl Nose Piercing
Grants the Enhanced Senses benefit. (Already achieved.)
Grants the Targeting Smell benefit. Allows the user to use their enhanced sense of smell to localize opponents and objects that cannot be seen. Accuracy is sufficient for targeting. May not work in all circumstances.
Must be inserted manually the first time. Hope you don't mind needles!
"The scent thing is a double-edged sword," Levi noted after examining the loot. "It makes you more vulnerable to scent-based attacks. Nothing to do about it though, since your race comes with the enhanced senses from the jump. Targeting smell simply cranks it up even more."
"Yeah," she said, turning the nose ring over in her hands unhappily. "Okay, here we go." She set the sharp point of the ring's clasp against the inside of her nostril, took a pair of deep breaths, and shoved. "Fuck!" She blinked a few times as the pain made her eyes water, then clipped the clasp shut. It closed with a snick and blended in, leaving the ring looking like an unbroken band.
"Wow," she said. She pulled an apple out of her inventory and hefted it thoughtfully, then closed her eyes. "Unc, move around a bit."
Taylor Blue disappeared from the couch and reappeared a few feet behind her. Without looking or opening her eyes, she lobbed the apple over her shoulder and would have beaned him in the chest if he hadn't caught it.
"Sweet," he said, biting into the apple and sauntering back to the couch. "That's going to be handy."
"My turn," Drew said, sitting up in his chair and tapping the air where his invisible-to-others 'Open Loot Boxes' button hovered.
Drew had seven Bronze and three Silver boxes in addition to the Platinum that everyone had earned for the 'survive Belphegor' quest. The Bronze and Silver potions were unexciting, yielding only an assortment of health potions, mana potions, two Acid Resistance potions, and Confusing Fog scrolls.
Finally, the Platinum box opened and out floated an antique pistol and belt pouch, both straight off the set of a pirate movie. It spun slowly, displaying itself like a supermodel on the runway, and disappeared into Drew's inventory only to reappear a moment later.
He studied it and then started laughing.
"What?" Taylor asked, a little nervous.
"I think the AI likes my pirate theme," Drew said. He looked up to the ceiling. "Thank you, My Lord! I love it!"
Taylor made grabby hands at Drew, who passed the pistol over so that Taylor could check its properties.
Handcannon of the Piratical Plenipoteniary
Back in the days of wooden ships and iron men, with salt spraying across the decks and the wind in the sails, firearms were in their infancy. They were simple and unreliable things that looked cool, unlike these modern blocks of metal. Also, they were more fun. They could be overcharged (and maybe blow up in your face), they could use whatever random shit was lying around for ammo (though maybe not to great effect), and they could be used to beat a fool to death if they tried to mutiny. Arrr!
For purposes of skill requirements, this weapon counts as a cannon and as a pistol. Bonuses from any relevant skill will stack
Attacks made with this weapon deal an extra 50% sonic damage
The belt pouch that came with the pistol had its own enchantments.
Pistol Pouch
This pouch comes with 15 paper cartridges. It refills itself at a rate of 1 cartridge every 10 minutes if it is below maximum capacity. The cartridges are easy to use—put them down the barrel and use the ramrod under the barrel to shove them down nice and tight. Careful! You know how disappointed your lady gets when you don't go down properly? (Well, not you you, but some people. Ask your mother. Oh wait, she's dead!) Anyway, if you don't get the cartridge down all the way your handcannon will get a lot more than disappointed. Just saying.
"You know what I see when I read this?" Taylor said with a grin. "Infinite free gunpowder, very slowly! Empty that thing out, put the cartridges in your inventory." He handed both items back to Drew, who immediately took all fifteen of the thumb-sized cartridges out of the pouch and hung it at his belt.
Moose: MOOSE WOULD LIKE TO GO NEXT, PLEASE AND THANK YOU!
Taylor patted his friend on the shoulder. "You go, big guy."
"Woo, woo, woo!" Calliope said, pumping the fist that wasn't currently wrapped around a milkshake. She was lounging back, feet on the table. "Go, Moose! Get that cheddah!"
Moose: MOOSE WILL TRY, BUT HE DOES NOT THINK THE AI IS LIKELY TO GIVE HIM CHEESE! MOOSE IS VERY SORRY TO DISAPPOINT CALLIOPE!
She snorted. "Go on, ya big doof."
Moose sat on his haunches, tongue lolling out in amusement as the loot boxes appeared in front of him. As usual, the Bronze and Silver boxes weren't impressive, offering up only a dozen health potions, a trio of mana potions, and two Iron Skin potions.
