2021-05-08: The Circular Ruins
- Log: The Circular Ruins
- Cast: Citan Uzuki, Fei Fong Wong, Emeralda Kasim, Xantia, Elhaym van Houten, Leon Albus
- Where: Babel Tower
- Date: May 08, 2021
- Summary: The Black Wolves ascend Babel with all its frightful obstacles, seeking the top of that mysterious and ancient tower. But as strange as it seemed from the outside, what lies within suggests things even stranger. And once they reach the top...
DG: A party led by Citan Uzuki is now entering Babel Tower. DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.
===============================<* Babel Tower *>================================ ==================<* CHALLENGE - Why Don't We Fly Up There *>=================== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 4 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The daunting Tower of Babel, so fittingly named, stands as a reminder of the limits of human progress... and, perhaps, a teaser to urge one to surpass their limits in turn. An enormous cylindrical structure of rusted metal of a bygone era, it rises well past the atmosphere to bounds untold. Just peeking inside, the scene of utter carnage that visits the innards of the tower is clear. It would take remarkable feats of agility and balance to go through all of this. Then, perhaps, your first thought might be: "Why don't we just fly up there?" Perhaps your Gears can fly! Perhaps you've obtained some kind of lifter device! An ancient anti-gravity crystal! Or perhaps a good old fashioned winch and rope contraption! ... Should you succumb to this entirely understandable impulse, the inevitable conclusion eventually arrives minutes (or hours, depending on how foolhardy you are) later: It's far too high to fly up there. The Tower of Babel isn't one to give free passes, alas. =Dungeon Conditions: Madness, Madness, Madness, Madness, Secret===============
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
From a distance, Babel Tower looks impossibly, improbably tall.
...Looking at it up close doesn't do anything to diminish this impression. In fact, if anything, it only makes it seem to stretch to the ends of the heavens.
Approaching the tower is the easy part. Shrines and other sites of pilgrimage litter the base of Babel, but no one else is here now. And while normally there would be an obstacle to advancing into the tower itself...
"Would you look at this, here? It seems some of the seals have broken. Hmm..." So Citan muses as Heimdall approaches the now bare entryway, a rusted piece of metal that opens -- if with some mild difficulty -- when pulled by the Gear. "Just as Mirah had said. We can enter the tower from here."
But it looks to be a long way up from the inside, and there's no telling what awaits them within. ...Certainly, per first glances at the rusted, unstable-looking array of metal within. Will they even be able to climb it? Could it be possible instead to ascend in some fashion from the outside?
"..."
Citan at least considers the possibility.
"...We should not delay."
But basic math, given the rate of fuel consumption vis a vis the various methods, suggests to him that it's just not going to work with the Gear he has now.
DG: Citan Uzuki has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Why Don't We Fly Up There.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei is in Weltall. He doesn't try flying up because.... He has....
Completely forgotten that Weltall HAS flight capabilities. But if he DOES remember those things he'll probably use them at the last possible moment! Perhaps?!
"This is the wildest tower I've ever seen," Fei says softly. "To think that we're gonna try to contact Shevat through here. I wonder how they could even have gotten a city all the way up there to begin with?"
5rHe looks to Citan. The name 'Shevat' still feels him with a certain uneasiness but it really is the only hope they've got so heh as to reach out for it.
"Yeah." He says.
...
He looks to Elly. "Any ideas?"
That-a-Fei!
DG: Fei Fong Wong has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Why Don't We Fly Up There.
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.
Having finally broken through whatever thoughts had subdued her for a few days, Emeralda Kasim was ready for adventure once again. She was still keeping whatever she'd taken from the Zeboim ruins secret - she'd hidden it somewhere where she was sure nobody would find it - but then she'd just gotten back to life. Even if she'd had to stop and think about a few things that, a month ago, she wouldn't have thought about at all.
Emeralda was excited to come along to an ancient tower to try to signal a city that may or may not exist. She wanted to see everything she could and that included mythical locations, as it turned out.
Which is why Crescens is currently here in all its armless glory. At the moment, it is currently looking up at Babel Tower, leaning back to try to see the top. Even playing with the camera to zoom in, Emeralda can't see it.
"Wow! It's so high... how come storms don't push it over? It must get hit by lightning and wind all the time! Even if it doesn't rust." Emeralda thinks about that for a moment. "Though I guess the lightning would have to go UP to hit it."
Crescens leaps into the air, spreading its wings (hands) wide. Normally Emeralda only glides with it, because when she tries to really fly it spits back an error she hasn't entirely figured out. She gets about ten Crescens-heights vertically before she starts to slow down. Emeralda frowns. She does that peculiar mental twist to speed up.
[L-FFFFFF ERROR - INSUFFICIENT POWER]
Crescens is still going up, but... slowly. 'Along', even gliding horizontally in midair, is no problem, but actually gaining height is a problem. "There's nowhere to land," Emeralda whines, as she passes by the side of the tower. Where is she going to stand to let things recharge?
One day, Emeralda decides, she has really got to figure out what an L-FFFFFF is.
DG: Emeralda Kasim has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Why Don't We Fly Up There.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Fei isn't the only one with uneasy feelings regarding Shevat. Xantia hasn't said much regarding this expedition, but it's easy to imagine that she must have mixed feelings about this. She has mentioned once that she has a vague feeling that at some point in the past, she may have been running from Shevat. While nothing can be said about that with certainty, all things considered, it's extremely likely that she at least has some kind of connection to the people of the sky. ...at least one of the people of the sky.
Which of course means that there's no way that she wasn't going. Vague worries aside, if there's any chance that she'll learn more about herself by contacting Shevat, she's all for it. Doubly so when it's been known for a while now that this may be their best potential ally against Solaris. She's not about hesitate now.
Well, maybe there was a little bit of hesitation. She's probably not the only one wondering if it was coincidence that Xenia appeared right around the time Babel Tower was to become accessible. Could the warning given by her 'sister' have been about Shevat...?
Even so, once actually at Babel Tower, Xantia is quick to push her concerns to the back of her mind. None of that's going to matter if they can't actually get up there, and that doesn't exactly look like it's going to be an easy feat. Going to need to keep her mind focused on the task at hand. Even a Gear made to have feline agility like Silvestris will be in trouble here if the pilot is distracted.
"What a weird structure," she muses, the neck of her Gear craning up. "All this metal... and did it really need to be THAT high?"
Nothing to really consider where it comes to flight, in her case. Silvestris doesn't fly... unaided. There's the Karlsefni's catapults, but somehow it doesn't seem like a great idea to be launched directly at a sheer vertical surface. She can just picture her Gear hanging there by its claws, flailing its hind legs trying in vain to find some traction.
"...Good thing I brought a big lunch, this looks like it'll take a while to climb."
DG: Xantia has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Why Don't We Fly Up There.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"Do you think that someone beat us to it?" Elly asks.
