Looks like we got ourselves a Nolastrian Standoff.
Listen to Ctrl-Alt-Destroy: https://www.realm.fm/shows/ctrl-alt-destroy
--
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Share the show with your friends! https://funcity.ventures
Find more about Stillfleet at https://stillfleet.com
--
@funcityventures is the show on twitter
@funcityventures is the show on instagram
@bijanstephen is Remy, the Sleeper (human) Blooder
@randwiches is Merkis, the Jalasti Banshee
@nicholasguercio is Vynos, the Conscript (human) Tremulant
and @shodell is Beta, the Shoodtha Pir
@taylordotbiz is Oat
@mikerugnetta is everything else
--
This episode of Float City was recorded in various locations across Brooklyn New York and Cape Cod, MA. It was produced, edited and sound designed by Mike Rugnetta.
The horrent Demon rose, surrounded with red stars of fire,
Whirling about in furious circles round the immortal fiend.
Then Pixlriffs down, descended into his red light
Our music is by Sam Tyndall - https://arpline.bandcamp.com/
Remy's flute playing is by Jake Fridkis - https://instagram.com/flutebros
Our art is by Tess Stone - http://notdrunkenough.com/
Our Discord mods are Olivia Gulin, Kelly McKew, Kit Pulliam and Kestrel
The voice of Artemis is Molly Templeton
--
CC-BY LICENSED SFX USED
https://freesound.org/people/jayfrosting/sounds/333396/
https://freesound.org/people/Nox_Sound/sounds/550342/
https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/453823/
Float City 14: The Distant Heaven’s Reply
[Transcription by Alex, Aliks on the Discord and @aliks8ch on socials] [00:00:00]
[ Intro Theme Begins ]
Molly Templeton / Narrator: In the far future, faster than light travel is possible, via portals called stiffworks. Human and alien civilizations travel this way for millenia. Trade, war, and technology proliferate. Countless societies rise, thrive, fall, and vanish. Eventually, almost everyone forgets the secrets of the stiffworks. Almost.
Three hundred years ago, the Worshipful Company of Stillfleeters is formed on Spindle, a space station of unknown origin. They send fleeters into the void using stiffworks, in search of profit.
It is one hundred million years in the future. Welcome to Float City. [ Intro Theme Ends ]
Mike Rugnetta: [OOC] This episode of Float City contains descriptions of body horror, horror, extreme violence, and the use of guns.
[ Main Theme Begins ]
Mike Rugnetta / G.M.: Previously on Float City, the crew arrives in Nolaster, attempting to track down Co. employee Zeshdano Navelle at the request of the extradimensional trade lord, the Saffron Anax. He says Navelle is mucking with a trade deal of his and sullying his hundred-plus year long business relationship with the company. When the crew arrives in Nolaster, the Jash, Kakudun, they find Zeshdano dead. Vynos reweaves, goes back in time to learn the identity of the killer, and ends up saving her life, obviating two days of the team’s original timeline.
He and Zeshdano remain in her apartment and tease out the mystery while the rest of the fleeters repeat, for the first time, their trek, sans Vynos. When they arrive, Oat has lost an arm, Merkis is tough, and everyone is cross with Vynos for disappearing without leaving a note. As they’re discussing their options and the conspiracy to kill Zeshdano and seemingly frame the Fleeters, a human, a Mulruk and a Hanna, a clockwork murder-bot, burst through the front door. This is the Nolastrian Guard, and they’re claiming there’s been a report of a murdered fleeter. We’re joining everyone now, crammed into Zeshdano’s flat, tensions high.
[Main Theme Ends]
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis puts up an authoritative, but still adorably bulbous hand... [Laughter]
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] Doing his best, doing his best.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Has a stern frown of Tommy Lee Jones now.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Remy gives Merkis a big thumbs up.
Jen / Merkis: [IC] We’re happy to cooperate, but who is the missing murdered fleeter?
Mike / G.M. / Hanna: [IC] I’ll be the one asking the questions here. Is any of you Zeshdano Novelle?
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis points. [Laughter]
Shannon / Beta: [IC] Merkis! Bijan / Remy: [IC] Merkis!
Mike/ G.M.: Zeshdano says, “Uh, yeah, that’s me.” And she says, “Who called in that someone was dead?” And the hanna goes: “What was I saying, about who was asking the questions?” She sorta like cranes her head around, you can see she’s looking between you. She points to the mound that’s behind you in the corner. She taps her human partner behind her and points to it. She says, “What’s that?”
Bijan / Remy: [IC] Oh, that, that guy was there when we got here. [Laughter]
Bijan / Remy: [IC] Not that I’m saying it’s a guy, necessarily.
Nick / Vynos: [IC] I- I’m sorry, that was a person, who may have been insane, or on drugs or something, but tried to hurt Zeshdano here; tried to kill her; and unfortunately met his untimely demise in the process.
Bijan / Remy: You’re saying it was timely? Nice.
Nick / Vynos: Well, it was untimely, or-
Bijan / Remy: Oh, no no no, I like it. Look-
Nick / Vynos: Sorry, yes. I’m just trying to explain.
Bijan / Remy: We have different attitudes toward murder. I understand. But that was pretty cool. Nick / Vynos: I’m sorry, we are with the Company, all of us here. Can we see your order?
Mike / G.M. / Hanna: [IC] You absolutely cannot.
Nick / Vynos: I cannot see your writ?
[Taylor cracking up]
Nick / Vynos: I’m sorry, I thought I had a right to see your writ!
Taylor / Oat: [IC] Yeah! If you ask a cop to see their writ, they have to show you the writ. Everybody knows this.
Bijan / Remy: That’s the law.
Nick / Vynos: As long as I’ve been in the Company I’ve never..
Jen / Merkis: We have rights!
Taylor: And writs!
Mike / G.M. / Hanna: [IC] I’ll tell you what you can see, you can see the inside of the station downtown. Boys, lock ‘em up.
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] And you can see that the two Nolastrian guards behind her start to pull out these, what look like restraints, they’re like two big metal bracelets with these dangling heavy black, like, pods on the side of them, and they are advancing on you from the direction of the door, and she’s keeping her pistol up.
Bijan / Remy: [IC] Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa, whoa whoa, whoa. Guys, guys, let’s all calm down. Let’s all calm down. [OOC] Remy’s reaching for his wooden katana. [IC] We don’t need— we just wanna know what’s going on. You don’t have to take us anywhere, we can walk ourselves. Can we talk to your commanding officer, or whatever, what is— I don’t know what the... I don’t know what you guys are doing here, I just want some more information. Right, guys?
[00:05:06]
Shannon / Beta: [IC] Yeah.
Nick / Vynos: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That would be, it seems like that would be—
Bijan / Remy: We’ll cooperate! But you just gotta keep your distance ‘cause it’s been a long fucking day, okay?
Nick / Vynos: Yes.
Bijan / Remy: There’s a dead guy in the corner! Ya know! Like it’s a- woof! Buddy!
Jen / Merkis: [IC] You’ll be hearing from our refactor about this! [laughs] [OOC] Merkis is
shaking.
Mike / G.M. : Remy, as you are pleading with the hanna...
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] I would not say pleading.
Bijan / Remy: That’s not pleading. That’s fair. That’s very fair.
Bijan / Remy: It’s more of a warning. [laughs]
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Yeah.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] So the hanna’s the lead officer, the one who’s talking?
Mike / G.M.: Correct. She sort of looks like if Nicole Kidman was even scarier looking, and made of ceramic parts. And had a severe black bob.
Jen / Merkis: Wow. Extra Stepford Wives.
Mike / G.M.: Like literal, a robot. Her head is attached to her shoulders with these thin black wires, and when she moves around you can hear whatever the servos are on the inside whirring, and they have these giant eyes that never blink.
Jen / Merkis: Oh god!
Shannon / Beta: Yeah.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, they’re legitimately terrifying to behold.
Shannon / Beta: It’s taking everything inside of her not to scream out to the hanna, “What’s the oldest thing you remember? What is the oldest thing?”
Mike / G.M.: Remy, as you are reaching for your sword, and you are asking the hanna to just hold on a second, we don’t need to fight, the door, already twice-baked, is baked a third time...
Shannon / Beta: Poor door.
Mike / G.M.: ...as a third person, now, pushes it violently. And it just falls off of the hinges. It clatters to the ground. And on the other side of it, you see, again, three people. The first, up front, is a tall, skinny but muscular human, he’s holding a long skinny pistol that’s wrapped in what looks like rope, like it's a pistol that just has rope tied around it, and part of the rope is holding on a strange pointed bayonet. Behind him is a short, stocky, Big Drink Wrangler who’s wearing worn leather work clothes and a smaller pink-skinned human who is dressed similarly, in worn
leather work clothes, that at this point you might recognize as indicating someone’s relationship to the sea, or port work. They are also holding twine-covered guns, but they have shotguns. And as the blue human shoves down the door, sees that it has already been destroyed, has already been messed up twice, is surprised that he has completely knocked it completely off of it’s hinges, he comes in, and sort of looking at the door, he turns and he starts talking before he sees who’s in the room, and he says:
Taylor / Canary: [IC] Zed, you better tell me where Boo is— wait a minute, what do we have here?
[Laughter]
Taylor / Canary: I’ve heard of pigs in a blanket, but pigs in Zed’s apartment?
[gun cocking sound effect plays]
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Remy sits down.
[Laughter]
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis lowers his hands and his jaw is just dropped.
Bijan / Remy: [IC] I just; Zeshdano, you’re apartment is huge, for one, I really like the decor. Secondly, what; I mean, you could’ve knocked, I guess? What do you want? What is going on?
Jen / Merkis: Merkis starts to back away toward the desk, like, [IC] “What’s happening?”
Mike / G.M.: The Mulruk that was previously advancing on the group of fleeters flips around when the door gets knocked off its hinges and levels its shotgun at the three people that have just entered into this room, and the hanna is locking eyes, doesn’t turn around when this happens, but she does say to, you can’t really tell who, but she does say out loud, [IC] “Canary, I’d recognize that voice anywhere. Put the guns down. You’re coming with us too.”
Taylor / Canary: If I pick up a loaded gun I don’t put it down until it’s empty. You put down your weapons.