The Platinum box contained a beige plastic chew toy in the shape of a dog bone and the size of Taylor's leg. Moose read the description, woofed in delight, and clomped the bone out of the air while it still hovered above the box. He dropped down on his belly, trapping the bone between his front paws and gnawing on it with undisguised glee.
Moose: IF MOOSE CHEWS THE BONE FOR 10 MINUTES WHILE WITHIN A SAFEROOM HE GETS +3 TO HIS BITE SKILL FOR 30 HOURS AND HIS BITE DAMAGE IS DOUBLED FOR 30 HOURS AND HE GETS +6 STRENGTH FOR 30 HOURS! ALSO, THE DESCRIPTION SAID SOME VERY MEAN THINGS ABOUT MOOSE'S BREATH!
"Aww," Taylor said, ruffling his friend's ears. "I think your breath is fine."
Moose: THANK YOU, TAYLOR! MOOSE THINKS TAYLOR'S BREATH IS FINE TOO! ESPECIALLY WHEN HE HAS BEEN EATING MILK DUDS!
Taylor shook his head in amusement and hit 'Open Loot Boxes'.
His total boxes had been truncated by his deal with Calliope, so he only had a handful of boxes to open. On the other hand, among those boxes were two Platinums and a Legendary.
The Silver Desperation box, the one he had earned for using Invulnerability to save himself from certain death, contained a scroll of Statue Form.
Statue Form
Casting this spell will turn you into a basalt statue for 10 minutes.
"It's a so-so escape spell," Levi explained. "Use it when you're being surrounded by a bunch of enemies that you can't beat, hope that someone can save you before it wears off. You won't notice time passing or be able to activate your interface in statue form and there's no way to end it early. You can get creative with it—your friends can use your statue form as a battering ram if they're strong enough to lift it, you can use it to blend into an environment where statues would be expected, and so on."
Taylor grunted in disappointment. On the other hand, it was only a Silver box.
The Gold 'Dance for Me, Monkey, Dance!' box presented him with a massive red metal toolkit four feet long and a foot wide and deep.
Arsonist's Toolkit
Think of this as "Baby's first Arsonist's Crafting Table". It allows you to perform some limited incendiary preparation and -manipulation actions while outside a saferoom.
"Sweet," Taylor said with a grin. He tucked the toolkit away and moved on.
The first Platinum box whirled closer to him in a small Tasmanian-devil-esque cyclone, then popped into visibility and flung its lid back with a tada! Out of it floated what looked like a fist-sized tub of hand cream. It popped into his inventory and he pulled it back.
Yo-Yo Enchantment Enamel. Any yo-yo that soaks in this enamel for ten minutes will become an enchanted item, or become more enchanted if it already is. This item has a Short Shelf Life; don't be a bitch, use it now.
A thirty-minute timer clicked into existence over the enamel and started counting down as the box itself disappeared and the next one came forward to reveal its contents. Taylor ignored the new box in favor of quickly unscrewing the jar's lid and pushing his Skyhawk in. Only then did he turn back to his new present.
It was a wooden box with brass fittings, inside of which was a two-weapon gun belt and a pair of Glock 9mm pistols. They were twins to the ones he already had except that these were matte black with faintly iridescent blue-steel grips.
Paired Pistols of Wooing
When wielded one in each hand, these pistols convey the following benefits:
- +3 Pistol skill
- Armor Piercing
- Infinite ammo (basic only)
- Immunity to the Fire Suppression debuff
- The Dead Eye buff (once per 30 hours; special conditions apply)
Taylor laughed and looked up at the ceiling. "Thank you, My Lord. This is an awesome gift and I like the dramatic flair. I really needed a ranged attack and this is perfect."
"Oooh, ooh, memememe!" Calliope said, stretching out grabby hands towards Taylor. He handed the gun box over willingly and turned to the final loot box, the Legendary one.
It was a cage made of fire, through the bars of which could be seen a spellbook. Menacing music growled in the background as the cage floated up to Taylor and evaporated from the top down, leaving the book exposed.
The book was bound in leather that looked entirely too much like burned human skin. It had an iron clasp that latched it firmly shut but it visibly strained against the clasp as though something inside the book was repeatedly hurling itself at the obsctruction.
Grimoire of the Soul Sprite
Mana Cost: 10 MP
Target: the corpse of a recently-killed intelligent being
Maximum Duration: 1 minute per spell level
Effect: A soul sprite will enter the corpse and bring it back from the dead temporarily. The resurrected being will be strongly motivated to answer your questions and obey your orders. The duration of the spell varies based on your desires and the recalcitrance of the target.
"Uh...Levi?" Taylor said, handing the grimoire over.