ELLY VAN HOUTEN, of course, is in her Gear, VIERGE. Vierge approaches in echelon behind Dr. Uzuki's Gear, which is a relatively heavy model and should both test the ground quite adequately and provide them with cover if countermeasures attack.
And inside...
"... it's just a cylinder?" Elly says, wonderingly.
Elly reaches over for the camera view. She zooms up. Upwards. Her palm shifts down to press on the radar signal trigger. A faint blue glow flickers up the enormous column. "... It's like the inside of a building, one that's half rotted out, or that caught fire... I suppose what we see here is like the... stone floors, or the pipes, around the water closet or..."
"... this place feels haunted..."
Elly takes her hands off the controls, Vierge shifting up to a more stable posture as she steeples her fingers and thinks. Time spent thinking isn't ever wasted, she tells herself. They're going up here to make contact with Shevat. Is this a trap?
Maybe they're going to end up agents of Shevat. Is that so bad? What *has* Shevat done? Even if Shevat is only different from Solaris in better treatment of the surface-dwellers... is that not ENOUGH? Is that a SMALL thing? Elly thinks. Her stomach knots. Especially with what they know. With the truth behind the Wels.
"Hm." Elly answers Fei.
Then she blinks, and a moment later, Vierge is -- laying on its back??
Elly explains: "I just realized that the radar tracker is oriented to Vierge's primary gyro-axis." There's another of those subtle blue flickers upwards.
There is a six minute interim as Elly basically does the same thing outside. Long-distance spies are probably baffled. That's a good thing.
Back inside: "It's wrecked in here... but outside must be completely smooth. Whatever was on the outside, it's long since disappeared, at least as far as Vierge's high-resolution radar can track. I think it gets thicker towards the top, but I don't know if that's the lower layers of the upper atmosphere..."
Elly taps some keys and starts feeding a provisional map towards people, before pausing, revising something, and sending a second provisional map - this time with a hasty and apparently 'hand written' appendix on the side: 'filgaia V this way'
"It's baffling," Elly answers Xantia. "Even if they were using this for a space port, you would just need to build... I mean, it's completely enclosed, and there was SOMETHING in here. You would just need elevators to the top to move cargo and passengers..."
DG: Elhaym van Houten has used her Tool Radar Pulser toward her party's challenge, Why Don't We Fly Up There.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
"I've been scanning up there... but I can't get much. I don't think we can climb it -- or fly up there," Leon says. He shakes his head, then he looks ahead. The radar inside of the Weglaff continues to ping. The machine steps up, just after Heimdall, and Leon looks at the seal.
"It appears so," he says. Leon's nose wrinkles for a moment, and then he glances sideways at the Weltall on his monitor.
"It's a good question," he says. "We'll find out when we get up there." Then, he glances at Crescens. "Good engineering, I suspect. I heard some ancient buildings have some give built in -- they'll sway, slightly, in heavy winds. Or with earthquakes."
He rolls his neck; then he looks at the door ahead of them. "Let's keep our eyes forward. Who knows what's waiting for us in that tower--but probably something to concern ourselves about."
DG: Leon Albus has used his Tool Wide Area Radar toward his party's challenge, Why Don't We Fly Up There.
===============================<* Babel Tower *>================================ ==================<* CHALLENGE - Why Don't We Fly Up There *>=================== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 4 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The daunting Tower of Babel, so fittingly named, stands as a reminder of the limits of human progress... and, perhaps, a teaser to urge one to surpass their limits in turn. An enormous cylindrical structure of rusted metal of a bygone era, it rises well past the atmosphere to bounds untold. Just peeking inside, the scene of utter carnage that visits the innards of the tower is clear. It would take remarkable feats of agility and balance to go through all of this. Then, perhaps, your first thought might be: "Why don't we just fly up there?" Perhaps your Gears can fly! Perhaps you've obtained some kind of lifter device! An ancient anti-gravity crystal! Or perhaps a good old fashioned winch and rope contraption! ... Should you succumb to this entirely understandable impulse, the inevitable conclusion eventually arrives minutes (or hours, depending on how foolhardy you are) later: It's far too high to fly up there. The Tower of Babel isn't one to give free passes, alas. =Dungeon Conditions: Madness, Madness, Madness, Madness, Secret===============
===============================<* Babel Tower *>================================ ==================<* CHALLENGE - Why Don't We Fly Up There *>=================== |Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 4 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- The daunting Tower of Babel, so fittingly named, stands as a reminder of the limits of human progress... and, perhaps, a teaser to urge one to surpass their limits in turn. An enormous cylindrical structure of rusted metal of a bygone era, it rises well past the atmosphere to bounds untold. Just peeking inside, the scene of utter carnage that visits the innards of the tower is clear. It would take remarkable feats of agility and balance to go through all of this. Then, perhaps, your first thought might be: "Why don't we just fly up there?" Perhaps your Gears can fly! Perhaps you've obtained some kind of lifter device! An ancient anti-gravity crystal! Or perhaps a good old fashioned winch and rope contraption! ... Should you succumb to this entirely understandable impulse, the inevitable conclusion eventually arrives minutes (or hours, depending on how foolhardy you are) later: It's far too high to fly up there. The Tower of Babel isn't one to give free passes, alas. =Dungeon Conditions: Madness, Madness, Madness, Madness, Secret===============
==========================<* Babel Tower - Round 1 *>=========================== ====================< Results - Why Don't We Fly Up There >===================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Citan Uzuki 0 --(29)--> 29 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emeralda Kasim 0 --(29)--> 29 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Xantia 0 --(29)--> 29 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elhaym van Houten 0 --(29)--> 29 Fail Radar Pulser 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leon Albus 0 --(29)--> 29 Fail Wide Area Radar 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fei Fong Wong 0 --(29)--> 29 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Citan Uzuki 0 --(15)--> 15 Fail Conditions: Madness|Secret(2) Effects: Cleanse ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Citan Uzuki has failed this challenge! The party gained 15 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Elhaym van Houten has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== ================<* CHALLENGE - A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope *>================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 3 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You loom precariously over an enormous expanse. Underneath is the same obnoxious body of water you may have fallen into over and over and over again. Sensors indicate the distance is too far for your Gears to safely bridge with their own powers. The one tiny, shiny hope is a dangling piece of metal hooked onto a fragile wire. You could leap onto it, see-saw back and forth to gain momentum, and jump... time it wrong, and you may be here for a very long time. Or... maybe you can remember you can fly for short distances...? =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"It is difficult to determine," Citan replies after a moment of study of the broken seals. "Perhaps so... but perhaps not. It might be that there is some connection between this and the... attack on the Ethos Headquarters. An... unintended side effect, perhaps? If they must have come here regularly to reinforce the seal..."
But all he can do is speculate, based on what he can see before him. Many of those who would have known for certain are dead.
"Ah, Emeralda--"
But she's off, ascending outside the tower for a short time. As she'll discover -- as Elly's radar tells her -- there's nowhere to land. Anyone who wants to climb it needs to be prepared to conduct the entire ascent in one go.