[Laughter]
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Beta slowly puts her hand in her pocket and is clenching NTS.
[someone gasps]
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Vynos moves to the side of the room, just out of the line of direct fire between these two groups.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Yeah, Merkis backs toward the desk and is trying to reach for something.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Remy stands up and he starts fiddling with his endothermic grenade maker.
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] Zeshdano stands up and gets a big smile on her face. She looks back and forth between the group of you, and the hanna, and this man that the hanna has just referred to as Canary, and she says to Canary: “Canary, your timing is not very good. What can I do for you?”
[00:10:06]
Taylor / Canary: The only thing I want everybody to do is to stay cool and have these law boys
put down their weapons.
Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: [IC] “Now you and I both know that they are not going to do that, and if you would like to leave alive, I’m going to guess that the Nolastrian Guard, here, will be happy enough to escort us to the station, and that will be their win for the day, and they will just let you—” [OOC] And she’s looking at the hanna now, looking back and forth between the hanna and the Mulruk and the human, [IC] “...let you, go on your way, so as to avoid further complication.”
Taylor / Canary: I might be amenable to that, perhaps. [OOC] And you can see that he sort-of like, begins to uncock one of his weapons. You can hear the energy just begin to power down in the sort-of flat, matte-gray tube that he’s holding like a baton.
Taylor / Oat: And then Oat says, [IC] “Yeah, let’s all just take it easy here, I’ll put on a pot of coffee.” [OOC] And he means to reach for the pot of coffee on the countertop, but instead his new arm goes the opposite direction and knocks one of the cops in the shoulder.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Oh no, Oat!
Bijan / Remy: [IC] Whoa-oa-oa-oa! He’s— new arm! He’s— Taylor: [OOC] No, it’s too late. The cop; Mike, you take it.
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] Yeah, so, the human, the human Nolastrian guard who is the one who Oat was closest to, the one who was closest to the kitchen gets basically smacked across the arms and face and he lowers his weapon for a second, but then stumbles, and bumps into the Mulruk who had just turned around to face the pirates at the door, and pushes him in the back, and pushes him forward so that he just falls directly into Canary, who falls to the ground, and there is now a scuffle. And when the scuffle begins, the smaller human fires his shotgun at the hanna.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] So, I guess we’re in initiative?
Mike / G.M.: So, I’m gonna let him do that, and then we’re gonna roll initiative. Jen / Merkis: Oh, wow.
Bijan / Remy: Siiiiiick.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Wow.
Bijan / Remy: Let’s go! I’m very excited to use this grenade thing.
[Laughter]
Bijan / Remy: I like that we’ve had a pratfall sort-of slapstick situation.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] I like that we don’t know who’s against who right now.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Yeah, I don’t know who I’m supposed to—
Nick / Vynos: Are the rest of us involved in this scuffle or are we just—
Taylor: Really, what does the word involved mean?
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] I mean, a shotgun went off right by your head, I feel like everybody’s on high alert already.
[People agreeing]
Taylor: Yeah, on the cultural level, does this, necessarily involve you? Probably not. On the direct demonstrable material level?
Mike / G.M.: The bullets in the room level. Taylor: You are, you are involved. [Interstitial music plays and stops]
Mike / G.M.: First things first, the Big Drink Wrangler levels the shotgun and tries to take this opportunity of chaos to take out the hanna and just fires a shotgun into her back, and fucking connects. Does, like, you hear a loud thunk and you see the vibrations all throughout her body. She, kind of impossibly, is not knocked down. She is knocked forward a little bit, she like takes one step as the slug round hits her where her robot spine would be. You can see, as much as she is able to communicate emotion with her weird robot face, she looks very irritated and she takes 10 damage.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Whoaaaa!
Mike / G.M.: The first person to act in initiative is Oat. [Laughter]
Jen / Merkis: Oat! Oat! Oat! Oat! Oat! Oat!
Mike / G.M.: Oat, do you need me to describe the scene? It’s quite chaotic.
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] Yes! Why Mike / G.M., that was gonna be my first question to you. Would you just, give us the setup here? What’s the scale of the room we’re in?
Mike / G.M.: So, Zeshdano’s apartment, I would describe it as a medium-sized loft. You are currently standing in the kitchen and you are maybe holding a teapot and you are closest, I think, at this point, either to your friends or the hanna, who has just been knocked forward a little bit. You were previously closest to one of the other guards, who you accidentally pushed and sent flying. I would say the furthest person from you is maybe one of the pirates and there may be, I don’t know, how big is a medium sized loft? Maybe 20 feet? 25 feet?
[00:15:15]
Taylor / Oat: Yeah, so we’re all pretty fucking close.
Mike / G.M.: I mean, there’s not a lot of room between you. The fire marshal would be bad if they came by and say this many people in the apartment.
Taylor / Oat: Oat says, [IC] “Aw shit” [OOC] and he— I’m gonna use one of Oat’s moves, I’m using my character sheet. I am going to grab towards the cop, the Nolastrian guard that I bumped, and caused this whole thing. I am going to reach toward them and— Is there a visible grenade on their belt, a weapon that they’re not holding, that’s in their pocket? I’m really hoping there’s a visible grenade on this thing’s bandolier or something.
Mike / G.M.: There’s no grenade. You can see a baton. They also have the strange manacles that they were approaching people with. I think since they were holding those, and then you pushed them, they lost their balance, there’s a chance that they would’ve dropped those, and now they’re at your feet. So you can pick up these weird handcuffs if you want. You don’t necessarily know how they work, they look very strange, but they’re there..
Taylor / Oat: I’m going to try to steal the manacles.
Mike / G.M.: I want you to use your powers, but also I wanna maybe save you the 8 grit,
because I did say that they dropped them and they’re on the floor.
Taylor / Oat: Okay. Then I’m gonna grab the manacles easily, almost nothing, and then I’m going to try and take that baton.
Mike / G.M.: Okay great, yes. [Laughter]
Taylor / Oat: Free manacles, free space manacles. The baton is up to the dice. [Rolls dice]
Taylor / Oat: Okay, that’s a lot of grit. Okay, so I burned 7 grit, and now... 13!
Mike / G.M.: You very handily pilfer that baton. There is a weird confusing rubber loop that holds it onto their belt which explains why they can be knocked over and it hasn’t fallen off, but your nimble other fingers are able to undo it with aplomb, and you now have a baton that has a switch on the bottom of it. You do not know what the switch does, but it’s otherwise just a long piece of molded, feels-like metal.
Taylor / Oat: Wow, I grab those things, I jump in, grab those things and then I start backing up until I’m with the rest of the group, and then I say, “I am so sorry, I am so sorry, I think this is my fault, but I think we have to leave right now!”
Mike / G.M.: The next person to act is Canary, who is just going to roll combat to grapple, and try to get out of this tangle with the guard.
[Crashing and struggling grunts sound effects play]
Mike / G.M.: Interesting, so Canary rolled an 8 and the Mulruk guard who rolled on top of him, who was pushed on top of him by his partner, rolled a 1. So, the Mulruk guard was not planning on being involved in this fracas, but basically tried to take this opportunity, was holding the manacles, had their gun slung on their side, to try to restrain Canary, and that’s what the grapple was, to try to just get his hands into the manacles, and from those of you who are looking, it seems like try to affix them to the floor. You know, pushing these weird balls on the other side of them up against the, down into the floorboards. And Canary is very tall, very lanky, and the Mulrook, as previously described, they are sturdy, but they’re pretty short and Canary it turns out is able to maneuver pretty easily with this person on top of them. He does it without pageantry, so if you’re not looking closely you might not even see him take a knife out of his pouch on his side and just stab this Mulruk in the side several times.
[Gasps]
Bijan / Remy: Nice.
Mike / G.M.: There is dark blood pooling, again, from a Mulruk, in Zeshdano’s apartment. Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Oh no!
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Uh-oh.
Jen / Merkis: Bad optics!
Mike / G.M.: The next person to act is the Mulruk guard, who is going to try to continue manacling Canary, even though he is being sad.
Jen / Merkis: Oh my god! Such violence.
Mike / G.M.: He succeeds. So, Canary is able to do... Canary does 9 damage. Canary is stabbing this guy in the ribs, is just being merciless. The Mulruk is trying to power through it to grab a hand and put it in the manacle, and grab the other hand and put it in the manacle, and he manages, he’s very strong, he manages to do it. And you see after he has both of Canary’s head in this weird thing, he pushes it above his head, he smashes those two balls that are on either side of these strange handcuffs into the floor and you hear this strange kind of electronic motor noise followed by a little whir, and even though it doesn’t look like anything has changed, Canary obviously cannot move his hands. It looks like he’s been somehow just affixed to the floor and the Mulruk is on top of him. Yeah. It seems like he’s gonna try to get up but it seems like he’s got other stuff he’s gotta do.
The next person to act is the hanna, who is just gonna turn around and is gonna take a shot at Canary with her very fancy looking laser pistol. He’s going to not be able to dodge, I guess. What do we do in this situation, do I even give him the opportunity to move?
[00:20:54]
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] No.
Taylor / Canary: [IC] Ow! You stainless porcelain prawn!
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, I’m gonna say that she maybe just connects, because he can’t go anywhere.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Wow, this is so interesting. These NPCs acting for us. [laughs]
Bijan / Remy: I like how we’re just watching this kind-of like, horrifying...
[Laughter]
Jen / Merkis: Yeah, just backing away, like “Uhhh.”
Nick / Vynos: [OOC]This is kind of what would happen, though. I’m kind of happy we rolled lower on the move because it makes sense that the scuffle would start where it starts.
Mike / G.M.: She levels her pistol, you can see, with pinpoint accuracy, she does not waver, she does not overaim, her hands do not shake 1 millimeter, she just moves the position of her gun, and she shoots Canary expertly in the knee that is sticking out from underneath the Mulruk and basically just obliterates his leg.
[Screaming sound effect plays]
Mike / G.M.: The next person to act is Merkis.
Jen / Merkis: Holy shit.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Oh, Merkis.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] You’re hard now, you’re hard now. Mike / G.M.: Buddy, yeah there’s a lot going on, but... Nick / Vynos: You have a mustache.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis takes a free action called Reposition, which is literally expertly casing the chaos around you. So he burns 6 grit and he gains an extra d12 to use on any roll going forward. It’s like a boost.
