A BioHazard® 5.0 play-by-post adventure run by bh5ogm
The doors swing open and a rush of warm humid air fills the room. Before you a vast expanse, both far and wide is visible, a dark but dimly lit cave of titanic proportions. Unable to see the ceiling, you walk cautiously out onto a metal grate walkway, and are somewhat unnerved to see, several hundred meters down, the floor. The walkway, formed by metal in a honeycomb shape, has metal guardrails on each side. It seems solidly connected to the concrete next to the door. Dim light seems to be emanating from what has to be bioluminescent algae in the walls. Far below you, as your eyes adjust to the vastness, you see what appears to be a mammoth circle of some sort, and a thin haze floating over the distant floor. Pafnuty reaches for his telescopic cylinder and points it straight down. Below the catwalk appears to be a large tank, filled with some sort of opaque black substance.
The room seems to be a large, long oval, perhaps half a mile across. Ahead of you, the catwalk continues in a relatively straight fashion. It takes some minor curves, but towards the other side, a section of the bridge seems to have fallen and now hangs at an oblique angle from the far side of the walkway.
"That's Holy Water if I've ever seen it," says Pafnuty, looking downwards into the gargantuan tanks, which are nearly as wide as the room itself.
"It might as well be dead fish to us. It must be hundreds of meters down, and we have no way of getting to it," says Grover cooly.
"Let us not forget the noises we heard earlier, comrades," Heil says, scanning the long enclosure for movement. Suddenly, Heil notices a shadow ascend from below the walkway to perch on the catwalk rail near the far side of the room. A faint metal clank is heard as the creature's claws lock onto the metal railing. "Look!"
Pafnuty looks up and swings his telescope towards the movement. "A large bird... very hairy. Strange. It appears only to have one eye. Large wings... and a pig's nose."
Grover speaks softly but confidently, "A strange beast indeed, Pafnuty. It is a Faar."
"A what?" Heil asks.
"A large batlike beast with large talons for feet, and a single radiation-bathed eye. A fearless scavenger and a relentless attacker," the Mystic answers.
Pafnuty and Heil emit a singular gulp.
"Whatever path we choose, I certainly do wish it is not through them apples," says Grover.
Slowly I continue following the catwalk, not quite sure if we can get across the missing section, and not quite sure if we could even defeat the creature if we wanted to.
Tell me more about the missing section of catwalk. The distance? Can we climb past it? I assume we need to get to the other side to get down below, right?
The room is about half a mile long, and the hanging and broken section is at the opposite end... thus, it is a little less than half a mile away. At the other end of the catwalk, you see an entranceway, but it is too dark to tell if there is a door, or where it leads. From the looks of it, there is nowhere else to go.
"About now would be a really really good time for some ideas, guys," I whisper, trying remain calm and think of a plan.
Pafnuty holds his telescope parallel to the base of his crossbow with his left hand and tracks the creature at the end of the catwalk through the 'scope. He constantly adjusts the pitch of his crossbow with his most recent approximation of the intervening distance to the bird, to adjust for the parabolic trajectory, hopefully ending in the bird's chest, of a potentially loosed bolt.
"When you say 'scavenger,' you mean that the Faar won't attack living things, right?" Pafnuty whispers to Grover, but expects differently.
"Heil, can you see any other movement? I could probably fire off a couple of shots into a single creature before it knew what hit 'im---I've got the speed mutation. Either way, it looks like we've got to get past the Faar in order to get down to the tanks, unless Mr. Mystic can fly or teleport, or perform similar magic. We don't have enough rope to dangle a vial...."
I elbow Grover. "Can you do something? You are mister Mystic!" I whisper, looking around.
"Pafnuty, indeed it is a scavenger, but as I said, it is also a relentless attacker." Grover considers the Faar ahead of them, and their destination far below them. "My mystic abilities will not carry us as far down as we'd need to reach the tank. I fear our only course may be to get past our bat foe ahead." With that, Grover boldly steps forward, takes another look at the bird, then turns to face the duo behind him.
"Let us attack it." He has an almost glazed look in his eye. "Pafnuty, I think a long distance attack is a good strategy. The Faar's senses are extraordinarily acute, but it may not detect a couple of well placed shots until it is too late."