Within the cockpit, Citan rubs his chin for a moment. "Aligned to the gyroscope...? Ah, yes..." He nods, if only to himself. "That is quite an astute observation of you, Elly! I am afraid that my own instruments are hardly so sensitive. ...Then it appears we have no choice but to ascend from within. It is as I had assumed, but it is good to have confirmation."
At Xantia's question the doctor can only answer, "It depends on what its 'original purpose' had been. Had it been built solely by Shevat? Or does it have an older origin than that? Given that it has stood at least these last five hundred years, of course," he remarks to Leon, "I believe it must be sturdy enough. If only my own creations could last half as long..."
It could even be older than that. As old as the Zeboim civilization. Or... older?
"Well then," Citan says, once the way forward has been determined and Emeralda has rejoined them. "As they say, 'there is no time like the present'. At your leave, captain?"
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The good news, at least, is that the first few spaces - which manage, haphazardly, to lead upwards in a full rotation and a half - have improvised bridges around them, composed of scrap. So at least getting started is not difficult. Presumably, the Ethos made some preliminary efforts here, and perhaps removed SOMETHING, but wrote the rest off.
Which isn't very encouraging, now is it?
"What's a little interesting, I suppose," Elly says, perhaps more for Emeralda's benefit, or her own, "is that I'd think a long tube like this would draw in a lot of air... I suppose that means it's either enclosed at the top, even now, or that there are gaps higher up."
It isn't that windy inside, though it doesn't have the sort of dank, rotten sentiment you might expect with, say, a well bottom. You can even see where you're going in here. Almost meditative.
After this limited opening twist, there are a few more spaces that did not get bridged, but which are relatively easy to leap between. "Make sure you don't all go at once," Elly says, and this time is more for herself than anyone. Her tone has worry in it. Worrying is easy, familiar.
At a certain point - altitude equivalent to the second rest station on the way up the central mountain of Bledavik to the old palace of the Fatimas - there is a problem. The pick-your-steps, leap and tiptoe style of approach has reached its limits, and there is nothing but a yawning gap ahead along this route.
But.
There is a long structural gantryway going from about 11 o' clock to about 5' o clock. It dangles with some scrap material, long strands of - of something. It's golden, it looks like it might be rope. It hasn't rusted, so maybe there actually is gold involved.
On the far side, there are a series of mostly regular platforms in a sequence going upwards quite a ways. High enough that visual resolution doesn't make them out, with the haze in the air in here. (Yes, there's some haze. It's damp. There's water at the bottom.) (The metal hasn't rusted out yet.)
Vierge's head component tilts slightly as Elly examines the dangling wire. (It almost, but not quite, overlaps where the path ends.) She tugs on it a few times. She YANKS on it. She yanks on it, HARD, Vierge hiking up its grip to apply its full weight to the material. There is a little megalithic groaning... but...
It holds.
Elly is silent in thought for three seconds. (She is secretly hoping and praying that someone else will go first.) But then, breathing out, she flicks on another switch, and Vierge's engine makes a high capacity whining noise as if the Gear itself is either complaining or powering up a coolant system --
VAULT! "Kyahhhh!" Elly says, as Vierge dangles and swings back and forth several times before--
A leap, into the unknown.
DG: Elhaym van Houten has used her Tool Hammer Circuit toward her party's challenge, A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Huh." Fei tells Elly. Why DOESN'T it rust, he wonders aloud, and then he gives a glance towards Crescens, then he tries to look up up up with Weltall but that's just not going to happen.
"I guess we just have to do our best and--"
SPLASH
"It's okay we just have to get back up there and try again--"
SPLASH
"Third time's the charm!"
SPLASH
"F...fourth time's the charm?"
SPLASH
"Okay THIS TIME. THIS TIME we got it!" Fei says.
This time he sees the dangling wire. He exhales faintly nad says. "Aw geeze."
He takes in a deep breath. He takes a few steps back--
And he LEEEEAPS--attempting to use the flight engines to just sort of keep the Weltall afloat long enough to actually make the jump. But it's possible that thanks to his MILD CHEATING he'll overshoot it!?
"I guess we--we can try all the number of times we want right??" Fei says.
Finally, he thinks, a ruin that he hadn't secretly been to before or was somehow involved with. ... But why did it have to be like this???
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.
Finally, Emeralda gives up on flying. She drops back down like a stone, only to spread Crescens' wings for the last two Crescens-heights or so and slow down sharply before touching down. "There's nothing up there but more wall," Emeralda reports, which is exactly what was expected. But she had to check.
[L-FFFFFF - RECHARGING]
Apparently she agrees that going inside is the way to go, but as soon as she's in Emeralda threatens to abandon the party again - this time to explore. She never really goes too far, but on the larger platforms she does wander to the side a bit, and once Crescens bends down to poke at something on the floor; it turns out to be nothing and she abandons it after a while.
"Well, maybe it has windows," Emeralda says to Elly. "...so I guess that's why it's wet inside. If a cloud got inside... Would it be fog if it did that, or still a cloud? Could it rain INSIDE?"
Truly, these are the questions that this place deserves, and not 'why is there a 5000 meter tall tower' and 'Who built this, anyway?'.
"This place is kind of tilty," Emeralda decides, after some time. It's not that it's moving now - it's not - but just that none of the floors seem quite squared to her. Crescens tends to glide when it dashes instead of walking, and she keeps either scraping her toes or getting higher up from the floor when she does that.
At least it makes the short jumps (glides, really) easily. When they get to a bigger one, "I'll get it!" When she sees the dangling piece of metal, Emeralda is cheered. Here's something she - and Crescens - can do! One of the hand-wings Crescens has mounted to its head launches off, flying through space to...
...grab the dangling bit of metal and swing it over to the proper side. And then hold it in place so that someone can grab on. Having Crescens swing it seems like a much easier method than free-jumping. "I have got Vierge!"
She hopes.
DG: Emeralda Kasim has used her Tool Wing Bit toward her party's challenge, A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope. DG: Fei Fong Wong has used his Tool Remembered Flight Engine toward his party's challenge, A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
Leon feels some relief, as the first few spaces are navigable. The bridges -- made of scrap and detritus -- are concerning. But there is a lot that must have been taken, too. The Weglaff steps along, feet crunching the ground underneath. The blue Gear comes to a stop, as they come to a gap.
He glances at the sensors -- and one of the cameras in the cockpit -- and sees it is a long way down. He frowns for a moment, as he looks at the platforms.
Then the dangling wire.
Vierge leaps; Weltall leaps, again. (So far, Weglaff has not fallen.) The Weglaff waits for the Crescens, before raising an arm up. Leon takes aim -- firing up into the ceiling. A wire shoots from the wrist of the blue Gear.
Then Weglaff runs, leaps, and tries to swing across.