Bijan / Remy: That’s incredible.
Jen / Merkis: He is backing up toward the desk. What is the window situation like?
Mike / G.M.: There’s one single window, and it’s at the front of the apartment. So that is kind of diagonal from the writing desk. The blinds are closed, so there’s like dark curtains over them.
Jen / Merkis: Oh my goodness. What is on the desk behind him?
Mike / G.M.: Bunch of papers, lamp, a letter opener, you could go through the desk if you want to see if there’s anything in there, there’s three drawers on either side and a big middle drawer across the top.
Jen / Merkis: Yeah, he’s gonna go through all the drawers. And he grabs the letter opener.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, I’ll let you grab the letter opener for free. Roll movement and the higher you
get the more drawers you’re able to go through.
Jen / Merkis: Okay. Got a 7.
Mike / G.M.: You go through literally every drawer. [Shannon and Nick laugh]
Mike / G.M.: There are literally seven drawers and you move fast enough; it’s those sticky fingers, you don’t have to fiddle with any of the knobs or anything. So... it’s interesting that you did this. You find mostly paperwork and garbage, and a bunch of old music cartridges, and some zines that Zeshdano has collected but not filed into her library that is to your left. But, in the bottom-most drawer on the right-hand side, you find two things. You find a bottle of raq, which
is a liquor that is made on Kakudun, from this weird local seed, and you find an extremely ornate laser pistol that is obviously of late Tefnian design. Do you pull it out of the desk?
Jen / Merkis: Merkis marvels at it and discretely turns around and does not pull it out.
Mike / G.M.: You’re looking down on it, it looks huge, it looks very big. It looks like it's been modified but it looks very ornate, it's got a lot of very fancy swirly bronze and gold on it. And you can see there’s a bunch of [unsure] mechanisms on it, so it looks very complicated.
Jen / Merkis: He slips the letter opener into a pocket but then looks toward Zeshdano to see if she was watching what he was doing.
Mike / G.M.: She is not looking at you, she is mortified at what’s happening and when she sees Canary’s leg get blown off, she covers her eyes in her hands.
Jen / Merkis: What is everybody else’s position? So Merkis is at the desk, diagonal from the big window.
Mike / G.M.: I think Zeshdano is probably next to you, to your right, so she’s maybe within a couple feet of you. I imagine maybe to her right is a kind of scrum of a bunch of you, starting with Remy.
Taylor / Oat: Oat just sort of backed into the general group of friends.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah. And then there’s the three pirates and the one Mulruk Nolastrian guard kind of in front of you, quote unquote, Merkis, at the front door of the apartment. So, up next we have the human pirate, who was the one who tried to shoot the hanna, and the human guard, who is the one that Taylor, that Oat just stole things from. They technically act at the same time. The human pirate is going to try to take another shot at the hanna since he did so well at the first one. He shoots his shotgun and she sees it coming a mile away and just ever-so-slightly steps to the side and a huge hole opens up in the wall behind all of you, above the head of the Mulruk that’s underneath the tarp.
[Everyone shouts in surprise]
[00:25:57]
Shannon / Beta: [IC] Okay.
[Bijan laughs]
Mike / G.M.: Alright, okay, that’s enough. Shannon / Beta: Okay, we’ve had our fun here.
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] We’re guiding the listener, teaching them how to experience this fight scene while it's going on, this is great.
Nick / Vynos: Okay.
[Taylor and Shannon laugh]
Jen / Merkis: Merkis puts a protective right hand across Zeshdano’s chest.
Mike / G.M.: [laughs] She looks down like, “the fuck?”
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] This short lizard is trying to protect you.
Mike / G.M.: You guys are actually probably similar height, she’s very tiny.
The human guard is going to spend his turn trying to stand up. He successfully stands up.
[Triumphant music plays]
Mike / G.M.: So he has had his things pilfered from him, but he is now upright and trying to figure out what’s going on. The next person to act is Remy.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Can I gunch up as a free action? [Laughter]
Bijan / Remy: Like, before my turn.
Mike / G.M.: Um, no.
Bijan / Remy: Okay, ya know, it’s worth it to ask. [Shannon laughs]
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] It’s all happening so fast. Bijan / Remy: I will remember this.
Mike / G.M.: I appreciate your dedication to gunching, though.
Bijan / Remy: Remy, I think, he says: [IC] “I knew I should have gunched up before we got
here.”[OOC] Maybe I’ll just use one of my fuckin’ powers, let’s do it. Mike / G.M.: Now’s the time.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Now’s the time. I think he’s gonna use Overcharge, and the description is: “You can will your blood Nanites to do crazy things that are bad for them and for you and for everything around you. When you Overcharge, burn 8+Xgrit, minimum 1, add X to your initiative, combat check, damage roll for the next X rounds. In addition your offensive Nanobio powers do an additional two times X damage. Every time you Overcharge, make a will check, if you fail, you must act in some inappropriately, overly serious way on your primary passion, your telos. This can put you or your comrades at risk, it doesn’t matter.
Mike / G.M.: What is Remy’s telos again?
Bijan / Remy: Remy’s telos is penance, so it’s like testing his limits and what he can do. Mike / G.M.: Alright.
Taylor: Yeah, that’s what I think when I think of Remy: pining for redemption.
Bijan / Remy: You know what I mean, though? He wants to see, he just wants to see how far he can go. So, I think I’m gonna burn 10 grit, I’ll burn 10 grit. Remy shifts his stance and starts walking a step forward to the scrum. I guess everyone behind him can’t see this but his face is doing the thing where the nanites are moving very quickly, and you can sort of see, it’s like his skin is rippling, and you can tell that he’s hearing some fucking heavy metal music, like he’s ready to shred.
[Nick and Jen laugh]
Bijan / Remy: And you can see his flesh, his skin sort of tearing off, and you recognize that the haze that you’re seeing is nanites, and the skin is just sort of floating and it’s bloody so he’s got this sort-of bloody cloud forming around him. And I think what happens is his skin starts tearing off.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Ahh!
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Yeah, I’m gonna go for it.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, go for it.
Bijan / Remy: Yeah, I’m gonna go for it. And it’s sort of floating because the nanites are leaving his body and they’re— it looks like he’s powering up. Is that my turn or can I do something else?
Taylor: I think we need you to scream like you’re going Super Saiyan. Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Yeah.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Yeah. Well I didn’t wanna use Super Saiyan as a thing, but instead of an energy field or whatever like in Dragonball Z, it's just flecks of skin and nanites and blood.
[Cheering]
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, and dusty nanite smoke trails.
Bijan / Remy: It’s horrifying, it’s absolutely horrifying.
Mike / G.M.: Overcharge is free, so you can do anything you want.
[Bijan laughs]
Mike / G.M.: It’s like you haven’t acted yet.
Jen / Merkis: Woooooow.
Bijan / Remy: Okay, so I actually have to make a will check right now just to see if I do. His will is also 4, so.
Jen / Merkis: Oh!
[Bijan laughs]
Mike / G.M.: Maybe burn that remaining grit.
Bijan / Remy: Nope, cause I’m going to use that to fight. [laughs]
Mike / G.M.: So you’re basically guaranteeing that you’re going to act inappropriately. Bijan / Remy: Yeah, yeah.
Mike / G.M.: Okay, got it.
Bijan / Remy: We’ll do it by the book, I’ll roll 1d4, got a 2, failed the will check, and I think what Remy’s going to do is burn the rest of his grit, 3, and use Charge. So, I burned 3 extra grit, so I have 3 to my initiative, 3 to my combat checks, and 3 extra for my damage rolls for the next 3 rounds. And now, my nanobio powers deal 2x—- I guess 2x is just 2 times, it’s not 2...
Mike / G.M.: Yes, 2x, yeah. [00:30:18]
Bijan / Remy: And he takes out his machete and throws it with Charge at the back of the hanna, so...
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Whoa-ho...
Bijan / Remy: I guess it probably looks like a bolt of electricity because—
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, she’s like a meter away from you so that’s very close, yeah. Bijan / Remy: Oh my god, his combat is 12 plus 4, let’s go. 10, yeah.
Mike / G.M.: She fails. She does not beat 10. She rolled a 7. Her maximum, her movement dice is d10 and she even has a bonus. I didn’t give it to her because she’s faced away, so...
Bijan / Remy: D6 plus 8 is the damage on this I think. 12. Mike / G.M.: And this time, she falls over.
Jen / Merkis: Wow...
Mike / G.M.: The slug didn’t do it but you got right between two very important robot bits and the explosion of the charged machete just unbalances her in the perfect way and she stumbles and just... face first into the ground, right next to Canary at this point.
Bijan / Remy: Yeah, Remy’s just like,[IC] “Okay. Who’s next?” [IC ]And he unsheathes his katana.
[Jen and Shannon cheer]
Mike / G.M.: So you have to act inappropriately with regards to your telos of redemption.
Bijan / Remy: I think that in this case he’s just going to kill everybody until there is nobody left.
Mike / G.M.: Okay. God.
Bijan / Remy: I don’t know if that means the team is in trouble yet because there are still some guys.
Mike / G.M.: We will see.
[Jen laughs]
Bijan / Remy: So I guess you should add 3 to my initiative for the next rounds. Jen / Merkis: Wooooow.
Nick / Vynos: [unintelligible]
Jen / Merkis: Leapfrog.
Mike / G.M.: So you will go at the same time as the hanna.
Jen / Merkis: Oh shit.
Mike / G.M.: Beta and Zeshdano now act at roughly the same time. Beta, do you wanna go first?
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Beta is looking around at the situation and she is seeing clearly in her mind, these two groups need to destroy themselves and we gotta get outta here. And she wants to communicate that to the group without saying it out loud, so she’s going to meld all six of their minds together.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] [laughs] Ah, shit.
[Nick laughs]
Mike / G.M.: That’s Beta, Merkis, Remy, Vynos, Oat, and Zeshdano.
Shannon / Beta: Yes. So, she’s going to aetherspeak them all together.
Jen / Merkis: Woooow.
