1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

A game of (in no particular order) politics, intrigue, and swashbuckling adventure - set to a backdrop of an industrialized Amber.
The Stage is obsolete, leftover from a previous revision of reality. RP runs in Discord these days.

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Wyvern
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1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Wyvern »

(( Continued from here. ))

The tunnel worms its way down and east and - though only Theodore has the senses to notice this - a few shadows off to one side. Despite the tunnel seeming to go more or less straight, it doesn't take very long at all before the passage is caked in oppressive gloom... Who brought a light source?
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Joshua
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Joshua »

The Byakhee is part mole, and senses by detecting materialized color operating on the 49th vibration*. Or something. Theodore doesn't ask it, and it probably is too alien to communicate through language.

Theodore will, after recalling his pocket watch, work up some quick runed** goggles to help him see.

"We're getting close. Not sure how big the nexus will be."
_______________
*: Go. Watch... we'll wait.
**: The act of having runes. I don't think that's a word. Anyhow, this is just basic craft enchantment. I don't think that needs a fate point?
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Wyvern »

(( The Byakhee is, indeed, unimpressed by even supernatural darkness. Similarly, Shadow - out here where he can use his Power without having to directly contest with Pattern - should be capable of functioning, if perhaps a bit impaired by the supernatural nature of the darkness.

Theodore's goggles, however... Based on Theodore's character sheet, such a spell effect would be more appropriate as a thing he'd prepared in advance rather than whipped up on the fly - which, given that he wasn't expecting this particular excursion...

Plus, his Power doesn't exactly lend itself to... clarity of vision, shall we say.

Tell you what: I'll allow the goggles to function aside from purely cosmetic flaws if you're willing to spend a fate point - or I can provide that fate point via a compel on "Magic isn't an exact science" and say that, at some point during the upcoming confrontation, the goggles will fail in spectacular fashion, perhaps by showing something in a misleading fashion, perhaps by not showing something that is a purely mundane threat.

In either case, the following description stands. ))

Looking at the world through the goggles is a tricky proposition; the walls of the passage resolve into crazed and painful scribbles, etched and glowing words and claw-marks in dozens of different languages* - evidence of the passage of something profoundly unnatural. Shadow is just as visible - though he appears as a simple hole in the scene; whatever he is, the goggles' enchantment is simply incapable of processing that nature into any sort of useful display.

Up ahead, the passage takes a sharp turn to the right, and the goggles highlights a glistening smear along the floor, a sort of golden foam, glittering and bubbling.

_____
* Or perhaps one language that steadily mutated as the whatever-it-was burrowed onwards.
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Joshua
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Joshua »

"Great... Do you see the wording? Or is that just me?" Theodore will ask Shadow. He'll make a few observations... and adjustments* to the goggles. before taking a break to check out the highlighted foam**. "Anyhow, just checking this... assuming you see it too. Might help us know what we're facing."
__________________
*: Recycled fate points, sure. On the other hand, he will adjust to the writings, and spend a Fate point to tag "We're all Mad here" (Or Magic isnt' a science) so he can use Focus and "Self-Reliant" (cause, he's totally done this before) to add the anachronistic "Sees the matrix" advantage to the goggles for the scene, allowing him one shot to take advantage of the strange extra info.
**: Lore is? Focus + self-reliant cause Theo was reading up on eldritch horrors on the train?
(OOC: I'm burning a lot of fate points, but mostly because it was my confusing posts that got the delay in the first place.)
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by ShadowOfPreservation »

Depending on the fidelity of Theodore's goggles, the black spot that is Shadow may appear somewhat different than a moment before as he races after the unusual rider and mount on 4 legs. "Wording?", Shadow replies in a confused tone. "I see no words but that bloodstain leaves a clear enough trail to follow."
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Wyvern »

The words are less coherent lore and more a sort of ambient psychometry; reflections of the pain inflicted by/on the creature that dug this tunnel as it crystallized through space/time/earth, trying to get back to somewhere with less hostile* geometry.

The foaming blood is a breach - something in the creature broke, here, and now its internal substance boils off in reactions that resemble the magical equivalent of nuclear decay. Lingering longer here than necessary is almost certainly a bad idea. (But when has that ever stopped Theodore?)

_____
* Given Theodore's prior experience with such entities, it's not too much of a stretch to guess that this thing is physically allergic to such basic concepts as parallel lines... wherever it came from, the rules there were definitely different.
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Joshua
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Joshua »

"It's definitely from out there. Non-euclidean physics. The source of the corruption, but not the instigator." He will get back on the Byakkee and head out quickly. "If we don't hurry, it will die before we arrive... then it will be really hard to kill."
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by ShadowOfPreservation »

"You make little sense but lead on," the wolf replies. "I will follow."
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Joshua
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Joshua »

(OOC: Cause, why not... it's a bit more travel.)

Theodore will grumble as they rush to the center of the corruption. "Half these things are from places where death doesn't exist. When forced to deal with linear time and other euclidia* most crumble before that. But, since they can't truly die, they often will rebirth into something that is a hybrid of natural laws. Usually bad. Sometimes the hybrid of laws makes them really powerful. Or sometimes, they just die, but leave a festering corruptive pile that distorts local laws into those from their home. Zre** might have been summoned as a distraction or power-source. We're going to stop that."
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*: Things that are euclidean/exist in a normal universe?
**: Not a gender-neutral pronoun. It's the 4th configuration of the 23rd gender mixed with the 6th gender the species has, and an ambiguous temporal identity.
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Re: 1397-04-21-B2: Down The Rabbit(?) Hole

Post by Wyvern »

The tunnel curves sharply to the right, looping around through what feels like a full three hundred and sixty degrees without intersecting itself, and then opens up into a vast empty space.

To Theodore's be-goggled view*, the path of words and blood-foam cuts a bridge of sorts out across a pitch-black abyss, terminating in a lumpy, mis-shapen creature that vaguely resembles a cross between a cuttlefish, a crab, a caterpillar, and a tour bus.** It is, unfortunately, quite dead (or at least not exactly living), its segmented carapace burst open with a twisted golden tree growing upwards out of it. A few bits of splattered root-bundles and shrubbery float in space, marking a rough half-dome around the dead monster.***

_____
* Shadow's more mundane view of the situation is being sent to him via PMs, in case anyone was curious.
** The creature has some similarity to a Mi-Go, actually, though in about the same sense as one could say a naked mole rat has some similarity to a human.
*** Since it's not clear from the, er, more poetic description: the radius of that half-dome is roughly equal to the length of the blood/bridge, giving a feeling almost of a room floating in the void.
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