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Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

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Katarina Winters said:
My decision for the Spiders carrying the wounded comes down to my decision for the freeway path. They can handle the wounded over the very rough and clogged terrain, thus making the journey for them relatively comfortable and safe. It gives us cover, makes sure any attempts to follow will be very slow and very loud, and even though doubling back and potentially using cars could be faster, its also makes the chance of us leading a strong enemy force directly back to our home all the more likely.

Our defences are ready back at the community, but they aren't strong defences in the end, so this path also gives us a good chance of potentially keeping our home off the radar a little while longer. That way the wounded can heal, the Spiders can be helped towards being People fully again, we can work on fortifying further, AND we get the breathing room needed to work on saving the folks beneath Salt Bay Lake
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Starting on the freeway potentially increases the number of different exits we could take, but we end up on there either way, doubling back just increases the pace at which we can put distance between the party and the known target. If they can see us once we're on the freeway, starting there doesn't really add any potential stealth.
 
Alright party people I gotta go leave the house for a bit. As usual I'm always excited about feedback, discussion, impressions of characters, I feast on such.

However, now that we've got a better impression of Salt Bay City, this is also me making an open call for your wishlists & curiosities. It's not binding or high stakes or anything, but it might help refine the options for Arc 3 - to say nothing of more time for characters you're interested in.
 
Morrowlark said:
Alright party people I gotta go leave the house for a bit. As usual I'm always excited about feedback, discussion, impressions of characters, I feast on such.

However, now that we've got a better impression of Salt Bay City, this is also me making an open call for your wishlists & curiosities. It's not binding or high stakes or anything, but it might help refine the options for Arc 3 - to say nothing of more time for characters you're interested in.
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Immediate thoughts are:
- the animal life, particularly the half-glass dogs (what's up with them? They don't seem to be behaving like dogs in a lot of ways, but that is difficult to glean from their brief screen time), the BEARS, and, especially the cows.
- more scenes where the kids try to teach Orchid about the childhood stuff it missed, particularly surrounding Barkley, given I don't think Orchid has fully pondered why it prioritized space for a plushie.
 
lets just get out of here and set a trap behind us

[x] Evacuate
[x] Who transports the wounded (your team)
[x] What route (double back)
[x] Trap
 
[X] Evacuate
[X] Who transports the wounded (your team)
[X] What route (double back)
[X] What do you do with the explosives (take them)
 
[X] Evacuate
[X] Who transports the wounded (your team)
[X] What route (double back)
[X] What do you do with the explosives (take them)
 
Anyone else in our group have any Gifts/tricks?
Is Orchid having so many an outlier? Or just fast evolution of the new mutants of this world?
How big is the world? How many countries are there in this constructed land?
 
Kermie said:
Some way to choose between multiple gifts?
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Mm?

ScorpioSting said:
How big is the world? How many countries are there in this constructed land?
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It's a planet, it's not small. However, to draw back the curtain a little, the entire world is a bit out of scope for this Quest. No one is saving "the world". The entire world has a mythically fat ass too titanic for any one person. The work is with the real people in front of you, as it were.
 
That's what always happens until suddenly you get a prophecy JRPG style and stumble upon a global conspiracy that ends up with you getting an experimental brain surgery, traumatizing an entire generation of parahumans, and bullying a 'god' to death.

[X] Evacuate
[X] Who transports the wounded (your team)
[X] What route (double back)
[X] What do you do with the explosives (take them)
 
[X] Evacuate
[X] Who transports the wounded (spiders)
[X] What route (freeway)
[X] What do you do with the explosives (distraction)

make the explosions happen. spiders can take the wounded more smoothly and frees up more guns.

that grabbing vans idea is cool tho.
 
Would you look at the time
Scheduled vote count started by Morrowlark on Dec 19, 2024 at 7:43 PM, finished with 29 posts and 10 votes.
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Waking Nightmares 9: Weapon of Choice
  • Threadmarks
    • You hold your tongue between your teeth for a long moment, and then you shake your head. "We need to pull out. I've got some ideas...fuck, the chain of command." You give Nattie what you believe is an imploring look, and whether or not you're successful in this, it seems persuasive. She sighs, and rubs her left thigh, wincing.

    "...Walk me through your plan. If it seems viable, you're in charge of the evacuation. Most of the people who'd be upset about that idea are currently getting glared at by your surgeon anyway."