Bijan / Remy: I think if you try and touch Remy you just get a wall of static. Cause there’s nothing going on in his mind.
[Static sound effect plays]
Shannon / Beta: Oh, I can’t aetherspeak with you right now?
Bijan / Remy: I feel like; I just assume he’s not...
Jen / Merkis: He’s the unmuted one on the Zoom call.
[Laughter]
Jen / Merkis: Moving around and stuff.
Taylor: Yeah, we could hear his id breathing. Yeah, I like that a lot, that’s a good idea.
Mike / G.M.: It just sounds like the inside of someone’s pocket but its the inside of Remy’s brain.
Jen / Merkis: Yeah.
[Static sound effect plays]
Shannon / Beta: That’s six. So I burn six grit. Jen / Merkis: Oh my god! I love it! [laughs]
Shannon / Beta: [laughs] So that is... 18, and that’s 6, so we can talk, we’re level two? Mike / G.M.: Yes.
Shannon / Beta: Eight minutes. [echo effect] [IC] Okay, everyone, sorry, sorry to do this. [laughs] I know we talk a lot about me not just popping into your minds and I haven’t quite got the boundary situation with this quite figured out but we need both of these groups to destroy one another, and then we need to get the heck outta here.
Taylor / Oat: [IC] Can you see what I’m thinking? Shannon / Beta: Yes.
Taylor / Oat: Do not look!
[laughter]
Shannon / Beta: Whoa! How are you hungry right now, come on? Taylor / Oat: We haven’t eaten in so long!
[laughter]
Mike / G.M.: Is Oat going through the drawers in the kitchen right now? Taylor / Oat: [OOC] Nope! That’s just on his mind.
Mike / G.M.: All right.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] But, in some embarrassing way, which I’m curious about. Some
humiliating form of hunger. [IC] Oh, goodness, are all of us on here?
Taylor / Oat: [IC] Vynos!
Nick / Vynos: Yes? Can you read my mind or are we just kind of on a conference call?
Taylor / Oat: Yeah!
Shannon / Beta: Yeah, everyone, sorry. Yeah, we’re all together on this. I try to not do huge group one—
Taylor / Oat: All of us? Shannon / Beta: Yeah.
Taylor / Oat: Oh god, Merkis are you here?
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] A booming voice: [laughs] [deep voice effect] [IC] Affirmative Beta, I’m
looking at that window.
Shannon / Beta: [laughs] Oh my gosh!
Nick / Vynos: He changed more than he looks like on the outside!
Shannon / Beta: Whoa.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Just stone cold face as he’s doing this, just boom, echoing through your heads.
Shannon / Beta: Remy, do you come in Remy?
[silence]
Taylor / Oat: Okay look! This is fun but like nobody like at like yaknow...
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Wait! Are you not horrified by what just happened to Remy? [laughs]
[00:35:02]
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Vynos has seen this, he is horrified, he is quickly much more horrified by the thoughts that Oat currently has.
[laughter]
Nick / Vynos: About this pile of food that he has somehow dressed as a woman, and is sitting in a chair by him, and he’s romancing it, I think he’s gonna go all the way with this food!
Oat: Oh god!
Jen / Merkis: It’s really really tall like the Aanvader.
[laughter]
Nick / Vynos: An Amazonian food woman that he’s gonna have his way with. Oat: Get outta my head!
Mike / G.M.: It’s just cake that’s shaped like the Aanvader.
[more laughter]
Mike / G.M.: The next person to act is Zeshdano, and in the interim, Zeshdano has noticed, Merkis, that you are looking in the drawers of her writing desk and she looks at you and since you’re close enough she can whisper and she just says, [whispering] [IC] “You need to prime it. The button is on the right hand side, not the left hand side.”
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis just ever-so-slightly just—
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] They’re connected by the brains, they could just say it out loud.
Jen / Merkis: Oh, she’s in our conference call too?
Mike / G.M.: She has not yet figured it out.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Oh, I see.
Mike / G.M.: And then she goes: [IC] “Ope, sorry!” [OOC] And then she thinks it: [whispering] [IC] “You have to prime it, it's on the right hand—
[laughter]
Nick / Vynos: [IC] You don’t have to whisper here!
Shannon / Beta: [IC] Yeah. You’re in their mind, there’s no whispers. Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Just booming: [IC] “Understood.”
Mike / G.M.: So, this is a use of Zeshdano Navelle’s power called Give Orders, where she can give you advice and you receive +4 to your next attack. She can’t do anything else, this is the only thing that she can do, so her round is done. The next person to act is the Big Drink Wrangler pirate, who is going to... Who does this person identify as a threat? Probably Remy. Remy, I need you to roll movement, and beat a 5.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] 7.
Mike / G.M.: So he shoots you and he loads the slug, levels the shotgun, pulls the trigger, there’s a huge blast, and all of you brace for what has just happened to happen again, an explosion in the wall behind you, you know, Remy doesn’t react at all, but the bullet just disappears. And you hear all of Remy’s nanites just consuming it and crunching on it as it passes over his shoulder and next to his head.
Taylor / Oat: [IC] God! Oh god, is he gonna be okay?
Shannon / Beta: [IC] [mumbling] Is he ever really okay? [laughs] Jen / Merkis: [IC] [deep voice] He can handle it.
Mike / G.M.: Vynos, you are the last to act in the loop. What is it that made you so distracted that you are last in initiative?
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Well, the last thing I did was I moved against the wall, so I think it could be a couple of things. One, I could have moved too far against the wall and then like ran into a closet or hit something off the wall and it fell on me or something like that. If it's nothing like that then I may still just be really really pissed off that I never got a writ. Just incensed.
Mike / G.M.: Sure, yeah. Are you just pulling out pieces of paper from your coat, trying to find local laws?
Nick / Vynos: Yes. Yeah, maybe I... I moved aside before all of this to just prove that I had a right to see the writ.
Mike / G.M.: You walked over to the bookshelf to find the legal standings for Kakudun, now you’re just like “Now listen here!”
Nick / Vynos: Yes, well I happened to see that she had some legal standings for Kakudun as I moved over to the wall, I figured they would probably huff and puff for a couple minutes, so I could get the rule ready on hand for whenever they tried to arrest us again.
Mike / G.M.: Okay, so, everybody, Vynos has been in the corner talking to a book. You are currently holding a tome.
[Shannon laughs]
Taylor: Well it’s only been like six seconds.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, six seconds, something like that? Yeah.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] My guess at this point is that they are trying to kill each other. Remy is getting involved but I’m not particularly worried about Remy right now in this state. I think he could probably tear these people apart pretty quickly on his own. Even if that’s a misguided thought I think that’s the thought Vynos has, so he does make sure that he’s moved well aside so that he’s out of range of any shots but does look back into the book, or continue the conversation with the book about the rule about due process.
Mike / G.M.: Alright, that’s your turn?
Nick / Vynos: Yeah.
Mike / G.M.: Great, all right. The next person to act, top of the initiative order, is Oat. Taylor / Oat: [IC] Zeshdano, is there any backdoor outta this place?
Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: She thinks at you:[IC] “Do you see a backdoor?”
Taylor / Oat: That’s why I’m asking!
[laughter]
Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: [IC] Yeah, lemme just pull the secret hatch and then she reaches— Taylor / Oat: It’s okay everybody, she has a secret hatch!
Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: She pulls down a book and then gives you a look like— oh?
Jen / Merkis: [IC] [deep voice] I got a plan, Oat.
Taylor / Oat: What?
Jen / Merkis: [deep voice] We’ve got to break that window.
Taylor / Oat: Uh, okay! [OOC] Oat misunderstands and begins running forward with the intent to break through the window. He is gonna run and try to hit it with the baton. [pause] One. I got a one.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Oh noooo. Jen / Merkis:[OOC] Oh no! Oat! [pensive music plays]
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] Oat runs forward and he tries to jump over the scrum of the cops and the pirates to break the window open with his baton. Doesn’t make it quite high enough. Maybe his balance is thrown off by his much much lighter arm and the metal armature it's attached to. And he lands right in the middle of the fight on the ground.
[00:40:38]
Mike / G.M.: You trip over both the hanna and the human guard that you knocked down, knocking down the human guard again, but also falling yourself. And now you are also in the dogpile that’s on the floor in Zeshdano’s apartment.
Jen / Merkis: [IC] [deep voice] Not what I had in mind, Oat.
Shannon / Beta: Beta thinks: [IC] “We need to get better at communication while we’re all
connected. Remember, everyone can hear everything you think.”
Mike / G.M.: The next person to act is Canary, who just shouts, [IC] “Get me out of these things!” [OOC] at his fellow pirates who are around him. The Mulruk guard who was on top of
Canary is just gonna try to stand up... and can’t do it, is still bleeding, still not doing well, is very very hurt. The hanna; she is just gonna try to beat the shit out of Oat.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Well...
Mike / G.M.: Now that he’s the closest thing.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Damn, Oat.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Noooo!
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] You can hear Oat’s thoughts, he’s thinking ]IC] “This is not Merkis’ fault! This is my fault!”
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] I guess Remy’s just looking down at you with the intent to kill. Like he doesn’t really have a face; no thoughts! Head empty! Just one word and its kill.
Mike / G.M.: The hanna, a renowned murder robot, feared across the void for their combat prowess rolled a 1.
[sad trombone effect plays]
Bijan / Remy: Nice! The dice don’t lie. Shannon / Beta: Damn.
Mike / G.M.: The hanna did not realize just how hurt she was by Remy’s charged machete and when she tries to maneuver to get Oat she does it in just such a way that her whole left arm which is the one that was holding her laser pistol basically completely disassembles, and falls off of her body. And it starts squirting black oily liquid from the inside of her torso. And she’s basically now pulling herself with her remaining arm to try to get towards someone that she can exert some authority over. But yeah, she does not look good. This is like Terminator T-2000 level, like she is very damaged and yet still going, like terrifying killbot eyes.
The next person to act is Remy.
Bijan / Remy: I guess the hanna is directly in front of him?
Mike / G.M.: Basically at your feet, yeah.
Shannon / Beta: Ahhhh!
Mike / G.M.: Squirting robot liquid ever and clawing towards one of your teammates.