He looks back at the bat-creature. "If it rushes us, we can use missile weapons," he says, holding up his pistol, "while it is en route." Shooting a glance over his shoulder at the Faar, he continues. "If it gets too close, we can use our hand-to-hand weapons," Grover says, holding up his polearm. "Regardless, I request you let me stay in front. I may just have the best defense against its deadly radiation eye." Turning to Pafnuty, Grover finishes, "And yes, it is a Mystic defense."
As if trying to intimidate further its distant observers, the Faar lets out an inhuman and high-pitched squeal that echoes in the cavern and blankets the three with a piercing sound wave. The bird then alights from the rail, shuddering the metal grating with the sheer force, and dives down below the catwalk. Pafnuty runs to the side and leans over, terrified and curious at the same time, and sees the bird descend with break-neck speed down towards the last of the mammoth tanks. A few complete rolls and then large bat-like wings extend. He can only assume that the bird went down to the earth below the rim of the tanks, a place too dark to see. Only the soft luminescence of fungus, he presumes, is giving off enough light to see either end of the long cavern.
Another loud but distant shriek rumbles through the chasm from below.
The party stands silent, peering over the edge to try and see any signs of the beast.
"Do we m-move now? Run?" Pafnuty asks nervously.
"Running may not be the best mode of travel," Grover says, studying the thick hexagonal mesh of the catwalk. He taps his boot softly, studying the resonance of the sound. "Too loud."
Heil looks up and down, and to the sides of the cave exaggeratedly. "Well, we're fresh out of high and low roads. We'll have to just walk then."
"Agreed," Grover says, "But let us be aware of what is underfoot."
Heil and Pafnuty sigh mentally, slap their foreheads at Grover's pun, and follow as the mysterious white-haired Mystic begins to walk toward the other side of the cavern.
Relieved to be moving (it feels like hours, if not weeks, since they last traveled. ;) [GM hadn't post in nearly 3 weeks! --ed.]), Pafnuty tries to lose himself in the repetition of the walk, while still keeping an eye and an ear open for the Faar down below. Studying the catwalk's honeycomb metal floor, he determines that there is enough space to shoot a bolt through, although it would be mighty awkward.
Grover rehearses silently the motions of the most pertinent Mystic plans of action, keeping his eyes peeled ahead and downward through the metal grate. Trying to focus through the grate on the space to the right of the last large tank is giving him a slight headache. He reminds himself, though, of the Mystic teaching: "Complete observation and attention requires complete devotion to the ultimate goal, or the perception will be far from the intended." Thinking again on the quote, he reminds himself that he never cared much for the annoyingly lengthy quips of his masters.
Heil Hazard has never cared much for wise and witty axioms either. As he walks as quietly as possible over the catwalk, he reminds himself of a sentimental passage of his people's class. He recites it to himself quietly, only mouthing the words as the group passes over the first tank far below. "As I walk through the valley of the shadow of the swamp, I know that I will never be defined by anything but that which is inside me, just as I will never be harmed by anything but that which I do not know." Pausing mentally, Heil wonders to himself. Of all the creatures he's encountered in the swamp, he's never known a Faar.
As the party ruminates over various things, each notices a new wave of anxiety wash over them as they pass over the middle of the second tank. Nothing was seen or heard of the Faar in the past half hour, and the impasse at the damaged length of catwalk is nearing. The hanging section of the catwalk seems to be directly over the farthest edge of the final tank, and as they near it, each wonders how exactly they will cross. At the end of the long bridgeway, there is a dark archway. They still cannot tell whether it is a door or merely an open passage: it's too dark. But once past the broken bridge section, it will take only a minute to run to the arch.
The dangling section is about twenty feet long and still attached at the far side. The near side hangs at its lowest point almost thirteen feet below the catwalk level.
What do you do?
A wild plan soon formulates inside Pafnuty's multiprocessing brain. He whispers to Grover and Heil, "I could attach a single strand of this rope to the middle of a bolt and attempt to fire it into the honeycomb at the dangling edge of he walkway. Assuming the bolt goes through a hole and a single strand of rope is strong enough, when the rope is pulled taut the bolt will turn orthogonally and anchor the walkway section while we pull it up. Then we could use these bent pieces of metal that were in the desk back there to affix the walkway back the way it was."
The others stare at him blankly as they digest his words. "Theoretically, speaking, of course," he adds.
The GM, may his top quarks never lose their spin, has informed me that the "bent pieces of metal" are in fact what we know (and love) as paper clips. This being the case, Pafnuty would have instead suggested lashing the walkway with rope. D'oh!