DG: Leon Albus has used his Tool Wire Shooter toward his party's challenge, A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"This is quite interesting, here," remarks the doctor, gesturing with a wave of Heimdall's arm towards one of those scrap bridges. "It would seem that others have been present at some point in the past. I do not believe these bridges had been formed by chance or by the ones who built the tower originally. Had the Ethos attempted a foray within?"
Ida had mentioned that it was said that a monster was sealed somewhere inside the tower, according to the stories.
"Indeed. There is some airflow in here, but not what one would expect," he remarks, working his way upwards slowly over the bridges and platforms that exist.
"In fact, it very well could rain 'inside'," he says to Emeralda, at her question. "All that is required is a high enough 'ceiling' and the presence of a moisture-heavy cloud within... If there are gaps above, that could very well explain the water in here. ...Or perhaps, it is the intrusion of the sea?"
And then they reach... the dangling bit of metal and wire. It seems to be just strong enough to support a single Gear at a time. But one slip, or error in timing, and...
"Oh dear. This may be tricky," Citan remarks, watching the pendulum-like swing of the scrap over the gap here. "Now, let me see..." His gaze sweeps the console before him, hands hovering over this or that button or switch for a moment before he decides on his course of action.
Timing will be everything in what follows. He may need to make sudden movements and involve the verniers, if necessary. While the temperature within Babel is quite cool -- it won't add to the situation going on inside his Gear -- it would be best that he ensure that Heimdall doesn't run into any unexpected difficulties from, say, overheating.
The coolant begins to circulate as he prepares to take that leap. It would be quite unfortunate to fall from here.
...Again, if he considers Fei's predicament.
DG: Citan Uzuki has used his Tool Dual-Phase Coolant toward his party's challenge, A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
It may not be expected of her, but Xantia too has noticed that the lack of rust here is odd. And that things were forcibly removed on the lower levels. Perhaps the two are related... metal like that must be pretty valuable.
Silvestris, meanwhile, hasn't had much trouble navigating does far. Its cat-like leaps make it fairly easy to traverse small gaps. It's actually kind of fun, though Xantia remains quiet throughout, not expressing herself with the enthusiasm that might be expected from her. She must be in thought about all this.
When the group gets to a more problematic gap, she hesitates. "Ummm... that's... going to be a problem." She could see the wire option just fine from the beginning, but had to write that off as something that Silvestris won't be able to use. Its claws aren't really made for holding things with, and both those as well as its teeth are likely to cut right through that wire. However, given its form, it may not be impossible for it to cross through jumping, in its case. Its quadruped form and light frame are basically made for long jumps like this.
She got close, on the first attempt. She wasn't too eager to try again after having to trudge all the way back up afterwards. Not exceptionally confident about trting again without a little bit of extra help, she decides to employ just that. Her Gear does come with copious amounts of reserve energy for precisely this reason, for when you need just that little bit of extra juice. She was hoping to not have to dip into it so soon, but... well, anyone would agree that getting this right in as few times as possible would be preferable.
"Hang on, let me... here, this should help!"
With that, a yellow-ish light flows out from the skeletal Gear, blanketing everyone's machines and providing them with a small energy boost. Hopefully it'll be just the extra little bit of help needed to get across this time... so she hopes, as she gives that long leap another shot.
DG: Xantia has used her Tool Energy Dispersal Unit toward her party's challenge, A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope.
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== ================<* CHALLENGE - A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope *>================= |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 3 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You loom precariously over an enormous expanse. Underneath is the same obnoxious body of water you may have fallen into over and over and over again. Sensors indicate the distance is too far for your Gears to safely bridge with their own powers. The one tiny, shiny hope is a dangling piece of metal hooked onto a fragile wire. You could leap onto it, see-saw back and forth to gain momentum, and jump... time it wrong, and you may be here for a very long time. Or... maybe you can remember you can fly for short distances...? =Dungeon Conditions: Hesitate=================================================
=========================<* Babel Tower - Round 2 *>========================== ==================< Results - A Golden Shiny Wire of Hope >=================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Citan Uzuki 29 --(0)--> 29 Pass Dual-Phase Coolant 2 Agility Effects: Stalwart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Emeralda Kasim 29 --(0)--> 29 Pass Wing Bit 2 Agility Effects: Quicken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Xantia 29 --(0)--> 29 Pass Energy Dispersal Unit 1 Agility Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elhaym van Houten 29 --(0)--> 29 Pass Hammer Circuit 3 Agility Effects: Liability and Quicken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Leon Albus 29 --(0)--> 29 Pass Wire Shooter 3 Agility Effects: Rally ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fei Fong Wong 29 --(0)--> 29 Pass Remembered Flight Engine 3 Agility Effects: Rally ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Citan Uzuki 15 --(25)--> 40 Pass Conditions: Hesitate(2)|Secret(1) Effects: Cleanse|Quicken(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Citan Uzuki has passed this challenge! The party gained 25 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"If the fuel gets really low, we might have to go resupply at the Karlsefni," Elly answers Fei, a little dubiously, "But... yes, that's very true. I think if nothing's attacking us, we only have to worry about braking our falls, and that water would really help..."
"It could," Elly tells Emeralda. "It'd be a very light rain, but I've heard about that. Though, given how tall this place is, it might not be that light..."
Elly frets about Fei, especially since the signal is already getting a mote of static from this distance. What if he fell from much higher up? What if ANY of them did? Then again, Elly thinks, they might not make it to the bottom. Even with basic steering thrusters you could probably land on the platform.
"It would make sense for them to at least look inside before sealing it up," Elly answers Citan. "But of course, this tower... it's been here for a long time. It could have been someone else... the Zeboim, or maybe the people before the Day of Collapse..."
BUT
THE GOLDEN, SHINY WIRE OF HOPE provides the opportunity. The means. The talent! After Emeralda helps her with that last space of leaping, Elly actually jumps up a level so she doesn't put too much weight on one platform, as Leon uses his own interior wire-of-hope (or is it wire-of-violence)... Fei swings across classicaly ("Yeah!" Elly cheers)... Xantia power-boosts it and Citan overclocks at a vital moment.
"Hah... we did it! I wonder if this is where anyone previously would have had to stop," Elly says. "Even if they took that wire, they'd be..."
Elly glances around, superstitiously. Somehow she expects to see skeletal remains.
"... stuck here..."
DG: Emeralda Kasim has drawn a new Challenge.
===============================<* Babel Tower *>================================ ==================<* CHALLENGE - Traffic Control Nightmares *>================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Your team makes headway through an odd, sideways urban city... but your path ends here. There are no more footholds, as the buildings end before a dilapidated park. But a whirring noise catches your attention - round machines patrol the roads around you. They seem designed to direct traffic of a kind... but there is no traffic. Perhaps you can hop on their heads and use them as footholds, but beware! They don't take kindly to being jumped on, and will become agitated! =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.