Bijan / Remy: I think he briefly regrets destroying his machete, because his sword is made of wood. And that is because there is a flesh melting fungus inside of it that has a 1-in-2 chance of
infecting any non-informatic opponent. Unfortunately there is an informatic opponent on the ground.!
Mike / G.M.: Yeah.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Boy.
Bijan / Remy: Here’s what I think is gonna happen. Let’s see. I think Remy’s just gonna step forward, step on the robot, and calmly just stab his sword at whoever’s on the ground in front of him.
Mike / G.M.: Probably the closest person if you’re stepping over the hanna is the human guard. Bijan / Remy: Oh shit, this is definitely going to hit because of Overcharge.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, it's very possible depending on what you rolled, this person cannot beat it. Bijan / Remy: 15!
Nick / Vynos: Oy!
Mike / G.M.: You stab the sword down, the guard cannot get out of the way, but there is a lot of
wriggling, so when you stab it down—
Bijan / Remy: It is wooden, also! He’s just going to try and push it all the way through this guard.
[disgusted noises]
Mike / G.M.: You go through the space between Oat’s given arm and his torso, it's like just barely not touching your partner. With a 15, sure, you can push a dull wooden sword into flesh. Ugh!
Bijan / Remy: Uh, yeah! So I have 1-in-2 chance of infecting; I guess I gotta roll damage; but I have a 1-in-2 chance of infecting every non-informatic opponent with a disease that means they will die within d6 rounds.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, roll damage and then roll anything that’s even.
Bijan / Remy: It was 1 damage.
Mike / G.M.: Okay, he’s done 1 damage. Roll a d6 and if its high than they’re infected. Bijan / Remy: Please be high. Aw, I got a one! Not infected.
Mike / G.M.: Not infected.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Still horrifying.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, you push really really hard, the reason it only does 1 damage is because it turns out the Nolastrian guard is wearing a kevlar suit so it's very hard to actually pierce, or something like kevlar. Remy, also what happens— Taylor, I’m gonna do it now. Okay, great.
[gasps]
Mike / G.M.: Remy, as you’re doing this, you pull out the sword, you push it down on the person that’s below you, you’ve just stepped on and over the hanna, you can feel some of her synthetic, ceramic, serasteel bones crunching like sort-of broken plate beneath your boots, and you’re pushing against the guard with your sword, thinking “infect him,” or maybe you’re not thinking anything...
Bijan / Remy: Nope, just kill.
Mike / G.M.: And what happens is that your ears start to ring. You start to get really severe tinnitus and it makes you a little woozy. You’re still pushing, but you have to lean on your sword to keep your balance. And your eyes start to water. There starts to be this really intense pressure in your sinuses like there’s something just pressing on the inside of your head. And you also get, if you don’t already have it, this really intense feeling of dread, or doom, like something very very bad is going to happen, and it's going to happen right now and— that’s it. That’s it, that’s the end of maybe not just you, maybe everything. The world is over. You feel like you and all of your friends, and everything you’ve ever done, and everything you’ve ever known, for however long you’ve been alive is like nothing but an insect, and that there’s this giant boot coming down on you. And then the front wall of Zeshdano Navelle’s apartment blows open.
[gasps]
[00:46:34]
Mike / G.M.: There is a huge force of something. You do not know what it is yet. You are all knocked over. Everybody is knocked down onto the ground. The first thing when you sort of like come to, that you experience, is this terrible smell of melted plastic and burning rubber and it stings. It stings the inside of your nose and it makes your eyes hurt. And you start to hear this really awful sound like as many fingers as you could possibly get on a single blackboard. Out in front of Zeshdano’s apartment, sort of in the space in front of it, sort of on, but also sort of through the balcony that was on the other side of the windows, you start to see this form unfold into existence.
You first see this long wide tentacle or tendril. It’s gray, black, sort of shimmering, it looks like oil. It's like slick, and reflective. It extends from this envelope that has just opened up in space, this long horizontal line that’s maybe three or so feet tall, and it just dips out of this envelope. And you can see at the end of it there’s this long, fanglike talon. And then another one sort of unfolds from this envelope and a third, and then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth and it's like this
weird, inscrutable writhing pile of tendrils with talons on the end of them just pouring out of this envelope onto the space between the balcony in front of Zeshdano’s apartment, and the apartment itself, over the rubble that this thing that has opened up has caused. You can’t see an end to it, you can’t see a beginning to it, it's just this writhing, five or six foot tall pile of tendrils, tentacles, with piercing little things on the end. One of the tendrils kind of cobras up a little bit and it sorta is looking around, almost like a periscope. It looks like it's sniffing, or looking or something and then it levels, and it points directly at Remy.
[gasps]
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Ah. Right. The Emissary.
Mike / G.M.: This is the Emissary.
[gasps]
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Ahh, shit!
Taylor: Commercial break!
[laughter]
Taylor: Does your underwear stink?
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Yes, it does!
Taylor: Do you need—
[laughter]
Mike / G.M.: Is this an ad for washing your underwear?
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Yeah.
Taylor / Tony Underwear: [OOC] Yes, it is! You could order a little man named Tony to come to your house and wash your underwear. [IC] Hey, it’s-a-me! I’m-a Tony Underwear!
Jen / Merkis: [sales voice] I needed my underwear cleaned after I listened to Fun City! Taylor / Tony Underwear: I helped her! [OOC] Use code TONYTONYTONY! [laughter]
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Huh. I guess Remy’s still on the ground. He gets up, looks at it, and levels his sword. He’s unsure what’s going to happen but he wants to be ready for whatever happens.
Mike / G.M.: The tentacle that was doing the searching and that pointed with its talon directly at you, launches forward. Just flies forward and it makes this low wet whipping noise. Roll your movement, and beat a 5.
Bijan / Remy: I have no grit to burn so I gotta roll it. Shannon / Beta: But is there time to turn health into grit? Bijan / Remy: Yeah, Mike, that’s a question for you. [00:50:24]
Mike / G.M.: I believe that you can do that for free.
Bijan / Remy: Okay, I’m just gonna do that then.
Mike / G.M.: It’s at the cost of 3-to-1.
Bijan / Remy: 3-to-1. He’s going to burn nearly all of his health, I think. He’s going to drop 12 health and get 4 grit.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] You can only burn 3 right?
Bijan / Remy: Okay, I’ll do 3.
7. Wow. That was... [laughs]
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] There you go. You needed those 3. Bijan / Remy: Yeah.
Jen / Merkis: That was so scary.
Mike / G.M.: And yeah, you do not know what happens when this thing connects. The talon tendril rockets towards you. Remy, you get the distinct impression that it was aiming directly at your forehead. You manage to dodge it, just barely. If not for your quick thinking, it would have been directly on target and it would have pierced your forehead, but, you know, dodge just a little bit, and it slaps down on the ground in front of you, over Oat and the hanna and the human guard, who are now covered in this gross, smelly, black something and it just starts to retreat back to the writhing mess.
The next person to act is Merkis.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Oh my god. [laughs] So that thing is blocking the entire front?
Mike / G.M.: I would say that it is occupying a fair amount of space; like, let’s say it is about five and a half feet tall, by maybe six feet wide. So I have written in my notes, I have nicknamed this: Danger Spaghetti. So the Emissary is this always changing shape but right now, yeah, it's just a five foot tall pile of spaghetti.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] And remind me why the Emissary comes?
Mike / G.M.: The Emissary comes when someone uses Open Mind, because it announces the
existence of an extremely powerful brain.
Shannon / Beta: Ahhh.
Jen / Merkis: Ohhh.
Taylor: It announces to the creatures beyond our ken that you are there. Mike / G.M.: Yep.
Shannon / Beta: I see.
Taylor: It's like raising your hand in a room full of hyperspace serial killers. Jen / Merkis: Wow, okay.
Mike / G.M.: I’m gonna, just— and I realize this gives some people an advantage over others, so if you find this to be a problem, let me know— but just for play speed, I’m going to say everyone can get up as a free action.
Jen / Merkis: Merkis says to the group chat—
[laughter]
Jen / Merkis: ...[deep voice][IC] I can take someone with me out of here. Who should it be?
Nick / Vynos: Vynos pipes up immediately that she should take Zeshdano.
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] Yeah, Oat also in his mind screams Zeshdano.
Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: [IC] “Absolutely not.” Over and over again she says “absolutely not, absolutely not.”
Nick / Vynos: [IC] Zeshdano, they’re here for you! Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: [IC] No.
Nick / Vynos: They’ll kill you, damn it!
Mike / G.M. / Zeshdano: [IC] I’m not leaving you here to die in my apartment, where I should’ve died. You saved me, and now it's my turn to help you. There’s no way that you’re taking me out of here.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis looks to his right, offers a hand, and says [deep voice] [IC] “Come with me if you want to live.”
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] Zeshdano puts her hands out, you will have to forcefully take her.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Damn, really? I think what will happen is I can roll it, and see if he can. Mike / G.M.: Yeah.
Jen / Merkis: Merkis is going to Dive. Basically, it is a getaway power and can take one additional person with him, depending on how the roll goes. So he’s going to burn 6 grit and make a move check. But because he did the Reposition earlier, he’s going to use a d12, and he’s going to still burn 6. So he’s going to burn a total of 12. 4 plus 6 is a 10.
Mike / G.M.: Okay. I’m going to give Zeshdano a chance to try to wriggle out of this, because she really does not want to go. This is against her nature, in every possible way. She is not someone who abandons difficulty, she is not someone who abandons teammates, she is someone who stares down danger at every possible turn. Do you feel like it is more fair for her to roll movement, to try to basically dodge you, and to duck away, or do you think it is more fair for her to roll combat, to try to swat you off?
Jen / Merkis: Probably move because he’s trying to grab around her waist like a damsel in distress.
Mike / G.M.: She can’t beat it. So she wriggles around and as Merkis, with his newfound confidence, is just taking charge of the situation, she’s like “No, I have to stay. I need to help. This is my mess and I’m gonna clean—” You Dive. How— Explain to me in as much detail and drama as you can muster how it is that Merkis manages to get the two of them out of this situation. And where do you end up?