Levi examined it and winced. "Yeah, this is a rough one. The sprite brings the person's spirit back from the dead and eats it, one bit at a time. It's very painful. The sprite knows their thoughts and whether they're being deceptive and it will punish them if they don't do as you say and answer your questions truthfully and completely. The sprite will respond to your orders, somewhat. You can tell it to eat slowly if you want to keep the target alive longer so that they can answer questions, open doors, or whatever. You can have it take a bite to punish them if you don't like their attitude, and you can tell it to eat quickly when you're done with the person. When the sprite is done the body will burn away completely, leaving an ashy residue behind, so make sure you loot them before the spell runs out."
He handed the thing back. "Horrible as it is, it's incredibly useful. You can use it to get critical information, have a guard let you in or out of places, and a lot more. You need to read this thing."
Voting is open. What do you do?
Voting ends when discussion has run its course, but no earlier than .
Old 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.)
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Nando
they, them
Missing Threadmark
- Location
- Pacific standard
> Oldies shouldn't try to sound waist
Quest tag
Quest tag
Olivebirdy
mook.
It's a good spell, but I'd prefer to swap it with one that improves our build. Calliope mostly covers our social issues.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Damnit! Why do I have no problem remembering that in MfD but cannot remember it here?? Fixed.Missing Threadmark
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Taylor can turn the transparency of the UI to 100% with a touch... how effective does he think this would be in combat? Would he be able to cripple a Crawler's ability to operate their system? What if he turned the opacity to 100% and cranked up the brightness as high as it would go, to serve as a Blinding effect?
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Very John Wick, I love it ^.^
I'm hoping we don't have to fight Crawlers but I could be naive about that.
It's actually very John Woo. That's why they're the pistols of Wooing.
John Woo John Woo - Google Search
Ranged DPS with cooldown less than 30 hours.
And gunpowder for some tunnel deconstruction for some train stopping.
Neat.
And you can probably use it to not be alive for the sake of the sterilization process.
If its a book, should try having IT be casted by one Taylor to see how it interacts with having multiple bodies.
Ranged damage!
Immunity to Fire Supression!
Use 1: Torture someone deceased for information. (success not guaranteed)
Use 2: Torture them for other help. (not guaranteed either)
Use 3: If we face anything auto-ressurecting, we could try to snipe the ressurection and have it be under the effect of this instead.
Neet, Bonus damage from behind and a low instakill chance.
Note: This should be doable for Moose. Grab with frontpaws and dig with backpaws.
@eaglejarl
Does Levy have experience/educated opinions to share for this systems question:
When the conditions for the Rearrake skill are met, is that bonus for all attacks or just the ones part of the activation requirements? (Imagine someone were to bite while doing the Rearrake)
Ooooh, neat.
@eaglejarl
Were the settings for relay messaging, media sharing, and auto deduplication invisible or just way out there?
Come on Barbie let's go party
Canon Cocker gonna level. Black powder means black powder smoke which is nasty enough to be worth collecting what with the sulphur content. Might be worth machining some specialised rounds for the hand cannon too, lead is fine vs flesh but some AP would be handy.
I think it's time to explore some stations, find bosses, visit the Desperado and so on.
Standing order for Drew: when he summons the cannon, use it as many times as he can, even if it's firing solid shot blind through concealment - he's Lucky so he's got a good chance of hitting enemies anyway.
Drew and Moose didn't need to wait on Tay and Leo to open their own boxes, it was a mistake to do so but they got away with it this time
I think it's time to explore some stations, find bosses, visit the Desperado and so on.
Standing order for Drew: when he summons the cannon, use it as many times as he can, even if it's firing solid shot blind through concealment - he's Lucky so he's got a good chance of hitting enemies anyway.
Drew and Moose didn't need to wait on Tay and Leo to open their own boxes, it was a mistake to do so but they got away with it this time
- Location
- Pacific standard
Okay, I love the gunplay becoming a part of our style. I'm really excited for that new Skyhawk enchantment
I agree, Barbie line is the goal.
Okay, fucking up the floor: the mobs need to bunny hop stations to get sanitizer, but if we can get a hold of it Taylor can have one body in each location and spray an unlimited amount around. If the fungus is actually a boss monster this would be a loooooooot of xp. The type of exploit that top 10 crawlers need/are expected to do
I agree, Barbie line is the goal.
Okay, fucking up the floor: the mobs need to bunny hop stations to get sanitizer, but if we can get a hold of it Taylor can have one body in each location and spray an unlimited amount around. If the fungus is actually a boss monster this would be a loooooooot of xp. The type of exploit that top 10 crawlers need/are expected to do