"What if they can grab the wire to get back?" Emeralda says, thoughtfully. Because she can, and if *she* can do it, surely someone else can, too.
It's not even a ridiculous concept like some of the things she thinks other people should be able to do, either. Gears have remote tools and wires and grapples and all sorts of way to grab and manipulate the wire to get within leaping distance, and some fly or glide.
"...or they could jump," Emeralda adds, looking down a little doubtfully. Weltall has fallen before, but he'd better not do that again, she thinks.
There is some time of climbing. Fortunately it doesn't even seem to have a lot of jumping over gaps, for the moment; there's some literal climbing as the team circles around part of the outside of the tower before reaching an area that is flat vertically rather than curved like the Tower wall. There's a lot of platforms here that stick out varying distances, in various levels of intact-ness -
These are buildings. It takes Emeralda a bit of time to notice it - when Crescens gets to the top of the set of buildings - the edge of what used to be some kind of park - and looks around in the empty space. "Hey! This place is sideways! Did the tower roll? No, wait, it's the wrong sideways - "
Emeralda doesn't get it. Should the Tower be lying on the ground? She scratches her head in side the cockpit in confusion; Crescens partially mimics the movement, curling one of its wings in an unclear way.
One of the round machines bumps into said wing. Emeralda reflexively grabs at it, and finds herself being carried upward by the agitated trafficbot, which is trying to go any direction that does not involve a Gear hanging off it by a wing. "Aaaah! - Hey, I'm going up!"
Well, it's a strategy?
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei Fong Wong grimaces at the idea of having to go all the way back to the Karlsefni. "If that's the alternative I think I'd rather just fall." He isn't being completely serious. Right? Haha... right? Right?? Of course not. He's mostly not serious.
But he does say, "See, it only took a few tries," Fei says, giving Emeralda a thumbsup even though he was really the only guy who had a lot of trouble with it. But, to be fair, Fei isn't exactly adept at platforming as proven by history even on his own two feet. And...he tends to avoid riding Weltall around in the first place...
Fei sees it, then. A strange...city?
Fei blinks faintly and tilts his head to the side in his cockpit. He wrinkles his nose in deep thought and--
His hands are shaking. He doesn't know why. He feels...frightened. A deep fear welling up within him. A fear without end. A terror that cannot be quelled or quenched. It is a soft thing. He's not sure why, either.
"...Is...anybody else getting a weird feeling?" Fei asks.
But he does see a path forward and jumping on heads is just something he is always happy to do. He holds off on using more of his fuel for now because if he's good at anything, it's head hopping.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Traffic Control Nightmares.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
The climbing continues. Leon blinks -- a little surprised to find a flat area inside the tower -- and he stares a second at the buildings. It takes him a moment, too, to register what they are.
"How did this happen?" he asks. "A city on its side. This isn't--gh, Emeralda!"
He sees the Crescens getting carried away. He takes a deep breath, then shakes his head. "Yes, Fei," he says. "But ours are likely different."
He makes Weglaff run forward. After Weltall, he leaps --- and comes crashing down for a different building, to hopskotch across.
DG: Leon Albus has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Traffic Control Nightmares.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Sideways, Emeralda reports, but the wrong sideways.
Vierge stops with the hopping and looks around. Elly gazes straight at what looks to be an old wall marking in between these protruberances.
A white interreupted line?
Abruptly, Elly remembers -- "It's like... the roads in the Seed Cities... what...?"
"I think I know what you mean," Elly says to Fei and Leon. She seems to be about to say something else, when--
Lydia. Ida. Xantia. Seraphita. Bart. Billy. Everyone. Elly closes her eyes for a moment, tenses her jaw. She doesn't have the right to want to leave, not now. Not after this.
Her eyes open again-- in time to see one of the round objects get used as a jumping post by Weltall. "... They're active? And they've - got enough strength to - well, alright!" Elly pulls the boost lever again, Vierge's interior overclocking fans whining once more as she aims for a triple jump past a space that contains nothing but tiny little boxes, barely recognizable as -- single-family housing in a dense neighborhood? (But what does that look like?)
DG: Elhaym van Houten has used her Tool Hammer Circuit toward her party's challenge, Traffic Control Nightmares.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia hadn't thought about going back down until Elly's remark makes her think about it. That's alarming. Not just because it'd be a huge slog having to go all the way down again after going all the way up, but also... "Oh no, I only counted on having to go up, I don't have a big enough lunch to cover all the way back down again, too!"
This realization doesn't cause her to actually ration her sandwiches or anything. Parts of her 'lunch' happen periodically as they traverse up the tower. Meanwhile, Silvestris manages climbing short distances just fine by digging in its claws and scooting up quickly, much like a cat climbing a tree. She doesn't presume anybody's going to mind the damage she's causing in the process. Not like anybody lives here.
A short while later...
"Do people live here??"
This section immediately got Xantia's rapt attention, for obvious reasons, as she speaks her thoughts aloud. "This doesn't much look like a space port or anything like that, anymore..." Silvestris twists its neck sideways. "...that looks uncomfortable," she adds, unable to imagine how people would stay in that position. Do they have magnet boots? Do they have to glue all their furniture to the walls?
Her Gear's head turns to Weltall as Fei speaks. "What, you mean like vertigo? A little bit. I mean, I don't mind sleeping upside-down, but I can't imagine living like that." ...not quite the same as Fei's feeling, probably.
She isn't particularly alarmed by Emeralda being carried upwards. They need to go up, after all. "Oh, is that how you do it? 'kay!" And off Silvestris goes, hopping from platform to platform. That's all they are, just a kind of platform, right? Sure they are. Still energized from the earlier energy burst she employed, she figures this won't be too much of a problem.
DG: Xantia has used her Tool Energy Dispersal Unit toward her party's challenge, Traffic Control Nightmares. DG: Emeralda Kasim has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Traffic Control Nightmares.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"Indeed, it would have been quite foolish of them to not investigate, at least in part," Citan agrees. "Perhaps it was caution alone that prevented them from exploring further."
He pauses though.
"Or... could it have been something else?" he cannot help but muse, for better or for worse. Perhaps the mind again drifts towards the concept of the 'monster' alleged to be sealed within...
But they can't exactly turn around and go back, can they?
Perhaps even less so after they cross that gap. "Yes, we appear to have cross this obstacle with 'flying colors', as it were. Whether or not anyone else has come this far before, however... I should not like to attempt to return by a drop down below!" It may be reasonably 'safe', but it doesn't mean that it's the sort of approach that is preferable, even in a Gear.
They ascend, after a fashion, working their way from that point onwards higher into the tower. But up here... there is a city. That would not be so fantastic, given what they know about Shevat's past connection to the tower. No, the thing that is astonishing about the city is that it's sideways.
"A... sideways city?" Citan utters, pausing a moment to try and get a closer look with Heimdall's cameras. "Are we certain that we are not regarding it improperly... oh, my. There are pathways and... is that a plaza? Why would it have been constructed..."