[00:55:22]
Jen / Merkis: Mm-hm. In the big group chat, he goes: [deep voice] [IC] “Ma’am.” [laughter]
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] He has very short arms, so he has to get really close to her to grab around with both arms around her waist and like a juggernaut, uses that momentum to run towards the open slot by the window to dive out onto the balcony and fall down the stairs basically.
Taylor: You’re going over the Danger Spaghetti?
Jen / Merkis: Maybe next to? Or— it’s the only open thing, right?
Taylor: That and the door.
Mike / G.M.: I mean the thing about Dive is that I cannot argue with it, I don’t think. Taylor: It’s Dive! It’s Dive! I love Stillfleet.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, I can’t even have the Danger Spaghetti be like— It’s so funny that the Emissary, a much cooler and more serious name— I can’t even really have the Emissary try to swipe at you, like you have to be successful. Yeah, there’s a little space that Merkis maybe just has an eye for as the Banshee.
Taylor: [gasps] Dude. You’re a gecko. Run up the wall. Jen / Merkis: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: Run.
Jen / Merkis: Okay, yeah that’s great.
Mike / G.M.: Do some gecko parkour, describe it for us. With Zeshdano, who’s roughly your size, under one arm.
Jen / Merkis: With long hair flailing everywhere. Yeah, Merkis grabs Zeshdano around the waist and just kind of hurls them toward the right-most wall, and with his sticky bottom feet starts to scale the wall, and has a little parkour flip from the corner, to the ceiling, and then out the hole in the wall.
Mike / G.M.: You’re on the second floor, so do you just tumble down the stairs, and get to the courtyard?
Jen / Merkis: He’s not graceful, but he just starts booking it, and as you hear him in the group chat: [deep voice] [IC] “That was so cool. I’m so cool now!”
[Bijan laughs]
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, you get to the bottom... like, the street in front of Zeshdano’s apartment. It’s late, but there is a small group of people who have heard the commotion. I mean, a wall got blown open and there have been multiple gunshots. But, Nolaster being Nolaster, weird dangerous shit happens here a lot. For some people this is entertainment. You know, it’s like watching car chases on the news in LA. This is just sometimes evenings-goings-on. You’re out on the street in Nos. It’s dark, it’s getting lighter, it’s probably early, early morning at this point.
We’ll just come back to you in initiative and talk about what you’re going to do. Does that work? Great.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Mm-hm.
Mike / G.M.: So the next person to act is the human pirate who is by the door. He fuckin— he fucks off. He does not get paid enough to deal with this. So he sees the Danger Spaghetti blow open the wall, he gets knocked over. He was going to try to shoot some of the Nolastrian guards because, you know, that’s a beef that he understands. They’re pirates, they’re police, they need to fight one another every once in a while, or, you know, so he has been led to believe through the adoption of his ideology. A giant pile of black tentacles is not something that he knows how to deal with. So he runs and he tries to follow the same path that Merkis did, and the Danger Spaghetti just puts a tentacle talon directly into his spine.
[Nick and Shannon audibly wince]
Mike / G.M.: And lifts him up and kinda wiggles him around, and yeah. I can’t remember the name of the horror movie, but like you would imagine in a horror movie, you can basically see his innards just be squeezed out of the hole in his spine. He becomes a husk of a person.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] No fun, no fun.
Mike / G.M.: It’s like squeezing a toothpaste tube except it's all of the person-guts.
Jen / Merkis: [IC] [deep voice] Wait, what happened?
Taylor / Oat: [IC] No, don’t tell Merkis, oh my god!
[everyone protesting at once]
Taylor / Oat: Oh god, we gotta get outta here!
Mike / G.M.: The human guard who has the sword being pressed into them by Remy, and is underneath Oat, is just trying to get up and cannot. The next person to act is Beta.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Merkis can still talk to everybody, right? Mike / G.M.: Yes.
Jen / Merkis: [deep voice] [IC] There’s also a gun in the drawer.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] So, Beta has just seen this go down, saw the guy get skewered, and was literally preparing herself to do Heal on Remy, but quick, instead, hastily pulls out NTS and presses the button; there’s a button on top, right?
Mike / G.M.: I mean, however you want he’ll respond. It’s nanotechnology, so whatever you’re thinking, you guys are on a wavelength.
Shannon / Beta: Um, I press the button. What I think is a button. [laughs] [1:00:03]
Mike / G.M.: NTS thinks to himself, “Oh, how cute, she thinks I’m a button.” [Shannon laughs]
Taylor: He does not, that’s not what NTS is thinking.
Mike / G.M.: I know, yeah. Taylor, I’ll let you take over NTS. He floats in front of you and unfolds into his dark black rock, ED-209 shape and spits out his several nanotech stairs that you can climb into. Do you get inside?
Shannon / Beta: Yes. Remind me the will test that I have to pass. What do I have to get to...? Mike / G.M.: Yeah. So, you get in, you climb the two little stairs, and you sit down and the top
closes down over you, and you lose all sense of self...
Shannon / Beta: Right.
Mike / G.M.: You lose all proprioception as you know it, phenomenologically you are now a bundle of miniscule nano-robots. Please pass a will test. And, I would just like to emphasize, again, please pass a will test.
Shannon / Beta: And to pass it’s 6, right?
Mike / G.M.: It’s simple so it’s 6, yep.
Shannon / Beta: Okay great, so I’m going to burn 6 grit.
Mike / G.M.: So just do not roll a 1.
Shannon / Beta: Yeah, that’s the whole thing, always.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] That’s the game.
Shannon / Beta: [laughs] That is the game.
Nick / Vynos: Surprisingly hard game.
[laughing]
Shannon / Beta: Will is a 12, [singing] we always don’t wanna roll 1s! Did it roll?
[Taylor gasps]
Shannon / Beta: Oh, got a 2. Barely, barely.
[Everyone expresses shock]
Mike / G.M.: It like tilted over from the 1, it was like a slow— time diverged for just a moment. Taylor: Oh, god!
Mike / G.M.: Shannon, please now roll reason, because every time you get into NTS, you have the opportunity to learn an additional thing that NTS can do, as he has a near-infinite list of capabilities.
Shannon / Beta: 9.
Mike / G.M.: 9. Great. Okay, you can learn three things. What am I gonna tell you?
Shannon / Beta: Its sign, maybe.
Mike / G.M.: [laughs] NTS is definitely a Gemini.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] [laughs] Good to know.
Mike / G.M.: Okay. Shannon. NTS has a laser cannon.
Shannon / Beta: Right.
Bijan / Remy: Whoa!
Nick / Vynos: Nice.
Mike / G.M.: What does that mean, how does that work, how much damage does it do, how much does it cost? Who knows?
Shannon / Beta: Okay.
Mike / G.M.: Shannon. NTS has a power called Lock On. You can spend X grit to boost a combat roll by X. I would like to remind you, you are spending NTS’ grit in this situation, and you do not know how much that is.
Shannon / Beta: Okay. Whoa, and what’s the power called? Mike / G.M.: Lock On.
Shannon / Beta: Lock On! Oh, damn!
Mike / G.M.: When you do this, NTS plants its feet and you cannot move this round or the next
round.
Shannon / Beta: Damn. Okay.
Mike / G.M.: So that’s the tradeoff. You can spend God-knows-how-much grit, but you can’t move.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Spend 100 grit.
Shannon / Beta: Right, that’s what I feel like NTS has.
Bijan / Remy: NTS is the coolest.
[Shannon laughs]
Mike / G.M.: I would like to be very clear. When I say you cannot move, you cannot move.
Shannon / Beta: Right, right. When you say boost combat, that means boost the actual combat roll?
Mike / G.M.: Yes.
Shannon / Beta: Okay.
Mike / G.M.: So you’re not boosting damage, you are boosting the success of the combat roll.
Shannon / Beta: Right. Okay.
Mike / G.M.: This next one is complicated and long, so I’m going to read it to you, and then I’m just going to paste it in the chat.
You have discovered what Nihilist Protocol is. Taylor: Oh, thank god.
Shannon / Beta: Ohhh, wow.
Nick / Vynos: I was hoping for this.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Oh, Nihilist Protocol is bad! Taylor: Is this the one that she almost—
Mike / G.M.: No, that was Dandelion Protocol.
Taylor: Oh, that was the Dandelion Protocol.
Jen / Merkis: Oh, Dandelion.
Mike / G.M.: You do not know that one, which is probably good for everyone. Nihilist Protocol.
Jen / Merkis: Oh my god.
Mike / G.M.: For 10 + x grit, where x is the number of combat rounds, or 3 second increments, NTS enters a state of extreme offense. Its plate metal glows red hot, though the cockpit remains cool, and will melt and inflame any object which touches it for d8 damage. Every shot becomes a Lock On of value 10 + x, the priority of which is determined by NTS rather than the pilot.
[Laughter]
Mike / G.M.: NTS will also determine the most appropriate nature of the attack, but the pilot may negotiate to influence its choices.
Shannon / Beta: Wow.
Mike / G.M.: NTS also gains the ability to fly momentarily, and will produce atmosphere for the
number of rounds specified.
[Jen laughs]
Bijan / Remy: That’s fucking insane.
Shannon / Beta: Okay, all these things with grit, it’s my grit for this?
Mike / G.M.: Again, you are spending NTS’ grit. You do not know how much it has, and you do not know what happens when it runs out.
Shannon / Beta: Aye-yay-yay.
Jen / Merkis: Oh my god. [laughs]
Shannon / Beta: But for this, the x is the amount of combat rounds you’ve already done?
Mike / G.M.: No, the amount of combat rounds you intend to do. And I would like to remind you that one of the things that is not listed is turning it off.
Shannon / Beta: Oh shit, alright.
Jen / Merkis: Oh shit.
Taylor / NTS: [IC] Welcome to Nearer The Sun Than Is Advisable. Is this your first time in
Nearer The Sun Than Is Advisable?
Shannon / Beta: [IC] Oh, don’t play coy with me! You remember me, NTS. How are you doing today? I hope not as busy as last time!
Taylor / NTS: Nearer The Sun Than Is Advisable would like to know your location. Allow? Shannon / Beta: Uh, sure.