"Don't be a wus, Pafnuty. That'll never work. Let's instead lash the walkway together with rope. At least it seems like a more sensible plan to me anyway." I dig the 20 feet of rope out of my pack.
"I've never killed a Faar before.... I guess there is a first time for everything," I mumble more to myself than to any particular person.
And Dave said he had all the good ideas. Piffff!! I showed him! I'm prepared to continue the epic struggle between good and neutral.
Grover takes off his left gauntlet, places his bare hand on Heil's wrist, much to his disgust, and says seriously, "There is another way across, gentlemen." Grover looks at the grate on the other side of the gap and concentrates for a moment. He says to Heil without looking at him. "Do you trust me?"
I look at Grover as he touches my wrist. "No! Can you give me a reason why I should? And why are you touching me?" My frown is very obvious.
Grover frowns. He knows he hasn't earned Heil and Pafnuty's trust yet. But he was hoping they'd go with the flow, as it were, anyway. He reminds himself that this isn't an ideal world. It is the real world, a world gone horribly wrong. And in this biohazard of a world, trust is a luxury that is bought with hard work, sweat and too often, blood. He could take advantage of the situation---after all, he is still in flesh-to-flesh contact with the man---but at what price?
And, over it all, this is their quest, their initiation. His quest is of a different nature. Should he really jump to helping them solve theirs so quickly? It is easy to get caught up in the moment, to pretend he is on his own rite of initiation. But that was long ago, wasn't it? And he had moved on.
Hadn't he?
Grover looks at Heil Hazard and removes his hand from his wrist. He replaces his gauntlet. "I am sorry... Heil. I can give you no reason at this time." He looks back at the fallen bridge.
He continues talking, as if the whole conflict with Heil hadn't happened. "Pafnuty, there's no guarantee the bridge will be pulled back to this side without breaking from the other. What if it falls? Then we may have brought attention to ourselves and made no progress." He sighs slowly. "But, it is a good plan. I will keep my eyes peeled for the Faar--or Faars, from the sounds from down below--while you and Heil prepare your shot."
Pafnuty puts his brain to work, trying to figure out the best way to shoot his bolt and secure a hold onto the fallen catwalk. He studies the connection of the bent metal across the gap, and decides that if the bent and twisted metal framework hadn't fallen yet, it wouldn't fall if it were raised. The only problem Pafnuty forsees is raising the catwalk section to his current location and making it a viable walkway. But something is nagging him, and he can't ignore it any longer.
Only a minute or so later, he turns to Grover, who is more sullen and distant than usual. The white-haired Mystic stands aside, keeping an eye out for Faars far down below. Pafnuty blurts out, as if uncontrolled, "Grover, just what was it that you wanted from Heil?" He feels Heil behind him move, and almost flinches from fear of an imagined backstab. Almost.
"Just another idea, I suppose," Grover responds.
Pafnuty asks, almost impatiently, "Would it work on me?"
Grover is moved by Pafnuty's outreach of trust, although not childlike or naive, but a true motion for unity. As Pafnuty wonders what exactly he is doing, and worries of the consequences, Grover slowly removes his gauntlet again.
"It would," came the Mystic's reply.
Before Grover can step closer, Pafnuty backs up a bit. "What exactly is your idea?" he balks, second-guessing himself.
"I wouldn't trust the old man if I were you," Heil says under his breath, cunningly but with an apparent worry for control.
Without provocation, Grover grabs Pafnuty's exposed hand. That is all he needs. Pafnuty feels a rush of adrenaline and a sudden acute sensation of blood moving through his brain, but without having missed a heartbeat, the young genius finds himself standing on the other side of the gap in the catwalk.
Grover smiles as he unclasps his hand from where Pafnuty's used to be, and says cooly, "I will require only about twenty more minutes for you, and another 20 for me."
What the frak just happened? What will require 20 min? What did Grover take from/give to Paf? Why did Paf give up on Heil's idea of lashing a raised walkway with rope? Or did he realize that the walkway was too heavy to lift with a strand of rope light/thin enough to be attached to/fired from a bolt?
I'll elaborate on Pafnuty's response to what just happened in my next post, using any details the GM (may his mitochondrial DNA always withstand the teratogenic effects of cosmic radiation) provides.