He trails off, a particular realization perhaps occuring to him. Or perhaps, two separate realizations that complement each other quite well in fact. The first comes from his days as a Solaris citizen and its orientation towards Filgaia. The other comes from another source altogether.
"I... believe I may need to agree with Leon on that one, Fei," he says after a moment's silence.
But while they've been talking, the still-animate residents of this city have been busy. "--My word, are those-- oh dear," he finishes, watching as one of them begins to cart Emeralda away (accidentally). Activating Heimdall's jets for a bit of a 'boost', he leaps for another of those trafficbots, attempting to use it as a platform.
DG: Citan Uzuki has used his Tool Jump Jets toward his party's challenge, Traffic Control Nightmares.
===============================<* Babel Tower *>================================ ==================<* CHALLENGE - Traffic Control Nightmares *>================== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | ---------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------- Your team makes headway through an odd, sideways urban city... but your path ends here. There are no more footholds, as the buildings end before a dilapidated park. But a whirring noise catches your attention - round machines patrol the roads around you. They seem designed to direct traffic of a kind... but there is no traffic. Perhaps you can hop on their heads and use them as footholds, but beware! They don't take kindly to being jumped on, and will become agitated! =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
==========================<* Babel Tower - Round 3 *>=========================== ====================< Results - Traffic Control Nightmares >==================== Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Citan Uzuki 29 --(5)--> 34 Pass Jump Jets 3 Agility Effects: Rally -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emeralda Kasim 29 --(5)--> 34 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Xantia 29 --(5)--> 34 Pass Energy Dispersal Unit 1 Agility Effects: Cleanse -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elhaym van Houten 29 --(5)--> 34 Pass Hammer Circuit 3 Agility Effects: Liability and Quicken -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leon Albus 29 --(5)--> 34 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fei Fong Wong 29 --(5)--> 34 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC -----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------ Leader: Citan Uzuki 40 --(15)--> 55 Pass Conditions: Exhaust(1)|Hesitate(1) Effects: Cleanse|Quicken(1) ===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Citan Uzuki has passed this challenge! The party gained 15 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Fei Fong Wong has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== ==============<* CHALLENGE - Wayside Stories in Sideways City *>============== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You come across a bizarre urban area turned sideways; your footholds have become strange rectangular buildings of stone and glass, and your wall has become a tapestry of paved roads painted white and yellow, with various traffic and lamp posts acting as swing bars. Setting aside the good questions of what an ancient city is doing inside the Tower of Babel, the shift sideways also adds new challenges - the glass breaks easily underneath your Gear's weight, and the posts aren't always ready to support a Gear either. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.
Emeralda gets a better grip on the angry (?) robot as it maneuvers around. She is indeed going up. And down. And a bit around. But on average, up.
And she's not alone. Fei follows her up mostly by riding the next trafficbot; they strain a little under a full Gear's weight but that mostly serves to slow them down, not threaten to send them plummeting into the abyss.
Leon's ascent is a little more jumpy, and thus a little more circuitous, but just as effective. Vierge keeps up with him, passing past a bunch of 'platforms' far too small to support a Gear, toward the larger ones.
Xantia and Citan also keep up, riding their own bots. It's not quite *routine* at any point, but it does seem to be a reliably workable plan. And, it has one other bonus: "Whee!" Emeralda is having a lot of fun, now that she's holding on properly. "I don't think anyone lives here. It's too old!"
Eventually, the bots make it to the other side of the gap, into... more buildings. But differently sized and shaped. Emeralda drops off onto one of them as the trafficbot tries to go between two buildings into an area Crescens will not fit; the other ones are also heading toward their own side streets, so it's on foot (or whatever) again from here on out!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei Fong Wong glances towards Leon. Or rather, the Weglaff. He exhales slowly and rubs at his neck. He is starting to wonder if maybe people just sort of assume he'll have reactions to weird shit like this. And here he thought he might finally have a break from all that.
But this feels a little different from normal. He's not really sure how to describe it. It isn't like when he remembered 'LE' dying, it feels more primal.
"Leon..." Fei murmurs. "Do you--" No, he thinks, this would have to be even older than the Fila Del Fia by a landslide.
"No, not like that." Fei says to Xantia, looking over to her. "You know how you always talk about how you feel like there's something you have to do, or like something's calling you?"
Fei wrinkles his nose and says, "...It feels like that, maybe? Except... Except there's nothing actually there. Like an echo reverberating back at you."
He looks to Elly and then adds, "You feel something like that too?" But he does have to admit. "It is strange anything still works in here. Parts usually degrade over time but if it was meant to be a--"
He is interrupted as glass he assumed was solid ground suddenly shatters underneath him. He catches himself and grimaces but he pulls himself up and says, "Careful everyone-- The glass won't support our weight."
He looks around and sees some lamp posts and the like. "...And I'd honestly be surprised if those things did too. So let's try not to grip onto anything for too long."
DG: Fei Fong Wong has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Wayside Stories in Sideways City.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
"I'm not sure," Leon says to Fei. "This is... mm. Mysteries built upon mysteries, it feels like, sometimes."
He grimaces, as he takes another leap. The Weglaff lands on a parking arage's side -- rather than the glass -- but that makes the footing unstable. He thinks it might be better, after seeing the Weltall's foot slide through the glass of another building.
"It seems as if it must be abandoned," he adds. "But... I wonder how long. I wonder if Shevat knows about what's inside -- or if they're as lost as we are."
Weglaff leaps again, after a stumble; then it lands on another skyscraper, and then another.
DG: Leon Albus has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Wayside Stories in Sideways City.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"Yes," Elly answers Fei. "I feel it too."
"... But I don't know what 'it' is... all of this looks familiar, a little bit," Elly says, pausing on top of a particular robust protruberance/shopping center to look at Leon. "It could be intended as..."
Elly trails off. Her mind swims. She breathes deeply in and out several times, before answering Xantia. "Maybe? If it was on its side, then it would have been able to do quite well. Maybe they had control over gravity? You could build something this tall... but to control gravity so thoroughly that you build your city like this..."
"But we don't know anything about whoever... made this," Elly says.
"But those roads... I suppose the idea is so simple it might have occured to anybody," Elly says. "Maybe this place was built by people, but not by 'humans'."
And then there is a crash of glass--!!!!
-- Actual glass.
Elly looks at the Hammer Circuit's charge level - two Hammers remaining out of four. Good enough. She leans back, bites her lower lip, and pushes it to the limit-- vaulting up UP UP up UP past three or four blocks of buildings, too quick to put enough pressure to shatter glass - until she reaches a far less glassy skyscraper, where Vierge lingers, radiating steam.
"I suppose we can ask," Elly says, about the mysteries and Shevat.
"... ah," she continues. "I just noticed. We're... well, when we entered this 'city zone', we were about as high as the island mountain in Nisan... and now that we're here, we're at about the same altitude as Neo Vane, relative to Lunar's sea-level datum."