Taylor / NTS: For your safety and convenience, Nearer The Sun Than Is Advisable would like to collect data about your choices and actions while inside Nearer The Sun Than Is Advisable. Would you like to allow or see options?
Shannon / Beta: Oh, NTS. I’ll allow it!
Mike / G.M.: I like to think that somehow GDPR compliance has existed for like a hundred
million years.
[laughter]
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] It’s the only thing that carried on.
Taylor / NTS: Welcome back, Beta Combot. Hold on one second. Yes, I would like to accept this medal on behalf of the Consortium, and all of the city-states of the Oort Province. Alright. How can I help you today, Beta?
Shannon / Beta: Oh, there we are. Well, we’re in quite a sticky situation, NTS— Taylor / NTS: Extruding lubricant.
[1:06:41]
Shannon / Beta: [laughing] No...
Mike / G.M.: Everyone who’s standing around NTS outside, a weird pool of clear jelly starts to emit from its feet.
Shannon / Beta: Ew, ew!
Mike / G.M.: The floor is now slightly slippery around NTS. Nick / Vynos: [IC] [flustered sounds]
Shannon / Beta: Um...
Taylor / NTS: Water-based lubricant oil depleted. Applying oil-based lubricant.
Shannon / Beta: Wait, oh, uh, wait. You see that tentacle man? That’s the sticky situation.
Taylor / NTS: Lubricant jets will not reach that far.
Shannon / Beta: Got it. [OOC] Can I act in this turn? Or, that turn?
Taylor / NTS: You may act.
Mike / G.M.: Getting into NTS is a free action.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Oh, damn! Then I am going to fire one of the guns at Octopus Tentacle. Wait, what is it called again? Spaghetti Man?
Mike / G.M.: Uh, the Emissary?
Shannon / Beta: Oh right, the Emissary.
Bijan / Remy: [IC] Dangerous Spaghetti.
Mike / G.M.: The Danger Spaghetti. Roll a d20.
Shannon / Beta: Let’s hope she’s big. Oh, 15!
Jen / Merkis: Yeahhh!
Mike / G.M.: The Danger Spaghetti cannot beat that.
Shannon / Beta: Yeah!
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Nice!
Mike / G.M.: So roll an additional d20 for damage.
Shannon / Beta: Ohhh, yah! Come on, NTS, you got it! 19!
[laser sound effect plays]
[Jen laughs/whoops]
Taylor / NTS: [IC] Tactical laser attack, effective. Your session will expire in 10 seconds.
Shannon / Beta: [IC] What?
Taylor / NTS: If you wish to stay logged into Nearer The Sun Than Is Advisable, say “Okay.”
Shannon / Beta: Okay.
Taylor / NTS: Session reengaged.
Shannon / Beta: You know, every day is a mystery with you NTS. I learn new things, and you know, you’re learning new things about me too.
[pause]
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] No response.
Mike / G.M.: The arm cannons daka-daka-daka, and the Danger Spaghetti absorbs a bunch of huge-caliber bullets. Visually, not much happens to it, but you definitely have connected. You connected a lot. The next person to act is Zeshdano, who is just going to try meagerly to escape the... [laughs]
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Oh, no.
Mike / G.M.: She manages to get even more— she repositions herself and Merkis has an even tighter hold on her now, because she rolled a 1. You know, Merkis is just holding her back as she tries to re-enter her apartment. The next person to act is the Big Drink Wrangler pirate, who... he starts going through his work clothes, his worn leather work clothes, and you see him opening up these little pockets, and after a little while he starts pulling out this thing like someone cut a sphere in half, but then also scooped out the inside of the sphere. Kind of looks like a plastic shell. And he hits the deck and he starts putting it up against the spheres that appear to be holding Canary to the floor. He starts rubbing it against the manacles and saying under his breath, [IC] “Come on come on come on, come on come on come on come on...”
Taylor / Canary: [IC] Tiny Pocket Wrangler, get that hammer sphere out your pocket and get me the hell outta here!
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] The next person to act is Vynos.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Okay. So Vynos sees everyone basically trying to scramble to leave, with the exception of NTS, who looks like he’s about to gear up for battle. He thinks he’s done with the legal process of being arrested now, he was actually wrong about that, they don’t have to give you a writ.
[laughter]
Nick / Vynos: And his mind drifts to his shotgun, he knows that will probably do nothing to this mass of super-powered tentacle being thing, so he goes into the drawer to grab that pistol that he
heard about in the group chat. Knows where the latch is, or the priming pump, or what was it? The button that activates it?
Mike / G.M.: Or right, because Zeshdano said it to everybody in the group chat, yeah you know that the priming mechanism is on the right, not the left.
[1:10:41]
Nick / Vynos: I don’t know if could do this in one turn, but he wants to pull the gun out and fire
it at the tentacle monster.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, absolutely. You pull it out. It’s very heavy. It’s big. It’s a little uncomfortable to hold for how large it is. It is in fact very ornate, and sure enough it's actually, it’s not by the thumb, it's by your pointer finger, there’s a little priming switch that you have to flick. When you do that, a bunch of ornate swirls that are in this strange little cage around it begin to glow and you can feel it start to vibrate, and yeah. You can point it at whatever you want and pull the trigger. Roll combat.
Nick / Vynos: My combat is 4+1, but I think I’m gonna burn 6 to add 6 to it. So that would be 4 plus 7, so I would roll a d4 and add 7? Oh, I got 4 so that is a total of 11.
Mike / G.M.: The Danger Spaghetti cannot beat that. So, roll 4 d6 damage. Shannon / Beta: [OOC] Yeahhh.
Nick / Vynos: 4d6 damage, that’s a good gun.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Damn!
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] You guys are gonna kill this spaghetti, which might fuck with my plan. Nick / Vynos: That is only going to come out to 7.
Mike / G.M.: When it fires, it makes the loudest laser pistol sound that you’ve ever heard. This is definitely a serious piece of weaponry. You are knocked back a little bit from the recoil. You thought maybe the point of laser pistols was no recoil, but whatever power provision mechanism is inside this thing, when it discharges, it is serious. You don’t even see it. You do not see any beam. You do not see a bolt. You just hear this loud sound, and then you see this big charred hole in the side of the Emissary which very quickly closes up. But you hit it dead on, and you did 7 damage.
The laser pistol, now, you also swear, is lighter than it was before. It’s making a different kind of whirring sound, and the priming mechanism flips back to the previous position.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] What do we hear outside?
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, Merkis, you would hear a very loud—
Jen / Merkis: Pew!
[gasping sound effect plays]
Mike / G.M.: The difference between a normal pew and this pew is the difference between Merkis’ old voice and his new voice.
Nick / Vynos: Yeah. [Bijan laughs]
Mike / G.M.: And yeah, you see a puff of smoke, and probably a little bit of debris, like, flesh, whatever you wanna call it, come off of the Danger Spaghetti, but nothing else.
Jen / Merkis: [deep voice] [IC] Oh, I wanted to use that!
Mike / G.M.: The next person to act is Oat.
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] Oat runs and jumps in front of Remy to just get in front of Remy, because that’s all he knows, this thing seems to be after Remy. Jumps in front, he pulls out the baton, he points the baton at the Emissary, and he clicks the button on it.
Mike / G.M.: You click the button at the end and it actually lights up and begins to flash, the whole length of it, like it’s a flashlight.
Taylor / Oat: [IC] Oh. Uhhh.... Hi-ya! And he throws it at the Emissary. [Laughter]
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] There we go.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, roll combat.
Shannon / Beta: I’m happy, we’re doing pretty well. I thought this thing was just gonna take us out, dead. [laughs]
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] There’s still time, there’s still time. Taylor / Oat: [OOC] 2, I rolled a 2.
Mike / G.M.: The Danger Spaghetti whacks it out of the air as it arcs toward it, and you hear it clatter in the distance. Merkis and Zeshdano, a spinning Nolastrian guard baton lands slightly in front of the group of people you’re standing amongst. The group of people is getting louder minute by minute as this fracas continues, and a bunch of people go “Whoa!” and step back. As
if the firing of laser pistols was not enough, when the baton clatters, they’re like, “Hey, this is getting dangerous, alright?”
Canary acts next. He is attached to the floor with the poly-magnetic manacles, and Tiny Pocket Scrambler is trying to ostensibly free him. He still has a Mulruk guard on top of him, who has not been able to stand up.
Taylor / Canary: [OOC] He doesn’t have his hands free, he’s got his leg blown off, there’s a guy sitting on him, I don’t think he can do anything.
Mike / G.M.: Alright. The Mulruk guard reaches into one of the pockets that’s in his vest and pulls out a skinny, sort-of plastic square. It sort of looks like a square calculator, almost? And he puts it on the ground and he slides it towards his partner, the hanna, who’s right in front of him, and puts it underneath her grasping arm, and he says to her:[IC] “ Use your code!”
[OOC] The hanna is the one who acts next. She just types in this little thing that’s underneath her hand, keys in a bunch of numbers on these little buttons. She is going to... huh, 3 grit. She’s got that. Okay. When she finishes typing a few buttons, all of the little buttons go from unlit to lit, a kind of dull cream colored, and she says: [IC] “Backup requested,” and then the address that you are at.
[1:15:33]
Jen / Merkis: Shit.
Mike / G.M.: [OOC] The next person to act is Remy.
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] How far is he from the bad jelly?
Mike / G.M.: Two meters, two and a half meters?
Bijan / Remy: Great. Is the hanna still on the ground?
Mike / G.M.: She is. She’s basically underneath you right now.
Bijan / Remy: Yeah, so he’s still in kill mode, so I think what he’s going to do is he’s going to kneel down and try with the last of his grit to use Charge to fling the hanna into the Danger Spaghetti.
Mike / G.M.: I love it. Are you kidding me? That’s amazing
Jen / Merkis: I knew you were going to do that. I had a feeling, I was like hmm...
Bijan / Remy: So, he kneels down, it’s almost like he’s taking a running stance. He crouches down, it looks like he’s like... he puts his hands, one in front of the other, palms out, and looks
the hanna in the eye, doesn’t say anything, and he just uses Charge to try and blast her directly into the maw of the Danger Spaghetti.