In a nutshell, Grover took a hard look at the other side of the walkway, then made his offer to Heil. Heil, not only unknowing of Grover's intentions but also untrusting of his motives, refused. Pafnuty and Heil went back to their idea, when Pafnuty was struck by the oddness of Heil's refusal and the abandonment of what Grover might have been trying. So he asked Grover what it was all about, who in his mysterious and overbearingly quaint manner teleported Pafnuty using his Mystic teleport skill. Grover will need approximately 20 minutes before he can teleport Heil, and another 20 before he can teleport himself to the other side of the gap.
"Well Grover, that was really impressive.... for a Mystic. Would it have been so hard to explain your actions beforehand?" I let the question hang there for a moment. "Grover, it's not that I can't trust you, I just make it a rule not to trust anyone. Doing so has kept me alive this long, so don't take it personally, but I do want to cross the gap with Pafnuty." I look towards Pafnuty and wonder what it felt like to be displaced as he was.
"All this prolonged exposure to radiation is making me thirsty."
The youngest Galewood knows that he shouldn't be surprised at the Mystic's power, but he cannot suppress his amazement... nor his growing suspicions as to why---how---such a man would be allowed in their ritual quest.
As he stands looking at the catwalk beneath his feet on the far side of the gap, in an apparent quandry as to what to think, Pafnuty's thoughts (at least those in one of many simultaneous threads) are actually centered on his influential father. If Brinthas had gone through the trouble to get his armor from the far north, and even his boots from Roarn, would it not be conceivable that he'd go so far as to try to rig the quest in his favor? He knows his father is overprotective (and for good reason), despite the man's fervent attempts to hide or deny it.
"Is t-this chea..." he swallows, "cheating?" It's Pafnuty's squeaky voice again, and he quickly recovers upon realizing this, but not before his multiprocessing brain analyzes the optical signals it was getting. "Never mind, my plan would never have worked anyway. The catwalk has a number of stress fractures here at the juncture, which would have snapped with the strain of lifting it."
"I guess we wait, then?"
"Yes, we wait."
Grover turns his attention to Heil. "Sometimes trust must be earned, Heil Hazard," he speaks softly. "I was wondering how easily you give yours." He peers over the catwalk and looks for the Faar. "If our winged friend will leave us to our own devices, we should be able to get across the gap just fine, in due time."
Secretly, Grover hopes that he will not regret his spontaneous action in teleporting Pafnuty alone to the other side. He still has some tricks up his sleeve if they are attacked, but for now.... "Pafnuty, can you see anything more clearly from the other side?" he says a little more loudly to Pafnuty. He doesn't want to shout, but he speaks loud enough for Pafnuty to hear.
Realizing I failed my first test of friendship with Grover, I look down at my books and then to Pafnuty. I want to blame someone other than myself but I can't so I say nothing.
Forty minutes later, Grover, albeit tired from repeated Mystic incantations, appears in a soft haze on the far side of the broken catwalk next to Pafnuty and Heil. There is still no sign from below, although some unidentifiable sounds of movement have been echoing throughout the cavern. Beyond the doorway it is pitch black; nothing can be seen of what lies beyond.
Pafnuty has been studying the documents while waiting. They are not only faded and wrinkled, but in a form of the ancient language that Pafnuty has not been able to study. Pafnuty is familiar with a few dialects of the written ancient language contemporary of the time of the cataclysm, but he cannot make much sense of these. He expects this text may be technical or scientific in style. Furthermore, he finds little mention of the substance he knows as holy water. A few of the elementary level words he notices: "number," "signal," "ark," and "information."
You look around as to who will shed some light onto the subject.
"Unless one of you are soon to be struck dumb with some new information, I say we continue.... Well?" I twist my sharpened walking stick in my hand. I look toward Grover, trying to decide if I should thank him or not. I decide against it at the moment and avoid eye contact with him.
"Let us proceed then," Grover says, indicating that Heil and Pafnuty should take the lead. Grover does not look weary or terribly exhausted, but his body language suggests he is ready to fade back into a follower role behind the two young men. Grover intensifies the light emanting from his left index finger and holds it in front of him to light the steps through the archway.
After all three of them are transported to the other side, Pafnuty gives up in frustration. "I can't read this chicken scratch for the life of me. Dialect is probably pre- to co-cataclysmic, but not one I've studied, or even knew existed before now. I do however recognize the glyphs for 'number,' 'signal,' 'ark,' and 'information.' Nowhere does it look like the text references our holy water."
He puts the papers back in his pack and readies his loaded crossbow. "Heil, you want point? I'll cover you." As they approach the darkened archway, Pafnuty adds with a smirk, "And yell if you spot a Rosetta stone."
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