"... And I suppose, there's still a long way to go."
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.
Emeralda feels... something. Some parts of it seem like something she's seen before, but she can't figure out why, or where. But it's not somewhere she's spent a lot of time, she doesn't think. So maybe it was another ruin?
This place is a bit less of a ruin than Emeralda expected, though. Sure, it's old, but it still is together... mostly. It's a little less so when they start stepping on it. Emeralda kicks up Crescens' gliding functions, getting another one of those warnings; this time it's ignorable because she's not trying to go up, just stomp a little less hard on the building.
"I bet they don't go inside," Emeralda says, "because we haven't seen ANYTHING that doesn't... fit. It's all from here! I think. There's not Gears or monsters or anything." (jinx) "And nobody's taken things away, or at least I can't tell what they took."
Gliding, using the lift functions on the wings, Emeralda is less likely to put her foot through (she thinks). She doesn't really tempt fate, sticking to more stable-looking areas, but even so, it seems a little safer.
DG: Emeralda Kasim has used her Tool Wing Bit toward her party's challenge, Wayside Stories in Sideways City.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Even though the platforms are clearly capable of movement under their own power, it never really clicks with Xantia that they might be anything to worry about. Just platforms, it's fine. With how quickly she jumps from one to another, she doesn't get in any trouble for this, and is still none the wiser by the time she lands back on solid ground.
Or well, the buildings themselves are not quite ground, and not always exceptionally solid. Emeralda had a good point - if this was ever populated, it would have to be 'lived', not 'lives' by now. The disrepair makes that much apparent, even without considering how old this place is and how long it was sealed for.
Fei's description makes Xantia fall quiet for a moment. If he's comparing it to the way she feels, but instead of being called, it's something of a residual echo... It doesn't take her long to piece together the kind of feeling that would have to be, especially with Elly using the word 'familiar'.
"So... you feel as if you've been here before?"
She stops herself from wondering aloud whether that's possible. Considering that it's Fei, that's not something she feels she has to wonder.
Besides, she soon has something else to worry about, Silvestris being forced to quickly vacate the side of a building before a section of it crumbles away. Noting the drain on her energy reserves, the yellow glow coming from her Gear fades at this point. She should really save the rest of the reserves for real emergencies.
"...whoops. I hope none of this is still important to anybody." It must have been, once. That's weird to think about.
Her Gear nods in response to Leon's comment. "You think it's possible that people from Shevat used to live here?" After a short pause, she adds, "Then I hope you're right Elly, that would've been really uncomfortable if it was always all sideways like this."
DG: Xantia has used her Tool Energy Dispersal Unit toward her party's challenge, Wayside Stories in Sideways City.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"In a place such as this, one can almost feel the weight of history itself," Citan says, as the Fei speaks to Xantia of his strange feeling in this place. "But, when you say it like that... I do not think it is merely 'that sense' of which you are speaking, Fei."
He leaps from the trafficbot after a time, landing on a nearby building; the glass, as Fei warned, begins to crack and shatter underfoot. Making use of the same propulsion system as before, Heimdall leaps again for a nearby building; the force displaced requires a further jump.
"It is a shame to damage these buildings. To think they have stood untouched all this time...! But it cannot be helped," the doctor remarks, as he keeps moving, working to ascend ever higher. At some point, there must be a place where they can access the 'top', that space of which the Shevat agent had spoken.
"We have ascended as high as that already?" he remarks to Elly; he had learned some from them -- and others -- about the particulars of the geography of the rest of Lunar, even if he has never been first-hand. "Then we have much further to go. The height of the tower is--"
The place where his Gear is standing is beginning to crumble. It's time to keep moving.
DG: Citan Uzuki has used his Tool Jump Jets toward his party's challenge, Wayside Stories in Sideways City. DG: Elhaym van Houten has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Wayside Stories in Sideways City.
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== ==============<* CHALLENGE - Wayside Stories in Sideways City *>============== |Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You come across a bizarre urban area turned sideways; your footholds have become strange rectangular buildings of stone and glass, and your wall has become a tapestry of paved roads painted white and yellow, with various traffic and lamp posts acting as swing bars. Setting aside the good questions of what an ancient city is doing inside the Tower of Babel, the shift sideways also adds new challenges - the glass breaks easily underneath your Gear's weight, and the posts aren't always ready to support a Gear either. =Dungeon Conditions: Exhaust==================================================
=========================<* Babel Tower - Round 4 *>========================== ================< Results - Wayside Stories in Sideways City >================ Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Citan Uzuki 34 --(5)--> 39 Pass Jump Jets 3 Agility Effects: Rally ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Emeralda Kasim 34 --(5)--> 39 Pass Wing Bit 2 Agility Effects: Quicken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Xantia 34 --(5)--> 39 Pass Energy Dispersal Unit 1 Agility Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elhaym van Houten 34 --(5)--> 39 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Leon Albus 34 --(5)--> 39 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fei Fong Wong 34 --(5)--> 39 Pass Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Citan Uzuki 55 --(20)--> 75 Pass Conditions: Exhaust(1) Effects: Cleanse|Quicken(1) ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Citan Uzuki has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw. DG: Xantia has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== ==========================<* CHALLENGE - Hooray! *>=========================== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- They say the weather enjoyed after an effortful hike is all the more precious to savour; the moment of triumph in overcoming obstacles and one's own limits. The bright blue sky shines before you as you make one final ascent. The sun's rays gleam warmly, bathing the crumbling top of the Tower of Babel with a calming warmth. Everything is pleasant and quiet, allowing you a moment of peace... =Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Something like that." Fei says. "The weight of history, I mean. But also more than that like you said. I guess I'm not really sure what it is either but--Ahh, don't take this the wrong way Xantia, but I feel like for the first time I completely get what it's like to need to go somewhere. To find...something..." He wrinkles his nose. "...Someone?"
He shakes his head, clearing this thoughts. "Well even if it was the case, that's not really immediately useful. We should just keep at it. I'm not having a panic attack yet or anything so all told, this is pretty mild all told."
After his initial hiccup, he and the others are able to readily make their way across. Now that they KNOW that even super sci fi glass and structures are vulnerable to giant robots, it isn't too difficult to work around that.
He does look to Emeralda to make sure she doesn't have any trouble but Emeralda seems to have the best flight system out of the group. He probably has to worry about her the least.
"There may have been some kind of artificial gravity system but I don't think it'd work even like that."
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia shakes her head in response to Fei. He may not be able to see it, but he can probably picture that she's smiling when she replies. "That's alright Fei... I kind of wish you didn't have to understand what that's like. It's... bothersome, when you have no way to know what that something or someone is, isn't it?"
It's also easy to let it get to you, in her experience, so she can only be glad to see that Fei is holding up better under it than she did when she first experienced it. For now, they'll need to keep their minds on what they're doing, since like Citan said, there's still a long way to go. And there's no way that they're just going to find some sort of space train to quickly cover the rest of the way up, right?