Mike / G.M.: This is like you’re tossing a drunk out of a bar, but you’re tossing a murder robot into an unspeakably horrible extradimensional being.
Bijan / Remy: With knives, yeah.
Mike / G.M.: With knives, yeah.
Jen / Merkis: Wow.
Bijan / Remy: So, I guess, what should I...?
Mike / G.M.: I think technically I would describe this as a grapple, so I would roll combat, and she also is going to roll combat, but her combat is bad now because she is slowly disassembling. She’s gonna have a chance to not get it, but she’s not gonna have a good one.
Bijan / Remy: It’s also going to do double damage to whatever it hits, cause the object explodes on whatever it hits. Okay, so I guess I’ll roll combat.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah, you guys have done very well. Have any of you taken damage? Bijan / Remy: Yes. I rolled an 11.
Mike / G.M.: You have literally the upper hand and she’s— she can’t. She’s also covered in the oil that’s leaking from her own body. She’s like sliding around. NTS let a bunch of lube out, so this is a disaster.
Bijan / Remy: Slippery situation.
Mike / G.M.: Yeah. She can’t get out from underneath you.
Bijan / Remy: So, I guess she is launched at the thing, and is going to explode, damage equal to d6 plus 1, plus 2, d6 plus... oh, times 2.
Mike / G.M.: I do not think the hanna is long for this fictional world.
Bijan / Remy: So yeah, I guess she’s gonna get launched into the maw of the thing and explode
on the thing for 16 damage.
Mike / G.M.: I suppose it also makes sense that this is how much damage the hanna takes, right?
Bijan / Remy: Uh, I don’t know. I mean, look, this is not generally used— you generally do not use objects as big as a person. But I guess it's like half a person. It says any object.
Mike / G.M.: There’s maybe a sapient rights question here: Is the hanna an object? For game terms, we will say yes. Yeah, you charge the highly beaten up torso of this hanna, who has just called for backup, and you launch it into the vicinity of the Danger Spaghetti, who does a similar thing, or tries to do a similar thing as it did to the machete, it tries to bat it out of the way, sees that this is quite a bit bigger so it extends a few more talons, what it ends up doing instead of batting it away, because it doesn’t realize how heavy and, you know, charged this object is, it ends up catching it, almost, and kind of half swallowing it when it explodes.
The hanna just completely obliterates. There’s sarasteel ceramic plate metal in this weird off-white and pink color strewn all about the apartment and the veranda, or the balcony, or whatever you want to call it. Some of it rains down onto the people below. There’s this thin— it almost feels like sand— falling from the sky and little sections of her shoulders or her shins where you can see the steel struts that have been printed through her nearly indestructible ceramic body. And you blow a big hole in the top of the Emissary and for the first time you have seen, it maybe lurches a little bit. And it doesn’t form itself back together as quickly as it has in the past, but it is still sort-of like writhing and slithering, and there are still some danger talons floating around, trying to figure out what it does next. Which it does right now.
Bijan / Remy:[OOC] Right.
Mike / G.M.: The Emissary is again, going to float a talon, and it is going to aim for Remy’s
brain.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Oh no.
Bijan / Remy: Yeah, uh... I guess Remy rolls to dodge. I don’t have any grit- to spend, he has 5 health, this is gonna be good.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] Oh shit.
Bijan / Remy: Do I get any movement buffs...? Alright, hope I don’t fuck this up. 8! Let’s go! [Jen laughs]
Mike / G.M.: The Danger Spaghetti has rolled a 12.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] D’ohh, fuck!
Jen / Merkis: Oh, fuck!
Bijan / Remy: Well, you hate to see it.
Mike / G.M.: Taylor, in the chat, raises an interesting point. Oat has stepped between— [various gasps]
Bijan / Remy: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Mike / G.M.: —- Remy and the Danger Spaghetti. [1:20:31]
Jen / Merkis: Oh no...
Mike / G.M.: I think— Taylor, how do you want to deal with this? Do you want Oat to have a split second to choose to take the blow, or to choose to dodge out of the way? Or is he just not gonna roll, and he’s gonna be here to protect Remy, he’s gonna take it in the chest?
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] I mean, no one else has gotten a— I guess we have given people a chance to dodge the attack. That’s just a straight up movement roll?
Mike / G.M.: That would be a movement roll. Does Oat wanna roll that? Did he step in front of Remy and then, as the talon is rocketing towards him, is Oat like “Oh no, I changed my mind.”
Taylor / Oat: What would he have to roll to get out of the way?
Mike / G.M.: He would have to roll movement. I think the way that I would do this, and this is only because the Emissary is extremely powerful, I’m gonna allow it that he’s basically trying to attack both of them, and then in the Emissary’s quote-unquote mind, he’s just gonna go through Oat to get Remy, or if he has to go through Oat to get Remy that’s fine. So Oat would have to roll the same thing that Remy did, which is you have to beat 12. You have to roll movement to beat 12.
Taylor / Oat: [OOC] Uh, this... rules.
[Laughter]
Jen / Merkis: Wow.
Taylor / Oat: Oat intentionally got out there in front of everybody to fight. He’s not in a running away mindset. So it hits him.
Mike / G.M.: So the talon rockets towards the two of you, and it looks like its aiming, again, straight for Remy’s head.
Taylor / Oat: Yeah. The tentacle is striking from the ground. And it’s going for Remy’s head. And right on that course is Oat’s chest. And the tentacle shoots out and hits Oat square in the chest and stops. It goes into his chest a couple of inches, but it does not come out the back. And what you see next is very difficult to describe. Are you all familiar with the actual, real-world concept of what higher dimensions means? When we talk about higher dimensions in physics, we don’t mean like parallel dimensions. What we mean is that there are actually more physical dimensions than just height, width, and length, right? And that the way these are actually
structured in the world is like, imagine if you’re looking at, I believe Brian Green uses this in The Elegant Universe, this metaphor. Imagine you’re looking at a very far away clothesline, and it appears to be a single straight line. And there is an ant crawling across that clothesline. Right, okay?
Jen / Merkis: Yeah, yep.
Taylor: So it looks like there is one dimension that ant can travel in. To the left or the right, the one line. However, to the ant’s perspective, there’s another little dimension he can go, and that is around the clothesline, right? So the ant is still able to move, even though to us it appears to be a single dimensional space, that line. But the ant can go in that little circle around the clothesline. So that higher dimensions aren’t parallel dimensions, they’re actual physical dimensions that are curled, and furled, imperceptible to us but very much here in our world, curled up in between the dimensions that we experience.
What you see now is beginning at the tentacle that has pierced Oat, and working itself into the nest of the writhing, hard to look at tentacles of the Emissary on the floor, is a great unfolding of a higher dimensional object. What appears to be tentacles, themselves unfurl into impossible shapes that seem to get bigger as they move further away, and get smaller as you lean in to look closer. It is almost like a great flattening is happening, and these new flat shapes that the tentacles are becoming, both are near and far away from you, but they are without, it appears to be, any sort of 3-dimensional space, more like a collection of 2-dimensional planes. And this rapidly spreads to the entire mass of tentacles. And as it does so, the tentacles spread out into a flat plane that seems to go out across the street, and cut into the building on the other side. Some planes of it seem to be moving orthogonally, rotating within that 2-dimensional plane. It is almost like a 2-dimensional kaleidoscope of the colors that only appear when you close your eyes and rub your eyes very very hard. And then, the movement stops and these planes all just sort of fold away, fall away, and you can see that it’s just like what was once this very complicated mass of vines has now become almost these oddly colored cellophane-like sheets, not moving of their own accord, rustling in the wind, the sound of a dropped sheaf of paper matched by the rising cascade of Nolastrian police sirens.
[police siren effect plays]
Taylor: Blood begins pouring from Oat’s chest. [police siren effect continues]
[police siren effect stops]
[1:25:44]
[Main Theme Begins]
Mike / G.M.: You are now leaving Float City. Thanks for listening. If you like the show and you want to help us keep making it, head on over to patreon.com/FunCityVentures. Five bucks a
month gets you access to a whole other show we do called Fun Chatty. It gets you access to our rad as heck Discord full of very weird, very nice and smart nerds. Music, playlists and more. It is a wild deal. You know you wanna. patreon.com/FunCityVentures. And of course, thanks to all of our current Patrons for help keeping this ship afloat.
[Main Theme Ends]
[Outro Theme Begins]
Bijan / Remy: [OOC] Hi, I’m Bijan Stephen, and I play Remy Tester on Float City. You can find me online on Twitter @Bijanstephen, B-I-J-A-N S-T-E-P-H-E-N, on Twitch at the same name, and on Instagram @Bijancakes, B-I-J-A-N cakes.
Jen / Merkis: [OOC] I’m Jen de la Vega, I play Merkis Imeldar. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @randwiches, that’s the word sandwiches but replace the S with an R.
Shannon / Beta: [OOC] This is Shannon Odell, I play Beta Commbot. You can find me on social @shodell.
Nick / Vynos: [OOC] Hello, this is Nick Guercio, and I play Luxe on Fun City and Vynos on Float City. You can find me @nicholasguercio on Twitter and @nguercio on Instagram. You spell Guercio G-UE-R-C-I-O.
Taylor: I’m Taylor Moore, and I play all the cool, interesting characters. You can follow me @taylordotbiz. [sinister laugh]
Mike / G.M.: My name is Mike Rugnetta, I am your G.M., and you can find me on twitter and Instagram @Mikerugnetta.
You can find the show on Twitter and Instagram @FunCityVentures. Float City is played in a soon-to-be-released system called Stillfleet, which you can find on Twitter, Instagram and Patreon @stillfleet. This episode of Float City was recorded at various locations around Brooklyn, New York. It was produced, edited, and sound-designed by me, Mike Rugnetta. The horrent demon rose surrounded with red stars of fire, whirling about in furious circles, round the immortal fiend. Then, Pixlriffs Dem descended into his red light. Fun City’s music is by Sam Tyndall. Remy’s flute playing is by Jake Fridkis. Our art is by Tess Stone. Our Discord mods are Olivia Gulin, Kelly McKew, Kit Pullium, and Kestrel. And the voice of Artemis is Molly Templeton.
[01:28:30] [Outro Theme ends]