    As you start outlining the idea, others gather. During the first stage, the wounded will be loaded into vans and so, for that matter, will anyone else that can fit in some, with the combatants mounted up. Is this safe? No. Good gods no. If anything happens to those vans the people on top of them are fucking dead, but speed is of the essence.

    "To this end," you tell Nattie, "my team will help move the wounded. Sorry to say it but yours seems mildly more trained than 'not at all'."

    "...Would you believe we did 'cling to a moving vehicle' training?"

    "For the purposes of this conversation? Yes."

    Once the formation reaches the freeway, the vanguard will move ahead with the wounded and abandon the healthy entirely while the noncombatants and the remaining forces plug the gap with the hijacked vehicles. It won't stop the APCs if they're real intent on getting through ("They'll chew their way through if they have to," Nattie says glumly), but it'll slow them down, and that's all you really need. With enough of a head start, you might be able to use your explosives as traps, or even to blow the freeway entirely, though that's a last resort; it will definitely kill any statues still in their cars wherever you do it. You don't like that, and it shows on your face.

    "...The Captain would just kill 'em all," Nattie says, quietly. "Easy choice, for her. Three, seven lives for a couple hundred? She'd laugh it off."

    "Well," you sigh. "I'm not laughing."

    The formation may need to adapt as you move through, so spider-women will carry Nattie's riflemen as outriders, scouting out potential exits from the freeway. However, in an ideal world, everyone makes it back to Jillian's Farm and Fleet, where rooftop snipers and soil-bag barricades can give a nice entrenched position, to say nothing of your plentiful supplies of glass and metal with which to use your new-found power.

    You're only about halfway through the plan when Nattie starts giving orders to feed the spiders full, and after some prompting, you too; you're gonna burn a lot of calories(? Evidently?) on getting these vans started. She's transferring command to you as the wounded are loaded up into vans; the University itself is a frenzy of activity as students, professors, family members, guests, and one person fused into its fursuit during Impact ("It's pretty cool actually but I'd like to have pants again") pack up books, lab equipment, research papers, personal belongings, snacks, drinks, more books, even more books, dear gods the books do they not know how heavy books are -

    Nattie puts a hand on your shoulder. "From the look on your face you're thinking what I'm thinking, but the thing is...if we never come back here? The books might be more valuable than their lives."

    You give her a long look. A long, confused look, and you ask her, honestly: "Is there a point in saving the books if all the people are dead?"

    And she has no answer for you.

    * * * *

    The first mile is as smooth as you can ask for. You're riding the blonde spider-woman so you can keep an eye on the battlefield and trying not to think of the excited and soft look on her face when she'd passed you 'reins' of webbing that are lashed to her 'waist'. There is an automatic rifle slung across your back, given to you by Nattie from one of her troops too wounded to fight, and it feels distressingly familiar. This is not the first time someone has handed a rifle to this body, and asked it to kill strangers.

    It might not be the last.

    Then the bubblegum lights start up from behind. They're heading towards the university, and they will be disappointed. Will they start looking for all of you? You get on the walkie-talkie and order the formation to move as fast as they reasonably can, which, while still fast, is not much faster, and you put your binoculars to your eyes. SWAT is taking up positions at the gates...

    The 'APCs' are seemingly normal vehicles. No melding with flesh, no strange refractions; if anything they seem stronger, more solid, as if this image was so seared into the mind of whatever culture preceded you that it could only become more itself. But they're disgorging an endless supply of near-identical cops in body armor, whose eyes are on the outside of their visors, moving about on stalks of glass. You shudder...and then one of them makes eye contact with you through the binoculars, and starts shouting and gesturing in the direction of your formation.

    "WE HAVE INCOMING!" you bellow over the walkie. You look ahead and see the front of the formation is already disembarking, getting the wounded onto the clogged freeway, which is good, but are the noncombatants going to make it? Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK -

    Choose 1
    [ ] Stick with the plan
    [ ] Hack together a trap as fast as you possibly can

    Lose 1
    [ ] Your revulsion for this rifle
    [ ] The battle with your burgeoning pyrophilia
     
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    • There's no naturalistic way to say this in story, party people, so:

    Orchid is four-foot-seven

    This one will stay up overnight.
     
    [X] Stick with the plan
    [X] The battle with your burgeoning pyrophilia

    burn baby, burn.
     
    [X] Stick with the plan
    [X] The battle with your burgeoning pyrophilia

    i just like fire
     
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