ONE SPACE TRAIN LATER
"...I can't believe how quickly we got this high up," Xantia boggles, still a little light-headed from the high-speed ride. She soon finds herself needing to squint as her Gear's camera is directed upwards towards the... "Sunlight...?"
It seems that the last climb ended up at a sizable flat platform, crumbling at the sides like most other pieces of the tower, but plenty sturdy to serve as a solid and - dare we say it - safe platfrom to stand on. It's not quite standing on top of the tower, but where there should be a ceiling, there simply isn't one. Judging by the edges, it looks more as if it had been roughly torn off rather than collapsed at some point.
"...Is this it?" Xantia wonders aloud. "I don't see anywhere to go from here... is this where we need to be to contact Shevat? Then... what do we do now?"
DG: Xantia has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hooray!. DG: Emeralda Kasim has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Hooray!. DG: Fei Fong Wong has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Hooray!.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
"The weight of history... hmm. I do know what you mean," Leon answers Fei.
It isn't so long -- thanks to the high speed elevator -- before they're up at the top. Leon breathes a sigh of relief, as sunlight pours onto their gears. "I think it must be," he says to Xantia. "It feels like... we're at the very top of the world."
The altimeter all but confirms it. He glances, then, at the radar; he shakes his head, looking away after a moment.
"Quite the view..."
DG: Leon Albus has used his Tool Wide Area Radar toward his party's challenge, Hooray!.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"If they had a train here... And it's still running..."
Elly is disturbed at the prospect. She has thoughts about this place. She has also thought of the mysterious vessel Fila-del-Fia, but this place seems far vaster. It would remind her of home, or rather, the place of her birth; but that place was a rickety and crabbed confined space, compared to this.
Was this place some sort of shelter? But it's jutting up into the surface skies. It's BREAKING, if oh so terribly gradually. Why would you make it like this? Why wouldn't you lay it along the ground, curve it gently?
But then they reach a clear, blue sky.
Somehow, it's calming.
"It is," Elly agrees with Leon. "Dr. Uzuki, do you think this is where we...?"
DG: Elhaym van Houten has used her Tool Radar Pulser toward her party's challenge, Hooray!.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei laughs faintly at Xantia's own answer to him and he says, "Yeah
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
Hopefully they'll reach a place where they can get their bearings soon. The longer they go without pause, the more chance an error could ensue.
...Or, they could, before long, happen across an ancient space train capable of ferrying them up the rest of the distance to the tower's apex. That's also a thing that could happen.
"It is remarkable that it was still functional," is the thing that Citan says, as he takes in the blue skies above them.
To say nothing of Filgaia, stretching off into the distance all about them. "Ah! What a view that is!" he exclaims. "I cannot say when the last time I saw anything quite like it... Oh, indeed! Yes, if there is still a means to contact Shevat, it must be somewhere about here. Now... let us see..."
Looking about with his Gear's camera system, Citan attempts to determine if there is anything about here that seems to meet the requirements of 'a communication system, specifically, still drawing power'. It would not do to, say, accidently step on such a thing...
DG: Citan Uzuki has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Hooray!.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei laughs faintly at Xantia's own answer to him and he says, "Yeah... But as bothersome as it is... I guess at this point, what is another link to an unknown past. If I ever had been to a place like this, ever lived in a place like this... It might as well have happened to someone else. Its hard to believe it might have any relevance to what we are doing here besides providing a tricky path up! And..."
He walks to get a look at that view.
"Even one world is so big. And so small. If we were far enough away it'd look like a marble, maybe!" He laughs. "Elly .."
He looks to Vierge.
"When it looks like this...it almost feels like we could run to the end of the world, yeah?"
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.
There is a *lot* of up. Emeralda was not expecting to get so high so fast, but now that she has...
"Wow!" There is a moment of silence, and then the back of Crescens' head and neck split slightly, revealing the concealed hatch; a moment after *that*, Emeralda pulls herself out with both hands and her hair, which is shoving her up so she can stand on Crescens' head.
"It's so high! Everything is so small! But most of what I can see is water..." That's what you get for being on an island.
Emeralda stands up as high as she can on Crescens' head, mostly to say she got as high as she absolutely could. She shades her eyes, grabs one of the 'prongs' on the side of the wings, and leans forward so she can see whatever she can. "Look, look, there's a ship!" (Emeralda has sharp eyes.)
Yeah, she thinks. That was worth the trip all by itself.
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== ==========================<* CHALLENGE - Hooray! *>=========================== |Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- They say the weather enjoyed after an effortful hike is all the more precious to savour; the moment of triumph in overcoming obstacles and one's own limits. The bright blue sky shines before you as you make one final ascent. The sun's rays gleam warmly, bathing the crumbling top of the Tower of Babel with a calming warmth. Everything is pleasant and quiet, allowing you a moment of peace... =Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
=========================<* Babel Tower - Round 5 *>========================== ============================< Results - Hooray! >============================= Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Citan Uzuki 39 --(5)--> 44 Pass Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Emeralda Kasim 39 --(17)--> 56 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Xantia 39 --(17)--> 56 Fail Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elhaym van Houten 39 --(17)--> 56 Fail Radar Pulser 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Leon Albus 39 --(5)--> 44 Pass Wide Area Radar 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fei Fong Wong 39 --(5)--> 44 Pass Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC ----------------------------------< Party >----------------------------------- Leader: Citan Uzuki 75 --(35)--> 110 Pass Conditions: Save Point(1) Effects: Cleanse ==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: You have overcome the dungeon's trials! This run is a success! DG: The party led by Citan Uzuki has successfully explored Babel Tower!
==============================<* Babel Tower *>=============================== =========================<* CHALLENGE - Seventeen *>========================== |Type: Discovery |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1 | --------------------------< Challenge Information: >-------------------------- You enjoy an uninterrupted break and regain your bearings. ... Then... it happens-- The enormous roar of a high-caliber Gear vernier, as a massive blue silhouette with twin booster tanks descends from above. -= TO BE CONTINUED =- =Dungeon Conditions: Fright===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
This is another awkward moment for Xantia. Everyone seems to be marveling at the view from up here, but she... her only focus is on what they came here for. Even when she does look out at the world below, she just... doesn't seem to feel whatever it is that other people feel. It comes out sounding very hollow when she says, "Yes, it's... it's nice, isn't it?"
It probably is. It should be. So why is it not making any impression on her at all...?
But any such thoughts, or thoughts of looking for communication equipment are soon interrupted by the shadow of a giant Gear. Silvestris takes a pose much like a threatened cat as Xantia broadcasts, "We've got trouble!" Well, she shouldn't assume. "...Possible trouble!"
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"Hmm, is it possible that this could be--"
Citan's discovery of something apparently likely-looking is curtailed by the roar of an engine from above.
"This is--!"
<=== TO BE CONTINUED ====